out a report on a typewriter that more closely resembled an antiquated pipe organ. Treacle held up Birgitta’s thumb.
‘Whose thumb is this anyway?’
‘Birgitta,’ I said, ‘from the Siddons.’
‘Baggy went walkies?’ he murmured. ‘That’s a shame – she was quite delightful in a perpetually pissed-off sort of way. Amazing eyes, and a terrific painter. We dated once.’
‘Really?’ I said, not meaning it to sound quite so incredulous. Treacle sighed.
‘If you must know,’ he said, ‘I bought a date with her at a charity auction in aid of the Sector Twelve Pool. She didn’t find any of my jokes or anecdotes remotely interesting, then threatened to bite me on the face if I tried to kiss her when we said goodnight. She didn’t elaborate, but I figured a second date was out of the question.’
‘Very astute of you.’
He held up the two thumbs and stared at them.
‘The large thumb was from a travelling sire named Eddie Tangiers,’ I said, ‘the smaller from a female, also Siddons, mid-twenties, freshly married.’
‘I’ll call Lloyd,’ he muttered, ‘he’ll know.’
He wrote down ‘Tangiers’ and ‘Manderlay’ and ‘Newlywed Siddons’ on a slip of paper and went off to confirm them.
‘What do you think?’ asked Jonesy, who had finished her report and was hunting in vain for a stapler.
‘What do I think about what?’
‘About Treacle.’
‘Owning Laura’s child options makes him something of a heel.’
‘To a bondsman, that’s good business – and legal. They’ll both be millionaires when Laura hits eighteen; I can see her point, though. I meant aside from that.’
‘He’s very keen on you.’
‘I know,’ she said, looking all crestfallen. ‘Do you think I should just kill him and make it look like a Gronk attack? It would help Laura out, too.’
‘You could pay back the dowry,’ I suggested.
‘Yeah, right – and who would I borrow the cash from? Treacle himself?’
‘No, you could—’
I didn’t get to finish my sentence as the door to Toccata’s office had opened. I turned, expecting to see Winter Consul Toccata. But it wasn’t – it was Aurora. I opened my mouth to greet her but then stopped. Although she looked the same, her demeanour seemed utterly different. Aurora had been relaxed and friendly, whereas this woman seemed sharp, driven, and utterly without humour. She strode forward with a purposeful swagger and a clearly aggressive sense of purpose. The only other differences I could see were in her clothes, which were now Consular uniform, and her eyes. Unlike Aurora’s, her right was gazing absently off and looking blank, and her left fixed me with a steely glare.
But they weren’t twins. Aurora and Toccata were the same person.
Toccata
* * *
‘… The barograph recorded atmospheric pressure as a trace of ink on a 12hr strip of paper and was not only useful for gauging the weather, but could detect a pulse weapon’s discharge at a kilometre, less in a snowstorm. A skilled reader could often tell not just the weapon’s power and vortex gradient from the bump or spike profile, but the range, too …’
– Handbook of Winterology, 1st edition, Hodder & Stoughton
‘Well, well,’ said Toccata, ‘the forgotten sleeper of the Sarah Siddons. Charlie Worthing, isn’t it?’
Confused by the sudden turn of events, I blurted out the first thing that came into my head.
‘You know I am.’
Toccata’s eye flashed dangerously.
‘I never ask questions I already know the answer to. Waste of my time, waste of yours. So, again: are you …’
Her voice trailed off. She narrowed her eye and looked at Treacle and Jonesy in turn.
‘Oh, I get it,’ she said, ‘a bunch of comedians. You didn’t tell Worthing Aurora and I looked vaguely similar, did you?’
‘Since Jonesy found Worthing,’ said Treacle, pointing an accusatory finger at her and demonstrating in the clearest manner why Jonesy wanted nothing to do with him. ‘She could have done so. In fact, I thought she had. Which is why I didn’t.’
‘I wanted to see the shocked look on Worthing’s face,’ said Jonesy after giving Treacle a withering look. ‘The Winters are long and we have to make our own entertainment.’
‘Make it some other way,’ growled Toccata, ‘whittling or ice sculpture or something.’
She turned back to me.
‘But you are Charlie Worthing, I take it?’
‘I am, ma’am.’
‘Charlie prefers to be called Wonky,’ said Jonesy.
‘I doubt that so very much,’ said Toccata, ‘but Wonky it is. You were there when Jack Logan was … murdered?’
She almost chose the word ‘died’ but then pulled back and substituted ‘murder’ instead. It was not hard to see either how she felt about it, nor who