‘I want to thank you on behalf of the division, Valentin,’ she said. ‘You got us our result. I’ll bill the Administratum for a whole week, fair enough? Go get your things together. Someone will drive you home this evening.’

Drusher nodded.

‘I have a transporter waiting,’ Macks said. Drusher’s bags were in a neat stack beside the office door. He was closing the last of the dossiers, and sliding them back onto her carts.

‘Right,’ he said.

‘Well, it’s been good to have you on board. Thanks. Like old times, right?’

‘Like Outer Udar, Macks? I get the distinct impression you remember that more fondly than I do.’

‘Things’ll work out, Valentin,’ she said.

‘Before I go,’ he said, ‘I’d like you to look at something.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s put it this way. I’d hate to have you come all the way up the coast to get me again.’

Macks frowned. ‘What are you on about now?’

‘The killer wasn’t – isn’t – that cat.’

Macks wiped her hand across her lips as if encouraging patience. ‘Go on.’

‘I said from the start it wasn’t an animal.’

‘You also told me to look for a carnodon.’

‘Let me show you something,’ Drusher said. He held up a data-slate. The compact screen showed a display of the city, overlaid with rune symbols. ‘I’ve done some collating. See here? I’ve mapped all the sites where the victims were found. Thirty-two bodies.’

‘I did that myself, on an ongoing basis. I saw nothing. No pattern, no discernible spread.’

‘I agree,’ said Drusher. ‘I mean, there’s a certain concentration of kill-sites here, in this crescent, but most of the others are too wayward, too random.’

‘So?’

‘That first body you showed me, in the morgue. So cleanly, so particularly cut. Minimal signs of feeding, if any at all. Just like the body today in the Commission of Works. And Rimbaud.’

‘Right. The face bitten off.’

Drusher nodded. ‘Yes, except I don’t think it was bitten. Remember how clean I said it was? I mean almost sterile. None of the bacterial traces one would expect from an animal bite. Especially not from an old, diseased predator with gums receding from vitamin deficiency. Macks, I could wiggle that poor cat’s teeth out with my fingers.’

Her face had gone hard.

‘Keep going, Valentin,’ she said.

‘The body in the stacks we went to look at. That was the work of the carnodon. It had mauled and eaten the corpse away. I checked the autopsy files. Nine of the cases were just like that. Gnawed. The victims were all either dead already or helpless. Old, infirm. The carnodon had escaped from the zoological gardens, but it was weak and long past its hunting prime. It roamed the city, not preying, but scavenging. That was all it could do any more.’

‘What are you telling me?’ Macks asked quietly.