After five minutes of the charcoal-toned landscape, we stopped outside a Dormitorium, the only one still occupied in a clutch of seven, the rest burned out and abandoned. The John Edward Jones was higher than the others – at least forty storeys – and looked to be typically K-14: a mixed-sleep-ability Flopshop, a place where one could hibernate or nap on a budget, with staff on hand to rouse any Winterer who had slipped unthinkingly too deep into the abyss. It would have been cheap, too, out of town, and in the Scorch. I picked up the bouzouki, climbed out of the cab and was immediately struck by the warmth in the air. In Cardiff and Merthyr it had been about ten below, but here the temperature was somewhere around Low Ideal. The smoke was heavier than in Merthyr, and drifted across the road, the fumes occasionally punctuated by acrid whiffs of sulphur. As I looked around, a dead tree on the ridge-line suddenly burst into flames.

Muted chatter greeted me from the Winterlounge as I walked in. Although I couldn’t see the sleepers, I knew they were close. There is something about a Dormitorium that gives them away. The faintest smell of rotten eggs, a taste, a sound – a presence.

The lobby was lit sparingly with low-wattage bulbs, but made warm and welcoming by the orange glow from the fireplace. The portress was behind the reception desk and looked up at me with a quizzical expression as I approached. She had luxurious auburn hair, a nose with an interesting kink and was wearing spectacles.

‘Food, flop, laundry, booze, drowsy, blackjack, cage-fighting or poker?’ she asked, reeling off my options.

‘None,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for a Footman. Fiftyish, medium height, shabby combats. Came in here with a dead woman.’

‘What, like in a body bag or something?’

‘A nightwalker.’

‘That would make more sense,’ she said, ‘not a lot, but some. Let me guess: you want her back?’

I sighed. No one in the Winter seemed the least intimidated by a Winter Consul, nor rated my chances. Perhaps it wasn’t the uniform, but the resolve of the character inside it.

‘Yes, I want her back. Which room did you say?’

‘I didn’t. Want some advice?’

‘Does it involve leaving right now?’

‘It does.’

‘Then no thanks.’

As I pondered my next move, a man moved from the Winterlounge to the elevators, and within the soft caress of fresh-moved air I detected a faint whiff of carbolic soap. The smell of cleanliness stuck to medical professionals as yeast to a baker. If Foulnap wanted to farm Mrs Tiffen it would require extensive funding and logistical support – so he’d need a medic at the outset to confirm viability. All I had to do was to follow the medic all the way to Foulnap.