We were both soaked through the minute we entered the downpour. As we set off in the direction of the tram stop, Alex glanced at me. "Do you want my coat?"

"No, thank you. I'll break it."

He looked bemused.

"It's got electronics in it! As soon as it touches me, it will stop working."

"Are you really that bad?"

"You saw me at Ace's yesterday. And I have a coffee machine that does nothing except set me reminders, and a faulty earpiece to attest to that."

He smiled. "I can't work out if it's a good thing or a bad thing that you can't contact the PRBs."

"A little bit of both."

"I could take your earpiece home with me sometime and fix it if you want."

"Really? I should just give it to the workshop PRBs to fix, but I'm not sure..."

"...if that's a good idea when you're involved?" Amusement danced in his eyes. "Leave it to me."

"Thank you."

We rode a tram to the high street and disembarked among shoppers who stank of minty chewing gum and stale winter sweat. Splashing through puddles, we walked down to the police station.

When we turned onto the driveway, my chest tightened. I glanced over my shoulder, quick but casual, and saw a flash of blond hair and an electric blue scarf.

It didn't make Clyde very incognito.

Alex was watching me when I turned back. As I lengthened my stride, so did he. "Everything all right?"

"I'm just eager to get inside -- it's freezing."

I strode up to the facial-recognition scanners, my heart pounding in my throat. As the automatic doors rose, I glanced over my shoulder again. Clyde carried on past the driveway without looking down.

We entered the station and went straight to our office. I passed the door back to Alex with a shaking hand, and he mistook it for more shivers. "I bet you're wishing you'd worn my coat now."

"If I'd worn your coat, I'd be wishing I hadn't, because I'd have broken it."

"I'm wishing you'd worn my coat."

"That's a shame. Look, why don't you go and get us some lunch from the cafeteria? Grab us sandwiches and poison -- I mean, coffee."

Alex went out again, and I settled behind my desk to video-call Victory Casino.

A bald man with beady eyes answered. "Yes?"

"Victory Casino?"

"Yes." He looked at me as if I was stupid. "You called from our Xplora page."

"I'm Detective Inspector Rames from Socrico Police." I held up my warrant card. "I need to know if a man called Ryker James was in your establishment on Monday night."

"No."

"Are you sure? He has a buzz cut. He owns a repairs shop on -- "

"I don't know no Ryker James." The man's thumb appeared on screen, about to disconnect the call.

"You're the owner," I said.

"Yes." He hesitated over the disconnect button.

"How long have you owned Victory Casino?"

"Since it opened."

"Ryker James was arrested outside your building for ABH in 2180. You must know him."

"Lady, people get arrested near my casino every day. I don't know no Ryker James."

He ended the call.

I snatched my tabphone out of the air. "Well, fuck you, then!"

Alex strode in with two cups of coffee, two packets of sandwiches, and two chocolate bars. He deposited one of each on my desk. "No luck?"

I mellowed at the sight of the chocolate. "No. The owner of Victory Casino says he doesn't know anybody called Ryker James."

"So Ryker wasn't there on Monday."

"But we do know for sure that he was there last night. The owner's lying."

"He won't know all of his customers by name."

"I described him."

"Or face."

"He's a regular!" I attacked my chocolate bar. "He has a bloody gambling addiction!"

Alex shrugged and went to his desk, although he didn't sit down. "Whatever's going on, the fact is that Ryker still has no alibi. And Zoe was killed right outside his workshop."

"You should always look to the partner of a victim first."

"Or someone else they were previously involved with."

"Well, my bets are on Maxx," I huffed.

"I didn't know this was a betting shop," someone else said from the doorway.

I looked up. Sebastian Flynn was standing there, wearing an easy smile.

"This must be your new sergeant?" he continued.

"Oh, yes." I tried not to glare at Alex. Self-assured arrogance suited his face very well, and it was very irritating. "Sebastian Flynn, meet Alex Sullivan."

"Hello," my sergeant said.

"It's good to meet you." Sebastian leaned against the doorway. "Now, what's all this about bets?"

"We were discussing the Ackerman inquiry," I said. "I was actually hoping to pick your brains over it."

"Go ahead."

"One of our suspects was arrested by you outside Victory Casino in 2180. You charged him with ABH. Ryker James."

Sebastian frowned. "I remember some guy who was shot in the arm. The wound got infected, and he had to have it amputated."

"Ryker was certainly shot, and he has a cybernetic arm now."

"Then I know who you mean. You want me to tell you how the arrest went down?"

"Yes, please. And what you thought of him."

"It was the other man who started the fight -- and ended it when he pulled his gun. Ryker was acting in self-defence, but he took it too far. It just wound up being one big, messy brawl."

"What were they fighting about?"

"Ryker owed the guy some money but couldn't pay up. He'd gambled himself into serious debt. I think he declared bankruptcy not long after the incident." Sebastian shrugged. "I guess you want me to tell you if he's the kind of man who'd slit a woman's throat, but I don't know, sorry. I'm not a psychologist."

"He obviously has violent tendencies," Alex put in.

Sebastian grinned. "Ah, so you're betting on Ryker. I don't think I want to be around when one of you turns out to be wrong!" He opened the door again, then glanced back over his shoulder. "Oh, Amber -- Otto and I are going to The Silver Star after work. Do you two want to join us?"

Otto was Sebastian's sergeant, and The Silver Star was the pub we drank at sometimes. Nina had used to come with us.

I looked at Alex. He nodded.

"We'll be there," I said.

***

When the end of our working day arrived, Alex and I packed up and walked to the pub.

"We usually have a meal as well as drinks," I said when we hit the high street. "It'll be on me tonight. Sebastian helped me out a lot when Nina left, so I really owe him one." Although he owed me for my stunt the previous morning.

"Buying him a drink is a good way to start."

"Yes. And food, if you're staying for that...?"

Not that I couldn't stay without him, but it would feel awkward in the knowledge that I had a new sergeant to fill Nina's chair.

Alex's mouth curved into a dashing smile. "Of course."

"Great! Turn left here."

We'd come to the end of the high street, and now we turned onto another busy road. Shops and offices occupied the higher levels of the skyscrapers, while the lower floors were hogged by cafés, restaurants, and pubs. The Silver Star wasn't too far along, announced by a gigantic neon sign with a flashing star.

I glanced at Alex as we approached. "You'll like it inside."

Two glass doors rose into the air as we neared them, and we strode into a glowing blue room. The pub was long, stretching back almost a hundred feet and spilling up a floor via a glass spiral staircase. On both levels, the space was minimalist and airy, littered with elegant touchglass tables. Customers could use the screens to place their orders, but most went to the bar for the full experience.

The bar was in the middle of the ground floor, a doughnut-shaped counter worked by two humans and two robots. A fat pillar stood in the centre with a door, where the electronic chef was operated. Patrons flocked back and forth from all sides, leaning on frosted glass that glowed electric blue and paying on the eye-scanners mounted to it. They were mostly people who'd just finished work, dressed in suits and techno shirts or the lightweight armour of security officers. They shouted to each other over pounding synthwave music.

I spotted Sebastian first, sitting at our usual table near the bar. His sergeant, Otto Gibbs, was beside him. Otto was a quiet man, short and tanned, and sporting an impeccable dress sense. Today, he was wearing a three-piece suit and looking far too posh for the bright pub.

Sebastian was dividing his attention between talking to Otto and watching a blonde on the far side of the room. He never made any enormous efforts to attract female attention, just looked and smiled, and yet he seemed to take a different woman to bed each week.

I rolled my eyes as we approached. "Get your head over here, please."

He dragged his gaze to me and grinned. "I had to do something to entertain myself. I almost thought you weren't coming."

"Sorry."

"Is this your new sergeant?" Otto asked.

"Yes, Alex Sullivan."

Alex smiled. "Hi."

Otto said how pleased he was to meet him. I threw my bag down, sweeping my gaze over the multicoloured glasses spread across the table. "I see you two have already got your drinks, but the meal's on me. Are you having your usual?"

Both men agreed that they'd like their usual orders.

Alex took his coat off and hung it on the back of his chair, then leaned over the table and woke the touchglass up so that he could view the menu. Hit by an impulse, I tapped his shoulder. "No, come with me. There's someone I want you to meet -- and she'll tell you what you're ordering."

He raised a sceptical eyebrow, but he straightened up and followed me to the bar. When we'd found a space at the glowing counter, a robot came forward to serve us. I waved it away. "Gem!"

One of the human bartenders had been standing to the east of us, stacking neon bottles on shelves. Her hair was neon too: dyed pink and tied up in two short pigtails that bounced as she raised her head. She was in her early twenties, but her delicate features and freckled skin made her look like she was a teenager. "Amber!"

"Hi, Gem," I said. "How are you?"

"Okay, thanks. Still stuck working here." Her big smile didn't change as she came over.

"Cassia tells me it's not so bad for you now. You're getting more responsibility and more money."

"True. But how are you? And who's this?" She shot Alex an approving look.

"Sergeant Alex Sullivan," he said pleasantly.

"Well, aren't you tall, dark, and handsome? I wish you kept coming in here instead of my new stalker."

"Stalker?" I repeated.

"He's a bloody millionaire," the other bartender said as she passed by. "Stop complaining."

Gem shook her head. "He also was married, and he doesn't understand why I'm freaked out!"

My blood ran cold. "Maxx Ackerman?"

"Yeah, that's him. He comes in all the time. He wanted me to be his bit on the side -- 'girlfriend' he actually said, but how can you have a girlfriend if you have a wife?" Her blue eyes brightened. "Wait, how do you know?"

"I'm running Zoe Ackerman's murder inquiry, and he...mentioned a bartender he likes." I frowned. "Have you made it clear to him that you're not interested?"

"Obviously, but it doesn't put him off. He's not a real problem, though, just a nuisance. You'd better order because we're starting to get the evils from everyone else."

I hesitated, glancing at my sergeant. He shrugged.

I dropped the matter. "I was hoping you'd do me a favour. Could you look at Alex and decide what he'd like most? I want him to experience the best way to eat in The Silver Star."

"Sure. I'll get him a lime crusher and a steak. You look like you want a steak." She turned away from his expression of surprise. "Are the rest of you having your usual?"

"Yes, please."

"Okay! I'll be back in a moment." She entered the pillar in the middle of the bar.

Alex looked at me. "What is your usual?"

"You'll see. Did you fancy a steak?"

"Yes. That was odd. Is letting the bartender order for you a tradition here?"

"No, just a Rames tradition. The first time I came was with Cassia. Gem served us, and she insisted that she could choose what we'd like just by looking at our faces. We let her. Her choices were spot on -- and we've tried everything to be sure. We've been friends with her ever since."

"And your best friend is in Rosek. Nina Howell."

"That's right."

"I met her just before I came over."

I felt my back straighten like a rod. "Really? How was she? I haven't heard much."

Alex frowned. "I think she's settling in, but she was quiet. I guessed working with a new set of people must have been overwhelming."

"She's very shy." I sighed. "It took her ages to come out of her shell and warm up to me when we first started working together. I just hope it happens a bit quicker in Rosek now that she's an inspector."

I almost asked Alex why he'd come here and taken up Nina's job again, but at the last moment, I stopped myself. We'd known each other for forty-eight hours. He still wasn't going to tell me.

Gem came back and poured our drinks. "Whoops, I should have done this bit first." She giggled as she set a lime crusher cocktail, a glass of water, and two beers on the counter. Then she gestured to the eye-scanner grandly.

"This is all on me," I said.

From the corner of my eye while I was being scanned, I saw Alex glance at my water. "Not a drinker?"

"No." I stepped back and grabbed my glass. "Thanks, Gem."

"I'll be over in a moment with your food," she said.

We took our drinks back to the table and sat down. Sebastian was ogling the blonde again. Otto sighed dramatically, and we exchanged despairing looks. Alex sipped his lime crusher.

Gem came over a few minutes later, carrying a tray of plates. "Here you are. Alex, do you like your drink?"

He looked at the lime crusher as if it had betrayed him. "Yes. How do you do it?"

"Do what?" Sebastian asked, finally coming back to us.

"She chose Alex's drink," I said. "And he can try all the other drinks he wants, but he won't find anything he loves as much as a lime crusher in The Silver Star."

Gem finished setting our meals down. "I'm just going to say goodbye now, Amber, because I know you'll forget. Tell Cassia I said hello."

"Tell her yourself. I'm sure she'd appreciate a message from you."

"I always message her. I just thought something verbal would be nice. She's so busy." Gem shrugged and left us.

Sebastian looked at me. "How is Cassia, anyway?"

"Good. Up to her eyeballs in dead bodies, as per usual."

Our conversation moved naturally from corpses to murder cases as we ate. Sebastian encouraged Alex to talk about what he'd done in Rosek, and my sergeant obliged. He spoke of the man who'd killed all his wife's friends because he'd deliriously thought they were poisoning him, and the case of the bodies that were always left in lifts. He also regaled the knife fight he'd been subjected to on a tram to arrest a suspect, and the time he'd almost been shot in the leg by a murdering journalist.

I noticed that he didn't mention any recent investigations. Maybe he'd left quite a few of them open when he'd moved. Or maybe it was something else.

The conversation slowly expanded to look at Rosek in general. Alex talked about some of his favourite haunts, and I wondered if Nina would go to the places he had. Would she find the same restaurant he'd visited with his co-workers each Christmas? Would she find a place like Coffee Glitch for her daily caffeine hit?

I told Alex about Coffee Glitch, and he smiled. "Is that where you got your coffee from this morning?"

"Yes. You should try it sometime if you're a caffeine addict."

"Oh, I am. Maybe I'll go tomorrow."

Then he asked Sebastian about his investigations, and my friend told quick and sparse stories. He liked listening to us speak, but he always held back when telling his own tales. I'd pried into that before, and he'd admitted that he buried himself so deeply within his work that he always found it difficult to step back and story-tell.

When we'd finished eating, he checked the time on his tabphone. "I should go. I have someone coming around tonight."

"You mean a woman," I said. "What's this one called?"

"Faye." Sebastian pulled his coat on, a vape clinking in his pocket. "Doesn't she sound gorgeous by name alone?"

Otto rolled his eyes and stood up. "I need to get on as well. It was good to meet you, Alex."

"You, too." Alex glanced at me to see what I was doing. He'd been savouring his lime crusher, and his glass was still a quarter full. I could have sworn that it had turned his eyes greener, and my stomach fluttered.

I swallowed hard. Attraction was bad. Inappropriate. And potentially illegal.

"I'll wait," the devil in me said. Then, in the interest of remaining professional, I added, "We can discuss the investigation again."

As Sebastian and Otto walked away, I desperately fastened my attention on our glasses. Then I had an idea.

"Let's try looking at this using a fresh method." I tapped the three empty drinks. "Zoe Ackerman, Maxx Ackerman, Ryker James."

Alex looked at them dubiously.

I separated Zoe's glass from the herd. "Our victim. Found in the alley on Terra Road, just a few feet away from Ryker's Repairs. Cause of death: slit throat. Both carotid arteries were cut."

I slid a different glass across the table until it clinked against Zoe's. "Now let's ask the why question. Why would Ryker James want to kill Zoe Ackerman?"

"He was betrayed by her." Alex sipped his drink. "She jilted him at the altar and left him for her step-brother."

"Okay. Why now?"

That drew Alex up short. He blinked at me. "What?"

"Zoe and Maxx have been married for almost a year. Zoe jilted Ryker a year and a half ago. He would have been at his angriest then, but he didn't kill her. Why kill her now?"

Alex thought on that for a while, his brow furrowed. Eventually, he slid his own glass across to Zoe and Ryker. "The birth of Harley gave him a fresh wound. First Zoe married Maxx, and then she became a parent. Ryker's anger bubbled over. He went overboard defending himself outside Victory Casino -- we know he has the hot temper and violent streak we're looking for."

I worried my lip. "He went overboard when he was attacked. Zoe wasn't posing a threat to anyone."

"From his point of view, she'd already hurt him." Alex drained his glass.

"But..."

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I twisted around to look over my shoulder, but I missed the person who I feared was coming toward us. From the corner of my eye, I saw them moving around the other side of our table.

I turned back. It was Clyde.

No one could deny that he was a handsome man, although it was in a brutal sort of way. His blonde hair was cropped extremely short, not quite an army cut but something close, and although his face was well-sculpted and his eyes a mesmerising shade of blue, his jaw was too sharp, and his nose large and wide -- and slightly crooked from a break in his youth. He was wrapped up in a dark coat and the electric blue scarf again, and seeing it made me feel queasy.

Alex set his empty glass down and looked at our intruder. Then he clocked my expression.

"Well, fancy meeting you here," Clyde said. "I was looking for you earlier, but when I stop looking, here you are. Things always turn up when you least expect them to."