‘What, all the time? I know you weren’t on duty. The other night. I checked. So what were you doing, just driving around?’

Zidarov walked away from her. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Yes. Maybe I’ve been stupid for too long. Maybe I’ve trusted for too long.’

‘Don’t say that.’ Zidarov turned on her, and his scar flared up, right to order. ‘Look, do I chase up everything you do at work? Do I? I don’t ask where you were every hour of the day. I don’t want to. I want you to have a life, one that’s not just me, Naxi, this place. You’d go mad, you’d scratch the walls down. It doesn’t all just stop, here, at the door.’

‘I want it to, though.’ She looked at him. ‘I want it all to stop. I want to close that door, and have us again, the two of us, in here. This place. Our place.’

That got him. He felt it like a kick. He couldn’t remember when it had happened, exactly – when the city had invaded, cramping everything else out, eating up the time, the space, even his dreams. Perhaps when he’d swapped a sanctioner’s armour for a probator’s service pistol, and the investigations had become so open-ended that they never truly stopped. He’d felt it himself – Varangantua, lapping like an ocean under the doors, seeping into the plasfibre carpets, staining the walls so the smell never got out.

He found himself staring at her, emptily.

So she shook her head again, dismissively this time. ‘Get your head together. You need to talk to yourself. Sort the words out. Get your excuses worked on. I’ll wait.’ She bustled out of the kitchen, pulling her own coat on over the white medicae uniform.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Back on shift.’ She halted at the door. ‘But if all that’s too ­difficult, look out for your daughter. I want to know where she’s going, what she’s doing. Can you manage that?’

‘I’ve no idea where–’

‘You’re the law, Agusto. Work it out.’

Then she was gone, stomping down the corridor, the door hissing closed behind her.

Zidarov stood, on his own, for a little longer. He looked around the empty kitchen. He took a long swig of the beer, which was already going flat.

‘Hells,’ he swore.

He finished the drink. He stripped his clothes off, smelling the funk of the long duty-period. He scrubbed himself in the pulse-shower, ignoring the tepid water. He had a shave, he put on a clean shirt.

Then he made a call. Then he set an auto-alarm.

Then he stomped down the hallway, into the dorm-chamber, fell on the cot, face first, and collapsed into sleep.

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen