Lisa tried to take the criticism as stoically as she was taking the treatment, although the anesthetic effect of the sealant couldn’t offer much protection to her self-esteem. In the hope of deflecting the censorious gaze of Judith Kenna’s eyes from her hand, she said: “On the other hand, if the kidnappers were just guessing where Morgan might have kept his backup wafers, they probably wouldn’t have contented themselves with raiding my place. If Morgan had found something recently, they might have been more likely to look for it at Stella Filisetti’s place.” She was fishing, to find out whether Kenna knew whether or not Morgan had been screwing his research assistant. When Kenna didn’t bite, Lisa added: “Unless, of course, it was Stella who told them my flat was the more likely hiding place.”

“How well do you know Stella Filisetti?” Kenna was quick to ask.

“Hardly at all,” Lisa admitted. “I’ve only met her a couple of times. Morgan never told me anything about her, except for a few passing remarks about her radfem sympathies.”

“Some of the nicest people I know are radfems,” the chief inspector commented mildly. “None of them pose any threat to national security.”

“I didn’t mean to imply that he disapproved,” Lisa said swiftly.

“You have radfem acquaintances yourself, I believe,” Kenna added.

Lisa had to stop herself from asking the chief inspector where that tidbit of information had come from. Instead, she said: “I’ve known one or two.” Her first assumption was that Kenna must be talking about Arachne West—but then she remembered that she had had more recent and much longer-enduring contact with another proud wearer of the label, and wondered how significant the chief inspector’s choice of the word “acquaintances” had been. Arachne West had almost qualified as a friend once—but Helen Grundy never had.

If Helen was numbered by Kenna as one of those radfems who were “among the nicest people I know,” Lisa thought, that might go a long way to explain why she was so down on Mike—and why she might disapprove so strongly of Lisa’s having taken Mike in for a while after Helen threw him out.

“All done,” said the paramedic brightly. “None of the cuts is bad enough to need syntheflesh—just peel off the sealant in three or four days. How’d you do it?”

“Somebody shot a telephone receiver out of my hand,” Lisa said laconically. “It could have been worse—at least the shooter waited until I’d taken it away from my ear.”

The young woman grinned as if it were a joke, then went back to join her partner.

“Is Stella Filisetti a suspect?” Lisa asked the chief inspector.

“We’re treating everyone as a suspect until we know otherwise,” Kenna replied predictably, “including your friend Sweet. Security people usually have ways of accumulating information on people with whom they come into regular contact.”

“He’s another casual acquaintance,” Lisa said. “But it would take a master of disguise to seem that stupid if he were actually the criminal mastermind who planned all this.”

Kenna was still watching her closely, speculatively, if not actually suspiciously. The chief inspector was obviously not convinced that Morgan Miller hadn’t entrusted her with a precious backup wafer, perhaps containing the secret of the Ultimate Weapon of Biowarfare. Lisa realized that it might not be easy to persuade Kenna that the burglars had simply made a mistake—understandably enough, given that she couldn’t quite convince herself that they had simplymade a mistake.

If a mistake had been made—and it had been, Lisa silently insisted—it couldn’t have been simple. The reasoning that had led the would-be burglars to her must be as convoluted as it was powerful. The fact that she was Morgan’s oldest friend wasn’t enough. Nor was the fact that she had once been his mistress. There had to be something else. But if they suspected that she and Morgan had discovered a biowarfare weapon together, when were the two of them supposed to have done it? Surely nothing that they had worked on back in the first decade of the century could possibly have any relevance to the hyperflu epidemic, or whatever agent of the apocalypse would follow in its train.

Or could it?

Lisa was grateful to realize that Judith Kenna was no longer looking at her. The chief inspector had been distracted by the distant sound of a helicopter’s throbbing engine.

“That’ll be your Mr. Smith,” Lisa observed, hoping her relief didn’t show too clearly. “He’s made good time.”

“Yes, he has,” the chief inspector agreed, her tone finely balanced between satisfaction and regret. “I’ll have to brief him. You’d better wait with DI Grundy.”

All but one of the fire engines had now been withdrawn, so there was plenty of space in the parking lot for the chopper to set down. Lisa watched four men climb down from the belly of the aircraft. They were all wearing black overcoats, which seemed as distinctive as a uniform—much more so, in fact, than the relatively casual shell-suits of the paramedics, let alone Mike’s plainclothesmen.

Lisa had had contact with MOD field operatives on numerous occasions, but she didn’t recognize any of these men. She couldn’t even guess which of the many available sets of cryptic initials might be used to identify their department. They looked like businessmen, but that wasn’t inappropriate to the kind of work they would be routinely engaged in. The government for which they worked was not one of those conventionally regarded as a mere puppet of the megacorps, but its supposed independence meant that its dealings with the corps were all the more intricate and challenging. The only way to compete with crocodiles, or even to avoid becoming crocodile food, was to cultivate crocodilean habits.

Lisa thought she identified Peter Grimmett Smith even at a distance, and her guess was confirmed when she saw him shake Judith Kenna’s hand. He was a tall, dark-haired individual, handsome in a stately sort of way. He seemed to be tired and fractious. Lisa was perversely pleased to note that he must be in his sixties, easily old enough to be the chief inspector’s father.

Poor Judith, she thought. Just can’t get away from the older generation. Mike, me, Sweet, the senior fireman, and now the man from the Ministry. Is his expertise past its use-by date too, I wonder? Is this his last mission before he retires to the old bee farm? If he’s waving the flag for gray power, he’s really going to jangle her nerves, especially if he succeeds in getting to the bottom of all this while she’s still flummoxed.

She wondered briefly whether the spook’s name really was Smith, but decided that it probably was. No one used Smith as a nom de guerre anymore; it was too twentieth century.The Grimmett, which presumably served to distinguish him from all the other Peter Smiths on the civil-service roster, was a bit of a giveaway.

Lisa was tempted to hang around and watch, but the advent of daylight hadn’t banished the relentless wind and she’d neglected to put on her own black overcoat before leaving home. She retreated into the building and went back to Sweet’s office, where Mike Grundy’s men were still impatiently gathering information and trying to judge its significance. Sweet had rejoined them, but no one seemed to be restricting their conversation in case he might be an enemy keeping tabs on their progress.

“They’ve got to be local,” Jerry Hapgood was saying. “The blackout proves that.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Mike told him. “The blackout only proves that they were clever enough to know they couldn’t transport Miller crosscountry without being tracked, unless they could work a concealed switch. We don’t know that they didn’t bring him out of the blackout before Powergen got its act together—and even if they bring him out now in the trunk of some commuter’s car or the back of a pickup, we don’t stand the slightest chance of intercepting him, even with real containment measures about to come into force.”