“No,” he said. A man put his head round the corner of the door and stared at us. “You go on,” Dhatt said to me. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He left, closing the door behind him.

“Who was that?” I said to the boy.

“Doctor UlHuan,” he said. The other of the Ul Qoman academics on-site. “Will you find who did this?” I might have answered with the usual kind, meaningless certainties, but he looked too stricken for them. He stared at me and bit his lip. “Please,” he said.

“What did you mean about Orciny?” I said eventually.

“I mean”—he shook his head—“I don’t know. Just keep thinking about it, you know? Makes you nervy. I know it’s stupid but Mahalia used to be right up in that, and Yolanda was getting more and more into it—we used to rip shit out of her for it, you know?—and then both of them disappear…” He looked down and closed his eyes with his hand, as if he did not have the strength to blink. “It was me who called about Yolanda. When I couldn’t find her. I don’t know,” he said. “It just makes you wonder.” He ran out of what to say.

“WE’VE GOT SOME STUFF,” Dhatt said. He was pointing me along the walkways between the offices, back out of Bol Ye’an. He looked at the masses of notes he had made, sorted through the business cards and phone numbers on scraps. “I don’t know yet what it is that we’ve got, but we’ve got stuff. Maybe. Fuck.”

“Anything from UlHuan?” I said.

“What? No.” He glanced at me. “Backed up most of what Nancy said.”

“You know what it’s interesting that we didn’t get?” I said.

“Eh? Not following,” Dhatt said. “Seriously, Borlú,” he said as we neared the gate. “What d’you mean?”

“That was a group of kids from Canada, right…”

“Most of them. One German, one a Yank.”

“All Anglo-Euro-American, then. Let’s not kid ourselves—it might seem a bit rude to us, but we both know what outsiders to Besźel and Ul Qoma are most fascinated with. You notice what not a single one of them brought up, in any context, as even possibly to do with anything?”

“What do you …” Dhatt stopped. “Breach.”

“None of them mentioned Breach. Like they were nervous. You know as well as I do that normally it’s the first and only thing foreigners want to know about. Granted this lot have gone a bit more native than most of their compatriots, but still.” We waved thanks to the guards who opened the gate, and we stepped out. Dhatt was nodding carefully. “If someone we knew just disappeared without a single damned trace and out of nowhere like this, it’s one of the first things we’d consider, right? However much we might not want to?” I said. “Let alone people who must find it a whole lot harder than us not to breach every minute.”

“Officers!” It was one of the security detail, an athletic-looking young man with a mid-period David Beckham Mohican. He was younger than most of his colleagues. “Officers, please?” He jogged towards us.

“I just wanted to know,” he said. “You’re investigating who killed Mahalia Geary, right? I wanted to know … I wanted to know if you knew anything. If you got anywhere. Could they have got away?”

“Why?” said Dhatt eventually. “Who are you?”

“I, no one, no one. I just… It’s sad, it’s terrible, and we all, me and the rest of us, the guards, we feel bad and we want to know if, whoever, if who did this …”

“I’m Borlú,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Aikam. Aikam Tsueh.”

“You were a friend of hers?”

“I, sure a little bit. Not really, but you know I knew her. To say hello. I just want to know if you found anything.”

“If we did, Aikam, we can’t tell you,” said Dhatt.

“Not now,” I said. Dhatt glanced at me. “Have to work things out first. You understand. But maybe we can ask you a few questions?” He looked alarmed for a moment.

“I don’t know anything. But sure, I guess. I was worried if they could get out of the city, past the militsya . If there was a way you could do that. Is there?”

I made him write his phone number in my notebook before he went back to his station. Dhatt and I watched his back.

“Did you question the guards?” I said, watching Tsueh go.

“Of course. Nothing very interesting. They’re security guards, but this site’s under ministry aegis, so the checks are a bit more stringent than usual. Most of them had alibis for the night of Mahalia’s death.”

“Did he?”

“I’ll check, but I don’t remember his name being red-flagged, so he probably did.”

Aikam Tsueh turned at the gate and saw us watching. Raised his hand hesitantly in a good-bye.

Chapter Fourteen

SIT HIM IN A COFFEE SHOP—a teahouse, really, we were in Ul Qoma—and Dhatt’s aggressive energy dissipated somewhat. He still drummed his fingers on the edge of the table in a complicated rhythm I could not have mimicked, but he met my eyes, did not shift in his seat. He listened and made serious suggestions for how we might proceed. He twisted his head to read the notes I made. He took messages from his centre. While we sat there he did a gracious job, in truth, of obscuring the fact that he did not like me.

“I think we need to get some protocol  in place about questioning,” was all he said, when first we sat, “too many cooks,” to which I murmured some half apology.

The tea shop staff would not take Dhatt’s money: he did not offer it very hard. “Militsya  discount,” the serving woman said. The café was full. Dhatt eyed a raised table by the front window until the man who sat there noticed the scrutiny, rose, and we sat. We overlooked a Metro station. Among the many posters on a nearby wall was one I saw then unsaw: I was not sure it was not the poster I had had printed, to identify Mahalia. I did not know if I was right, if the wall was alter to me now, total in Besźel, or crosshatched and a close patchwork of information from different cities.

Ul Qomans emerged from below the street and gasped at the temperature, shrank into their fleeces. In Besźel, I knew—though I tried to unsee the Besź citizens doubtless descending from Yan-jelus Station of the overland transit, which was by chance a few scores of metres from the submerged Ul Qoman stop—people would be wearing furs. Among the Ul Qoman faces were people I took to be Asian or Arab, even a few Africans. Many more than in Besźel.

“Open doors?”

“Hardly,” Dhatt said. “Ul Qoma needs people, but everyone you see’s been carefully vetted, passed the tests, knows the score. Some of them are having kids. Ul Qoman pickaninnies!” His laugh was delighted. “We’ve got more than you lot, but not because we’re lax.” He was right. Who wanted to move to Besźel?

“What about the ones that don’t make it through?”

“Oh, we have our camps, same as you, here and there, round the outskirts. The UN’s not happy. Neither’s Amnesty. Giving you shit about conditions too? Want smokes?” A cigarette kiosk was a few metres from the entrance to our café. I had not realised I was staring at it.

“Not really. Yes, I guess. Curiosity. I haven’t smoked Ul Qoman I don’t think ever.”

“Hold on.”

“No, don’t get up. I don’t anymore; I gave up.”

“Oh come on, consider it ethnography, you’re not at home … Sorry, I’ll stop. I hate people who do that.”

“That?”

“Pimping stuff on people who’ve given up. And I’m not even a smoker.” He laughed and sipped. “Then at least it would be some fucked-up resentment at your success in quitting. I must just generally resent you. Malicious little bastard I am.” He laughed.

“Look, I’m sorry about, you know, jumping in like that…”

“I just think we need protocols. I don’t want you to think—”

“I appreciate that.”

“Alright, no worries. How about I handle the next one?” he said. I watched Ul Qoma. It was too cloudy to be so cold.

“You said that guy Tsueh has an alibi?”

“Yeah. They called it in for me. Most of those security guys are married and their wives’ll vouch, which okay isn’t worth a turd, but we couldn’t find any link from any of them to Geary except nods in a corridor. That one, Tsueh, actually was out that night with a bunch of the students. He’s young enough to fraternise.”