Spoder arrived full of news and gossip about what he had seen around the town, as well as in the suburb where he had his apartment. It was all interesting, but nothing I had not heard about, or had not assumed was happening. I was happy to let it flow around me. He and I drank coffee together on the decking outside my office, relishing the shade and the steady draught from the electric fan, while an entirely normal and unthreatening summer’s afternoon unfolded around us. I took him down to the roadside and showed him the tyre scorch marks, still visible, left by the roadster as Frejah Harsent accelerated away.

‘Who is this woman?’ he said. ‘Is she the ex-cop from Dearth?’

‘Frejah Harsent, a commissioner of police on Dearth. She claims to be still operative, and carries a warrant card or at least something that looks just like one.’

‘Harsent – that rings a bell.’ Then he shook his head, as if trying to erase the remark.

‘Do you know her?’

‘Let me think.’ He leaned over to the coffee pot and poured himself a second mug. ‘I think I heard the name recently.’

A silence followed. Spoder was not good at silences, because he made facial expressions and sometimes emitted grunting noises, but I knew to wait. After I had stared at him for a few seconds he began to look evasive.

‘Tell me what you heard?’ I said. ‘It’s not a Salay name, I know. Frejah Harsent said she was born on Hames, the fifth, but when she was six years old her parents moved to Dearth. She grew up there, and married a man called Harsent.’

‘It was a man I heard about.’

‘What was his first name? Was it Hari?’

‘It was a case I was briefly involved in. I don’t remember his name. It might have been Hari.’

‘Was it a murder case? Where did it happen?’

‘It was on Salay Ewwel, the first. Not so long ago – more recently than the murder of Dever Antterland, at least. I never had to investigate it directly, but these big cases generate a lot of paperwork. Some of the records came to the station house in Raba, and I was working on those for a while. There was something about the ballistic identity of the murder weapon. I remember scouring the files of registered guns, but we found nothing. The victim had his own similar weapon, but that wasn’t the one used on him.’

‘The man who was murdered was called Harsent?’