‘He’s getting there.’

‘Should he be here?’

She frowned. ‘He was dumped, Lucas, he wasn’t shot. What about the victim’s Drop?’

Lucas knelt by the body again. The back of the head was a disaster, split open in a dozen places and sagging inwards. Carefully, Lucas pushed the strands of hair and bone to one side to reveal the Sun Drop, sitting on the victim’s neck. Izzy spoke out loud what he was already thinking.

‘It’s intact.’

Lucas smiled fiercely, and carefully cleaned the surface of the Drop. It was intact, covered in blood and its tough, tear-drop carapace wasn’t cracked or broken. It was a dark blue, with shards of white skittering across the surface as they watched.

‘And it’s full. Lucas, get this processed, get it back to the station pronto.’

The coroner nodded, and Izzy turned to catch up with her partner.

That special type of happiness that comes from being fat and well fed. She stretched and felt the muscles in her legs pop and creak as they worked to full extension. The sun lay across her like a blanket and she rolled onto her back, feeling it spread across her chest with the warmth and intimacy that no lover could ever match. She leaned back and yawned and waited. If you waited long enough, food would always come. In the meantime, all that needed to be done was sleep and stay warm and fat and happy. She purred the sound low and melodic in the back of her throat and wrapped her tail around herself.

Izzy shook her head as the memory faded. She was sitting in one of the stalls at the police station, and her watch told her she’d been there five minutes too long. She swore, stood and felt the ghost of her cat’s memory slip away from her. The cat had died years ago but the memory had been one of the first she’d recorded on the Drop. It relaxed her and as it faded, she began to remember why she’d chosen it in the first place.

Getting back to the station had been a nightmare. The press had been camped outside and for a second as they’d arrived back, she was afraid a riot was going to break out. She’d long ago got used to seeing her face plastered over the evening news, long ago adjusted to people asking her in the street whether they were any close to catching the killer. She’d even got used to the continual, genially harsh conversations with Sun Drop’s lawyers. Any indication that their device was at fault would be considered libellous, any and all assistance that could reasonably be offered would be. It was like a dance, a measured, precise set of movements that would do nothing but take up time. The killings had become a cottage industry, from the lawyers contesting the legality of the Drops to the download sites themselves and the academics gleefully writing papers on the psychological effects of living vicariously through someone else’s eyes. It was the mediocrity of the case that was hard to deal with, so hard to work past.

.