“You could have—should have—said no. He had no business asking you.”

“When they come for us in the night, to try and take us away to wherever it is they take people like us to torture for what we know, we’ll discover it’s been our business all along. Except it’ll be too late to do anything about it. I need to know who they are, and what they’re planning, because if I do, I can send them home with their tails between their legs.”

She put her arm around him, her hand resting against the shoulder which had taken the brunt of the shotgun recoil. The paper clothes he was wearing rustled.

“I didn’t believe him,” he said. “I didn’t trust him. Maybe…”

“He was just using you, as usual. You didn’t even like him.”

“Yeah. I know. And now he’s gone, I can’t even tell him what a pizdobol he was.” Petrovitch leaned in against her, resting his head in the angle between her head and chest. “I knew something was wrong. There should have been a guard on the gate. He wanted to go on, I wanted to wait. So he did his thing, and I did mine. He was right in front of me, Maddy.”

“He could have waited, just like you.”

“I should have made him.”

“When did he ever listen to you? He always did what he wanted.” She pulled him close. “Stupid man.”

“Ow,” mumbled Petrovitch.

“Sorry,” she said. She didn’t let go.

They sat like that for a while, listening to the little sounds each other made. The door opened again, and there was a man in uniform: jacket; crisp, white shirt; tie knot snug against his throat; trousers that could hold a crease in a hurricane. He was carrying a sidearm at his waist and a clear plastic bag in his hand.

“Apologies for the intrusion. Sergeant Petrovitch, Doctor Petrovitch?”

They looked up.

“Captain Daniels. Intelligence Division. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Loss?” said Petrovitch, sitting up. “Yeah. That. So am I.”

Daniels held up the bag he was holding. “We need to keep this as evidence, but we can release it to you later, if you want.”

Madeleine took the bag and examined the knife inside. “Where did you get this?”

“The surgeon took it out of your husband’s chest, Sergeant.”

She scowled at Petrovitch, and handed the bagged knife back. “It’s a Ka-bar. American.”

“They make them in Taiwan,” said Petrovitch, putting his hand on the dressing over his heart. “Could have come from anywhere.”

“No, it couldn’t,” she said. “It could only have come from my fool of a husband, who in ten years’ time will have to have had everything important replaced with plastic and metal.”

She stood up, forcing the captain back, and resumed her hands-on-hips accusation of Petrovitch.

“Anything else you need to tell me? Lost an eye, a leg? Been fitted with a robotic spleen? Because they’ve already replaced your brain with a fifty-cent pocket calculator.”

“Depends,” said Petrovitch.

“On what?”

“On how much they told you.” He looked over the top of his glasses. “Do we have to do this now?”

“Then when? I don’t see you doing anything else important right now—unless you’ve arranged another press conference to hurl abuse at.”

“Perhaps I should come back later,” ventured Daniels.

“No, we’re done here. You’re supposed to tell me everything, Sam. Everything.”

She stormed out, leaving Petrovitch with his head in his hands.

“That went well,” he said. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

“I need to ask you some questions. Are you sure this is a good time?”

“Yeah. She’s right: I’m not doing anything else, so questions are fine. I’ll do what I can. Can I just ask you one first?”

Daniels pointed to the seat vacated by Madeleine, and Petrovitch nodded his assent. The captain sat down smartly, back ramrod straight.

“How much trouble am I in? If the guy I killed was just a regular citizen who liked dressing up as a ninja, I’m screwed.”

“If that was the case,” said Daniels, “you’d be under arrest by now.”

“I’m supposed to be smart. Everyone tells me so. I could’ve thrown it all away.” Petrovitch scrubbed at his scalp with his fingernails. “I think I have some apologies to make.”

Daniels’ face twitched. “He doesn’t appear on the Metrozone database. Most likely an Outie, judging from his appearance.”

“Good job I didn’t shoot him in the head, then.”

“Quite. You were suspicious?”

“I’m a street kid. I know how people behave when they’re scared, surprised, shocked. This man was too calm, like he knew what had happened, like he’d made it happen. It was just wrong.”

“You chased him.”

“And he ran. I looked like govno and I was carrying a pushka. I would’ve run from me, too, though I like to think I would have got away.” Petrovitch shifted in his chair. The pain was starting to seep through the haze of morphine.

“You didn’t think that someone who leaped from tall buildings was someone you should stay away from?”

“Yeah. Well. It was a little late for that. I was committed.”

Daniels kept his hands on his knees. He didn’t record any of Petrovitch’s answers, merely soaked them up like a sponge.

“You were with Major Chain at his request, yes?”

“Yeah. He called me. Said there were no tech guys around.”

“Is it something he did often?”

“No. No, he didn’t.”

“So why this time?”

Petrovitch shrugged. “Desperation. He was in a hurry. Couldn’t wait. That’s why he died in the explosion and I didn’t.”

“So how did you and the major know each other?”

It was time to start lying. He could do it, as natural as breathing, even to the urbane Captain Daniels.

“I was a witness, one of his old cases from back when he was plain old Detective Inspector Chain. Nothing ever came of it, but we’d talk every couple of weeks.” Petrovitch pushed his glasses toward the bridge of his nose. “He was checking up on me, I suppose.”

“You obviously made a big impression on him,” said Daniels.

Petrovitch gave a momentary frown. “Why d’you say that?”

“He made you his next of kin.” Daniels lost his composure for the first time, and sounded genuinely surprised. “Didn’t you know?”

“No. No, I didn’t. Why didn’t the old kozel say anything?” Petrovitch inspected his bandaged palms. “What does that mean, next of kin?”

“It means he nominated you to receive any outstanding pay, in-service benefits. That sort of thing. Human Resources will tell you more.” Daniels reclaimed his self-control. “There should be enough to pay for a funeral, at least.”

“Hah,” said Petrovitch mirthlessly. “So that’s what he was after: mourners. You see, Captain, there’s no one else. No one to mark the passing of Harry Chain but me. No friends, no family. That’s what a lifetime of pissing people off leads to.”

He levered himself to his feet, the sudden surge of blood to his extremities making everything tingle. His face was frozen, his shoulder one big bruise, his hands and knees scrubbed raw and clean with only a layer of vat skin beneath the bandages. There was a hole in his chest that went all the way down to a notch on the surface of his heart, and that meant yet another scar on the road-map that was his ribcage.

He paced the floor, working the life back into himself.

“Do you know what it was he wanted you to look at?” asked Daniels.

“Don’t you lot talk to each other?”

“Of course. I wanted to know if the major had told you.”

“Yeah, he told me.”

“Did you believe him?”

Petrovitch was flushing out the drugs from his system, feeling sharper by the minute. “No, of course not. I was going along to prove to him all he had were a couple of windscreen wiper motors and a bent aerial. Then some govnosos Outie takes out half the district and Chain goes to his grave thinking he was right.”

“So you don’t buy the CIA story?”

“No,” said Petrovitch. “Do you?”