There: a flash of cartilaginous skin. Lönnrot doesn’t seem to have felt the endless climb to sea level at all, moves through the closing-time crowds at the same steady sprint that the Inspector kept thinking must surely fade as the stairs went round and round in a haze of white-glazed abattoir tiling and settled atmospheric grime. She is still following, still keeping the spiked black hair in sight, though her breathing sounds black in her ears and the edges of her vision are tinged with patterns cut in coffee stains or the residue of nicotine. Somewhere behind her, two constables are rasping on, booted feet heavy and determined, but the Hoxton academy obviously isn’t making them like it used to, and they are falling behind. Neith will not quit. She will not lose Lönnrot again. Assailant and murder suspect be damned: Lönnrot has answers to the larger puzzle, and this time she means to have them. She drives herself onward, ignoring the warnings of the Witness and her own body that if she catches up now she will be incapable of making an arrest. Her quarry must surely be in the same case, and somewhere on her body is the taser. She does not believe she is pursuing a ghost or a god-shark in the guise of a human being, nor yet a killer who just happens to be a specialist in endurance running. Everything about Lönnrot says mind: a perverse lethality that is the product of self-consideration rather than overclocked physical acumen. The pale feet crammed in those shoes must be hurting like hell.