For instance, it is now clear that the wobbling ziggurat to one side of the young Chinese man’s desk is composed of pizza boxes, and the tin pyramid to the other of Coke cans; and clear, too, that he appears to have sole occupation of this office.
There is another desk, but its surface is clear; almost antiseptically so. It’s as if a particularly conscientious cleaner has obliterated all traces of the desk’s erstwhile occupant; a sterilization which evidently leaves his former colleague undismayed, occupied as he is by whatever is unreeling on his screen. This thorough decluttering is in marked contrast to the state of the adjoining office, which looks to have been abandoned at a moment’s notice. The desktops here are still littered with the usual detritus: diaries open to future events, uncapped pens, an alarm clock, a radio, a small gonk. Stuff which, upon a desk-worker’s abrupt departure, would usually find itself swept into the nearest cardboard box and carted home. But here it all remains, suggesting that whichever pair recently shared this office found good reason not to return; being guilty, perhaps, of the kind of offence which has rendered them not only persona non grata but in danger of incurring active hostility from above.
Onwards and upwards, though; onwards and upwards. From the Barbican perch, a view of the second floor is offered, and this is busier, or at any rate, more peopled.
— Slow Horses (Mick Herron), Loc. 5741–52