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now suddenly eager to have it returned—we wouldn’t give him his van back. We did take him to the pound to verify it was his.
    “Yes, it’s mine.” I waited for him to complain about how ill it had been used, but that was obviously its usual colour. “Why can’t I have it? I need it.”
    “As I keep saying, it’s a crime scene. You’ll get it when I’m ready. What’s all this for?” He was huffing and grumping, looked into the back of the van. I held him back from touching anything.
    “This shit? I don’t fucking know.”
    “This, I’m talking about.” The ripped-up cord, the pieces of junk.
    “Yeah. I don’t know what it is. I didn’t put it here. Don’t look at me like that—why would I carry garbage like this?”
    I said to Corwi in my office afterwards: “Please, do please stop me if you have any ideas, Lizbyet. Because I’m seeing a may-or-may-not-be working girl, who no one recognises, dumped in plain sight, in a stolen van, into which was carefully placed a load of crap, for no reason. And none of it’s the murder weapon, you know—that’s pretty certain.” I prodded the paper on my desk that told me.
    “There’s rubbish all over that estate,” she said. “There’s rubbish all over Besźel; he could’ve picked it up anywhere. ‘He’ … They, maybe.”
    “Picked it up, stashed it, dumped it, and the van with it.”
    Corwi sat rather stiff, waiting for me to say something. All the rubbish had done was roll into the dead woman and rust her as if she, too, were old iron.

Chapter Four
    BOTH OF THE LEADS WERE BOGUS . The office assistant had resigned and not bothered to tell them. We found her in Byatsialic, in the east of Besźel. She was mortified to have caused us trouble. “I never hand in notice,” she kept saying. “Not when they’re employers like that. And this has never happened, nothing like this.” Corwi found Rosyn “The Pout” without any difficulty. She was working her usual pitch.
    “She doesn’t look anything like Fulana, boss.” Corwi showed me a jpeg Rosyn had been happy to pose for. We couldn’t trace the source of that spurious information, delivered with such convincing authority, nor work out why anyone would have mistaken the two women. Other information came in that I sent people to chase. I found messages and blank messages on my work phone.
    It rained. On the kiosk outside my front door the printout of Fulana softened and streaked. Someone put up a glossy flyer for an evening of Balkan techno so it covered the top half of her face. The club night emerged from her lips and chin. I unpinned the new poster. I did not throw it away—only moved it so Fulana was visible again, her closed eyes next to it. DJ Radic and the Tiger Kru. Hard Beats. I did not see any other pictures of Fulana though Corwi assured me they were there, in the city.
    Khurusch was all over the van, of course, but with the exception of those few hairs Fulana was clean of him. As if all those recovering gamblers would lie, anyway. We tried to take the names of any contacts to whom he had ever lent the van. He mentioned a few but insisted it had been stolen by a stranger. On the Monday after we found the body I took a call.
    “Borlú.” I said my name again after a long pause, and it was repeated back to me.
    “Inspector Borlú.”
    “Help you?”
    “I don’t know. I was hoping you could help me days ago. I’ve been trying to reach you. I can help you more like.” The man spoke with a foreign accent.
    “What? I’m sorry, I need you to speak up—it’s a really bad line.”
    It was staticking, and the man sounded as if he was a recording on an antique machine. I could not tell if the lag was on the line, or if he was taking a long time to respond to me each time I said anything. He spoke a good but odd Besź, punctuated with archaisms. I said, “Who is this? What do you want?”
    “I have information for you.”
    “Have you spoken to our info-line?”
    “I can’t.” He