‘Start-up snake oil. No one had heard of Auracle or their drones until two years ago. Now they’ve vanished off the face of the earth.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Try calling them.’

‘I will.’

‘Are you really on a wanted list, Elliot?’

‘So it seems.’

I promised I’d message with an update asap and hung up. I was a few blocks east of the Special Economic Zone. I could do better than calling them. I turned the car around and headed for their office.

Astana’s citizens were out in force. Many carried flowers or wreaths. I passed two satellite broadcasting vans, then heard the first chants. At the corner of Independence Square I saw the crowd: two thousand or so men and women drawn together by shock. Police lines protected the governmental palace. Military groups waited beside armoured vehicles at the corners of the square. Taking up positions: Zhaparov’s national guard, balaclavas covering their faces, fingerless gloves on assault rifles.

Three security police waved me away. I turned east, kept going, into narrower, poorer back streets, turned another corner and saw two black Land Cruisers, ten black uniforms. A man was down on the snow, clutching his face, eight more individuals with their hands on their heads, noses pressed to the wall. An open doorway led into a tatty prayer hall with overlapping rugs on the floor, a speaker on the wall, prayer books in a case by the door. I checked the uniformed men. They looked sharp, well equipped, with Glocks and MP3s. Looked like Zhaparov’s personal unit.

I reversed fast, circled back to the gates of the economic zone. Two guards kept uneasy watch. They asked for my pass.

‘I’m visiting Auracle.’

‘Gone,’ one of the men said. ‘No visitors today.’

I talked my way in by virtue of being a white European and passing them my last handful of cash. Besides, it wasn’t a day for excess propriety.

The businesses were housed in identikit warehouse-style buildings and it took me ten minutes to find Auracle’s unit, not helped by the fact that their signage had been removed.

The door to the office was locked but no alarm went off when I smashed a back window. Inside, it was bare bricks and trailing cables beneath empty desks. The desks were askew, bins filled with shredded paper. A whiteboard had been smeared. The small kitchen contained bags of unused stationery and stacks of plastic cups. In a back room was a snub-nosed drone with its wings off.

I sat down in a swivel chair at an empty desk.

‘They have software that can tell you how long a relationship will last,’ she said.

‘What does that allow you to do? What are we, marriage guidance?’

‘It means, theoretically, if you wanted a relationship to end, you could run the program backwards and see what steps would engineer that outcome.’