A Voss and Pike Casefile: The Early Days
Section 53: The Road Not Taken
"Not this one, Callum," you said, or signed Strand's retainer on her nice desk and let twelve months of regular money become the whole of your involvement, whichever door you walked through to get here.
The council's version stood. Saltmarsh Together was adopted on Monday, the register unchanged. Marian's audit was filed under "background". The retainer paid the rent, and the surprising thing was how little it asked of you. A report a quarter on which problems to solve first. Nobody ever told you what to conclude. They didn't have to.
The glass on the door stayed as it was, a name and nothing else. A line you'd half-composed for the lower pane, about playing parts and scripts, never got painted.
Sociological note: the point at which a sociologist becomes, in Mills's words, a means of facilitating administrative decisions: co-option into the social control process, paid on time, with nothing sinister about it at all.