Bancroft met my eye calmly. 'I'm sorry if my briefing was inadequate, Mr Kovacs. It is true, I spend some of my leisure time in purchased sexual release, both real and virtual. Or, as you so elegantly put it, whorehouses. I'd not considered it especially important. Equally, I spend part of my time in small-scale gambling. And occasionally null-gravity knife fighting. All of these things could make me enemies, as indeed could most of my business interests. I didn't feel that your first day in a new sleeve on a new world was the time for a line-by-line explanation of my life. Where would I expect to begin? Instead, I told you the background of the crime and suggested that you talk to Oumou. I didn't expect you to take off after the first clue like a heatseeker. Nor did I expect you to lay waste everything that got in your way. I was told the Envoy Corps had a reputation for subtlety.'