Zidarov paused the footage and dialled it back a few seconds. He swung the holofield around, aiming to get a better view of the building’s frontage. Beside the grand entrance facade was a bronze plaque bearing the name of the tower – Imperial Garden Complex VII. He shunted the reference into the databanks, and triggered a search for ownership and occupancy.

Then he let the footage run again. The groundcar pulled off to an underground lot, and after that nothing moved. Soon, it looked like the driver had fallen asleep in the front cab. Zidarov cycled it onwards, and the hours ticked by. He passed midnight, the time when he and Draj had been active up at the suborbitals. It was just before dawn, by the chronomark, when the next motion was detected, so he set the footage to play at real-time speed.

The groundcar drew up again at the same frontage. The chrono told him it was before the dawn-shifts began, about an hour before first light. Zidarov angled the viewpoint back up at the steps, just in time to see the doors open. Udmil emerged from the glass doors wearing the same clothes she’d arrived in. Her hair looked a little less tightly arranged, and she had a new pendant around her neck – an emerald, possibly, though hard to tell through the holo-interference.

She was escorted by a man in a dark suit, an overcoat, close-fitting. The man walked unusually, as if he were heavier than he seemed. His face was pale, his hair dark, receding from a high forehead. He held her arm as they descended the steps, and then opened the door of the groundcar for her. Udmil barely spoke to him. She inclined her head perfunctorily at the end, before taking her seat. Zidarov kept the viewpoint centred on the man throughout, freezing several static picts.

Then the door closed, and the groundcar drove off. The driver took Udmil back to the mansion, where she got out again. The vehicle then made its way to another secure lot, and the driver left too. After a little while, with some skips forward, the footage reached the present moment, and Zidarov cut the feed.

He sat back in his chair, and chewed over what he’d seen.

The dark-suited man had been at the warehouse a few hours beforehand. That was the killer link. He was also likely an off-worlder. The way he carried himself, the paleness of his skin, the length of his face – the things he had half-guessed from the glimpses he’d had at the warehouse, now confirmed by clearer footage. All those things could be mimicked or eliminated, as desired, but it remained probable that these were his original attributes. Such people were not common in Urgeyena. As a rule, their services were highly prized, given what they knew about void-trade and intra-sector politics, so whomever he worked for was capable of paying significant slate.