‘He had, you know,’ said Laura. ‘She’s very big on spelling, too. Often holds a surprise bee to try and catch us out. I got “Algonquin” wrong and she wouldn’t speak to me for two weeks.’

‘What did you want to know about anyway?’ asked Fodder.

‘Viral dreams. Something about a blue Buick.’

Fodder stared at me for a moment.

‘Jonesy and I investigated this a couple of weeks back,’ he said, ‘but decided on no further action. There was this woman named Suzy Watson. Pleasant girl. Single, late twenties. She slept during the late Summer like Moody and Roscoe and awoke two weeks ago. Only this time she was different. Withdrawn, and haunted by a  . . . haunted by a  . . . ’

‘ . . . headless horseman?’

‘No.’

‘Nightmaiden, Gronk, bondsmen, what?’

‘A dream,’ said Fodder.

‘Oh.’

I’d never given dreams much consideration before, not having had one since I went on Juvenox aged eight. What was there to know, beyond that which was obvious? An anachronistic and outmoded pursuit that signified little and did nothing except sap one’s carefully accrued weight during hibernation.

‘She wasn’t on Morphenox?’ I asked.

‘No; they’re all Beta Ceiling payscale in Railway Infrastructure Support – they don’t qualify.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘It’s contentious,’ said Fodder. ‘Anyway, she wakes up feeling off-kilter, complaining about this dream, and then instead of improving, she gets worse. She has the dream again, night after night, and before long it takes her over. She becomes withdrawn and suspicious, then starts to have waking hallucinations. Pretty soon it’s all she talks about and eventually, she goes into Mrs Nesbit’s and attacks random customers with a machete. She kills one guy and hospitalises two more. Someone calls us as it’s a sleep-related incident, and Toccata tells her to drop the machete. She doesn’t, so she thumps her.’

‘Dead?’

‘When Consul Toccata thumps, she thumps to kill.’

‘Is it true she eats nightwalkers just for fun?’ I asked.

‘It’s rumoured,’ said Laura, ‘and that she garnishes them with mint jelly to make them more appetising.’

‘After Suzy Watson, there was Roscoe Smalls,’ continued Fodder, ‘who babbled on about blue Buicks and boulders and Mrs Nesbit – then took the Cold Way Out. We found him huddled under the statue of Gwendolyn VII outside the museum, frozen solid. He’s still there. Then Moody got it. He had it worst of all.’

‘Hooke whacked him dead just now,’ I said. ‘He was yelling about Mrs Nesbit and blue Buicks. What did all that mean?’

‘Not sure,’ said Fodder, ‘but to us it looked like a mixed bag of Sleepstate Paranoia, Hibernational Narcosis and Waking Night Terrors – probably fed by an escalating conversational feedback loop.’