His hated diary was bleeping at him and seeing the names underlined in red and the comments beside them he wondered for the nth time who it was who had thought that the delightful Ms Servalan was suited to this type of work. Charming and empathic she might be but she lacked the mental steel needed to deal with the flotsam and jetsam the ever caring and forgiving Federation society seemed to produce in greater numbers each year. As for the person who had thought it appropriate to allocate the Blake file to her, well he could only assume that they must be living in a parallel universe.

Blake was enough to send any newly qualified social support worker screaming for occupational health, let alone one with the delicate conscience and deep, if sometimes misguided, compassion, of their newest recruit. The man was a psychopath with string of broken and violent marriages and assaulted co-workers to show for it. It was Kerr Avon’s opinion that only his well known luck and unwillingness of his victims to risk further harassment that had kept him out of a correction facility to date. It remained one of Director Avon’s private professional ambitions to put him there before he actually managed to kill anyone. Whatever he had done this time it seemed that Ms Servalan might require more help than the soothing words of Dr Travis; he put a call through to his PA,
“Del, see if you can find some good coffee and decent biscuits for my ten o’clock will you? I think she is in need of the best tea and sympathy we can find.”
“She’s come to the right place then, I’ll have a word with her section head see if I can find out which her favorites are.”
Avon smiled at the comm.
“Good man, knew I could rely on you.”

He let his eyes drop back to the diary,
“Oh and Del have Ms Soolin’s training records ready will you, I need to find her something else given that the leadership course didn’t work out. We can’t have her sitting and worrying about a minor set back, maybe something on assertiveness would help her.”
“Fine, I’ll pull off a couple of possibilities shall I?”
“Thanks, that training database makes my head ache.”
Del laughed,
“Well we can’t all be ruthlessly logical.”
“God knows I find most of them hard enough but this recent Orac thing is beyond belief. I do wonder if Meegat ever wonders how her users are going to make head or tail of her whizzy applications.”
“She doesn’t, but given what they pay her I doubt that keeps her awake at nights.”

Avon laughed,
“No, I suppose not.”
Certainly some of her budget would make his first appointment less wearing. Talking of which,
“Oh and Del, no need for the good coffee for my first appointment, the freighter fuel from the machine will do, wouldn’t want the bean counters thinking that we’re wasting our less than princely budget on fripperies now would we?”
A laugh echoed down the line,
“True.”
“Good man, Knew I could count on you.”

Avon made a note to himself to remember to make sure Del’s next bonus was generous, he’d need it now that the second child was on the way. Must see about getting Jenna’s birthday present too. With a sigh he settled down to decide which of Servalan’s case load he could redistribute and to where. He sighed again as he admitted to himself that he was going to have to get involved in a some field work, he couldn’t in all fairness hand Blake over to someone else, the bastard would run rings around any of them.

The com line clicked,
“Your first appointment is here, shall I send him straight in?”
“Please.”
He stood up and straightened his jacket, coming from behind his desk and extending his hand with a friendly smile as the door opened. The smile stayed in place as a sharp suited man entered, but his heart sank. That his gut feeling had been right about today had just been confirmed, why was it that finance always wished the most nit picking and humourless of their accountants on him, wasn’t his job hard enough with out this? But none of that showed as he grasped the man’s cold damp hand warmly.
“Ah, Mr Restal, Good to see you again."