SWITCHING ONTO THE JUBILEE LINE, I passed within a stone’s throw of Paddington. At some point I’d probably have to drop in there for a word or two with Rosie Crucis. But now wouldn’t be a good time. I was still feeling a bit seedy and hungover, and you need a full set of options to stand a chance against Jenna-Jane Mulbridge; anyhow, Rosie is more nocturnal even than Nicky. Yeah, maybe I was just putting off the inevitable, but right now that worked for me. So I dropped in at the office instead, and dug out some emergency supplies from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. It was just a foil-backed bubble sheet with eight slightly odd-looking pills on it—white squares with rounded edges, marked with a cursive “D.” There’d been space for twelve pills originally, but four had already gone. The nurse who’d given them to me in the course of a brief, tempestuous relationship had said the “D” stood for “Diclofenac,” although the tablets had a couple of other active ingredients as well.
