Macks slowed the transporter, and guided it between piles of shattered bricks. They were approaching one of the most ramshackle towers. Ahead, the lamps picked out a pair of Magistratum transporters, parked near the stack’s loading dock. A heavy morgue carrier was pulled up beside them, its rear hatch gaping.

‘Come on,’ Macks said.

Drusher got out into the cold, pre-dawn air. The rectangular habs stood stark against a sky slowly paling into a gold sheen. He smelled the sweet rot of garbage, and the unpleasant odour of wet rockcrete.

‘Bring your stablight,’ she said, making off across the rough ground to the group of Magistratum officers waiting by the stack entrance. She spoke to a couple of them, then signalled Drusher to follow her.

They entered the wide doorway, and began to climb the crude stairwell.

‘They’ve held off so you can get the first look at the scene,’ she said.

Drusher took a deep breath. They climbed to the fifth floor.

‘Hurry up,’ she called back to him.

‘Hang on,’ he said. Drusher stooped to examine the rough wall, touching a dark patch among the lichen with his fingertips, and then sniffing them.

‘You’ll catch something,’ Macks said, coming back down the stairs to join him.

‘I thought that’s why you hired me,’ he said. ‘Smell this. Ammonia, very strong. Other natural chemicals, pheromones. This is a territorial mark. The animal spranted here.’

‘What?’

‘It scent-marked the wall with urine.’

‘And you wanted me to sniff it?’

Drusher looked up at her. ‘It’s textbook felid behaviour. The stain suggests quantity, so we’re looking at something large.’

‘Carnodon?’

‘It fits.’

‘See if this fits too,’ she said.

The derelict hab stack had become home for vagrants, and it was rare for these dispossessed souls to have any contact with the Magistratum. But one of them had been scared enough to raise the alarm, having heard a commotion on the fifth floor.

The stack apartment was a four-room affair, a kitchen-diner, a bed vault, a lounge and a washroom cubicle. The place stank of mildew.

And another smell Drusher hadn’t encountered since Outer Udar.

Blood.

The Magistratum crew had set up pole lamps to mark the scene, and it had been picted and recorded.

‘Watch your step,’ Macks said.

As they went in, the smell became more intense. The corpse was in the lounge area. Even Macks, hardened to the uglier aspects of life, had to turn aside for a moment.

The body was that of an older female. The legs, swathed in filthy hose and support stockings, were intact. The torso had been stripped down to the bones, and these had been broken open so that something feeding could get at the soft organs. There was no head, no arms.

‘They tell me the head’s in there,’ Macks said, indicating the kitchen area.