“If you didn’t kill him, if he torched his own head off, why should you care what happens? What’s your interest in this?”

“That isn’t under discussion here.”

I nodded slowly. “And what do I get in return for this tidy ending?”

“Apart from the hundred thousand dollars?” Kawahara tilted her head quizzically. “Well, I understand you’ve been made a very generous recreational offer by other parties. And for my part, I will keep Kadmin off your back by whatever means necessary.”

I looked down at the lettering beneath my feet, and thought it through, link by link.

“Francisco Franco,” said Kawahara, mistaking the direction of my gaze for focused interest. “Petty tyrant a long time back. He built this place.”

“Trepp said it belonged to the Catholics.”

Kawahara shrugged. “Petty tyrant with delusions of religion. Catholics get on well with tyranny. It’s in the culture.”

I glanced around, ostensibly casual, scanning for robot security systems. “Yeah, looks like it. So let me get this straight. You want me to sell Bancroft a parabolic full of shit, in return for which you’ll call off Kadmin, who you set on me in the first place. That’s the deal?”

“That, as you put it, is the deal.”

I took one last lungful of smoke, savoured it and exhaled.

“You can go fuck yourself, Kawahara.” I dropped my cigarette on the engraved stonework and ground it out with my heel. “I’ll take my chances with Kadmin, and let Bancroft know you probably had him killed. So. Change your mind about letting me live now?”

My hands hung open at my sides, twitching to be filled with the rough woven bulk of handgun butts. I was going to put three Nemex shells through Kawahara’s throat, at stack height, then put the gun in my mouth and blow my own stack apart. Kawahara almost certainly had remote storage anyway, but fuck it, you’ve got to make a stand somewhere. And a man can only stave off his own death wish for so long.

It could have been worse. It could have been Innenin.

Kawahara shook her head regretfully. She was smiling. “Always the same Kovacs. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Romantic nihilism. Haven’t you learnt anything since New Beijing?”

“There are some arenas so corrupt that the only clean acts possible are nihilistic.”

“Oh, that’s Quell, isn’t it? Mine was Shakespeare, but then I don’t expect colonial culture goes back that far, does it?” She was still smiling, poised like a total body theatre gymnast about to launch into her aria. For a moment I suffered the almost hallucinatory conviction that she was going to break into a little dance, choreographed to a junk rhythm beat from speakers hidden in the dome above us.

“Takeshi, where did you get this belief that everything can be resolved with such brute simplicity? Surely not from the Envoys? Was it the Newpest gangs? The thrashings your father gave you as a child? Did you really think I would allow you to force my hand? Did you really think I would have come to the table this empty-handed? Think about it. You know me. Did you really believe it would be this easy?”

The neurachem seethed within me. I bit it back, hung from the moment like a parachutist braced in the jump hatch.

“All right,” I said evenly. “Impress me.”

“Gladly.” Kawahara reached into the breast pocket of her liquid black blouse. She produced a tiny holofile and flicked it into active with a thumbnail. As the images evolved in the air above the unit, she passed it to me. “A lot of the detail is legalistic, but you will of course recognise the salient points.”

I took the little sphere of light as if it were a poisonous flower. The name hit me at once, leaping out of the print —

— Sarah Sachilowska —

— and then the contract terminology, like a building coming down on me in slow motion.

— released into private storage —

— provision for virtual custody —

— unlimited period —

— subject to review at UN discretion —

— under vested authority of the Bay City justice facility —

The knowledge coursed sickly through me. I should have killed Sullivan when I had the chance.

“Ten days.” Kawahara was watching my reactions closely. “That’s how long you have to convince Bancroft the investigation is over, and to walk away. After that, Sachilowska goes into virtual at one of my clinics. There’s a whole new generation of virtual interrogation software out there, and I will personally see to it that she pioneers the lot.”

The holofile hit the marble floor with a brittle crack. I lurched at Kawahara, lips peeling back from my teeth. There was a low growling coming up through my throat that had nothing to do with any combat training I had ever undergone and my hands crooked into talons. I knew what her blood was going to taste like.

The cold barrel of a gun touched down on my neck before I got halfway.

“I’d advise against that,” said Trepp in my ear.

Kawahara came and stood closer to me. “Bancroft isn’t the only one that can buy troublesome criminals off colonial stacks. The Kanagawa justice facility were overjoyed when I came to them two days later with a bid for Sachilowska. The way they see it, if you’re freighted offworld, the chances of you ever having enough money to buy a needlecast back again are pretty slim. And of course they get paid for the privilege of waving you goodbye. It must seem too good to be true. I imagine they’re hoping it’s the start of a trend.” She fingered the lapel of my jacket thoughtfully. “And in fact the way the virtuals market is at the moment, it might be a trend worth starting.”

The muscle under my eye jumped violently.

“I’ll kill you,” I whispered. “I’ll rip your fucking heart out and eat it. I’ll bring this place down around you—”

Kawahara leaned in until our faces were almost touching. Her breath smelt faintly of mint and oregano. “No, you won’t,” she said. “You’ll do exactly as I say, and you’ll do it within ten days. Because if you don’t, your friend Sachilowska will be starting her own private tour of hell without redemption.”

She stepped back and lifted her hands. “Kovacs, you should be thanking whatever deities they’ve got on Harlan’s World that I’m not some kind of sadist. I mean, I’ve given you an either/or. We could just as easily be negotiating exactly how much agony I put Sachilowska through. I mean, I could start now. That would give you an incentive to wrap things up speedily, wouldn’t it? Ten days in most virtuals adds up to about three or four years. You were in the Wei Clinic; do you think she could stand three years of that? I think she’d probably go insane, don’t you?”

The effort it cost me to contain my hate was like a rupture down behind my eyeballs and into my chest. I forced the words out.

“Terms. How do I know you’ll release her?”

“Because I give you my word.” Kawahara let her arms fall to her sides. “I believe you’ve had some experience of its validity in the past.”

I nodded slowly.

“Subsequent to Bancroft’s acceptance that the case is closed, and your own disappearance from view, I will freight Sachilowska back to Harlan’s World to complete her sentence.” Kawahara bent to pick up the holofile I’d dropped and held it up. She tipped it deftly a couple of times to flick through the pages. “I think you can see here that there is a reversal clause written into the contract. I will of course forfeit a large proportion of the original fee paid, but under the circumstances I’m prepared to do that.” She smiled faintly. “But please bear in mind that a reversal can work in both directions. What I return, I can always buy again. So if you were considering skulking in the undergrowth for a while and then running back to Bancroft, please abandon the idea now. This is a hand that you cannot win.”

The gun barrel lifted away from my neck and Trepp stepped back. The neurachem held me upright like a paraplegic’s mobility suit. I stared numbly at Kawahara.