Geneve pulled her knife out so that only the tip was inserted into the skin of the stomach. She drew it down, then across in an L. Veltz stood on one side of the stomach to press its contents out of the slice. More shellfish squeezed out across the bank. Then the headless body of Angelina Pelter tumbled out with them. Her brother, his face seeming dead round its mutilation, stepped up onto the ridge and gazed down at her.

‘Where’s her head?’ he asked.

Veltz and Geneve looked at each other.

‘Was the transponder in her head?’ Veltz asked hesitantly.

Pelter said nothing for a long moment as he stared at what remained of his sister. When he looked up, his expression was puzzled and vulnerable. ‘I asked you where her head is,’ he said.

‘How the fucking hell are we supposed to know?’ Geneve snapped. ‘It could be at the bottom of the ocean, in another otter. Whoever killed her could have taken it as a trophy!’

Pelter’s hand snapped out and Geneve screamed. Her boning knife spun through the air and she staggered back with both hands to a face now pouring blood. She slipped on intestines and fell. Pelter turned on Veltz.

‘Where’s her head?’ he shouted. He had a short, wide blade in his right hand. Yellowish fluid was seeping out round his optic link. Veltz moved back, though careful where he stepped, his boning knife held ready at his side.

‘You didn’t have to do that. Why’d you do that?’ he said, ashamed of the whine that was coming into his voice.

‘Her head!’ Pelter yelled, and he waved his right arm almost in dismissal. Veltz buckled. It felt like he had been punched in the stomach. Pelter’s knife was imbedded up to its hilt in his guts. His legs went weak and he went down on his knees.

‘You took her fucking head!’ Pelter raged at the sky. When he looked down again his expression had regained its avidity. Veltz tried to stand, but couldn’t. He watched Pelter kicking at the spread offal, then striding over to pick up Geneve’s boning knife. That Veltz knew what to expect was no comfort. The next high tide would take away what Pelter left there.

As he carried the body of his sister to the Meercat Pelter looked up again. ‘You’re dead. You’re a walking dead man.’

His expression was flat and blank, and now the fluid ran clear from where his left eyelid was sealed to metal. Perhaps the fluid was tears.

* * *