I looked down and noticed for the first time that my right pinky had vanished below the knuckle, the wound hardly bleeding and the exposed fleshy part looking like a cut of uncooked silverside. I felt underwhelmed as I stared at the loss – it was as though this were somehow inevitable. I thought for a moment. Outside, in the snowdrift, upside down, as I was slipping away, I’d heard the laugh of a young girl.

‘Where did you find me?’

‘I heard a thump on the outer door,’ replied Foulnap, ‘and there you were. Your finger must have caught in the wire when you fell. They come off surprisingly easily in the cold.’

‘It was the Gronk.’

‘Yes; assisted by unicorns, the tooth fairy and the ghost of Owain Glyndwr, I shouldn’t wonder. Here.’

He handed me a large mug of tea laced with condensed milk and Nutella. If you’d offered it to me in the Summer I’d only have drunk it as a dare, but right here and now I thought it was the best thing I’d ever tasted. Within half an hour I was warm enough to climb out of the bath and get dressed.

‘The Open Network has been chattering constantly for the past hour,’ said Foulnap, hanging up my damp towel. ‘We heard you’d been harbouring Birgitta, Jonesy was bumped off by a mystery girl from HiberTech who was then herself killed – and you’d been taken off to HiberTech. Is that anywhere near correct?’

I told him yes – and that Hooke had been taken by the Gronk on the way to HiberTech while I’d sought refuge out in the Cambrensis.

‘A lot of Gronk this evening. Who was the mystery girl from HiberTech?’

‘An old friend of mine from the Pool back in Swansea. She was on one of HiberTech’s Fast Track Management schemes. It didn’t work out for her.’

‘They rarely do.’

Foulnap stared at me for a moment, deep in thought.

‘Why did you leave the Cambrensis in this weather, Worthing?’

‘To come and see you.’

‘For?’

‘Answers.’

He stared at me again, trying to make up his mind.

‘That’s the hardest thing about all this,’ he said, ‘knowing who to trust. Can I trust you?’

‘Can I trust you?’ I said in return. ‘When we met in Cardiff you were attempting to farm a nightwalker.’

‘Were we? Were we really?’

‘Yes, I  . . . ’

My voice trailed off. I’d been so convinced of that particular narrative I’d never for one moment stopped to reappraise the situation. About Mrs Tiffen, and Foulnap not wanting her to go to HiberTech, then Jack Logan cajoling and threatening me to simply drop it.