“General . . .” Her voice faltered as Raf climbed from the huge car, and Raf decided that maybe his morning wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Unfortunately, his optimism lasted only as long as it took him to reach the crime scene.

Right in the middle of the sodden wreckage of what had once been a casino stood a handful of uniforms, including a grey-haired lieutenant, a crime-locale technician in whites, two members of the morales made obvious by their bottle-green jackets, and three plainclothes in matching black jeans, blue shirts and long leather coats. From what Raf could see, it was a typical Iskandryian crime scene, five times as many officers as needed, with interdepartmental rivalries and demarcation disputes guaranteeing that no one was doing anything useful.

“Boss.” An elderly plainclothes stepped forward, all heavy moustache and combed-over greying hair.

“You’ve got something?”

“Looks like it.”

Beside him, the uniformed lieutenant snorted. The hyena-like grin on his youthful face didn’t even pretend to reach his eyes. “I think you’ll find we’ve got something.” There was an unsubtle stress to his words.

Raf raised one hand to chop dead an immediate protest from his own man and saw hurt pride and irritation swamp the old detective’s heavy face, only to be wiped. It was a reaction Raf had begun to recognize.

“What’s your name?”

The detective looked at him, judging the danger inherent in the question, while knowing he’d answer it anyway. “Osman, sir . . . Ibrahim Osman.”

“And what’s your job?”

Ibrahim Osman looked at him. “I’m your deputy.”

Raf sighed.

“What,” Raf asked the uniform, “makes you think this man was the butcher?”

The young lieutenant frowned. “We got his murder weapon,” he said defensively and reached into his pocket, pulling out a blackened hunk of metal he’d probably trampled all over a crime scene to find.

“. . . fic,” whispered the fox. “. . . taminated evidence . . . ow original.”

Raf beckoned for the two morales. “There’s nothing for you here,” he told them. “You can go too,” he said to the lieutenant. “Take your men and leave the blade . . . In an evidence bag,” he added tiredly. Not waiting for the man’s reply, Raf turned on his heels and headed back to Madame Mila.

Inside his head, the fox’s grin was thin and mostly invisible.

“Excellency . . .”

Heavy clouds crowded the horizon and according to Raf’s watch the temperature had fallen to 53° Fahrenheit, making it the coldest October for eighty-seven years. Mind you, according to his watch, he’d also missed three calls from Zara, who apparently needed to talk to him about her father. And one from Hani, which Raf found infinitely more worrying.

Toggling his Seiko to sound/vision, Raf added vibrate for any call coming in from the kid, while beside him the officers waited expectantly. Way too expectantly.

When Raf looked up from resetting his watch the coroner-magistrate was standing directly in front of him. A small and intense woman with braided black hair, minimal jewellery and shoes that were immaculately polished, for all that they were obviously cheap. She was, as Felix had once said, probably the most beautiful woman in the city and the most implacable. One who wore her disapproval of Raf like cheap cologne, flooding the moist air between them, colouring her every emotion.

“Madame Mila . . .”

It was obvious from her eyes what she saw when she looked at Raf. A rich, spoilt and overprivileged young notable who’d fallen into the job of Chief of Detectives. The dark glasses he wore permanently glued to his face she took as affectation, the rumours of his combat skills, exaggeration, nothing else. Which was true enough, they were exaggeration. But the ever-present shades were down to retinal intolerance and rich was the last thing he was. As for overprivileged . . . He could argue that definition with her all day.

“Well?” The woman was waiting for some response from him. So was the tight little group of uniforms, gathered on the edge of Madame Mila’s conversation.

“I’m sorry,” said Raf tiredly, “what was your question?” Behind him, one of his own men sniggered and Madame Mila’s scowl grew, her face darkening and perfect lips setting into a bitter line.

“A whole day’s been and gone,” she said finally.

“And your point is?” said Raf, then realized what she meant. They were back to Sharia law. “You want proof the dead girl wasn’t local . . .” He was talking to himself but a plainclothes who stood nearby took it as a question and nodded, careful not to meet Raf’s eye. Which meant that was undoubtedly exactly what Madame Mila had just told Raf.

“Where’s the body now?”

“Still on ice.” It was Madame Mila who answered. “She’d been spring cleaning a guard hut when she died, apparently . . .” Her voice made it silkily obvious she wasn’t about to accept that fact without further proof.

“Wearing what?” He saw the sudden tension in Madame Mila’s face and qualified his question. “Before she was murdered,” he said, gently enough to surprise himself. “I’ve read the preliminary report. I know she was naked when found.”

“White trousers,” said Madame Mila stiffly. “Thin, like silk. And a silver . . .” Her hands sketched a slight, embarrassed double circle, well away from her own body. “A metal brassiere . . .”

“Friday night. Wearing almost nothing. You think someone from this city would behave like that?”

Madame Mila thought about it. “No,” she admitted finally. “Probably not.”

Raf did, but he wasn’t about to say so. “And the wounds,” he said, “no change at all?”

A blank look.

“Upward slash from pubis to throat, a right to left across the rib cage, entrails disturbed . . .” And if ever there was an appropriate word disturbed was it. Three psy-profilers had been busy from the start trying to explain exactly what that shit with the ripped guts might signify. So far, their sole conclusion was that the mutilation was historically interesting.

Madame Mila nodded, tight-lipped.

“You took a close look?”

Another nod.

Which probably explained the tightness in her eyes, thought Raf. She had slight sweat marks under her arms and tiny beads of perspiration where her dark hair was pulled into a shape nature never meant it to hold. By anyone else’s standards Madame Mila still looked immaculate: judged by her own, the woman was a wreck.

“Go on,” said Raf. “Get out of here.” He meant it kindly but that wasn’t how his comment was taken.

Instead Madame Mila bridled. She actually pulled herself up to her full height, slight though that was.

“Out,” Raf said, finally losing his patience. “I want all of you out of here . . . Except for you,” he added and pointed to a uniform at random. “You get to finish taping off the crime scene and chase sightseers away.”

The uniform glanced at his young lieutenant, who glared at Raf, caught between outrage and a growing unease. Madame Mila just felt the outrage, which was how she got her question in first.

“Just who do . . .”

“. . . oes he think he is?. . . interesting question.” The fox had Raf take out his two-line letter and hand it to the furious woman. “. . . erson giving orders, like it or not.”

Raf shut his eyes.

He was standing, dead on his feet, in an almost deserted car park, outside a firebombed casino, in a city undergoing meltdown, with five different flavours of police, none of whom knew his real name, his record or that he was meant to be serving time for . . .

Well, welcome to the Apocalypso . . .

Except that was a club, wasn’t it? Somewhere in downtown Zurich. He used to be driven past it on his way from the airport to school.

“. . . ap out of it,” hissed the fox.

“Why?”