She reached out and touched something on the undercarriage with an extended finger, then brought it to her nose and sniffed. Next she took the metal instrument and started to scrape at something on the undercarriage. I moved a little closer, until I could see some sticky, mucus-like substance clinging to the metal instrument.

She got up again and handed me the vial. ‘Hold this,’ she said.

I took one last glance around, then shouldered my rifle and did as she asked. I watched as she pushed the metal tool inside the vial, depositing some of the sticky stuff inside before taking the vial back and carefully sealing it.

‘So what is that stuff you found?’

‘You remember we talked about how the bee-brains largely operate on the basis of scent? Well,’ she said, holding the vial up, ‘if this is what I think it is, it just might be the proof we need that Nadia’s death was no accident.’

I was still trying to process what she had just told me as we got back in the SUV. ‘How sure of this are you?’ I asked her. ‘I mean, if this is true . . .’

‘I’m far from sure,’ she said.

‘You think someone deliberately put that stuff on our SUV?’

She glanced sideways at me. ‘In your official statement, you said you ran into a night patrol. Correct?’

‘Sure.’ I nodded. ‘But that was after the SUV got totalled.’

‘The night patrols are responsible for laying the scent-routes through the city.’ She showed me the vial again. ‘They do it by upchucking this stuff at different points, and the bee-brains follow after the scent of it like good little soldier ants.’

She chuckled when she saw me grimace. ‘See,’ she continued, ‘in some ways the night patrols are the brains of the operation. If I’m right,’ she said, before tucking the vial back inside its leather case, ‘this stuff originated with a rival Hive, most likely the one that’s on the other side of the city.’

‘How the hell did you manage to figure all this out?’ I asked.

‘Deduction, my dear Watson,’ she replied. ‘I spent a lot of time on this alternate studying the bee-brains, and there had to be some reason they went so far out of their way to attack you the way they did. And this was the only logical answer.’

I reached for the ignition and got the engine started. ‘If someone really did sabotage our vehicle,’ I said, ‘they couldn’t have known we’d run into a night patrol. Is it possible they weren’t necessarily trying to get us killed?’

She laughed scornfully. ‘Are you kidding? They put you in a situation where you were guaranteed to come under attack by thousands of bee-brains the moment they caught the scent from your car – and, rest assured, they’d have had a very good idea just what your chances of survival were. I call that premeditated murder.’