She shrugged. ‘Unless some well-intentioned citizen came along during the war, and let something out and then locked the cage again. Some of them seem to be empty, though the collection’s manifest doesn’t say if they were just unstocked pens. It’s years out of date.’

‘You have a manifest?’

Macks nodded and produced a data-slate from her coat. ‘I’ve highlighted any item that was caged in the bombed area, and also anything connected to an empty cage. Throne, Valentin, I haven’t the first clue what half of them are. So glad to have an expert on board.’

He started to look at the list. ‘So it could be anything highlighted, or anything at all, given the fact that the stock might have been changed or rotated after this list was made?’

She was about to reply when her vox-link chimed. The sharp little note made Drusher jump. Macks took the call.

‘We have to go,’ she said, turning to head back to the exit. ‘I’ve been called in. Some drunken idiots brawling in a tavern after curfew.’

‘Do I have to come?’ he said.

She turned back and shone her stablight in his face. ‘No. Why, would you like to stay here?’

Drusher glanced around.

‘Not really,’ he said.

They drove through streets that were deserted but for burned-out vehicles and the occasional Magistratum transport rushing off on a response. He sat in the passenger seat, studying the slate, rocked by the jolts of the uneven roadway. Relief was beginning to seep into him, relief that he wasn’t bound for disgrace and a custodial sentence after all. A little part of him hated Falken for his trick, but a greater part despised himself for being so foolish. Gershom wasn’t his nemesis. Valentin Drusher was his own worst enemy, and his ruined life was testament to the way he had studiously taken every wrong turn destiny had ever offered him.

‘Your hair’s gone grey,’ Macks said, her eyes on the road.

He looked up. ‘I stopped dying it.’

‘You dyed your hair?’ she asked.

He didn’t reply.

‘So you’ve matured out of that vanity, then, Valentin?’ she smirked.

‘No. I just couldn’t afford the treatment any more.’

She laughed, but he was sure he detected some sympathy in her tone.

‘I like it,’ she said after a while. ‘It’s distinguished.’

‘You haven’t changed at all,’ he said.

She pulled the vehicle to a halt outside a battered townhouse where Magistratum officers were attempting to restrain nine or ten brawling men. There was blood on the pavement, and the air was lit by the blinking lamps of the armoured patrol vehicles.

Macks got out.

‘Stay here,’ she said. She peered back at him through the open door. ‘So, is that a good thing?’

‘What?’ he asked.

‘The fact that I haven’t changed?’