Oxford, 1880:

Four years passed. The rumours of baby-killing and virgin-biting gradually subsided, until Jack came to be seen as just another of Oxford's charming eccentrics. Even Sam abandoned his suspicions enough to let him train the new police recruits in hand-to-hand fighting.

God, that was brilliant. It had been years since he'd last punched somebody in the face. Of course, he had to rein-in his enthusiasm, in case he inadvertently punched too hard and was never asked back again. It was a bit like it had been seeing Ellini in Paris – after an absence of four years – and pretending he wasn't out of his mind with excitement, in case she took fright and ran away.

With Ellini, he had no idea how he'd done it, but, with the police training, it was manageable. Perhaps some of the fire had gone out of his belly, but it wasn't actually that much fun anymore, punching clueless young men in the face. Of course, as soon as they began to learn, it became a bit more enjoyable. By the time they started using their own initiative and trying to mob him in front of the police station, he could almost have believed that he was happy.

Almost, but not quite. No matter how hard he tried to drown them out with drugs and alcohol and feverish activity, the moments of sobriety came creeping back to remind him how alone he was.

For starters, there were the hallucinations. Because his brain wasn't used to all these chemicals – and still less was it used to being idle – dead men would sometimes appear to him on the pavements. Garrett would trudge up Cornmarket Street, all covered in mud, his neck twisted at an odd angle. Joel and Alim would glare out from shop windows and remind him, if only with a look, that he had killed them – that, if he had been a bit quicker, a bit smarter, if he had been able to sleep the night before the massacre, they might be alive instead of him.

His favourite hallucination wasn't even a dead person, but he still got a wrenching, fluttering, hot sensation in his stomach whenever she appeared. He supposed it was no wonder. Because Robin was dead – and because he didn't know where she was, or who was looking after her – he couldn't shake the feeling that she appeared to him like this when she was in trouble.

He would see her standing in the street, dressed just like another pedestrian – and perhaps she was just another pedestrian, perhaps he had simply pasted Ellini's face and figure onto an innocent bystander – but this didn't stop him from going up to her, abandoning all pretence at sanity, and saying, "What is it? Where are you? Do you need me?"

And when she just looked at him silently for a moment and then drifted off, Jack would grit his teeth and mutter that he hadn't wanted to talk to her anyway.

"This is my damp, murky, boring city," he grumbled, as she melted back into the crowd. "If you want to avoid me, all you have to do is be absolutely anywhere else."

Still, it wasn't all bad, living here. His theoretical take-over of the city was coming on by leaps and bounds – as Sergei found out when he looked into Jack's room on the fourth anniversary of his arrival in Oxford.

He usually stayed away from Jack's rooms, as part of his cheerful determination not to discover anything unsavoury about the people he lived with. But today he paused in the doorway on his way to the jigsaw room and gave a low whistle, as though deeply impressed.

Jack supposed the sheer scale of the mess was impressive, if you had a taste for that kind of thing. Pieces of paper were everywhere – some stuck to the walls, others accumulating gently in the corner like snow-drifts – some covered with scribbles, and others with sketches. Some were just sheets of numbers, sloping down the page, and following a mysterious pattern of their own. There were architectural drawings, technical schematics, maps with pins stuck into them at points which would have seemed completely random to the uninitiated. Sometimes they seemed completely random to Jack, but there was a pattern in there somewhere, and he generally only had to wait until he'd sobered up to remember it.

"Good heavens," said Sergei genially. "Sarah wasn't joking when she said it's impossible to clean in here. What is all this?"

"My laboratory," said Jack, gesturing around with something like pride. "This is how the city works, and how you could make it work for you, if you had a mind to. Most of it's up here," he added, tapping his head. "The paper's just – overspill."

Sergei raised his eyebrows. "This would be a good argument for not pickling your brains in alcohol every night, perhaps?"

"Not a good enough argument. But I'll take it on board."

"What's this?" said Sergei, stooping among the heaps of paper and picking out something that looked like a map with no markings or contours – just a series of interconnecting channels that sprawled across the paper and didn't always meet.

Jack blinked at it. "I have no idea. Oh no, wait!" he added, snatching the paper from Sergei and tracing his finger along one of the channels. "Hah, yes – this is a map of the cellars and crypts and underground streams beneath the city. You'd only have to knock down a few walls and you could get from Christchurch to Keble without ever seeing daylight."

"And this is useful because...?"

"I don't know yet. Maybe it isn't. No matter how much you know, you very seldom know the right thing at the right time. But I'm increasing the chances."

"And what's this?" said Sergei, picking up a stack of official-looking documents with the city's seal on them.

This time, Jack didn't have to rack his brains. "Papers incriminating the mayor and a number of city councillors," he muttered, half-turning his head to make it difficult for his companion to make out the words.

"Blackmail?" said Sergei. But again, he only raised his eyebrows. There was no sternness or shuddering – there was no disapproval in his voice. In another ten minutes, he would forget about it again. He thought he lived in a civilized world now, and was determined to go on thinking it, no matter what.

"No," said Jack patiently. "Entirely no. They live here – I never use them. In fact, they're safer here than they would be in the city archives. I just – I like to know how I could influence people if I needed to."

"And do you extend this policy to your friends and colleagues?"

"Well, I don't have much on you," Jack admitted.

"Except the ten thousand dead new-breeds?"

Jack waved his hand, as though to imply that every man had ten thousand skeletons in his closet. "Something you readily admit to, and which wasn't even against the law at the time? That's no good for blackmail. I suppose it could create a scandal, but you don't strike me as the kind of man who cares about scandal."

"It would be quite exciting to have a scandal attached to my name," said Sergei.

"Exactly. No, you're the kind of man who needs to be bribed with good sense – or quite possibly love. After all, it was love that made you stay in the job that forced you to kill those new-breeds, wasn't it?"

It seemed to Jack that Sergei's smile had become a little chillier. Eventually, he handed the bundle of letters back to him, and said, "Well, I shall rely on your good will if you ever find anything with which to blackmail me."

"You do that a lot," said Jack, under his breath.

"I'm sorry?"

"You rely on other people's good will too much. Mine, Alice's. You'll be disappointed – especially with Alice."

"Alice has never disappointed me in all the years I've known her."

"Oh," said Jack. "That's all right, then. That suggests that you're so determined not to be disappointed, you'll ignore anything that even comes close. Relying on people's good will with your fingers in your ears. That's fine – very sensible. I was afraid you were being naive."

Sergei chuckled at this. "I do enjoy our little talks, Jack."

"Likewise."

It struck him after this conversation that he did have something on Sergei. And it was always after nice, friendly chats like this that the horrible, tactical ideas occurred to him – as though, the more he liked people, the more he had to control them.

At the time, it hadn't struck him as being important, but he dimly recalled that, when they had first met, Sergei had asked him whether he knew everyone who'd made it out of the prison colonies alive, as though he'd been looking for someone. Someone he'd sent there, probably.

How could he find out who? There would be records of all the new-breeds deported from Constanta in the years Sergei had lived there, but there would be thousands of names – ten thousand was only the total number who had died, not the total number he'd deported – and, in any case, Jack didn't know what he was looking for. A woman, perhaps? It was usually a woman. Someone with the surname 'Petrescu'? But that wouldn't narrow it down much more – Petrescu was one of the most common names in Romania.

Oh no, he thought suddenly – no, there was no need to go to all that trouble. He'd been looking at the whole thing backwards! Petrescu was an unusual name here and now, in England. So, if a Sergei Petrescu had made enquiries among the survivors of the prison colonies, someone would remember his name – and even perhaps who he'd been asking about.

That was how Jack came to be having coffee with Simonelli – a big, bear-like Italian – on the pavement outside the Grand Cafe, four years after arriving in Oxford.

Most of the denizens of the prison colonies had been unshaven. What was the point in shaving? You'd been deported from civilized society – there was no-one to impress. But Jack had never seen a man whose beard went right up to his eyeballs, or whose hair crept down the nape of his neck like a second spine. When Simonelli wore proper clothes, he looked like a man who'd been caught halfway through a werewolf transformation. Hair sprouted through the gaps between his buttons, and peeped out of his starched collar like spider-legs.

Still, he had been put in charge of the telegraph in the new, Northern town of the prison colonists, and that made him invaluable.

"What can I do for you, Sir Jack?" said Simonelli, when their coffees had arrived, and he was holding the little porcelain cup between a giant thumb and forefinger.

Jack winced. "Less of the 'sir', please, Simonelli."

"But I always called you sir!"

"You had a reason to then," said Jack, gulping his coffee with a grimace. "I was your commander. What am I now – somebody the Queen felt sorry for?"

"I don't think that's how the Honours system works, Si – Mr Cade," said Simonelli. "But I won't call you anything you don't like. After all, we owe you everything--"

"I don't like that either," said Jack swiftly. "But, if you can answer my questions today, we'll call it even."

Simonelli gave a hollow laugh. "I have three children who're alive today because of you. I don't think there's anything I could do to make it even."

Jack waved a hand irritably. "Well, maybe I'll have children someday, and we can arrange for you to save their lives. That's not the point. I've asked you here because I think that, four years ago, when the northern settlement was first established, a man named Sergei Petrescu telegraphed your office, asking for somebody's whereabouts – a woman's," he added, thinking that, if he was going to guess, there was no point in half-measures.

It had been a shot in the dark, but he'd hit something. Simonelli was staring at him over his coffee cup, without noticing that his beard was now trailing in his drink.

"I'm right, aren't I?" said Jack eagerly. "You remember him?"

"It's an unusual name," Simonelli conceded, looking uncomfortable.

"Who was he looking for?"

The bear-like Italian scratched his head. "Can't say as I remember her name. I think it was Romanian, same as his."

"Was she dead?"

"Long dead," said Simonelli. "I had a job finding anyone who remembered 'er."

"And that's all?" said Jack, his heart sinking slightly.

"That's all I told him. You can't be too careful with humans. Some of them only make enquiries so they can tie up loose ends, you know? Remove any blights on the family name."

"Ah," said Jack, leaning back in his chair. "Let me guess – there was a child?"

"He's almost twenty now," said Simonelli.

"She was pregnant when she got to the colonies, yes? And I bet she told this boy about his father?"

"She named 'im for 'is father," said Simonelli. "That's why I remembered the case. A Sergei Petrescu telegraphs, asking after some woman – I make a few enquiries and discover that the woman in question 'as been dead for thirteen years, but had a child named Sergei Petrescu. It was almost spooky – like some man oo's gone back in time, and is looking for 'is past self."

"But you didn't tell him – I mean, Sergei Petrescu senior – about his son?"

Simonelli spread his hands wide. "Couldn't be sure 'ow 'e'd react. I told the boy."

"And what did he say?"

"He doesn't want to know," said Simonelli. "Said 'is father did something unconscionable for a living. I said 'well, he's a doctor now, and might've made 'imself quite a bit of money' – but this one doesn't care about money. He's a revolutionary, like our Joel – God rest 'im."

Jack's smile flickered for a second. "Yes. Well, thank you."

"You know, I'm sure the lad would meet 'is father if you asked 'im to. He worships you."

"Tell him not to," said Jack, standing up. "In fact, don't tell him anything about this. I'll contact you, when and if I need him."

"All right, Sir – I mean, Mr Cade." Simonelli got up too – and, when he shook Jack's hand, he leaned in close and whispered, "Are they treating you all right here?"

"Like one of their own," said Jack. "It's awful." 

***

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