“Yes, that’ll do, that’s what you are, old son, hush now.” Isaac glanced at the clock. “I really have to get a bit more work done, so do the decent thing and push off, eh? No hard feelings, Lucky . . .” Isaac hesitated and thrust out his hand. “Sorry about your nose.”

“Oh.” Gazid looked surprised. He prodded his bloody face experimentally. “Well . . . whatever . . .”

Isaac strode away towards his desk.

“I’ll get your moolah. Hang on.” He rummaged in the drawers, eventually finding his wallet and drawing out a guinea. “Hold on, I’ve more somewhere. Bear with me . . .” Isaac knelt by the bed and began to throw piles of paper aside, collecting the stivers and shekels he unearthed.

Gazid reached into the packet of dreamshit which Isaac had left on the caterpillar’s box. He looked thoughtfully at Isaac, who was scrabbling under the bed with his face on the floor. Gazid plucked two dreamshit pellets from the sticky morass and glanced over to Isaac, to see if he was watching. Isaac was saying something in a conversational tone, his words muffled by the bed above him.

Gazid sauntered slowly over towards the bed. He took a sweet wrapper from his pocket and twisted it around one of his dreamshit doses, dropped it into his pocket. An idiot grin grew and blossomed across his face as he stared at the second lump.

“Should know what you’re prescribing, ’Zaac,” he whispered. “That’s ethical . . .” He giggled with delight.

“What’s that?” shouted Isaac. He began to wriggle his way out from under the bed. “I’ve found it. I knew there was some money in the pocket of one of these trousers . . .”

Lucky Gazid quickly peeled off the top of the ham roll that lay half-eaten on the desk. He slipped the dreamshit into a mustard-covered space under a lettuce leaf. He replaced the top of the roll and stepped away from the desk.

Isaac stood and turned to him, dusty and smiling. He clutched a fan of notes and some loose change.

“That’s ten guineas. ’Stail, you bargain like a fucking pro . . .”

Gazid took the proffered money and backed down the stairs quickly.

“Thanks then ’Zaac,” he said. “Appreciate it.”

Isaac was somewhat taken aback.

“Right then. I’ll contact you if I need any more dreamshit, all right?”

“Yeah, you do that, big brother . . .”

Gazid was all but scurrying out of the warehouse, pulling the door behind him with a cursory wave. Isaac heard a peal of absurd giggles from the retreating form, a thin wittering cluck that tailed out in the darkness.

Devil’s Tail! he thought. I fucking hate dealing with junkies. What a screwed-up mess he is . . . Isaac shook his head and wandered back to the caterpillar’s cage.