As if in response, the dead woman’s fingers felt across me for the instrument. As soon as I handed it to her she launched once again into ‘Help Yourself’.

‘Why not let them stay?’ said the man who had asked the bouzouki question. ‘The deadhead can play for us. Besides, service retired look after service active.’

It was one of those adages that was based more on hope than reality, but I liked the sound of it.

‘Very well,’ said the proprietress at length, ‘you and the Vacant can stay. But if it starts freaking out my customers, it’s history.’

I thought of insisting Mrs Tiffen was a ‘she’ and not an ‘it’, but decided instead to take my small victory with quiet grace and say nothing. I ordered two bacon sandwiches – one for me, one to go, two teas, same – then sausages, Jaffa cakes and marshmallows for Mrs Tiffen.

‘With apricot jam,’ I added.

‘On what?’

‘On everything of hers and quite thick.’

The proprietress growled at me and lumbered off. I pushed Mrs Tiffen into a booth and shoved her across so I could sit, then gave her the sugar lumps to eat.

‘Mind if I join you?’

It was my benefactor from the other side of the room.

‘Please do,’ I said, welcoming the company.

He was, I guessed, somewhere between his fourth and fifth decade. His hair was already fully white and he was dressed in the solidly tailored clothes of a career Winterer. He sported a lopsided jaw from a poorly-healed break and he had a balding patch on the side of his head – follicle frost damage, most likely. Most noticeably, he was at Spring weight. In any other context he’d appear almost obscenely underweight. He might once have been Consular staff, but I had a pretty good idea of what he was now.

‘She plays it quite well, doesn’t she?’ he said.

‘If you like to listen to a short instrumental of a Tom Jones hit from the sixties and nothing else,’ I said, ‘it could become tolerable, given time.’

‘Does she play “Delilah”?’

‘Everyone asks that. No. And thanks for just now.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ he said with a boyish smile. ‘You taking her up to HiberTech to be redeployed?’

‘Yes; do you know how they do it?’

‘No idea. HiberTech guard their secrets aggressively. The name’s Hugo Foulnap.’

‘Charlie Worthing,’ I said, taking the calling card he’d offered me. I’d guessed correct – he was a Footman. He’d do anything for anybody, so long as you paid his hourly rate. They were mercenaries, Dormeopaths, odd-job men, nannies and bounty hunters all rolled into one. They’d even play Scrabble with you if you paid their rate, but only to win. Like most Winterers, Footmen took pride in their work.

‘First Winter?’ he asked.

‘Do I wear it that badly?’

‘Yup,’ he said, ‘I can see the fatigue on you already.’