Soul-free

THE CELL DOOR SLAMMED BEHIND RUBASHOV. He remained leaning against the door for a few seconds, and lit a cigarette.

I get to the client's office before 8:00. The aircon is out and no-one seems to be expecting me. I loiter until Karen comes to conduct me to another building.

The aircon is working here. The room is a small video conference suite and, hence, poorly laid out for a training class. Twenty four people with laptops will struggle to fit. I rearrange it as best I can. It's located in a secure area which my pass will not give me access to, so I have to be let back in when I go to lunch or the toilet.

In the end only 14 people turn up, so it's alright. They mostly want to talk about how they can get other teams to work differently or how to cope with badly written software inherited from other teams.

I mope back to my room. It's very humid and soon erupts into lightning and downpour. In a dry spell I go across the road to an Italian and order cod pescatore. A massive plate arrives, a mountain of risotto, laced with calamari, topped with slab of cod, ringed by a perimeter of mussels. There's no way I'm finishing it.

And then I realise I left my wallet in the house. The waitress seems happy for me to leave my phone and car keys while I go back and fetch them. Which is just as well.