Anselm drove them down from the Rim without being asked, and he drove as if the car were full of eggs and the road were somebody's argument.

Nobody talked for the first four hairpins. Nadia sat in the back with her knees against the seat in front, and made a list in her head because it was the only thing in her head that would hold still. Things she knew: Liesel had left a coat. Liesel had left an apology. Liesel had not left the notebook, which meant it was in her bag, or in a hand that was not hers. Things she did not know was a longer list, and she stopped writing it at nine.

Kaveh sat beside her with his hands flat on his thighs. He had not touched the window, the door handle or her. The funicular had left them at Marl Terrace and the city had come up to meet them, all its lights lit unevenly, like a mouth with a few teeth missing.

"The annex has two entrances," he said at last. "The service bay, which is a loading dock with a roller door. And the staff stair, which has a turnstile and a night guard. Both log."

"Log what?"

"Everything. Badges, visitors, vehicles, the time a person takes to find their pass." He turned his head a quarter-inch. "Dov will have read it by now. He reads logs the way other men read the football."

"Then why are we going?"

"Because he hasn't read it with my eyes."

Anselm said nothing, but his shoulders did a small, respectful thing.

Marrow House at night was a different animal. By day it was a grey block of Strata self-regard with flags. At ten past nine it was a cliff with windows, most dark, a few lit in rows where people were still entering other people's lives into forms. The annex sat at its flank behind a wall of planters, and the service bay was a concrete mouth under a sodium lamp that made everyone look recently exhumed.

The taxi was still there. Someone had pulled it into the corner and run yellow tape across its bonnet in a manner that suggested the tape was an afterthought and the someone had been told to hurry. A uniformed man stood beside it, young, with the stiffness of a person who has been left in charge of a thing he does not understand.

Kaveh got out. He did not hurry, and she watched him become somebody else. His back lengthened. He took his badge from his inside pocket, held it at chest height, and let the sodium light fall on it.

"Registry audit," he said. "Fourth floor. Dastgheib, senior. I am opening a review of this vehicle under section nine. You are?"

"Ferris, sir. Security. Night."

"Mr Ferris, who ordered the tape?"

"The duty officer, sir. He said leave it for the morning. He said the Director's office had been told."

"Then the Director's office will not mind if I look inside."

Ferris opened his mouth and found he had nothing to put in it. He stepped back.

Nadia stayed near the wall, where the planters threw a ragged shadow, and was not looked at. This was the oldest trick she had and the only one that had never failed her: be the thing that people's attention slides off. Wolves slid off her faster than humans, because they checked her with their noses first, found nothing, and drew the conclusion that nothing was there.

She watched Kaveh open the back door.

The coat lay on the seat the way a coat lies when someone has taken it off carefully and not wanted to be seen doing it: folded once, sleeves in. Pale, soft wool, a man's cut, probably his; she had seen it on a hook in his hallway. A card was tucked under the collar, not a note after all but the back of a taxi receipt. *Tell Kaveh I'm sorry about the tea.* The handwriting was upright and graceful and too steady. The steadiness bothered Nadia more than shaking would have.

Kaveh did not take the coat. He bent and breathed in, once, through his nose, with his eyes shut.

"Well?" she said quietly.

"Nine hours old." His voice was very level. "She was calm when she sat here. No adrenaline, no fear. Pine, from the Rim garden. Her own soap." A pause. "And Saoirse."

"Saoirse was in the cab?"

"Not in it. On the coat. Cardigan wool and, I think, linseed oil." He opened his eyes. "They hugged. Before she got out. Or after she took it off."

Nadia thought of a woman in cactus-print pyjamas saying she was probably up a tree. She pressed the heel of her hand into her sternum, briefly, as if checking the lid was on.

"The visitors' book," Kaveh said to Ferris, in the tone of a man asking for the salt.

It was a real book. That was the thing she would remember, in the end. Tessarine had Tether in beta, a Chirrup account for every dog and a lift that could tell you your own heart rate, and the Assay Office's annex kept its night visitors in a bound ledger with a pen on a chain, because a ledger could not be updated from a distance. Ferris laid it on the bonnet of the taxi. Kaveh ran a finger down the margin.

Today's page. Three entries before noon, all contractors. Then, at 10.05, a hand she knew without having seen it before: loose, looping, in green ink the colour of a pond.

*S. Whitcombe-Nair. Visiting: Pilot Suite, 3rd floor. Purpose:* and then, in the same loose green, *Orientation (voluntary).* The brackets around *voluntary* had been drawn with great care, and beside them, small and exact, was a sketch of a leaf. A birch leaf, serrated, with a fine stem.

"She drew a tree," Nadia said.

"She drew a signal." Kaveh's finger had stopped. "The brackets. She wants the reader to look at that word twice."

"Or she's just a person who draws on things."

"She is that too."

He turned the page with one finger on the edge, as if it might bite. 14.20. A second hand, cursive, elegant, the kind they taught at the Rim schools and have not since seen a reason to stop. *L. Ostergaard-Banda. Visiting: Director's office, by arrangement.* And beside it, a different ink, black, an initial slashed in and a date: *D.A-N.* Dov had come down himself to countersign.

Six hours between them. Saoirse had gone in at ten in the morning. Liesel had arrived at twenty past two, and she had known exactly where to go.

"He did go to the flat," Nadia said. "After we left. He said he would. He was going to look for Okoro-Lund, and then he looked at Saoirse instead."

"Or she called him." He said it gently, which was worse. "Nadia. The word is *voluntary*. She did not write *coerced*. She is clever and she is brave and she has been told for eleven years that the only reason anyone wants her is her partner. If Dov offered her a way to stop being a lever, she might have gone to see what it cost."

"And the brackets?"

"Mean she wanted to be able to say later that she'd told someone."

Nadia looked at the leaf. It was a very good leaf. She thought it was the saddest thing she had seen all week, and the week had included her father's handwriting.

"Mr Ferris," Kaveh said, "has anyone gone out through this bay since 14.20?"

"Just the cab, sir. And it wasn't going anywhere, with no driver." A beat. "The driver went in with the lady, sir. Fella with a red scarf. Never came back out the front."

"Never."

"The duty officer said he'd been paid off and walked home, sir."

"Did you see him walk?"

Ferris, who was perhaps twenty-three, looked at the ground. "No, sir."

A cold small thing went through Nadia, and settled. She had been a chemist for eight years and a criminal for two, and in neither profession did you ignore the number that did not fit. A driver does not walk into the Assay Office at 14.20 and fail to walk out. A driver is not on any list. She said, in her flattest voice, "So there's eight names on Dov's register, and now a taxi driver?"

"Or one of them is a taxi driver who knew too much about where a fare was going." Kaveh shut the ledger. His thumb lay on its cover for a moment. "I want a copy of this page."

"I can't, sir, it's the original..."

"You may photograph it. Mr Ferris. Please do."

Ferris photographed it. Nadia, in the shadow, took her own picture and did not hide it, because there was no one left to hide it from. Anselm had stayed at the kerb. She felt, rather than saw, him turn his head.

Then the staff door at the annex stair banged open, and a figure came out into the sodium light, quickly, shoes rapping: a small woman, round, in a beige raincoat, a thermos held against her chest like a rescued child.

"Kaveh," said Odalys Ferreira-Singh. She was out of breath. "Oh, thank God. Don't go in. I was going to call, but they've taken the desk lines down, they have taken the lines. Don't go through the turnstile, you're... I'm so sorry. I didn't sign it. I want you to know I didn't sign it."

"Odalys." He stepped toward her. "Sign what?"

She held out her phone. It was a short email, in a typeface Nadia recognised from the Registry's letterhead, and its first line was bolder than the rest.

*Re: Senior Auditor K. Dastgheib. Pursuant to Operating Protocol section 14 (conflicts of interest arising from the disappearance or incapacity of a registered mate), the above is placed on administrative leave with immediate effect. All access is withdrawn. Badge to be surrendered at the nearest desk.* And beneath it, in the soft sans-serif of a man who has never needed to raise his voice, the sign-off: *With real concern, Dov.*

Kaveh read it twice. His face was perfectly still.

Ferris, behind them, had gone the colour of putty. "Sir," he said, in a small voice. "Sir, the log just pinged. Your badge, sir. It's... the reader says it's expired."

"Noted," said Kaveh.

But she saw his hand close around it, and she saw him not drop it.