Just then two uniformed policemen walked past her doorway, their long capes dripping. She shrank back, but they weren’t on a round-up, not tonight. Probably they were intent on getting back to the precinct station and hitting the canteen. She relaxed again.

Suddenly the figure was in front of her.

She drew her breath in.

“Hi,” the man said, pulling his mask down.

She relaxed. It wasn’t the person from the other side of the street; it was a regular, the one she’d been hoping would turn up. He wore a short, pale cape and a broad hat. He was a smallish, thin man with muddy-looking skin and intensely blue eyes you couldn’t look at for too long.

“Oh,” she said, and smiled. She had slightly prominent teeth, already spotted with decay. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Sweetie…” he said, sounding amused. He stood in the doorway with her, and gently put his hand up underneath the lace veil to her face and stroked the rough surface of the old radiation burn. His fingers were delicate and slim. She tried not to flinch.

“You smell different this evening,” he said. His voice was like his eyes; sharp and demanding.

“New perfume. Like it?”

“It’ll do,” he said. He withdrew his hand from her ruined face, and sighed. “Shall we go?”

“Okay.”

They left the doorway and walked down the street together, not touching; she had to walk quickly, teetering on her high heels, to keep up with him. A couple of times, glancing at their reflections in shop windows, she thought she saw the figure she’d seen earlier in the alley-way, following them with that odd, stiff-legged gait.

“Here,” he said, entering a narrow alley. It was dark, and she almost tripped on rubbish left on the dark, uneven bricks underfoot.

“But, doll,” she said, following him down the alley and won-dering what was going on. “This isn’t your-”

“Shut up,” he told her. He started up a flight of rickety wooden steps. She looked back, and saw the stiff-legged figure enter the alley-way behind them, silhouetting against the marginally brighter street behind, then disappearing into the shadows. “Hurry up!” her client hissed from the top of the steps. She glanced back at the darkness where the figure had vanished, and then ran as fast as her high heels would allow, up the creaking wooden steps.

There was a broad wooden gantry at the top of the steps, dotted with small sheds and ladders; it stretched along the side of the dank, bow-sided tenement. She couldn’t see him, but then a hand came out of the shadows and pulled her into the shelter of a small lean-to. A hand went over her mouth and she let him pull her against him, his breath warm on the back of her neck. Something glinted in his other hand, pointing out to the deck of the wooden gantry. Her eyes were wide and her heart thudded. She clutched the little black purse to her chest, as though hoping it would protect her.

She heard a creaking noise, then slow footsteps. The hand over her mouth clamped tighter.

The figure in the long dark coat came into view, still walking lopsidedly, then stopping and standing directly opposite them. The figure reached in through the coat, and from what must have been a leg-holster, pulled out a very long gun with a slim sight on top of the barrel. The man holding her tensed.

A creaking noise came from behind and beneath her.

The figure spun towards them, the gun coming up.

The man behind her shouted something; his gun fired, a burst of light and sound that lit up every grubby cranny of the alley and filled its length with a terrible barking noise. The figure with the rifle was blown back, folding in two; the great long gun made a quiet roar and something flashed overhead as the figure went straight through the hand rail at the edge of the wooden gantry to fall flaming to the stones of the alley-way.

She looked up; above the wooden gantry a small net swung from a piece of broken guttering. The net swayed in the wind, making a fizzing, sputtering noise and glowing with a strange green light.

The man followed her gaze.

“Prophet’s blood, it was only a stun-net,” he whispered.

She tottered to the broken rail and looked down to see the figure lying torn almost in half and burning amongst the packing cases and trash against the wall of the tenement opposite. A smell of roasted flesh wafted up from the body, making her feel sick.

The man grabbed her hand. “Come on!” he said. They ran.

“God help me, I almost enjoyed that,” he said, stumbling into the service entrance of the quiet apartment block. He took out his key, then paused, breathing hard, looking at her. “You’re still keen, I hope, yes?”

“Never say no to a man with a gun,” she said, trying to get out of the bright light shining near the laundry baskets.

He smiled and took off his short cloak with a flourish. “Let’s take the service lift.”

She busied herself with her make-up in the lift, turning to the corner and squinting into the little mirror, leaving the veil down while one hand worked behind it. She caught a glimpse of his face; he looked amused.

They entered his apartment. It was surprisingly plush, lit by subdued but expensive wall panels, full of ancient art works and pieces of fancy-looking equipment. The rug in the main room-patterned after the fashion of an early electronic chip-had a deep, luxuriant pile. He lit a cheroot, and sat down in a big couch. “Strip,” he told her.

She stood just in front of him, and-still determinedly holding the little purse-slowly pulled her veil away and let it fall to the floor. The radiation burn looked livid and raw, even under the make-up. The man on the couch swallowed, breathing deeply. He drew on the cheroot, then left it in his mouth as he folded his arms.

She took hold of the pillbox hat and removed it too. Her hair had been gathered up under the hat; now it fell out, spilling down her back.

He looked surprised. “When did you-?” he began, frowning.

She held one hand up flat towards him and shook her head, then put the same hand to the side of her face. She gripped the top edge of the radiation scar and slowly pulled it down, tearing it away from her cheek with a glutinous, sucking noise.

His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. The cheroot fell from his mouth onto the chest of his shirt.

She dropped the black purse from her other hand, which now held a small stubby pistol with no muzzle aperture. She spat out the fake teeth; they bounced on the printed-circuit rug.

“Hello, Cenuij,” she said.

“Sha-!” he had time to gasp, before the gun in her hand buzzed, his eyes closed and he went limp, sliding slowly off the couch onto the floor.

She sniffed, wondering what was burning, then took two quick steps towards him and removed the cheroot from the hole in his shirt before it burned any more of his chest hair.

He woke to the sound of spattering rain; he was sitting slumped in the rear seat of a tall All-Terrain and it was dark outside. Sharrow sat opposite him. His whole body was tingling, his head was sore and he didn’t think it wise to try speaking for a while; he looked around groggily.

Through rain-streaked glass to the right he could see a giant open-cast mine lit by dotted lights. The mine had eaten away half of an enormous conical hill and was continuing to shave away the other half. Looking carefully, he could make out a motley collection of trucks, draglines and lines of people with shovels, all working the canted grey face of the floodlit, sectioned hill. At least he wasn’t having trouble focusing.

“Cenuij?” she said.

He looked at her. He decided to try speaking.

“What?” he said. His mouth seemed to be working all right. Good sign. He flexed the tingling muscles in his face.

Sharrow frowned. “Are you okay?”

“She fries my synapses with a neurostunner whose insurance warranty ran out around the time of the Skytube, then she asks if I’m okay,” he said, attempting to laugh but coughing instead.