‘The story goes that he spearheaded the military wing of HiberTech’s Dreamspace-Derived Information Extraction Technique. Quite effective, apparently, going in to people’s dreaming minds to extract intel, but with a downside: the subjects were rendered little better than nightwalkers by the process.’

‘And you think he did this to Webster and the others?’

‘HiberTech are not a pleasant company, Wonky. If they’re employing people like Hooke, trebly unpleasant. You were interested in Webster, so I thought you should know.’

I thanked her and we drove past the Ashbrook advertising hoarding and then the Cambrensis. Jonesy’s story would make a lot of sense if my dreams were real: HiberTech didn’t know who Don Hector gave the cylinder to, so they interrogated everyone they suspected. I shivered, and pushed the thoughts to the back of my mind. Dream then reality; not the other way round.

I parked the Sno-Trac next to the statue of Howell Harris and Jonesy told me to keep the engine running.

‘You’re to go on patrol with Fod,’ said Jonesy. ‘Wait here.’

She climbed out the back of the Sno-Trac and went to have a word with Fodder, who was standing outside the Consulate. While I waited I fiddled with all the controls on the dashboard. The main headlamps, H4S radar, hydraulic snowplough. Most of my Sno-Trac time was on simulators, but it wasn’t as if driving a Trac was hard – the controls were identical to those of every other road vehicle, from car to tank to coach to lorry to the biggest dumper truck. SkillZero protocols insisted upon it. ‘Drive one, drive all’ was the slogan.

‘Don’t like these things,’ said Fodder as he climbed aboard, chucking a large black holdall on the seats behind, ‘but we’ve got some distance to cover.’

His eye was badly bloodshot from the thump the previous day, but otherwise he seemed in good spirits.

‘What’s in the bag?’ I said.

‘A surprise.’

‘I like surprises.’

‘I’d hold off judgement in this particular case.’

We moved off with a low rumble from the engine and a shudder from the transmission.

‘Take it out of town past the jammed truck,’ he said, ‘but be careful.’

I did as he requested and we edged slowly across the bridge.

‘Before you ask,’ I said, ‘nothing happened between me and Aurora. She’s just causing trouble.’

‘Whether you did or didn’t,’ he said, ‘it’d still be a good idea to stay out of Toccata’s hair until this afternoon. She’s pretty grouchy in the first hour after coming on shift. We’ll take the road west out of town; the Frances Hoggan hasn’t checked in for the past three weeks, so we need to take a look.’