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‘I’m not even supposed to handle them until I get my B2 through.’

‘Yeah, no worries,’ said Chesney, throwing his jacket down on top of one of the filing cabinets. ‘You go ahead. Take a full hour if you want. Morpork won’t be back until four, will he? Not if he’s at one of those RSPCA thrashes.’

He went to one of the filing cabinets, opened the top drawer and started to rummage around without much conviction. His acting stank, and Smeet was taking her time getting ready – taking off the white coat and hanging it on a rack behind one of the desks, then putting various items from the desktop into her handbag.

‘Busy?’ I asked her, just to draw her attention away from Chesney.

‘Busy?’ she echoed. ‘Yes, we are. We’re working until ten o’clock most nights. Bird flu is our main money-spinner, at this point in time. Rabies is a niche market since the pet passport came along, but bird flu was a very timely replacement. It’s even outselling canine thrombocythemia. I’d say, on average, Vince gets to do the parrot sketch from Monty Python once every other day.

’

Smeet was done with loading her handbag by now and she hit the high road without looking back, deftly snatching up a brown suede jacket from the same rack and putting it on as she headed for the door. Chesney listened to her footsteps, one hand raised for silence, as they receded down the stairs.

‘Bitch,’ he said with feeling, when the front door two floors below us slammed to. He shut the file drawer with unnecessary force, opened the bottom one instead and took a box from it with a certain amount of care.

It was about the size of a shoebox, but it was made of wood and had a hinged lid. It was painted in green and gold to resemble an oversized Go {n oze lden Virginia tobacco tin. ‘She’d report me in a minute, you know? I have to do everything on the sly. Come into my parlour, and I’ll give you the stuff. Happy to get rid of it, to be honest.’

Chesney opened the door that the general public couldn’t pass through and went inside.

Following him, I found myself in a room that fitted my preconceptions of a pathology lab pretty much to the letter. There was a massive operating table in the centre, with a swivelling light array above it on a double-articulated metal arm. White tiles on the walls and floor; gleaming white porcelain sinks, inset into white work surfaces with kidney-shaped steel dishes stacked ready to hand.