He got out of the cruiser and hefted his bag onto his shoulder. She pulled down in a circle and drove back onto the hem of the highway. He raised a hand, a little wave. She stopped and slid down her window.

‘Why does this place suit you?’ she called out.

‘Because you’ll know where to find me,’ he replied.

Macks grinned. She roared away onto the highway.

Drusher watched her lights fade into the twilight. He turned and looked at the old shack. He could hear the rush of the waves on the beach behind him. He could see the sky turning dark like a bruise along the wasteland horizon beyond the dunes.

He walked into the shack. It smelled dry and stale. It was just as he had left it. He put his bag on the table, opened the hall cupboard and cranked on the generator.

He lit a lamp. Outside, the Bone Coast evening was falling fast.

He opened his old bag and unpacked a few bits and pieces. Some food he’d bought in Unkara town. A can of caffeine Medea Betancore had given him. His taxonomy. A folded Magistratum rain slicker, just the thing for wet days. The Regit snub, cleaned and reloaded, with two boxes of shells. Eisenhorn’s parting gift, the small leather bag. Esic Fargul’s sketchbook with its faded green cover, and an old, annotated book on bird migration.

He went out into the yard behind the shack to watch the last of the day. Seabirds were circling. It was sort of beautiful, he thought.

The sea raptor was sitting on the beach fence. It watched him. He smiled at it.

It spread its wings, and flew down, landing at his feet.

‘I let you go,’ he said. ‘You wanted to get out so much.’

It stared at him.

‘There’s no hope for either of us, is there?’ he asked.

He went into the kitchen, opened the wax paper bindings of the provisions he’d bought and brought back a couple of slices of good, cured Karanine ham. He held one out to it.

Its beak snapped as it took it. But Drusher still had all his fingers.

‘You old bastard,’ he said.

Several nights later, he was working at his table late when lights went by on the highway. He looked up every time a set of lights went past, hoping.

This set, southbound, slowed down and pulled up on the gravel outside. He heard crunching footsteps.

‘Don’t make a fuss,’ he told the raptor perched on the back of the chair facing him. It turned its beady eyes to the front door. ‘I’m warning you,’ he said. ‘I’ll put you outside.’

He opened the door before the knock came.

Drusher’s smile ebbed slightly. It wasn’t her.

‘Interrogator Voriet,’ he said.

Voriet was patched with dressings, and his arm was in a sling.