THE LEDGER - As the shadows stretch east over Jamrock, you and your partner JV return to the studio of the Belles Lettres, a dilapidated warehouse across the road from an abandoned bus interchange at the ass-end of Boogie Street, where posters of some dead actress cling to the cement-render like faded memories. You dismount from your horses in a designated RCM area behind the rows of bus-stops. You suggest that the best approach is to play the role of Art Cops till you get another confession out of the belletrists - it's what they're expecting, after all, given your good standing as public art conservationists.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "You think *so*?"

YOU - "Yes, which is why I said it." You slide a solid prybar out of a saddlebag, and turn to face him, frowning.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Wags a finger at you. "I'm not going along with this."

YOU - "Vic, *come on* - only until we get a confession."

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Sighs. "Okay, sure, whatever. I don't give a shit." He jerks his head at the warehouse across the road, from which muffled music can be heard. "Let's just finally tie up the loose end."

INLAND EMPIRE - Guilt presses in on you. The loose end – *not* getting the idealogue's identity first time around - is on you.

YOU – Cross the road in step with Jean, tuck your ledger under one arm as you mount the pavement, and knock on the corrugated warehouse door with the red tip of your prybar.

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - Clang, clang, clang. The muffled music cuts off.

VISUAL CALCULUS - There are six graffiti artists in the studio - all men, two in their twenties, three in their thirties, and one about your own age. The last is their would-be leader, nom de plume Blixa. Bleached hair, a mouth of gold teeth, and sunglasses that I question his ability to actually see through.

THE LEDGER – Blixa greets you and your partner like old buddy-buddies as you step inside. The walls are covered in layers of colourful graffiti, mostly stencilled work. Paint and spray cans litter every nook and cranny; you note that the most popular brand (judging by quantity) is Inso-Tux, a company known for its footwear paint products, which have a distinctive chemical caramel smell. The place reeks of Inso-Tux fumes - so much so that you wonder whether lighting a cigarette would start a combustion reaction.

INTERFACING - You're tempted to try. Your fingers twitch.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - If you breathe these fumes for long enough, maybe you'll get an ultra-mild buzz? Let's wait and see. Take nice deep breaths now.

VOLITION - Pay no mind to the desperado. Take control of who you are, of what you want to see when you look in the mirror.

YOU - I'm a detective.

VOLITION - Then *detect*.

BLIXA - "Sooo," he bows his head a little to look at you from over the frame of his sunglasses, "how can we be of assistance to the RCM today, detectives?" Without waiting for a response, he nods at the youngest crew member - shaved head, reddened nostrils - and calls out, "Ed! Hey, Ed! Sharing is caring, man."

ED - Does a line of magenta cocaine right in front of you as his four buddies sit around scoffing down hamburgers and pretending that you don't exist. He goggles, coughs, sputters. "Huh?" Blinks up at you through watery eyes.

DRAMA – An accomplished actor, sire.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Hold on, did you say *magenta*?!

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - Yeah.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - That's blow from Supramundi and Saramiriza, the super-pure nose-candy favoured by Revacholian royalty.

LOGIC - How can it be super-pure when it's magenta?

YOU - "Magenta blow isn't exactly found on the cheap side these days."

BLIXA - "Nor was it ever, detective."

YOU - "Where would one score some ...?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Looks at you, quickly assessing, then looks away and exhales as if expelling something painful.

PAIN THRESHOLD – Ouch.

YOU – Because he misunderstands my true intention.

ENDURANCE - You're starting to sweat, and you feel queasy.

BLIXA - "Who knows - I don't look a partial payment in the mouth, know what I mean." From over the top of his dark mirror eyeware, his blue eyes flick back and forth from you to your partner. He leans closer, as if about to share a secret. "But, *but*, rumour has it a *le petit rat* brought up a whole *five hundred grams* from *Le Royaume* in a *silver cup*. Can you believe it?"

DRAMA – He *believes* it, sire.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "No." Bluntly. "I really can't."

BLIXA - "Think I'm telling tall tales?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Five hundred grams of Royalist era cocaine from a legendary burial chamber located two kilometres below ground? You're right,' he nods enthusiastically, "I take it back - that's *highly* plausible."

BLIXA – "See for yourselves." He gestures at the purple cocaine, encouraging you to sample some. "Narc Cops can tell the quality and cut just by tasting the powder, right?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Oh, we wish we could, we wish we could, Blixa. Unfortunately, we are 'Art Cops'," he looks at you, "not Narc Cops. Maybe if you don't make such a grossly stupid suggestion again, we won't arrest you, buddy." Feigning nonchalance to go along with his friendly tone, he takes his time to light a cigarette.

HALF LIGHT – Nothing combusts.

RHETORIC - Yeah. Try not to sound so relieved.

YOU – Inhale the secondary smoke from Jean's Astra Chocolate -

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Because you need the nicotine hit to get your mind off the purple snow-day over there. It's not disco to *lie* to *yourself*.

BLIXA - "I was just trying to be a polite host."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "And I was being polite by telling you not to fuck off."

BLIXA - Mimics taking a knife to the heart. Gasps theatrically.

DRAMA - No bleeding hearts here, sire. Just *hustlers* attempting to give their lives purpose and meaning with bad belles lettres, worse art, and food-coloured blow.

YOU - Do they ever find it, the meaning and purpose?

INLAND EMPIRE - No. Underneath it all, only meaningless ruin.

EMPATHY - It's not that bad. Don't be such a pessimist.

INLAND EMPIRE - It *is* that bad.

YOU - Clear your throat. "Purple's not really our colour, Blix. How about you be a polite host by answering our questions instead."

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Oh, come on, man! We've *always* wanted to sample the *magenta* marvel, the *purple* pazazz. It's not *alcohol*.

VOLITION - *Shut up*.

BLIXA – Removes his sunglasses, and gazes at you as if only just seeing you *in focus* for the first time.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) – He looks older without the eyeware. Older than you.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - He *is* seeing *you* for the first time. He's only ever seen *shitkid* before.

VOLITION - No, he's seen *you*. But you're better now. Let's tie that loose end. Subdue the desire to snort a purple powder. Proceed, *detective*.

YOU - "You said the blow was payment for a job?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Gives you a look.

ESPRIT DE CORPS - Will you stop blabbering about the cocaine, he thinks, and be professional, goddamnit.

YOU - Press on to the point: "Must have been some job. Another mural?"

BLIXA - Taps the side of his nose. "I reckon you may have feasted your eyes on it, officers. That's why you're here, isn't it?"

THE LEDGER - Again, the belletrists confess readily to the mural's execution. Again, the crew offer to clean up after themselves - not at all bothered by how much such a gigantic clean-up operation will cost. And again, they refuse to give up the idealogue's identity.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Cut the shit, Blix. Your patron is paying for politically motivated messages to be seen by Coalition aerostatics."

YOU – "Given the current climate, that's sedition."

BLIXA - "Well, the Belles Lettres couldn't possibly comment on or be held accountable for that."

YOU – Shake your head. "You're accessories."

BLIXA – "Huh? We only executed the design!"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Takes a step towards him. "Yes, and cops only *execute* bad guys."

PERCEPTION (SIGHT) - Everyone has stopped eating. And snorting. Everyone is watchful, tense. Eyes on your partner, on you, on the exit.

BLIXA - Takes a step back and throws a nervous glance at his crew. "C'mon, man," he appeals to Jean. "What happened to the cool cop who organized an admittedly surprising and rare plebiscite to conserve a priceless piece of culture and history?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Nods sarcastically. "Which you then turned into a fucking Frittte."

BLIXA – "No, no way." Even as he denies your partner's claim, vehemently shaking his head, a look of dawning comprehension infects his eyes with horror.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "*Oh*, you only just realized *now* that having more than one Next World Mural is a chain. Well, tough luck, buddy."

BLIXA - "*We* didn't turn it into a Frittte; the idealogue did."

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Who is the idealogue? Give me a name, an address."

YOU - Amble over to a huge work-table where a stencil is in the process of being created from sections of thick carboard. A yellow box-cutter rests nearby, its blade glinting under the fluorescent light. Turn to Blixa, and ask, "Is the idealogue your allegedly rich secret member?"

BLIXA - "That's confidential, Detective Du Bois. Sorry."

DRAMA - The gent's remorse is insincere, my liege.

EMPATHY – But he is quite anxious now, thanks to the rough handling dished out by your partner.

INLAND EMPIRE - Is it just me or does something about the main outline of this stencil look familiar? Humour me for a second. Look again. Notice the negative space?

YOU - Do a double-take.

VISUAL CALCULUS [Challenging: Success] - Outlined in glowing yellow, cut-out shapes lift from the flat surface, and you follow them with your eyes as they float to a section of wall painted mostly black. Against the black backdrop, a familiar *cameo* materializes.

DRAMA - Be still my heart.

INLAND EMPIRE - There's a *giant* shoeprint on the wall. Missing its alphanumeric code.

VOLITION - Well done, detective.

YOU - Blink, avert your eyes, and the glowing yellow fades. You lean your ass back against the work-table, rest the prybar against its edge too, and grip your ledger in front of you with both hands, giving yourself a moment to settle your thoughts.

RHETORIC – Is it an original work, or another commission?

YOU - "Hey, Blix. This work-in-progress – is it a new commission, or an original piece?" You take a moment to stretch, scoping the warehouse to see if you can spot anything else resembling the shoeprint on the walls blitzed with belles lettres.

ENDURANCE - Frankly nauseating, taking it all in.

BLIXA - "Ahhh, you've an eye as always! It's a *cameo* - turns out they're *perfect* for stencilling. Sadly not a Belles Lettres concept – but it's given us so many novel ideas for the future."

EMPATHY - He's eager for the change of topic, yet still on edge, and more suspicious than buddy-buddy now.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "Oh, I'm sure it has." Flicking the butt of his cigarette aside, he strides over to where you're leaning, pulls out his Posse notebook and flips through a few pages, then looks back and forth from the stencil-in-progress to a page that he hides from view.

Brushing a stray strand of black hair out of his eye, he meets yours and gives a single nod.

ESPRIT DE CORPS - Good find, detective.

EMPATHY - His blue soul is satisfied.

INLAND EMPIRE - But his blue heart? Imbroglio.

THE LEDGER – You and your partner turn up the heat, take turns to grill them with more particular questions about the cameo till Ed cracks, revealing that it is of Jean Milton. The graffiti crew's would-be leader Blixa yells at him to "Put a sock in it!"

ENCYCLOPEDIA - Jean Milton. A poet of the Decline, known for allegedly accidentally turning the antagonist of his epic into his protagonist - that is, defending that which he claimed to despise.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Allegedly Accidental Apologia. Sounds like an idea worthy of the Thought Cabinet.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "I get the reference," he says, pausing to think. Pulls out a pen and scribbles something in his notebook, before slipping both back into a pocket of his jacket. "Your find, your call, partner."

INLAND EMPIRE – Hold on. Here comes some more neural fallout. Ever since you saw that shoeprint, there's been something on the tip of your tongue, a shadow slipping just out of reach in the nooks and crannies of grey matter. Here it is: 'Milton 32-8'.

LOGIC - The alphanumeric on the shoeprint, 'M32-8', is obviously shorthand for this.

YOU - But why the cameo, then?

INLAND EMPIRE – Because of Allegedly Accidental Apologia? Who knows. Ask me again later.

YOU – Nod at Jean, lean closer, and say under your breath, "Shoe soles, followed by the Shuffle?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Picks up the prybar leaning against the work-table, and turns to face the belletrists with arms wide open. "Now we're finally getting somewhere - somewhere *good*."

DRAMA – Let the search and seizure game *begin*!

THE LEDGER - You and JV inspect the crew's shoes, but their feet are bigger, their soles, ordinary. You Jamrock Shuffle the entire warehouse-studio and find an account book ledger with '51 on the red cardboard cover. Flipping through for a quick scan, you come across some serious reál pouring in around about the dates that both murals were executed, Isola-Tux paint 'donations', and the word 'magenta'. You bag the account book as evidence while JV photographs the half-done cameo stencil.

You write up and hand out station calls, with a narrow 24-hour window, arresting everyone.

You want to set up the rest of your squad to take turns in a stake-out on the warehouse studio, but JV points out that the task force is currently understaffed, and that everyone is too busy working other cases for that.

BOOGIE STREET (ASS-END) - You cross the road in step with your partner towards the bus interchange. As the setting sun is quenched by western Insulindean waters, and the incandescent sky cools, the last of the light flashes off your hologram patches and the prybar Jean rests on his right shoulder. The rows of bus-stops quickly turn to silhouettes.

YOU - "This might sound strange, Vic, but does 'Milton 32-8' mean anything to you?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "Apart from being connected to the shoeprint, not even a little bit. You?"

YOU - "I think so - in this broken head. I think I needed it or used it for something once."

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "Then try to remember. We need to check who owns Isola-Tux."

YOU – "Maybe our industrial paint and the footwear paint are subsidiaries?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "Exactly."

BOOGIE STREET (ASS-END) - You mount the pavement together, right feet first, A FALN sneaker beside a polished black lace-up shoe. In the gathering shadows beyond the last bus-stop, the RCM horses peer at you in the gloaming.

YOU – Bounce off another thought: "Why would the idealogue partially pay them with magenta cocaine?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Does not reply.

YOU - "I mean, it's easier to trace, isn't it?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Ignores you, squinting at the ground.

ESPRIT DE CORPS - You could, I don't know, try to explain?

YOU - "It's all connected." You walk past bus-stop 'C', the last in the row. "The murals, the shoeprint, the paint, the blow, -"

JEAN VICQUEMARE - "*No*, Harry."

THE PRYBAR - Clangs to the ground.

THE HORSES – Snort and whinny, startled.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Turns on you, grabbing fistfuls of your jacket, then drags and shoves you bodily up against the back of the bus-stop wall.

INTERFACING - Whooa! Wrong switch flipped!

HAND/EYE COORDINATION – The Ledger of Oblivion slips out from the cradle of your arm -

PERCEPTION (HEARING) - And *cracks* upon impact with the concrete.

HALF LIGHT - What the *fuck* -! Front jacket grab - perform countermeasure!

VOLITION - God, *no*.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "*No*. You are *not* going to go on a side-quest for drugs," he yells at you under his breath, with his fists clenched around the front of your collar. "You are going to be motherfucking professional for goddamn once."

YOU - Stand there, with your back to the wall, and him pressed up against you like a furious statue.

HALF LIGHT - His surprise attack launched your pulse past the aerostatics. He can probably *feel* the rise and fall of your chest, your heart beating.

COMPOSURE – You don't care.

EMPATHY – Your partner thinks that if he doesn't intervene now, what you'll do to yourself is much worse. Will you be there for him, though, when push comes to shove?

RHETORIC - I see what you did there.

YOU - "Okay, Jean. Okay - no drugs side-case. Understood. Calm down."

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Tightens his hold even more on the fabric of your jacket, tugging on the front of your collar. "You're not shitting me, Mullen. You want to snort that magenta shit." Warm exhalations against your mouth. "Tell me, in there, when you saw it, did you want to get better, or did you *want to get worse*?"

PERCEPTION – The tiny hairs on the back of your neck stand erect as if called to the challenge. Your stomach liquefies. A force courses from your heart down to your balls.

PAIN THRESHOLD – But it feels strangely *good*.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Him. Pressed up against you. Reacting exothermically.

AUTHORITY – You *made* him react.

VOLITION – Power is power to Skull-Head; but it isn't general; and it shouldn't be to you.

YOU - Softly: "Jean, I am *getting better* - you know that."

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Snorts sarcastically.

EMPATHY – He's softening up.

HALF LIGHT – No, he isn't.

YOU – "Jean ..."

INLAND EMPIRE – His name tastes like a kiss. Taste it again, languidly.

YOU – "Jean ..."

JEAN VICQUEMARE – His grip loosens a little as he sighs through his nose.

INTERFACING – You move with slow deliberation, gripping his fists and prying them open with your fingers to hold hands, making him release your jacket.

YOU - Lower your linked hands by force, noting that his resistance is only half-hearted, his breathing painfully controlled.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Looking over his shoulders, then back at you, he reluctantly withdraws.

ESPRIT DE CORPS – You're in a public place and uniformed, brother. Every breath you take, every move you make, every bond you break represents the RCM.

PERCEPTION – But all's still and subdued. It highlights and intensifies the tension between you.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Unresolved. Sexual.

YOU – Clear your throat, cough into your fist, adjust the manhandled collar of your jacket. Then crouch down to retrieve your ledger.

INTERFACING – It's well and truly busted this time – the blue plastic clasp that locks the permeables compartment has broken off. The tab of a case file divider is bent.

PAIN THRESHOLD – A brother has been critically wounded. Krazy Glue. Stat!

AUTHORITY – Fuck it. Requisition a new one. You should have done that after pissing on it anyway.

VOLITION – It's a material object, mostly plastic. Come on, straighten your spine, officer.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Thrusts a hand out for you to grab.

EMPATHY – I'm not one to say I told you so. But I told you so.

INTERFACING – You take the proffered hand, and your partner hoists you back up to a standing position, then promptly lets go again.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Did you feel that *buzz*?

YOU – Run a hand through your hair as a salty evening wind picks up.

INLAND EMPIRE – Seeing your trepidation after the trial he put you through, he steps closer and gestures for you to come. You limp towards him, as warm blood streams down your leg and soaks through your pants, making the black fabric glisten and stick in the cold. The wind howls. You reek of oxidizing iron. As he supports you with a shoulder, sliding an arm around your waist. You feel *strange*, leaning into him, his warmth. You turn your head to examine his familiar face. Wherever your bodies brush and rub on the awkward walk to the motor-carriage, your skin feels as if it's missing a layer.

BOOGIE STREET (ASS-END) - The streetlights sputter to life, casting puddles of illumination that glisten on Jean's eyes to reveal their wide pupils lingering on your mouth.

INLAND EMPIRE – Every move you make, every vow you break, every smile you fake.

YOU - "Fucking uniforms."

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Nods, and closes his eyes for a moment, rubbing at his face.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – He felt the buzz, too. *God*, I'm starving to death here!

YOU – Lean closer to your partner, just two detectives conferring confidential information. "Your place. Now. And I'll show you how much better I am."

JEAN'S APARTMENT – Is dark by the time you get there, but the blinds are drawn, letting in streaks of blinking sodium light from a billboard on a building opposite. Noises of traffic from the most elevated section of the 8/81 highway filter in even through the double-glazing. Smells of coffee and nicotine hang in the air.

PAIN THRESHOLD – The skin around your lips tingles from kissing in the slow shaky elevator ride all the way up to the twelfth floor, kissing as if running out of time. There's a stinging line of heat down your throat where his goatee scraped as he tongued the pulse in your neck. You *revel* in it.

INLAND EMPIRE - But he experienced a moment of doubt back there in the elevator, standing awkwardly beside you with his fists clenched and his head turned away, deep in thought.

REACTION SPEED – It's nothing. As soon as you took hold of his chin, forcing him to face you, he *engaged*.

YOU – Take a breather as Jean shoves the apartment door into the frame to snap the deadlock before sliding the security chain into the hasp. There's a mirror on the wall above a side-table where he chucks his keys into an ashtray; you glimpse your debauched self in it as you lick your lips wetly in the blinking light. Leave your busted ledger nearby.

THE MIRROR – In its dark reflective depths you appear and disappear in the blinking light. Beyond what its surface reveals from this angle, Jean slides his arms around your waist from behind, unclips the belt on your jacket, then starts to twist its buttons out of their holes. His black hair flops in front of his eyes, his defined cheekbones, as his lips brush against your ear.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "What do you see when you look into the mirror?"

YOU – "No truce with the furies."

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "Thank you, Harry." The last button of your jacket pops open with a harsh tug. "That's meaningless." One hand slides inside, over your shirt, to where your gun is holstered against your ribcage. "I'm glad I asked."

YOU – "It isn't 'meaningless'," you say, as he unholsters your sidearm, and you let him. "It's ... It's like sometimes the memory of my face in my head doesn't match what I see in the mirror, or who I am and want to be – the vision of me in my head."

THE MIRROR – Jean draws your Villiers 9mm out from under your jacket, and drops it carefully onto the side-table with a clunk: *Sunrise, Parabellum*. "I still cannot believe you 'sucked on' this shit," he says, shaking his head as he looks up from your triple-barrel gun to stare bleakly into the reflection of your eyes. You look away, swallow hard. He unholsters his own sidearm off a hip holster and drops it beside yours with a clunk: *Αἴκα*.

RHETORIC - *Αἴκα* fits him like a glove.

CONCEPTUALIZATION – *If*. Beautiful.

YOU – Meet his grey eyes in the mirror, narrowing yours. "What, what do *you* see?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "Why, I see *you*." He looks at himself and sighs. "And me."

THE MIRROR – You reach behind to the back of his neck and pull his head into a kiss over your shoulder, suck on his plunging tongue. Out of view, his hand tugs on your pants belt, dragging it free of the buckle. You turn your back on the furies.

INTERFACING – Jean's uniform has *three fucking belts*: one around the waist of his jacket, a thick gunbelt on his hips, which is attached to the belt looped to his pants. He drags on his jacket belt so hard the whole thing slides free and falls to the floor. As he battles with the buttons next, you dig your hands under the lapels, and feel around the gunbelt to unclip it, then undo the buckle of his regular belt, pulling the jingling thing open. Stick your hand into his pants –

INTERFACING – And pull out his stony cock. Okay, we know *exactly* how to handle this beautiful organ.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Tilts his head back, closes his eyes and opens his mouth.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - *God*, finally.

YOU – Remove his necktie, let it drop to the floor. Kiss his hard Adam's apple, feel it move under your mouth as he swallows.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Grips your head between his hands, angles your mouth back up to his. Shucks your jacket, holster, shirt.

YOU - See the bed behind him in the blinking light and shadows, rip at the buttons of his shirt one-handed as you push him towards it. The whole way, you're giving him a hand job, and he's kissing you slow and deep, *in prelude*.

JEAN VICQUEMARE - Jerks open a bedside drawer and fumbles around inside with one hand for condoms and lube. Hot ragged breaths against your ear: "Are you sure, Harry?"

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Yes. *Yes*. Fucking yes!

YOU – "Wait. Are *you* ... sure?"

HALF LIGHT – Your heart *literally* skips a beat.

INLAND EMPIRE – In reply, he presses you tightly to himself, the warmth of his bare chest against your bare back feels like relief, like some kind of reprieve. In counterpoint, the head of his cock slides wetly against your ass and prods. Why do excitement, fear and panic feel so similar?

YOU – In reply, you twist around as you sit on the edge of the bed, then without preamble, push your mouth over his loaded cock.

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Stifles a grunt in his throat. Fingers grip your hair.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Make him forget about how you almost sucked off your sidearm. Make *him* explode in your mouth instead.

INLAND EMPIRE - Why do noises of pleasure sound like those of pain? Why are we this kind of animal?

THE NEW LEDGER – The lapis lazuli plastic shimmers, the clip boasts a new hologram sticker perforated with exactly the right amount of micro-dots for your years of service, completed cases, kill count. When you unlatch the permeables compartment, the drawer slides out smoothly without having to bend the plastic over your knee first to align the sides. Is this a new ledger for a new start? You *hope so*.

PERCEPTION (SMELL) – Best of all, the new ledger doesn't smell like eau de parfum of urinal cleaner and bin juice with a basenote of piss.

YOU - What does it smell like?

INLAND EMPIRE – Its new-plastic smell reminds you of swimming pools. We don't know why. Maybe something from your childhood?

THE LEDGER – Anyway, you and your incomparable partner JV keep searching for the maker of the shoe-sole: JV scratches each name off your dwindling list by interviewing potential artisans while you search through all your old reports, trying to jog your memory on Milton 32-8. At lunch-time, you try to convene with JV, but Communications Officer JP informs you that your partner left the station on a 10-200 call - narcotics or other drugs.

ESPRIT DE CORPS – Satellite Office Jean Vicquemare's primary informant for the case is MIA, but he decides to wait till the Belles Lettres station call window closes to see whether the informant will show. In the meantime, the lieutenant pays visits to a couple of contacts in the red-light district, to get them to covertly canvass the drug dens. But there's no point, they stress - there is no *magenta* cocaine. This nothing is also something.

THE LEDGER – The Belles Lettres graffiti crew present themselves at the station en masse a minute before their twenty-four-hour window closes. You note that the snorter, Ed, is MIA. But the belletrists crowding the overcrowded holding cells stick to the story that he left that morning for his usual baguette submarine sandwich at Lucky's, saying he'd be back soon. JV returns to C-Wing and insists on waiting for Ed to turn up before interrogating the rest of the belletrists.

YOU – "Where were you all afternoon?"

JEAN VICQUEMARE – "Doing my fucking job," he says flatly.

EMPATHY – He's overworked, edgy.

SUGGESTION – Ask again later.

THE LEDGER - At JV's request, JP relays all officers to detain Ed on sight. At approximately 2000 hours, a pair on patrol spot the fugitive trying to hitch a ride to the Burnt Out Quarter. It takes another forty minutes to bring him in, and another ten after that to process him and escort him to the C-Wing interrogation room. You and JV enter the room at 2100.

SUGGESTION – Psst. Hey, you.

YOU – Hmm?

SUGGESTION – You didn't meet Kim on the roof last night -

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Because we had our hands full, baby.

SUGGESTION - Neglecting to meet Kim again would send the wrong kind of message.

AUTHORITY – And would be dishonourable.

YOU – Check the time on your wristwatch. "*Fuck*."

JEAN VICQUEMARE – Closes the interrogation room door with a snap, and turns on his heel to raise an eyebrow at you.

YOU – Reach for the door handle. "I've got to go. I'll be back soon."