In the Dearth Vassal Court of Marital Union and Dissolution I came across a summary (only) of a suit of dissolution, in other words a divorce, made by the plaintiff, one Enver Woller Jeksid. He was suing for dissolution on the grounds of desertion by his wife, Jessa Jeksid. He lodged an appeal against a previous court decision, which had granted custody to Jessa of their twin sons, then aged two years, but the appeal was turned down. Jessa was granted leave to travel away from Dearth, with the condition that her ex-husband be allowed full access to the boys on request.

I soon found Jessa’s birth record: she had been born into the Dearth vassalage as Jessa Alman. She was approximately the same age as Enver Jeksid. They had married young and the marriage did not last long: between three and four years. I could not discover why custody of the boys had been granted to the mother, although I knew in most divorce cases involving children that was what happened. There was one unsubstantiated allegation of neglect against Enver Jeksid, but he emphatically denied that and it was not raised again.

In the archived gazetteer of the Dearth police I discovered that Jeksid had joined the force two years after his marriage broke up. He was then twenty-five years old. After three years he was moved to the Transgression Investigation Department as a plainclothes detective. He was promoted to detective serjeant two years later, having displayed, according to the gazette, ‘commitment and determination’ in his work.

From this information I worked out that Jeksid, the man Frejah alleged was hunting for me with deadly intent, was now sixty-two years old.

While searching through the gazette archive I looked to see what I could find out about Hari Harsent. Harsent was five years older than Jeksid and at the time Jeksid was recruited Hari was a detective serjeant in the TID. According to the file, Harsent was promoted to detective inspector a year later. In the same year he married another young officer, Detective Serjeant Frejah Garten. There was no further information about Hari Harsent’s career after that, presumably because for several years he was working undercover. The final entry reported his death at the age of fifty-eight, nearly a decade ago.

I frequently remembered Spoder’s querulous demand: ‘Who are all these people?’

I was beginning to find out at last, and even had some idea of what they looked like. I had already seen the photos of Lew and Dever Antterland, for instance, and the police archive carried a blurred photo of Hari Harsent in the years before he was assigned to undercover work. Of course I had met Frejah several times, but Jeksid remained an enigma. He was the one I knew least and, unexpectedly, through his written confession, the most about.

Spoder was on my mind. Then Spoder called me on the landline.