I get my first premonition from the greasy, mouth-watering smell. It’s faint but noticeable: last night’s Chinese char siu takeaway, or something worse? (Or was it last night’s? Could it be even older?) “Wait one. There’s a corpse? Do you know what he died of?”

Our guide stops, her bunny suit rustling. “You’re definitely Howard?” I nod. “You’re here to ID the victim?”

Angleton buts in: “He is.”

“Well, thanks for briefing me,” I say sarcastically. In context, the smell is nauseating. And my ward is itching—it’s not under attack, but something very bad happened here not long ago, and it’s picking up the aftershocks. “How bad is it?”

“Breathe deeply,” she suggests. “If you’re feeling faint, it’s okay to go back into the hall. Or sit on one of the dining chairs. But don’t throw up on the evidence.”

Oh, that bad. We move on, doing the pantomime horse thing, into a big open-plan dining-kitchen-living area. Kitchen and breakfast bar at one end, then a dining table, then thick shag-pile carpet and sofa and living stuff opposite a picture window. Someone’s sitting on the sofa—

Oh, right.

I wander over to the window, turn round, then squat on my heels facing the corpse. The victim is badly burned, but the sofa’s made of thick cowhide over fire-retardant padding, and the carpet didn’t catch. Like many burn victims the corpse’s arms and legs are drawn in, its back arched by contracting muscles—so why is his charcoal briquette of a head lolling to one side? I close my eyes and anchor myself, then look. Yes, I’ve seen him before. In the Scrum’s office, then a couple of times on induction courses around the New Annex crèche. There’s still a faint crimson glow inside his skull, but it’s not human; there’s not enough life there for me to reanimate, just the quiet crunching and munching of the V-parasites chowing down on a host who can no longer deliver the goods.

I open my eyes. “It’s Evan,” I say. “Evan Elliott. Teamed with Alex for pair programming, specialist in Hilbert-space visualization interfaces.” I look at Angleton. “Neck’s broken, and there’s some residual V-parasite activity. But nothing I can reanimate.” The SOCO sergeant is giving me a glassy-eyed stare. “If I had to speculate, I’d say someone broke his neck. Then, while he was paralyzed”—(looks like vampires are tougher than merely mortal humans)—“they positioned him in front of the window and opened the curtains, leaving him for the daylight. Which implies they knew who and what he was.” Evan has clearly participated in his final burn-down. I stand up and look at Angleton. “When did we hear about it? How long has he been dead?”