‘We captured Gonrad Maliko five years ago. He’s serving life in the penal colony on Izzakos. Don’t you remember?’

Endor paused. He wandered over to his desk, and poured the last dregs of a bottle of joiliq into a dirty glass. ‘No, no, I don’t remember that. Not at all.’

‘Oh, Titus,’ Liebstrum muttered.

‘Maliko is loose. He’s here, and he’s loose. I have a lead, a girl in the Theatricala, and box four-three-five–’

‘Stop it! Stop it now!’

‘Liebstrum?’

Liebstrum rose from the bed, and approached Endor.

‘Show me your rosette,’ he said.

Endor took a swig of his drink, and pulled his wallet out of his pocket.

‘Look. Do you see, Titus?’ Liebstrum asked, opening the leather wallet. ‘There’s no rosette in there. You were disavowed, three years ago. They took your warrant away. You’re not an inquisitor any more.’

‘Of course I am,’ said Titus Endor, ignoring the bald patch in the wallet where his rosette had once been sewn in. ‘I’m operating under Special Circumstances.’

Liebstrum shook his head sadly. ‘Titus, I’ve tried to help you, Throne knows, but you’ve got to stop calling me. You’ve got to stop pretending.’

‘Pretending? How dare you!’

Liebstrum walked towards the door. ‘This is the last time I come running, you understand? The very last time.’

‘No, I don’t understand. I am affronted by your manner, interrogator. Maliko is still out there.’

Liebstrum turned to look back one last time. ‘No, Titus, he really isn’t.’

Endor went to the park in the last of the afternoon. Black trees and blacker ironwork benches stood up out of a skim of wet snow. He wondered how Maliko had got to Liebstrum. What did he have on him? He sat on a bench, and began to draft a report in his copy book, a report exposing Liebstrum’s connections to the criminal, and recommending his immediate censure and suspension. But the bench was cold and damp, and it soaked his clothes, and gave him a headache, so he walked to a local cafe, and ordered a pot of chocolate and a thimble of amasec.

The light was going out of the sky. As the snow fell, it almost seemed as if the pale sky was shedding in little white flakes, leaving a dark undercoat behind.

Endor went back to the zendov club early, before the Theatricala turned out, and waited for the girl, but she never showed. He hung around until it was quite late, and then started asking questions. The other dancers, the girls, were reticent. They’d learned that you didn’t give out personal details to men who loitered at the clubs.

Finally, Endor snagged a junior barman who, for rather too many crowns, said he was prepared to slip into the manager’s office and take a look at the girl’s contact address in the club ledger.