‘We’ve got a crew inside the Cambrensis and the HotPot hadn’t been shut down at all,’ said Mrs Nesbit. ‘There’s also about thirty nightwalkers inside.’

Aurora looked at me.

‘Jonesy and Toccata,’ she said, reading my thoughts perfectly. ‘Pull out the nightwalkers and send them for immediate redeployment. No, wait. Safer to simply retire them – along with Birgitta and Webster. We can’t risk any of them being retrieved.’

And in that moment, I broke. I thought about what I’d done with the cylinder, and Aurora picked up on it immediately.

‘Porter’s lodge, lower ground floor,’ she said in a triumphant tone, ‘behind the vermin grid on the ventilation duct.’

She relayed the information to Goodnight, and Mrs Nesbit acknowledged the message, then asked Aurora if she was going to come out, retire Worthing and then get some rest.

‘I’ll see this through,’ she said. ‘I want Wonky to know what happens to people who annoy me. Besides, it will be fun. I’ll see you later.’

Goodnight agreed, and the shimmery Mrs Nesbit vanished.

‘Well now,’ said Aurora, ‘that wasn’t so very hard, was it? If you’d told us earlier you might still be alive. Driving a golf cart and brain dead, but alive.’

‘Even if I lived another thousand years,’ I said, ‘I’d never come across a more obnoxious person than you.’

‘That’s a hard call to make,’ she said cheerily. ‘HiberTech is a big place, and I’m really only the muscle, the one who does the shitty jobs that need to be done. Who’s worse? The monster who does, or the monster who guides policy and gives the orders?’

I was probably past caring at this point. Tears of frustration were running down my cheeks and freezing before they hit the ground. I’d failed – again. I looked up, and the nightwalkers continued their slow advance. There were about ten of them, and they all licked their dry lips as they stared at me. Some were missing body parts, all were in rags, and the stench of decaying flesh mixed with body odour and excrement was overpowering. I struggled to free my feet but couldn’t, and the nearest nightwalker lifted my bathrobe and placed a dirty fingernail on my stomach. I thumped it hard on the head, but it was like striking a bowling ball, and I did little except hurt my hand.

I closed my eyes and awaited my fate. If Webster could take it, so could I.