Maren's note arrived early.

  Not by the young guard this time — it had been slid under the door in the large, deliberate handwriting the inspector used when he was in a hurry and didn't want to admit he was in a hurry. Crowe found it when he went to collect the morning paper, folded in four with a single line:

  Upper Quarters. Acacia Street, number 7. Come before the owner decides he doesn't want the Guard here. — M.

  The last part was useful information. In the Upper Quarters, the Guard was tolerated as a necessary service and treated as an inconvenient visitor — the sooner it resolved what it had come to resolve, the sooner the doors went back to being closed. Maren knew this and had learned, over twenty-three years, to use the available window efficiently.

  Crowe went without coffee.

  Acacia Street was the kind of street the Upper Quarters produced when it wanted to demonstrate that there was enough money for not even the architecture to need to make an effort. The townhouses were wide and pale stone, with spacing between them that in any other neighbourhood would be considered wasteful and here was considered privacy. The acacias of the name were present — lined along the pavement, pruned with the regularity of something that cost constant maintenance and was worth the cost because the cost was the point.

  Number seven was indistinguishable from its neighbours except for the presence of two guards on the pavement and Maren on the front step with his notebook and the expression of someone who had arrived before the coffee had taken effect.

  — Quickly — said Maren, when Crowe arrived. Not as a greeting — as an instruction. — Mr. Aldren Voss has already asked three times when we're finished.

  — Aldren Voss — said Crowe.

  — The owner. No relation to the watchmaker — I already checked. Coincidence of surname. — Maren turned the notebook to show the annotation, then returned to the next page. — The incident was discovered this morning at six when Mr. Voss's wife woke and found a stranger sleeping in the sitting room armchair.

  — Sleeping.

  — Sleeping — Maren confirmed. — No sign of forced entry. Windows closed from the inside, front door locked with the key that hangs on the inside. The stranger woke when she screamed, was as confused as she was, and the two of them spent approximately ten minutes trying to understand what was happening before she went to fetch her husband and her husband called the Guard.

  — The stranger — said Crowe.

  — Lives in a building three blocks from here — said Maren. — Same floor. Same flat number. Same layout, according to Mr. Voss who knows the other building's owner. — He closed the notebook. — The man's family swear he didn't go out last night. His wife says he was in bed when she fell asleep and that he isn't the type to leave without saying so.

  Crowe was quiet for a moment on the pavement, looking at the facade of number seven.

  Same floor. Same number. Same layout.

  — Where is he now — said Crowe.

  — Inside. The sitting room. Mr. Voss insisted he stay in a specific chair that is far from the valuables, which says something about Mr. Voss.

  — And says something about the chair — said Crowe, already going up the steps.

  The interior of number seven was what the exterior promised — spacious, well-furnished with the particular taste of someone who had had money long enough for the money to have become style. Rugs of good provenance, adequate lighting, the kind of order that comes from domestic staff rather than personal habit.

  Mr. Aldren Voss was a man of sixty with the posture of someone who had been important in specific contexts long enough for the posture to have remained outside those contexts. He stood near the fireplace with his arms crossed and looked at Crowe with the assessment of someone calculating whether what he was seeing justified the level of disruption that had been introduced into his morning.

  He apparently decided it did not.

  — You're the private one — he said.

  — I am — said Crowe.

  — The Crow — said Voss, in the tone of someone testing whether the nickname was irritating to its bearer. — I saw it in the paper.

  — So did I — said Crowe, in the voice that made any development of that subject clearly unproductive. — May I see the room.

  The man in the specific chair far from the valuables was thirty-five years old and had the appearance of someone who had spent the last few hours being repeatedly informed that he was somewhere he shouldn't be and had completely exhausted his capacity to find that surprising.

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  Dark hair with the dishevelment of someone who had slept in an armchair. House clothes — wool trousers, a collarless shirt, the kind of clothes that were not a choice for going out. An expression that had navigated confusion, then fright, then embarrassment, and had finally arrived in a region of resigned exhaustion.

  There was something more. Crowe identified it in the first five seconds — a quality in the eyes, not of ordinary disorientation, but of the specific kind he had seen before. In Thomas Reed. The morning after the factory.

  Someone who had been somewhere that had no words to describe it and was trying to reconcile that with the world they recognised.

  — Your name — said Crowe, sitting in the chair opposite without ceremony.

  — Harlan — said the man. In the slightly thick voice of someone still processing. — Harlan Vey.

  Crowe registered the name without showing what he registered — there was a resemblance to another name he had investigated recently, Harlan Vex, which was a coincidence of first name and nothing more, but which the mind had noted all the same and had filed to discard later with sufficient data.

  — Mr. Vey — said Crowe. — I need you to tell me the last thing you remember before waking up here.

  Vey looked at him with the expression of someone who had told this twice already and was calculating whether a third time would produce a different result.

  — I was at home — he said. — In the sitting room. My wife had already gone to sleep, it was late. I was reading. — A pause. — A mechanics almanac.

  Crowe went completely still.

  Thomas Reed. Twelve twenty. The mechanics almanac.

  — What time was it — said Crowe. In the careful voice of someone verifying something without revealing what they were verifying.

  — By the sitting room clock — said Vey — it must have been just past midnight. I didn't look directly, it was an impression.

  — And then.

  — Then I'm here — said Vey. With the particular frustration Crowe had heard in Reed's voice — not anger, the weight of someone trying to reach something that wasn't there. — No then. No transition. No corridor, no door, nothing. I was in my sitting room and then I was in that armchair with a woman screaming at me.

  Crowe looked at him for a moment.

  — Your hands — said Crowe.

  Vey looked at his own hands with the expression of someone who had not thought about their own hands in that context.

  Crowe leaned in. There was something beneath the fingernails — not earth this time. Something different. A dark substance, almost black, with a texture that from his angle looked metallic.

  — May I — said Crowe, extending his hand.

  Vey held out his hands with the passivity of someone who had decided that the morning had exhausted his capacity to have opinions about what happened to him.

  Crowe examined it. The substance under the fingernails was thin, deposited in a way that suggested contact with a surface — not active handling of material, but touching a surface coated with it. Like running a hand along a wall.

  Metallic. Dark. With a smell that Crowe identified after a second — the same smell as the chamber in Voss's factory. Not identical. Similar. The variation that exists between two places that share the same quality of air.

  The interval has a smell.

  He filed that away.

  — Is there anything else — said Crowe. — Any detail, however small it seems. Something you saw, heard, felt. Anything between being in your sitting room and being here.

  Vey was quiet for a moment.

  — There is — he said. In the voice of someone who had kept that back because they didn't know whether it would be taken seriously. — I can't describe it well.

  — Try — said Crowe.

  — It was a corridor — said Vey, slowly. Like someone describing something they are seeing through memory and not through present experience — with the particular imprecision of perception that had not been processed while it was happening. — It wasn't the corridor of my home or of this building. It was different. Taller. The walls had a quality — I can't explain it. As though they weren't entirely solid.

  — Lit — said Crowe.

  — There was no lamp — said Vey. — But there was light. The kind with no source. — A pause. — There was a door. At the end of the corridor. I didn't open it. I don't know if it was possible to open it. — He looked at Crowe with those eyes that had that specific quality. — And there was something in the corridor with me. I didn't see it. But it was there. The presence of something.

  The flat was silent for a moment.

  Maren was standing near the window, quiet, with the notebook closed. He had learned that certain interviews produced more with less intervention.

  — That corridor — said Crowe. — If you had to describe it in one word.

  Vey was quiet for a second.

  — Between — he said. At last. — It felt like a place between two places. Like the space that exists when you close one door but haven't opened the next.

  Crowe looked at him.

  The interval.

  He didn't say that aloud.

  — Thank you — he said. He stood. — You're not going anywhere today.

  — My wife is expecting me — said Vey.

  — I'll arrange for someone to bring her here — said Maren, from the window, in the voice of someone who had reached the same conclusion about the need to keep Vey accessible. — As a precaution.

  Crowe went out into the corridor. Maren followed, closing the sitting room door behind him.

  They stood in the corridor with the expensive rug and the pictures on the walls and the silence of the Upper Quarters that was purchased silence.

  — Mechanics almanac — said Maren, quietly.

  — Reed said the same — said Crowe.

  — I know — said Maren. In the voice of someone who had made the connection two seconds after Crowe had made it and was confirming that they had. — Coincidence.

  — No — said Crowe.

  — Then what.

  Crowe was quiet for a moment. There was an answer that was formed — it had been forming since Vey had said mechanics almanac with the same ease with which Reed had said it — but which needed more before being said aloud.

  — I need to see his flat — said Crowe. — The one three blocks away.

  — His wife is there.

  — Better still.

  Maren looked at him for a second.

  — And this flat — said the inspector. — The sitting room where he was found.

  — After — said Crowe. — His first.

  He went out into the Upper Quarters street with the dark substance from under Vey's fingernails recorded in his notebook and the corridor between two places and the presence that had no form yet.

  Three blocks. Same floor. Same layout.

  A man had passed through something with no name on any map of Londrivar and had arrived in the wrong place.

  Which raised a question Crowe had not yet asked:

  If he had arrived in the wrong place — what was the right one?