Geraint held her hand and sat on the patchwork quilt spread over the huge bed, downplaying the conference, not wanting to mention Serrin. Mercifully, Francesca didn’t know that the mage was in town, so she didn’t ask after him. They talked gently into the late evening hours.

“It was Annie who saved me," she mumbled for the fifth or sixth time. “She pulled the jacks when she saw my face. That’s twice she’s done that now. Good girl, Annie. Well, not what you’d call a good girl, but she is really." She was rambling a little. He thought it was time to tuck her in and leave. The Careline doc would be back in the morning to make another check, and it was the best coverage money could buy.

“Maybe I’ll drop in on the lady and thank her,” he said, rising from the bed. “It’s good to know you’ve got such a friend.”

She made to get out of bed. “She’s just around the corner. Hanbury Court. You know, jus’ round the corner. Call it a court even though it’s just the next floor down. Round the corner, down the stairs and number fifty-five on the circular balcony. I ought to go see her myself. Say thanks properly. Good girl.” She was struggling into her robe.

“Come on, you’re in no fit state,” Geraint said calmly, but she pushed her feet into some slippers and took his arm. “Fresh air will do me good, Geraint.” She grinned up at him, suddenly coherent again. Her face was flushed from the tranquilizers, but she walked fairly steadily. What the hell, he thought.

Geraint checked to see that she had her magkey as they closed the door behind them, then circled around to the mezzanine stairs and toward number fifty-five. When Geraint knocked, he was startled to find the door just slightly ajar. It swung silently open even as his hand rapped at it.

The living room was quiet, the trid on very low. Behind the settee a black lacquered lamp lay on the carpet, the shade tumbled askew. Geraint’s nerves began to jangle. People who lived in a place like this didn’t leave their doors open. Most of them rarely even spoke to the person who lived in the next apartment, and they paid big money for security. Doors did not get left open.

Francesca looked puzzled, dumb, as if trying to focus on the scene. "Where’s Annie?” she murmured.

“Don’t know. This seems a bit odd, but I’m sure there’s nothing to…" Geraint’s voice trailed away as he saw the hint of a stain in front of the door to his left. He couldn’t be sure, it might be no more than spilled wine, but his guts were beginning to churn and he was afraid.

"Fran, why don’t you just, uh, sit down there and I’ll call down to security." He steered her to a plush chair facing away from the far door, and reached for the telecom pad on the table beside it. That way he could open the bedroom door and peek in unobtrusively while pretending to make a call. She’d never see him.

Francesca turned around in the chair and saw his face just as the blood drained out of it. She staggered to her feet and got to him before he was able to react, stunned as he was. Feebly, he clutched at her face, trying to turn her head away from seeing what lay in the bedroom beyond. “Just don’t look, just don’t look," he managed to gasp, but it was too late.

Geraint would never have believed a body had so much blood in it. Great poois of it were congealing on the carpet and the covers, and the far wall looked as if someone had flung a bucketful of blood from one end of the room to the other. The curtains were dappled with it, drops still leaking onto the parquet tiles by the window. The great gash across Annie Chapman’s throat found its hideous, enlarged echo in a ragged, bloody gash across the breadth of her stomach. A ribbon of internal organs had been flung in a ghastly pile around one shoulder of the woman’s body in a horrific parody of modern fashions.

Geraint reeled back across Francesca’s unconscious form, fell before he could get to the bathroom door, and vomited until he thought his heart would burst right through his chest. Scrabbling at the telecom pad he had dropped to the floor, he frantically tapped in the code for emergency. He had just barely managed to regain his self-control when the uniformed troll arrived, hefting his IWS taser and netgun in alarm.

“You won’t be needing those.” Geraint said. “Just call the police.” He gagged again. “I really wouldn’t look in there if I were you,” he managed to add, but the security guard had sniffed the carnage and couldn’t resist taking a look for himself.

Geraint was calling up Careline to take care of Francesca when he heard an unmistakable noise. It was the troll, half-retching, half-sobbing, in the room behind him.

11

Rani knew it was useless questioning any of the neighbors in the faded five-story Victorian apartment house. Imran, like any decent snakeboy with any vestige of self-respect, only hung with those who considered themselves tough, mean types. No way did that include the trancers squatting in the rat-infested ground floors, or the meek and fearful old folk upstairs. Her brother was still sleeping, but Rani would find out whatever she could from his friends.

Being an ork and-worse-a girl, Rani knew the reaction she was likely to get. But with three family members dead, nothing was going to stop her trying to dig up any possible scrap of information. She really didn’t expect trouble, but she decided to pack the long knife anyway. After thinking long and hard about it, she went to get Imran’s Predator too. Partly for extra security, but mostly because she felt tougher with the gun bulging inside her jacket. Today she’d need all the fierceness she could muster.

Passing some kids playing with the remains of a dog in the street, she crossed over along Whitechapel Road. It wasn’t far east to the wooded, gentrified corporate enclave of Limehouse, with its media elves and chardonnay-sipping kens and kylies, but it could easily have been half a continent and half a lifetime away.

Along the main road, Rani smiled wryly at a double-decker tourist bus parked to allow the mostly American and Japanese tourists aboard the opportunity to buy baked potatoes and hot chestnuts from a street vendor. Hot smoke from his barrow poured into the freezing air of the November morning.

“Cor blimey, mister, that’ll be two quid. Cheap at half the price and no mistake," the cloth-capped urchin pattered cheerfully to an admiring American snapping away with an accessory-bedecked portacam. Chestnuts, huh! Extruded fungal residues, matey, and that’s if you’re lucky. As for the jacket potatoes served with a plastic beaker of real Lancashire hot pot, she didn’t think the rat meat in it came from Lancashire. With the slightest shake of her head, Rani crossed over and cut through Old Montague Street, heading for Brick Lane.

She found who she was looking for in their usual spot, hawking stolen cameras and other goods near the back of the fruit’n’veg stall. The men looked momentarily surprised to see her dressed so differently, but Kapil barely missed a beat before resuming his pitch. Business was slow this morning, though the regulars would surely stop by later to see what had fallen off the back of sundry lorries over the weekend. By the look of the cartons discreetly stashed next to the pulpy tomatoes, quite a few lorries had coincidentally lost some of their cargo of late.

The boys might be in a better mood later after they’d pocketed some more doshi, but Rani had no time to waste. Kapil seemed deep in conversation with a rodent-faced white kid, so Rani grabbed Bishen, his partner.

“There’s been trouble, Bishen,” she said. "Trouble that left family dead.”

“So I heard. Where’s lmran?" Bishen asked, sounding like he didn’t want to know.

“He took a little flak. Nothing serious but he’s out for a while." She’d prepared the lie in advance. "I’m trying to find out what I can about who fixed him for this run. There’s a score to settle.”