‘Howell Harris,’ said Aurora, ‘a preacher who lived near here. There’s a Dormitorium named after him. Died last century some time. Should be a statue of Don Hector, really – or Gwendolyn the – what are we up to now?

‘Thirty-eighth, I think. Not the statue – the frozen guy.’

‘Oh,’ said Aurora, ‘him. That’s Jedediah Bloom, Sector Footman.’

‘What did he do?’ I said, looking closer.

‘We caught him trying to smuggle drugs out of HiberTech, and that’s a mandatory Frigicution – even if it was only to supply the winsomniacs.’

I stared at Bloom, thinking it was a bit harsh, even so.

‘I was off-duty at the time,’ said Aurora, probably thinking the same as I, ‘and Hooke was acting Head of Security. He has very many fine qualities but the notion of proportionality is not one of them.’

I kneeled down and stared at the cadaver with an odd sense of morbid curiosity. Bloom was frozen quite solid. His pallid blue-grey skin was flecked with snow, and every single follicle of his winterdown was standing hard out in a last-ditch effort to forestall the inevitable. He was covered with a dusting of snowflakes, which made him look fluffy, and his milky eyes were wide open and staring off into the middle distance, his expression placid. Near the end you start to feel warm, hallucinate, and then lose all fear.

‘He looks like he died only last night,’ I said.

‘He did,’ said Aurora, ‘as fresh as frozen peas.’

I hastily stood up, the recentness of his death somehow making the event seem more shocking. Bloom was the grim reality of Frigicution.

‘That’s the thing about the Winter,’ said Aurora, ‘it takes the lawless the same as it takes the diseased and the underweight and the elderly. Society’s spring cleaner, hoovering up the substandard before they become a burden.’

Aurora walked toward the Wincarnis, and I followed. Above the door, the Edwardian woman on the Restorative Tonics sign was still grinning out at the Winter, her cheery smile and bright enamelled colours undiminished by season or cold.

Shamanic Bob looked up from the reception desk from where he had appeared to be dozing.

‘Back to ride the night train to Dreamville?’ he asked me.

‘No,’ I said.

‘How are you and your odious bunch of sleep-shy?’ asked Aurora. ‘Thinned out much?’

‘I’ll pass on your good wishes,’ said Shamanic Bob sarcastically.

We walked into the bar. At one table were a foursome playing Scrabble but they remained oblivious to our arrival. I recognised the receptionist named Josh from HiberTech, but not the others. The only other customers in the room were the drowsy named Zsazsa, who was more intriguing now her younger self had starred in my dream, and a dozen dozing dreamers, who paid us no attention at all.