‘If? Everyone knows there is!’ Shandy interjects. ‘I work there. It’s practically a joke. Necessary evil and all that.’

‘Even so, the company still has to offer transparency about their technical practices under the law. Especially where health and safety are concerned. I don’t personally think that this sleepwalking issue is coming out of BigSky management, I think it’s someone taking advantage of BigSky technology in ways that BigSky probably didn’t foresee.’

‘OK, well, here’s the thing,’ I say. ‘You can’t protect me. You can’t catch the killer—’

‘Or killers.’

‘Or killers. So all you are doing with your investigation is endangering me more. Because now the killer knows about me, knows you are hunting him or her or them, and I’m out here with my arse exposed.’

‘I agree your positioning is bad.’

‘Well, thanks, mate. Your opinion makes all the difference in the world.’

‘I’ll give you my advice, Charlie, and I want you to take it seriously. Remove your headware. Don’t use it for a while. See if anything changes.’

I nod and make affirmative noises. He smiles. I smile. Of course I have no intention of doing anything of the kind. My headware is my livelihood now, plus it’s the only thing that keeps me safe, because it gives O access to my bodycam, and O has Muz, and Muz can rescue me if there’s trouble. But I’m not going to disagree with Roman, because then he’ll think I’m stupid and I don’t want him to think that. Hate to be so obvious, but there’s something about him that I like, and I want him to think well of me.

And it’s on these little stupidities that matters of life and death have been known to turn, I’m afraid.

* * *

When I get home, O is tied up working. At first I think she’s coding, because she’s in her coding pattern of movement; that is, she rolls up and down past the sitting-room window, one side to the other, looking out over the roof. It’s like watching someone obsessively pace. Every so often she will call up her screen and enter a little bit of material or maybe take some out – always on the physical keyboard, she refuses to use a direct reader or anything else platformed on BigSky – and then she stares and stares at the code, and then she goes back to rolling.