Most of the transgression work we did was in Dearth City itself. Neither of us was senior enough to be a given a police mobile unit of our own. To get to any incident we normally had to beg a lift from one of the other teams we worked alongside. Resources were always a problem at that time. It slowed our response, so Jeksid and I had probably the worst clear-up record on the force, but apart from that we were no different from the other detective teams. Most of the transgressions we investigated were minor.

I enjoyed the work and felt a growing commitment to policing, but it was a slow progress. Detective work is usually routine and uncontroversial, and when we were in the station house we spent our time peering at computer databases, making endless phone calls or completing by hand the case and information forms demanded by the seignioral management of the force.

In those days, we were expected to carry a certain handheld device called a 6M8. It was designed to reverse or suppress temporarily the effects of a mutability event. The reason for that was because in the past defence lawyers had frequently argued in court that our investigation of an incident was inadmissible, because a mutability event might or might not have taken place since the alleged incident. This would make forensic evidence unreliable: measurements, placement, movement of evidential objects, and so on.

We were therefore issued with the 6M8, a battery-powered wave generator which had the effect, for a short time and in a restricted area, of reversing any recent mutability event. Its total range was no larger than an average room in a house. We called it, unofficially, the mute-muter. Most of the time it made no difference at all, but occasionally it had the dramatic impact of restoring the scene to the condition it was in when the transgression took place.

We used it a few times and so did the other cops, but in the end it was taken away from us. The same lawyers who had argued that mutability might have interfered with evidence since the transgression now argued the other way: that our little wave generator was contaminating evidence. We haven’t been allowed to use it for years.

I mention this because I was still routinely using the 6M8, the mute-muter, when I was asked by my department head if I would be prepared to investigate an off-island incident that involved someone born on Dearth, but living on Salay. I would be working alone. The trip would run up travel and hotel bills, and for that reason they could not afford to send two officers. The case was straightforward: I was to check the detective work carried out by the local force. It was well within my ability level. I leapt at the opportunity.