‘Drink up,’ Macks said. ‘You’ll need it where we’re going.’

‘In your expert opinion,’ she said, ‘what did that?’

Drusher took a long, slow look, then excused himself. Coming up, the amasec was a lot hotter and more acid than it had felt going down.

‘All right?’ she said.

He wiped his mouth, and nodded reluctantly. Macks took a little pot out of her uniform pocket, and smeared what looked like grease under her nose. She reached out and did the same to Drusher. The fierce camphor smell of osscil filled his sinuses.

‘Should have done that before I took you in,’ Macks apologised. ‘Old medicae mortus trick. It masks the stench of decay.’

She led him back into the morgue. The place was chilly, and tiled with mauve enamel squares. There were brass plugholes every few metres across the floor, and in the distance, Drusher could hear water pattering from a leaky scrub-hose. High-gain glow-strips, sharp and white, filled the chamber with a light like frost.

The cadaver lay on a steel gurney beside an autopsy unit. Other shapes, tagged and covered in red sheets, lurked nearby on other trolleys.

‘All right to take another look?’ Macks asked.

Drusher nodded.

She folded the red shroud back.

The man was naked, his body as white and swollen as cooked seafood. His hands, feet and genitals seemed shrivelled with cold, and the fingernails stood proud and dark. The hairs on his chest and pubis were black and looked like insect legs.

He must have been about one-eighty in life, Drusher figured, fighting back another wave of nausea. Heavyset. Bruises of lividity marked his lumbar region, and there were other darker blue bruises around his ribs.

The front of his face, and most of his throat, had been bitten away. Parts of the skull structure had gone, along with the soft tissue. Cleanly severed, like industrial shears had…

Drusher gagged, and looked aside.

‘Animal, right?’ Macks said.

Drusher mumbled something.

‘Was that a yes?’

‘It would appear to be a bite,’ Drusher said, his voice very tiny. ‘Very deep and strong. And then… the suggestion of some feeding. Around the face and neck.’

‘Animal, right?’ she repeated.

‘I suppose. Nothing human could have… bitten like that.’

‘I measured the bite radius. Just like you taught me. Remember, in Outer Udar? I measured it.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Twenty centimetres. And I checked too. No tooth fragments. This was clean. I mean, it just bit his face right off.’

Drusher turned slowly. ‘Macks? What am I doing here?’