Epstein stared into the empty air of the warehouse as if his own deep common sense might do better than the technology, then took himself down to the alley off Tupolev, where he arrived in time to see Toni Reno follow his loader into oblivion. It was a cold wet morning, with traffic sparse on Tupolev and light creeping in from the side. As the war re-engaged everyone’s libido, Toni’s following had dropped off. But a couple of thirteen-year-olds – their calculatedly asymmetric caps of black hair and Fantin & Moretti hand-crafted moccasins soaked with rain – still occupied the sidewalk.

‘Toni never hurt anyone,’ one of them complained to Epstein. ‘Why does this have to happen to him?’

‘Beats me, kid,’ Epstein said.

‘You see?’ the boy said to his friend, as if Epstein wasn’t really there. ‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

He moved them on. He called it in. He tried to get hold of the assistant, but Uniment & Poe were being coy about her whereabouts. Eventually he shrugged and forgot about it. High grade crime tourism was at a low this month, but in and around the new refugee centres in Placebo Heights and White Train Park, misdemeanours of a puzzlingly old-fashioned nature – simple beatings, direct thefts of food or money – were ensuring the uniform cops a sixteen-hour day. No one had seen anything like it. They were having to develop new theory.

While Epstein made himself busy, the Halo was holding its breath and falling into the mirror. Upper management loved itself at war. In the corporate enclaves – which constructed themselves as little market towns called Saulsignon, Burnham Overy or Brandett Hersham, featuring stone churches and water meadows under blue rainwashed skies, perfect windy weather and ponies on the green – war felt real and grown up, a contingency for which your values and education had prepared you. Although obviously some sacrifices would have to be made.

Other demographics found themselves less convinced. Alyssia Fignall, who had caught the last shuttle off Panamax IV before the war arrived, ended up with three hundred families in a refugee camp on Alum Rock. It was a small camp, three or four acres of tents on a headland under fine blowing rain. From the fence you could see beet fields stretching away inland. In the early afternoons, tired-looking women congregated between the tents to exchange what little information they had. No one in the camp was allowed access to an FTL router, or even a dial-up, so there wasn’t much. No one knew when they would be taken off.

‘Plenty of rumours,’ the women told Alyssia, ‘but no rockets.’ It was clearly something they said a lot.