“Of course. Hardly expect you to bring it fresh. Imagine the stink. Especially after three months.”

“Two months.”

The trawler winch again. “Nine weeks, I thought we agreed. So are you in town, finally?”

“Near enough, yeah.”

“You coming out to visit?”

“Yeah, see, that’s the problem. Something’s come up and I can’t. But I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the fish—”

“No, nor would I. Your last consignment hasn’t kept well. Barely fit for consumption these days. My boys think I’m crazy still serving it up, but I told them. Takeshi Kovacs is old school. He pays his debts. We do what he asks, and when he surfaces finally, he will do what is right.”

I hesitated. Calibrated.

“I can’t get you your money right now, Rad. I daren’t go near a major credit transaction. Wouldn’t be good for you any more than for me. I’ll need time to sort it out. But you can have the fish, if you send someone to collect in the next hour.”

The silence crawled back onto the line. This was pushing the elastic of the debt to failure point, and we both knew it.

“Look, I got four. That’s one more than expected. You can have them now, all of them. You can serve them up without me, use them how you like, or not at all if my credit’s really out.”

He said nothing. His presence on the line was oppressive, like the wet heat coming off the Weed Expanse. Envoy sense told me this was the break, and Envoy sense is rarely wrong.

“The money’s coming, Rad. Hit me with a surcharge, if that’s what it takes. As soon as I’m done with this other shit, we’re back to business as usual. This is strictly temporary.”

Still nothing. The silence was beginning to sing, the tiny lethal song of a cable snagged and under stress. I stared out across the Expanse, as if I could find him and make eye contact.

“He would have got you,” I said bluntly. “You know that.”

The silence lasted a moment longer, then snapped across. Segesvar’s voice rang with false boisterousness.

“What you talking about, Tak?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Our meth-dealing friend, back in the day. You ran with the others, Rad, but the way your leg was, you wouldn’t have had a chance. If he’d come through me, he would have caught you up. You know that. The others ran, I stayed.”

On the other end of the line I heard him breathe out, like something uncoiling.

“So,” he said. “A surcharge. Shall we say thirty per cent?”

“Sounds reasonable,” I lied, for both of us.