He sits unmoving, his gaze apparently focused on the desk in the other half of his room. This, like its counterpart in the occupied office downstairs, appears to have been swept clean of personal effects, leaving only the ubiquitous computer and keyboard, a telephone, and a battle-scarred blotter belonging to another era entirely. But closer inspection reveals something else on the desk’s surface; an object our watcher recognizes as a hair-slide, or barrette, though whether that word forms part of the young man’s vocabulary is open to question. And yet for the moment at least it demands his full attention: an abandoned barrette on a blotter on an unoccupied desk.
— Slow Horses (Mick Herron), Loc. 5755–60