We stepped from Wrex's armoured speeder at the corner of Shearing Street and Pentecost. The captain pulled on her arbites helmet and a quilted flak-coat. I began to wish for a hat of my own, or a rebreather mask. The rain stank like urine. Every thirty seconds or so an express flashed past on the elevated trackway, shaking the street.
'In here/ Wrex called, and led us through a shutter off the thoroughfare into the dank hallway of a tenement hab. Everything was stained with centuries of grime. The heating had been set too high, perhaps to combat the murky wetness outside, but the result was simply an overwhelming humidity and a smell like the fur of a mangy canine.
This was Idilane Fasple's last resting place. She'd been found in the roof.
'Where did she live?' asked Fischig.
'Two streets away. She had a parlour on one of the old court-habs/
'Hewall?'
'His hab about a kilometre west. His remains were found five blocks east/
I looked at the data-slate. The tannery where Mombril had been found was less than thirty minutes' walk from here, and Graven's home a short tram ride. The only thing that broke the geographical focus of these lives and deaths was the fact that Graven had been dumped in the bay.
'I hasn't escaped my notice that they all inhabited a remarkably specific area/ Wrex smiled.
'I never thought it had. But "remarkably" is the word. It isn't just the same quarter or district. It's a intensely close network of streets, a neighbourhood/
'Suggesting?' asked Bequin.
The killer or killers are local too/ said Fischig.
'Or someone from elsewhere has a particular hatred of this neighbourhood and comes into it to do his or her killing/ said Wrex.
'Like a hunting ground?' noted Fischig.
I nodded. Both possibilities had merit.
'Look around/ I told Fischig and Bequin, well aware that Wrex's officers had already been all over the building. But she said nothing. Our expert appraisal might turn up something different.
I found a small office at the end of the entrance hall. It was clearly the cubbyhole of the habitat's superintendent. Sheaves of paper were pinned to the flak-board wall: rental dockets, maintenances rosters, notes of resident complaints. There was a box-tray of lost property, a partially disassembled mini-servitor in a tub of oil, a stale stink of cheap liquor. A faded ribbon and paper rosette from an Imperial shrine was pinned over the door with a regimental rank stud.
What you doing in here?'
I looked round. The superintendent was a middle-aged man in a dirty overall suit. Details. I always look for details. The gold signet ring with the wheatear symbol. The row of permanent metal sutures closing the scar on his scalp where the hair had never grown back. The prematurely weathered skin. The guarded look in his eyes.
I told him who I was and he didn't seem impressed. Then I asked him who he was and he said The super. What you doing in here?'
I use my will sparingly. The psychic gift sometimes closes as many doors as it opens. But there was something about this man. He needed a jolt. 'What is your name?' I asked, modulating my voice to carry the full weight of the psychic probe.
He rocked backwards, and his pupils dilated in surprise.
'Quater Traves/ he mumbled.
'Did you know the midwife Fasple?'
'I sin her around/
To speak to?'
He shook his head. His eyes never left mine.
'Did she have friends?'
He shrugged.
'What about strangers? Anyone been hanging around the hab?'
His eyes narrowed. A sullen, mocking look, as if I hadn't seen the streets outside.
Who has access to the roofspace where her body was found?'
'Ain't nobody bin up there. Not since the place bin built. Then the heating packs in and the contractors has to break through the roof to get up there. They found her.'
'There isn't a hatch?'
'Shutter. Locked, and no one has a key. Easier to go through the plasterboard.'
Outside, we sheltered from the rain under the elevated railway.
That's what Traves told me too/ Wrex confirmed. 'No one had been into the roof for years until the contractors broke their way in.'
