I’m shoved back as two leathernecks square up to each other. Their fight lasts all of three seconds before one of Falco’s G’hals stands up, hand on the weapon at her hip. The men, belligerent as they are, immediately take their quarrel outside.

My neck prickles with the knowledge of someone watching. Falco sits at her usual table in the corner, one brown eye narrowed, the other a mass of scar tissue. Pulling off my hat, I make my way towards her. There’s a G’hal at her side, tall and lean with shaggy, grey-blonde hair and skin tanned the same fawn colour of the Barrens. Their gun-belt and holster is graffitied, studded with bright bits of metal. They stare at me with a steely expression, evidently wondering why the boss would waste time with an outcast like me. But Falco smiles.

‘Pegeen,’ she says, kicking out a chair for me to sit down. ‘This is Doc Low. She’s the one who pulled that bullet outta my head.’

The G’hal looks at me with renewed interest, though still a little distaste at my ragged state. Falco reaches out and pats their hand.

‘Bring us a bottle, Peg, and couple of airtights. Looks like the Doc needs it.’

I slide the medkit from my shoulder. ‘How can you tell?’

‘Call it intuition. It was you seen not long ago getting off the Air Line with a child?’

Her informers work fast. ‘Long story, Mala. And I don’t think you will believe the half of it.’

‘Oh, I’ve got some notion. You know you’re wanted by some snakers, named Kwalkavich?’

I roll my eyes. Pegeen returns with a bottle of benzene, and two tin cans, already open. ‘Cherries?’ I ask, my mouth already watering. ‘And peaches? Where do you get these things? Business must be good.’

‘It is,’ Falco says, pouring the liquor. ‘And I don’t need any trouble.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘Well,’ she pushes a cup across the table, ‘let’s drink to that.’

The benzene is actually whiskey, cut with Falco’s secret cocktail of chemicals. It gives you an almighty headache the next day, but before that it makes your heart sing. I down the first cup like water.

Falco smiles. She looks well, far better than when I saw her last, after a bullet from a shoot-out with a rival gang went straight through her eye to brush her brain. I pulled it out, no choice but to take the ruined eye with it. When she finally came around, I was worried she would blame me for not having the skill to save her eye. But she’d only grimaced, her face racked with pain, and told me that she’d get on with one.