‘Helping my investigation,’ she said. ‘I thought we’d covered that. I’m in charge in this neck of the woods, with plenty enough problems to contend with, I can tell you… and then this crap happens. I look for an expert, and lo and behold I find Magos Biologis Valentin Drusher, my old pal, working as a teacher in Kaloster. So I thought, Macks, that’s perfect. We worked together so well before, and this clearly needs a biologis expert.’

‘That’s great…’

‘Valentin, cheer up. There’s money in this. I’ll bill your hours out to the Magistratum, and you’ll get three times what the Administratum was paying you. Expert witness and all.’

‘You’re running the Martial Order programme here in Tycho, and you pull strings like that to get me to consider one case?’

‘No,’ said Macks. ‘I should have explained that too, I guess. This isn’t the only victim.’

‘How many others?’ he asked.

Macks made a vague gesture that encompassed all the other gurneys in the chamber. Twenty-five, thirty, maybe more.

‘You’re joking?’

‘I wish I was. Something is chomping its way through the population.’

Drusher steeled himself, and turned back to the exposed corpse, switching his standard glasses for his reading pair. ‘A fluorescing lamp, please. And a close glass.’

She handed him the glass from the autopsy cart, and held the lamp up, bathing the dead man’s devastated skull with blue light.

Drusher picked up a steel probe, and gently excised the lip of one of the revealed bone edges. He fought to keep his gorge down.

‘No tooth fragments.’

‘I told you.’

‘I mean nothing,’ he said. ‘Not even the bacillus residue one would expect from the wound mark of a predator. This wasn’t an animal. It’s not a bite.’

‘What?’

‘It’s too clean. I’d say you were looking for a man with a chainsword.’

Macks shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Why no?’

‘Because if there was a maniac with a chainsword running around downtown Tycho, I’d know about it. This is animal, Valentin.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ he asked.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you.’

The headlamps of her transporter picked out the sign over the wrought-iron gateway.

The Gardens of Tycho.

‘Well-stocked before the civil war,’ she said, pulling on the wheel. ‘The biggest xenozoological exhibit on the planet. The local governor had a thing about exotic animals.’

‘And?’

‘And, Valentin, it was bombed during the war. Some animals were killed, but many more escaped. I think something from here is roaming the ruins of Tycho, hungry, neglected, killing people.’

‘And that’s why…’ he began.

‘That’s why I need a magos biologis,’ she finished.

They pulled up and got out. The gardens were dark and quiet. It was still two hours before dawn. There was an awful damp reek in the air, emanating from the empty cages and the dank rockcrete pens.