Vongella leaned forward, placing her padded elbows on the tabletop. ‘Listen, I hate it. I hate it. Cell-work, I mean. I hate it just as much as you, and I want it off my territory for good. But if this doesn’t give you a lead we can use, a good one, it’ll come back to you. It’ll come back to you hard, and at my hands.’

Such was always the way.

‘So I’ll get right on it,’ Zidarov said. ‘Then we’ll all be happier.’

Getting things together took time. He had to fill out the authorisation forms, get clearance for non-emergency use of a Bulwark riot-wagon, make sure the patrol sanctioners in the subsector knew it was coming. Worst of all, he had to speak to Draj, who was the sergeant on the roster and so was the one he had to work with.

As he entered the sanctioners’ demob chamber, Zidarov smelled the hostility coming off them all just as pungently as the body odour did. The room was lined with ceramics, the floor unpainted rockcrete. Several of Draj’s attack dogs were sitting on benches, pulling their armour plate off studiously, knocking the power packs out of lasguns, slamming used shock mauls into recharger-sleeves, cracking knuckles newly freed from gauntlets. The air was hot and wet from the pulse-showers in the next chamber along. Zidarov heard singing coming through the steam clouds, and recognised an old enforcer ditty about where to land a maul in order to cleanly fracture a skull.

Gurdic Draj looked up as Zidarov entered, his helmet pulled off to reveal a sweaty face that looked like the underside of a battered mag-lifter. His neck was as thick as his face, heavily tattooed with swirls of designs that had faded to a dull blue-green over time. He had a crooked nose – broken three times – tiny dark eyes, a thick-lipped mouth bisected with a white scar up to his lower cheek. He’d taken off his breastplate, padding and undershirt to reveal a bull-like torso covered in whorls of tight black hair.

‘Sergeant,’ said Zidarov, nodding at him.

Draj grunted. Zidarov smelled alcohol on his breath. That was normal. He wondered what he’d think if Draj hadn’t been drinking. That might be worse. He didn’t know what he’d do with a sober Draj.

‘Dawn, tomorrow,’ Zidarov said, handing him a palm-sized dataslug. ‘Everything’s on there. I can run you through it any time.’