“I’m guessing girls don’t feature much in your life.” Chain ran the wand around the boot, then inside. He plunged his hand in after it, and after a few moments of pulling faces, retrieved a sticky label. “There.”

Petrovitch took the wand from the detective and inspected it. A line of lights ran up one side, the bottom four already lit. When he brought it close to the label stuck to the end of Chain’s fingers, all the lights flickered on.

He peeled the label off Chain, and as he held it up to the window, he could see shadows of circuitry inside. “What do I do with it?”

“Tear it in half. But if they have access to the CCTV network, they can still track you with cameras, and they know where you live. Anywhere you can hole up safe for a few days?” Chain dragged his coffee closer, and warily tried to drink it.

“I’m a physicist, not a spy.”

“A holiday in Russia?”

“Yeah. That really isn’t a good idea.”

Chain raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

“It just isn’t. Okay?” Petrovitch stared up at the detective, who eventually shrugged and muttered something under his breath.

“Look,” said Chain, “let me explain something to you. I can’t stop you from being killed. I don’t have the resources. I can make it difficult for them, but not impossible. I might even be able to catch your murderer, but I’m sure that’s not going to be of much comfort to you. You’re going to have to help yourself. Any good at that?”

Petrovitch nodded slowly. “Yeah. Not bad.”

“Good. So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet. Chain, what is it with you and the Oshicoras?”

The detective slid off his desk and paced the floor. When he spoke, it was with messianic zeal. “I was here. Here for everything. Armageddon: the shock of the first explosions—Dublin, Belfast, Sellafield, the emptying of the countryside, the radioactive rain, the streets choked with refugees, kids—so many kids without their parents—everywhere. We could have lost control in so many different ways, torn apart from the inside, swamped from the outside, or just one of those fucking heretics with their holy nuclear bombs getting across the M25: but we didn’t. We kept it together. We took everybody in. Housed them. Fed them. Found something for them to do.”

Petrovitch sighed, and Chain made a rumbling cough.

“Am I boring you?” he asked.

“Just get on with it, Inspector.”

“What we did was a miracle. Then Oshicora turned up, eight years ago, unseen amongst all the other refugees that were washing around the world. Marchenkho’s organitskaya and every other criminal gang in the Metrozone has been losing ground to Oshicora’s yakuza ever since.”

“He’s not yakuza,” said Petrovitch. “His men have got too many fingers.”