‘No,’ he said, ‘I never did.’

We climbed into the Sno-Trac.

‘Do you have my briefing notes?’

I started the engine with a hiss of compressed air then handed him the binder. Logan flicked through the contents as we drove through the empty, snow-draped streets, the drifts piled high against the buildings. In the binder were updated guidance notes from HiberTech as regards nightwalker policy, a list of alerts, missing persons and most-wanteds.

‘Well, how about that,’ he said, ‘the bounty on Lucky Ned has been raised to ten thousand euros.’

‘Lucky’ Ned Farnesworth was one of the more daring members of the Winter off-grid community. He was an unapologetic male supremacist and also indulged in theft, murder, and kidnapping. He was also fond – obsessively, some say – of collecting stamps. Wise philatelists lodged their collections in vaults during the Winter.

‘Ten thousand? Is that enough to have his own people turn him in?’

‘Not a chance.’

As an example to others, Villains stuffed snitches and turncoats with snow while still alive, a form of retribution that, whilst barbaric, did lend itself to artistic interpretation: the body could be posed in almost any position before it froze solid. Emulating David was quite popular, with anything by Rodin a close second. Once, a squabble between two dynastic groups of Villains resulted in the vanquished being made into a very lifelike tableau of The Last Supper. It was a popular tourist attraction until they thawed, and for a short time became a best-selling picture-postcard.

We parked up outside the Cardiff Sector House and were buzzed in through the shock-gates where the team were waiting to greet their Sector Chief: Pryce, Klaar, Thomas, Price, Powell, Williams. There would be eight Consuls covering Cardiff including myself and Logan. As little as ten years ago there would have been twenty staff. Budget cuts hit everywhere.

*   *   *

The first day Logan spent settling in and getting up to speed with what was going on, especially as regards long range cold weather forecasts and Dormitoria thermal serviceability. I’d spent the previous six weeks with the team and had learned some of their foibles, both good and bad. It was indeed true they had me doing their domestic errands, but in exchange they regaled me with stories that were designed to both frighten and enlighten: about blizzards thicker than milk that lasted for weeks, of the trees cocooned in ice looking as though shrink-wrapped in glass. Of rain that fell frozen as jewels with a sweet tinkle of chimes upon the rocks, of temperatures so low that mercury solidified in the thermometers and those foolish enough to venture out could be frozen solid in minutes. They told me of snowflakes the size of dinner plates, drifts seventy-foot deep burying villages for weeks on end, of snow-sculptures carved by wind into shapes so jagged and perverse and beautiful they appeared as though hewn by gods.