Lara was going to join them in the afternoon when the branch manager meeting was over. ‘You can choose any dish you like to make up for missing the reading, kitten,’ said Deborah. A little later she said goodbye and hung up. ‘What did she ask for?’ ‘Chicken breast and salad.’ ‘Wow.’ ‘Well, it’s light, and we don’t often get asked for something really light.’ ‘How about us?’ ‘I thought you had to work all day?’ ‘I’ll try to drop by later with Rashid. After two days at the Book Fair I need something sensible to eat.’ ‘Shall I buy ox tongue?’ ‘I love you!’ When Slibulsky arrived I quickly gave him Valerie de Chavannes’s address and phone number, and asked him to call in for the rest of my fee if he was near there in the next few days. Then the first thing I did was to drive to my office. As I had expected, the door had been broken down, but otherwise everything seemed more or less in the right place. A minibook edition of the Koran lay in the middle of my desk, probably some kind of Best of the Koran.
