‘This is what I mean by the word ‘void’. Numbers are my language, my life. I know when they are lying. There was a void in the accounts, and the more I struggled to identify it, the more the figures hid it from me. It was as if they were closing ranks to conceal the truth.

‘Why have I come to you with a book-keeping error? Sir, again you mock me. It was no error. I reviewed and recalculated. I redid the accounts eight times. As I added to this column and subtracted from that, the numbers began to betray me. They became numbers that I did not understand.

‘Sir, I believe I have calculated something that should not be. I believe I have found the Number of Ruin.’

He regarded Master Johan Imus for a moment. Such a small man, shrivelled by age, his sparrow bones lost in heavy robes that had evidently been cut to fit his father or his grandfather. The gilt clock ticked on the mantle. Its face had no hands, a simple ordo trick. The constant, measured ticking was all that mattered. Tock, tock, tock, flicking time away without a trace of its passage on the enamelled face. Guilt got them all in the end.

Imus possessed a small, neat face with a wide, slit mouth that might have revealed a toothy grin had the circumstances been different. His hair was straggly and white, and he wore half-moon eyeglasses. His knuckles bulged with arthritis.

‘The Number of Ruin?’ asked the officer.

Imus nodded. ‘That is my transgression. Will it be painless?’

‘Will what be painless?’

Imus strugged. ‘My punishment. I presume... Well, censure is inadequate. Will it be burning? Poison?’

The officer had been making notes in a small copy book. He dipped his pen into the desk’s power well.

‘Do you believe you have committed a crime, sir?’ he asked.

‘No, no not at all. But I believe I have become a crime. I am a criminal thing.’

‘I see.’

Master Imus sat forwards and adjusted his eyeglasses. ‘I see you are quite a young man, sir. Will this have to go to a superior?’

‘My superior?’

‘Yes, sir. I imagine something this grave-’

‘My master’s name is Hapshant. He is indisposed, an old ailment. I hold the rank of interrogator, as I told you. I can deal with this matter.’

‘Oh, good. That’s good. Very good. So, how will you proceed?’

The officer stared at Master Imus. ‘Forgive me, Imus, you don’t seem alarmed at all by this process.’

‘Alarmed?’ Imus echoed. ‘Of course I’m alarmed. I’m terrified. I’ve been terrified of this day all my life.’

‘Why?’