Well, said Reg, "it's been an interesting time recently, or rather, a dull time. But dull for interesting reasons."

More from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

• Dirk, please, if you would. I prefer it. It has more of a sort of Scottish dagger feel to it.
• In Islington you can hardly hurl a brick without hitting three antique shops, an estate agent and a bookshop.
• It’s all right, it’s just a horse in the bathroom.
• Mason gave him another grim look from a vast repertoire he had developed which ranged from very, very blackly grim indeed at the bottom of the scale, all the way up to tiredly resigned and only faintly grim, which he reserved for his children's birthdays.
• "Now, that I didn't know," said Reg. "Your past has murkier things in it than I dreamed possible. A quality, I might add, that it shares with this soup."
• Tall. Tall and absurdly thin. And good natured. A bit like a preying mantis that doesn’t prey – A non-preying mantis if you like. A sort of genial mantis that’s given up preying and taken up tennis instead.