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the man on the slab, whose muffled protestations began to grow louder and shriller. ‘Now, this might sting a bit,’ he said as he lowered the filleting knife towards his victim’s abdomen.
    Protestations turned to screams, high pitched and anguished, as the knife did its work, parting the flesh right down to the mucosa and releasing a line of thick red fluid. As he cut, Krane parted the flesh, his gloved hands working expertly to open a wound from navel to pubis.
    The cries grew throatier, the man giving off choked grunts behind his gag, but Krane was immersed in his work and no amount of noise would distract him. He delved in, his fingers probing into the wound with a sickly squelch, his eyes rising to the dark roof space above as he concentrated. Then with a foul sucking noise he pulled free a gelatinous tube of intestine.
    ‘Oh bravo,’ said Milo, as the man on the slab went into spasms, his eyes rolling back in his head. ‘Masterfully done.’
    ‘Why, thank you. Would you mind?’ Krane said, nodding towards the large frame that stood to one side, just within the shadows.
    Milo reached over, wheeling the frame towards the slab. He positioned it over their subject, reaching up to grasp the hook attached to a winch at the top of the frame. Ever so carefully, Krane pulled the intestine further out of the surgical laceration he had made in his victim’s abdomen, causing the man to buck and writhe, straining against his shackles. Both men had their tongues out now, concentrating intensely as they speared the sausage like tendril on the end of the hook.
    ‘There we are,’ said Krane, taking a step back to view his handiwork. ‘Feel free to begin.’ 
    ‘Oh, you’re too kind,’ Milo replied. 
    Slowly Milo began to turn the crank, spinning the pulley and winding the cruor covered intestinal sausage around it. Screams turned to gurgles as their subject was ever so slowly eviscerated before their eyes.
    ‘Beautiful,’ Krane breathed, his eyes staring wide in stupefied glee.
    ‘Indeed,’ Milo replied.
    Their victim, eyes crossed and haemorrhaging, face purple and wan, had nothing more to say.
     
    ‘So why me? Why not the Judicature?’
    Blaklok was starting to get annoyed with this arsehole’s caginess. Then again, he was offering a lot of money, so he could probably afford to be cagey. Even so, there was only so much cowshit a man could take, even for a bucket-load of cash.
    ‘Come, Mister Blaklok,’ replied the fat man, sitting behind his mahogany writing desk. ‘You know as well as I do the Judicature are useless unless you’re landed gentry. And this case requires someone with specific talents – talents I’ve been led to believe you possess.’
    He was right there, the Judicature were about as much use as a see-through mirror, unless you were of the Noble Houses – then they’d break their backs to help you out.
    ‘All right, so what exactly is it you think I can do for you?’
    ‘I need you to eradicate a problem… a life threatening problem that’s come to my attention. I’ve been told you’re good at that.’
    All of a sudden Blaklok was conscious of the light pouring in through the huge bay window. It illuminated him far more than he was comfortable with.
    ‘Been told by whom?’
    The fat bloke smiled knowingly. ‘Mister Blaklok, I’m a discreet man. It would be remiss of me to reveal my sources, now wouldn’t it.’
    This whole thing stank. Blaklok had been summoned here, to the industrial quarter of the Manuactory, by an anonymous messenger promising plenty of ready cash if he was to take on one simple job. If his finances hadn’t been so strapped he would have ignored it, but as things were he simply needed the money. Now he was here, in front of this fat, grinning business-type – what was his name? Bunkle? Tinkle? – on a promise for cash to ‘eradicate a problem’. And Blaklok could guess what that would involve.
    ‘All right, who do you want dead?’
    ‘Oh, no, no, no,