10

The Linnaeus Room

Next morning, a letter arrived by hand at Durham College for Malcolm. He opened it in the porter’s lodge and saw that the paper was headed Director’s Office, Botanic Garden, Oxford, and read:

Dear Dr Polstead,

I feel I should have been more frank with you yesterday about Dr Hassall and his research. The fact is that circumstances are changing rapidly, and the matter is more urgent than it might seem. We have been organising a small meeting between various parties who have an interest in the case and I wondered if you could possibly attend. Your knowledge of the area and of the items you found means that you might be able to contribute to our discussion. I wouldn’t ask, but it’s both serious and urgent.

We are meeting this evening at six, here at the Garden. If you can come (and I very much hope you will) please ask at the gate for the Linnaeus Room.

Yours sincerely,

Lucy Arnold

He looked at the date on the letter: it had been written that same morning. Asta, on reading it with him from the counter of the porter’s window, said, ‘We should tell Hannah.’

‘Is there time?’

He had a college meeting at mid-morning. He peered into the lodge and read the time from the porter’s clock: five past nine.

‘Yes, we can do it,’ he said.

‘I meant for her,’ Asta said. ‘She’s going to London this morning.’

‘So she is. Better hurry then,’ Malcolm said, and Asta leaped down and padded after him.

Ten minutes later he was ringing Hannah Relf’s doorbell, and thirty seconds after that she was letting him in, and saying, ‘So you’ve seen the Oxford Times?’

‘No. What’s that about?’

She held out the newspaper. It was the evening edition from the day before, and she’d turned it back to page five, where a headline read BODY FOUND AT IFFLEY LOCK. NOT DROWNED, SAY POLICE.

He scanned the story quickly. Iffley Lock was about a mile down the river from where Pan had seen the attack, and the lock-keeper had found the body of a man of about forty, who had been brutally beaten, and who appeared to have died before his body entered the water. The police had opened a murder enquiry.

‘Must be him,’ said Malcolm. ‘Poor man. Well, Lucy Arnold will know by now. Perhaps that’s what she’s referring to.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I came to show you this,’ he said, and handed her the letter.

‘Circumstances are changing rapidly,’ Hannah read. ‘Yes. Could well be. She’s very cautious.’

‘Doesn’t mention the police. If there was nothing on the body to identify him they wouldn’t know who he was, and she still might not know about it. Do you know anything about her? Ever met her?’

‘I know her slightly. Intense, passionate woman, almost tragic, I’ve sometimes thought. Or felt, rather. I’ve got no reason for thinking it.’

‘That doesn’t matter. It’s part of the picture. Anyway, I’m going to go to this meeting of hers. Will you see Glenys in London, d’you think?’

‘Yes. She’ll certainly be there. I’ll make sure she knows.’

She took her overcoat from the hat stand. ‘How’s Lyra getting on?’ she said, as he held the coat for her.

‘Subdued. Not surprising really.’

‘Tell her to come and see me when she has an hour or so. Oh, Malcolm: Dr Strauss’s journey through the desert, and the red building …’

‘What about it?’

‘That word akterrakeh – any idea what it could mean?’

‘None, I’m afraid. It’s not a Tajik word, as far as I can tell.’

‘Oh well. I wonder if the alethiometer could clarify it. See you later.’

‘Give my regards to Glenys.’

Glenys Godwin was the current Director of Oakley Street. Thomas Nugent, who had been Director when Hannah joined the organisation, had died earlier in the year, and Hannah was going to his memorial service. Mrs Godwin had had to retire as a field officer some years before when she contracted a tropical fever which had had the effect of paralysing her dæmon, but her judgement was both sound and daring, and her dæmon’s memory was fine-grained and extensive. Malcolm admired her greatly. She was a widow whose only child had died of the same fever that had infected her, and she was the first woman to head Oakley Street; her political enemies had been waiting in vain for her to make a mistake.

After the memorial service, Hannah managed to speak to her for ten minutes. They were sitting in a quiet corner of the hotel lounge where several other Oakley Street people were having drinks. She briskly summarised everything she knew about the murder, the rucksack, Strauss’s journal, and Malcolm’s invitation to this hastily summoned meeting.

Glenys Godwin was in her fifties, small and stocky, her dark grey hair neatly and plainly styled. Her face was quick with feeling and movement – too expressive, Hannah had often thought, to be helpful to someone in her position, where a steely inscrutability might have been preferable. Her left hand moved gently over her dæmon, a small civet cat, who lay on her lap listening closely. When Hannah had finished, she said, ‘The young woman – Lyra Silvertongue, was it? Unusual name. Where is she now?’

‘Staying with Malcolm’s parents. They have a pub on the river.’

‘Does she need protection?’

‘Yes, I think she does. She’s … Do you know about her background?’

‘No. Tell me some time, but not now. Clearly Malcolm must go to this meeting – it’s very much Oakley Street business. There’s an experimental theology connection; we know that much. A man called …’

‘Brewster Napier,’ said the ghost-like voice of her dæmon.

‘That’s the one. He published a paper a couple of years ago, which first drew our attention to it. What was it called?’

‘“Some effects of rose oil in polarised light microscopy”,’ said Godwin’s dæmon. ‘In Proceedings of the Microscopical Institute of Leiden. Napier and Stevenson, two years ago.’

His words were quiet and strained, but perfectly clear. Not for the first time, Hannah marvelled at his memory.

‘Have you been in contact with this Napier?’ Hannah asked.

‘Not directly. We checked his background very carefully and quietly, and he’s perfectly sound. As far as we know, the implications of his paper haven’t been noticed by the Magisterium, and we don’t want to prompt them by taking an overt interest ourselves. This business that Malcolm’s come across is just another indication that something’s stirring. I’m glad you told me about it. You say he’s copied all the papers from the rucksack?’

‘Everything. I imagine he’ll get them to you by Monday.’

‘I look forward to it.’

At about the same time Lyra was talking to the kitchen helper at the Trout. Pauline was seventeen years old, pretty and shy, inclined to blush easily. While Pan was talking under the kitchen table with her mouse-dæmon, Pauline chopped up some onions and Lyra peeled potatoes.

‘Well, he used to teach me a bit,’ Lyra said in answer to a question about how she knew Malcolm. ‘But I was being horrible to everyone in those days. I never thought of him having a life at all apart from college. I used to think they put him away in a cupboard at night. How long have you been working here?’

‘I started last year, just part-time, like. Then Brenda asked me to do a few more hours, and … I work at Boswell’s too, Mondays and Thursdays.’

‘Do you? I worked at Boswell’s for a bit. Kitchenware. It was hard work.’

‘I’m in Haberdashery.’

She finished the onions and put them in a large casserole on the range.

‘What are you making?’ said Lyra.

‘Just starting a venison casserole. Brenda’ll do most of it. She’s got some special spices she puts in, I don’t know what they are. I’m just learning really.’

‘Does she cook one big dish every day?’

‘She used to. Mainly roasts and that, joints on the spit. Then Malcolm suggested varying it a bit. He had some really good ideas.’ She was blushing again. She turned away to stir the onions, which were spitting in the fat.

‘Have you known Malcolm for a long time?’ Lyra said.

‘Yeah. I spose. When I was little he … I thought he was … I dunno really. He was always nice to me. I used to think he’d take over the pub when Reg retired, but somehow I can’t see that any more, really. He’s more of a professor now. I don’t see him so much.’

‘Would you like to run a pub?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t.’

‘It’d be fun, though.’

Pauline’s dæmon scampered up to her shoulder and whispered in her ear, and the girl bowed her head and shook it slightly to let her dark curls swing down and hide her flaming cheeks. She gave the onions a final stir and put the lid on the casserole before moving it a little away from the heat. Lyra watched without seeming to; she found herself fascinated by the girl’s embarrassment, and was sorry to have caused it, without knowing why.

A little later, when they were sitting on the terrace watching the river flow past, Pan told her.

‘She’s in love with him,’ he said.

‘What? With Malcolm?’ Lyra was incredulous.

‘And if you hadn’t been so wrapped up in yourself you’d have seen that straightaway.’

‘I’m not,’ she said, but she sounded unconvinced even to herself. ‘But … Surely he’s too old?’

‘She doesn’t think so, obviously. Anyway I don’t suppose he’s in love with her.’

‘Did her dæmon tell you that?’

‘He didn’t have to.’

Lyra was shocked, and she had no idea why. It wasn’t shocking: it was just … Well, it was Dr Polstead. But then, he was different now. He was even dressing differently. At home in the Trout, Malcolm wore a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up showing the golden hair on his forearms, a moleskin waistcoat and corduroy trousers. He looked like a farmer, she thought, and very little like a scholar. He appeared to be perfectly at home in this world of watermen and farm labourers, of poachers and travelling salesmen; calm and burly and good-natured, he seemed to have been part of this place all his life.

Which of course he had. It was no wonder that he served drinks so expertly, talked so easily with strangers as well as regulars, dealt with problems so efficiently. The evening before, two customers had nearly come to blows over a game of cards, and Malcolm had them outside almost before Lyra had noticed. She wasn’t sure that she felt at ease with this new Malcolm any more than the old Dr Polstead, but she could see that he was someone to be respected. To fall in love with, though …? She resolved to avoid talking about him again. She liked Pauline, and didn’t want to think she’d embarrassed her.

When Malcolm arrived at the Botanic Garden just before six he saw a light in one window of the administrative building; apart from that the place was dark. The porter’s shutter was closed, and he tapped on it gently.

He heard a movement inside and saw a glow forming at the edge of the shutter, as if someone had arrived with a lamp.

‘Garden’s closed,’ said a voice from inside.

‘Yes. But I’ve come for a meeting with Professor Arnold. She told me to ask for the Linnaeus Room.’

‘Name, sir?’

‘Polstead. Malcolm Polstead.’

‘Right … Got it. Main door’s open, and the Linnaeus Room is one floor up, second on the right.’

The main door of the administrative building faced into the garden. It was faintly lit by a light at the top of the stairs, and Malcolm found the Linnaeus Room just along the corridor from the Director’s office, where he’d seen Professor Arnold the day before. He knocked on the door, and heard a murmur of conversation come to a stop.

The door opened, and Lucy Arnold stood there. Malcolm remembered Hannah’s word: tragic. That was her expression, and he knew at once that she’d heard of the discovery of Hassall’s body.

‘I hope I’m not late,’ he said.

‘No. Please, do come in. We haven’t started yet, but there’s no one else to come …’

Apart from her there were five people sitting at the conference table in the light of two low-hanging anbaric lamps that left the corners of the room in semi-darkness. He knew two of them slightly: one was an expert on Asian politics from St Edmund Hall, and the other was a clergyman called Charles Capes. Malcolm knew him to be a theologian, but Hannah had told him that Capes was in fact a secret friend of Oakley Street.

Malcolm took his place at the table as Lucy Arnold sat down.

‘We’re all here,’ she said. ‘Let’s begin. For those who haven’t already heard, the police found a body in the river yesterday, and it’s been identified as that of Roderick Hassall.’

She was speaking with a stern self-control, but Malcolm thought he could hear a tremor in her voice. One or two of the others around the table uttered a murmur of shock, or of sympathy. She went on:

‘I’ve asked you all here because I think we need to share our knowledge about this matter and decide what to do next. I don’t think you all know one another so I’ll ask you to introduce yourselves briefly. Charles, could you start?’

Charles Capes was a small, tidy man of sixty or so, who wore a clerical collar. His dæmon was a lemur. ‘Charles Capes, Thackeray Professor of Divinity,’ he said. ‘But I’m here because I knew Roderick Hassall, and I’ve spent some time in the region where he was working.’

The woman next to him, about Malcolm’s age and very pale and anxious-looking, said, ‘Annabel Milner, Plant Sciences. I – I’d been working with Dr Hassall on the rose question before he went to, umm, to Lop Nor.’

Malcolm was next. ‘Malcolm Polstead, historian. I found some papers in a bag at a bus stop. Dr Hassall’s name and university card happened to be among them, so I brought them here. Like Professor Capes, I’ve worked in the same part of the world, so I was curious.’

The person sitting next to him was a slim, dark-featured man in his fifties whose dæmon was a hawk. He nodded to Malcolm and said, ‘Timur Ghazarian. My area of interest is the history and politics of Central Asia. I had several conversations with Dr Hassall about the region before he went there.’

The next to speak was a sandy-haired man with a Scottish accent. ‘My name is Brewster Napier. Together with my colleague Margery Stevenson, I wrote the first paper about the rose-oil effect in microscopy. In view of what’s happened since, I was alarmed and profoundly interested to hear from Lucy this morning. Like Professor Ghazarian, I spoke with Dr Hassall last time he was in Oxford. I’m shocked to hear about his death.’

The final person was a man a little older than Malcolm, with thin fair hair and a long jaw. His expression was sombre. ‘Lars Johnsson,’ he said. ‘I was the director of the research station at Tashbulak before Ted Cartwright took over. The place where Roderick had been working.’

Lucy Arnold said, ‘Thank you. I’ll start. The police came to me this morning to ask if I could identify the body that had been found in the river. There was a name tag inside his – inside the dead man’s shirt, and they connected his name with the Garden. Staff lists are easy enough to come by. I went with them, and yes, it was him, it was Roderick. I never want to have to do that again. He’d clearly been murdered. The strange thing is that the motive doesn’t seem to have been robbery. Yesterday morning, Dr Polstead –’ she looked at him – ‘found a shopping bag in the Abingdon Road, which contained Roderick’s wallet and a number of other things, and he brought it to me. Frankly, the police didn’t seem very interested in that. I gather they think it was just a meaningless attack. But I’ve asked you all here because you each have a part of the knowledge we’ll need in order to, to move forward with understanding what, what’s happened. And what’s continuing to happen. This is … the thing is … I think we’re treading on dangerous ground. I’ll ask you each to speak in turn and then we’ll open it up to a more general … Brewster, could you tell us how it began for you?’

‘By all means,’ he said. ‘A couple of years ago a technician in my laboratory noticed that she was having trouble with a particular microscope, and asked me to look at it. There was one lens which was misbehaving in an unusual way. You know when you have a smear of dirt or oil on your spectacles – one part of the visual field is blurred – but this wasn’t like that. Instead there was a coloured fringe around the specimen she was looking at, quite definite in character. No blurring, no lack of clarity; everything we could see was unusually well defined, and in addition there was that coloured fringe, which – well, it moved, and sparkled. We investigated, and discovered that the previous user of the microscope had been examining a specimen of a particular kind of rose from a region of Central Asia, and had accidentally touched the lens, transferring a very small quantity of oil from the specimen to the glass. Not very good microscopy, to be honest, but it was interesting that it had that effect. I took the lens and put it aside, because I wanted to see exactly what was happening. On a hunch I asked my friend Margery Stevenson to have a look at it. Margery’s a particle physicist, and something she’d told me a month or two before made me think she’d be interested in this. She was investigating the Rusakov field.’

Malcolm sensed a slight shiver of tension around the table, perhaps because he felt it himself. Nobody spoke or moved.

Napier continued: ‘For those who haven’t come across it before, the Rusakov field and the particles associated with it are aspects of the phenomenon known as Dust. Which of course is not to be spoken about without the specific authority of the Magisterium. I’m assured by Lucy that you are all aware of the constraints this places on our activities. And our conversations.’

He looked directly at Malcolm as he said this.

Malcolm nodded blandly, and Napier went on: ‘Briefly, Margery Stevenson and I discovered that the oil on the lens made it possible to see various effects of the Rusakov field which had previously only been described theoretically. There have been rumours for a decade or so that something like it had been seen before, but any records had been systematically destroyed by – well, we know who. The question now was whether to keep this discovery secret or make it public. It was too important to say nothing about, but perhaps too dangerous to make much of a noise. Where should we place it? The Microscopical Society of Leiden is not, frankly, a very influential body, and its Proceedings are seldom noticed. So we sent a paper there and it was published a couple of years ago. At first we heard nothing in response. But more recently both my laboratory and Margery’s have been broken into, very skilfully, and we’ve both been questioned by people we assumed had some connection with Security or Intelligence or something. They were discreet, but quite probing, very persistent, rather alarming, in fact. We told them nothing but the truth in return. That’s all I need say for the moment, I think. Except to add that Margery now works in Cambridge, and that I haven’t heard from her for the past fortnight. Her colleagues can’t tell me where she is, and neither can her husband. I’m extremely anxious about her.’

‘Thank you, Brewster,’ said Lucy Arnold. ‘That’s very helpful. Clear and alarming. Dr Polstead, could you tell us what you know?’

She looked sombrely at Malcolm. He nodded.

‘As Professor Arnold has told you,’ he began – but then there came a soft, hurried knock on the door.

Everyone looked round. Lucy Arnold stood up instinctively. Her face was pale. ‘Yes?’ she said.

The door opened. The porter came in quickly and said, ‘Professor, there’s some men wanting to see you. I think maybe CCD. I told ’em you was having a meeting in the Humboldt Room, but they’ll be up here soon enough. They en’t got a warrant – said they didn’t need one.’

Malcolm said at once, ‘Where’s the Humboldt Room?’

‘In the other wing,’ said Lucy Arnold, almost too quietly to be heard. She was trembling. No one else had moved.

Malcolm said to the porter, ‘Well done. Now I’d like you to guide everyone here except me, Charles, and the Director out into the garden and away through the side gate before these men realise what’s happened. Can you do that?’

‘Yes, sir—’

‘Then everyone else, please follow. Make as little noise as you can, but go quickly.’

Charles Capes was watching Malcolm. The other four got up and left with the porter. Lucy Arnold, gripping the door frame, watched as they hurried away down the corridor.

‘Better come back and sit down,’ said Malcolm, who was replacing the chairs to look as if they hadn’t been moved out from the table.

‘Nicely done,’ said Capes. ‘Now what shall we be talking about when they arrive?’

‘But who are they?’ said the Director, sounding distressed. ‘Are they from the Consistorial Court of Discipline, d’you think? What can they want?’

Malcolm said, ‘Stay calm. Nothing you’ve done or we’re doing is wrong or illegal or in any way the business of the CCD. We’ll say that I’m here because, having brought the bag to you, I wondered if you’d had any news of Hassall. I didn’t connect him with the body in the river till you told me about it, as you just have done. Charles is here because I’d been going to see him anyway about the Lop Nor region, and I told him about Hassall’s bag, and he mentioned that he knew him, so we decided to come here together.’

‘What did you ask me about Lop Nor?’ said Capes. He was perfectly calm and composed.

‘Oddly enough, I asked about the sort of thing you would have told this meeting if we hadn’t been interrupted. What were you going to say?’

‘It was local folklore, really. The shamans know about those roses.’

‘Do they? What do they know?’

‘They come from – the roses, I mean – from the heart of the desert of Karamakan. So the story goes. They won’t grow anywhere else. If you put a drop of the oil in your eye, you’ll see visions, but you have to be determined, because it stings like hell. So I’m told.’

‘You haven’t tried it yourself?’

‘Certainly not. The thing about that desert is that you can’t enter it without separating from your dæmon. It’s one of those odd places – there’s another in Siberia, I believe, and I think in the Atlas mountains as well – where dæmons find it too uncomfortable, or too painful, to go. So the roses come at a considerable cost, you see. A personal cost as well as a financial one.’

‘I thought people died if they did that,’ said Lucy Arnold.

‘Not always, apparently. But it’s horribly painful.’

‘Was that what Hassall had been going to investigate?’ said Malcolm, who knew full well what the answer would be, but who was interested to see whether she did. Or whether she’d admit it.

But before she could answer there was a knock on the door. It was much louder than the porter’s, and the door opened before anyone could respond.

‘Professor Arnold?’

The speaker was a man in a dark overcoat and a trilby hat. Two other men stood behind him, similarly dressed.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ Her voice was perfectly steady.

‘I was told you were in the Humboldt Room.’

‘Well, we came here instead. What do you want?’

‘We want to ask you a few questions,’ he said, stepping further into the room. The other two men followed him.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Malcolm. ‘You haven’t answered Professor Arnold’s question. Who are you?’

The man took out a wallet and flipped it open to show a card. It bore the letters CCD in bold upper case, navy blue on ochre.

‘My name’s Hartland,’ he said. ‘Captain Hartland.’

‘Well, how can I help you?’ said Lucy Arnold.

‘What are you discussing in here?’

‘Folklore,’ said Charles Capes.

‘Who asked you?’ said Hartland.

‘I thought you did.’

‘I’m asking her.’

‘We were discussing folklore,’ she said flatly.

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re scholars. I’m interested in the folklore of plants and flowers, Professor Capes is an expert on folklore among other things, and Dr Polstead is a historian with an interest in the same field.’

‘What do you know about a man called Roderick Hassall?’

She closed her eyes for a moment, then said, ‘He was a colleague of mine. And a friend. I had to identify his body this morning.’

‘Did you know him?’ Hartland asked Capes.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘You?’ to Malcolm.

‘No.’

‘Why’d you bring his stuff here then, yesterday?’

‘Because I could see that he worked here.’

‘Well, why not to the police?’

‘Because I didn’t know he was dead. How could I? I thought he’d left it there by mistake, and the simplest thing would be to bring it straight to his place of work.’

‘Where are those things now?’

‘In London,’ Malcolm said.

Lucy Arnold blinked. Keep still, Malcolm thought. He saw one of the other two men leaning forward at the far end of the table, his hands on the edge.

‘Where in London? Who’s got them?’ Hartland said.

‘After Professor Arnold had looked at them with me, and I’d heard for the first time that he was missing, we decided that it would be a good idea to ask an expert at the Royal Institute of Ethnology about them. There was a lot of material that had a bearing on folklore, which I knew very little about, so I gave it to a friend to take it there yesterday.’

‘What’s your friend’s name? Could he confirm this?’

‘He could if he was here. But he’s going on to Paris.’

‘And this expert at the – what was it?’

‘Royal Institute of Ethnology.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Richards – Richardson – something like that. I don’t know him personally.’

‘You’re being a bit bloody careless with this stuff, aren’t you? Considering there’s a murder involved?’

‘As I’ve just pointed out, we didn’t know there was at that stage. Naturally we’d have taken it straight to the police if we had known. But Professor Arnold said the police weren’t interested when she mentioned it to them.’

‘Why are you interested?’ asked Charles Capes.

‘It’s my job to be interested in all sorts of things,’ said Hartland. ‘What was Hassall doing in Central Asia?’

‘Botanical research,’ said Lucy Arnold.

There was a hesitant knock at the door, and the porter looked in. ‘Sorry, Professor,’ he said. ‘I thought you was in the Humboldt Room. I’ve been looking all over. These gentlemen found you, then.’

‘Yes, thank you, John,’ she said. ‘They’ve just finished. Could you show them out?’

With a speculative look at Malcolm, Hartland nodded slowly and turned to go. The other two followed him out, leaving the door open.

Malcolm put his finger to his lips: Hush. Then he waited for a count of ten, closed the door, and moved silently to the end of the table, where the man had been leaning. He beckoned the other two to come and look. Crouching down, he looked under the edge, and pointed to a dull black object about the size of the top joint of his thumb, which seemed to be stuck to the underside.

Lucy Arnold caught her breath, and again Malcolm put his finger to his lips. He touched the black thing with the point of a pencil, and it scuttled away to the corner by the leg of the table. Malcolm shook his handkerchief open and held it underneath before flicking the creature off with the pencil. He caught it and wrapped up the handkerchief tightly, with the thing buzzing inside it.

‘What’s that?’ whispered Lucy.

Malcolm held it on the table, eased off his shoe, and hit the creature hard with the heel. ‘It’s a spy-fly,’ he said quietly. ‘They’ve bred them smaller and smaller, with better memories. It would have listened to what we said next, and flown back to them and repeated it exactly.’

‘Smallest I’ve seen,’ said Charles Capes.

Malcolm checked that it was dead, and dropped it out of the window. ‘I thought it might be an idea to leave it and let them waste time listening to it,’ he said. ‘But then you’d always have to be careful what people said in here, and that would be a nuisance. Besides, it could move about, so you’d never be sure where it was. Better to let them think it just failed.’

‘It’s the first I’ve heard of a Royal Institute of Ethnology,’ said Capes. ‘And what about those papers? Where are they really?’

‘In my office,’ Lucy Arnold said. ‘There are some samples too – seeds – that sort of thing …’

‘Well, they can’t stay there,’ said Malcolm. ‘When those men come back, they’ll have a search warrant. Shall I take the papers away?’

‘Why not let me?’ said Capes. ‘I’m curious to read them, apart from anything else. And there are plenty of places to hide things in our cellars at Wykeham.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Yes. Thank you. I don’t know what to do.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ said Malcolm, ‘I’d like to take the book of Tajik poetry. There’s something I want to check. You know Jahan and Rukhsana?’ he added to Capes.

‘He was carrying a copy of that, was he? How odd.’

‘Yes, and I want to find out why. As for the CCD, when they discover there’s no Ethnology Institute they’ll come straight back to me,’ said Malcolm. ‘But I’ll have thought of something else by then. Let’s go and get those things right now.’

Lyra walked along the river during the afternoon, with Pan in sullen attendance. From time to time he seemed to want to say something, but she was deep in a mood of wintry isolation, so in the end he slouched as far behind her as he could get without arousing suspicion, and said nothing.

As the late afternoon light thickened into gloom under the trees, and a mist that was almost a drizzle began to fill the air, she found herself hoping that Malcolm would be there when she got back to the Trout. She wanted to ask him about – oh, she couldn’t remember; it would come to her. And she wanted to watch Pauline with him, to see whether Pan’s crazy idea could be true.

But Malcolm didn’t come, and she didn’t want to ask where he was in case – in case she didn’t know what; so it was in a state of frustrated melancholy that she went to bed, and there wasn’t even anything she wanted to read. She took up The Hyperchorasmians and opened it at random, but the heroic intensity that had once intoxicated her now seemed out of reach.

And Pan wouldn’t settle. He prowled about the little room, leaping up to the window sill, listening at the door, exploring the wardrobe, until finally she said, ‘Oh for God’s sake, just go to bloody sleep.’

‘Not sleepy,’ he said. ‘Neither are you.’

‘Well, can’t you stop fidgeting?’

‘Lyra, why are you so difficult to talk to?’

‘Me?’

‘I need to tell you something but you make it difficult.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘No you’re not. Not properly.’

‘I don’t know what I’ve got to do to listen properly. Am I supposed to use the imagination that I haven’t got?’

‘I didn’t mean that. Anyway—’

‘Of course you meant it. You said it clearly enough.’

‘Well, I’ve thought more since then. When I went out last night—’

‘I don’t want to hear about it. I knew you were out, and I know you were talking to someone, and I’m just not interested.’

‘Lyra, it’s important. Please listen.’

He sprang on to the bedside table. She said nothing, but subsided on to the pillow and looked up at the ceiling.

Finally she said, ‘Well?’

‘I can’t talk to you if you’re in this mood.’

‘Oh, this is impossible.’

‘I’m trying to work out the best way to—’

‘Just say it.’

Silence.

He sighed, and then he said, ‘You know in the rucksack, all those things we found in there …’

‘Well?’

‘One of them was a notebook with names and addresses in it.’

‘What about it?’

‘You didn’t see the name I saw in it.’

‘Whose name?’

‘Sebastian Makepeace.’

She sat up. ‘Where was it?’

‘In the notebook, like I said. The only name and address in Oxford.’

‘When did you see that?’

‘When you were flicking through it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I thought you were bound to see it yourself. Anyway, you’re not easy to tell anything these days.’

‘Oh, don’t be so stupid. You could have told me that. Where is it now? Has Malcolm got it?’

‘No. I hid it.’

‘Why? Where is it now?’

‘Because I wanted to find out why he was in it. Mr Makepeace. And last night I went out and took it to him.’

Lyra almost choked with rage. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. She found her entire body trembling. Pan saw it clearly, and leaped off the bedside table and on to the armchair.

‘Lyra, if you don’t listen I can’t tell you what he said—’

‘You filthy little rat,’ she said. She was almost sobbing, and she couldn’t recognise her own voice or stop herself saying detestable things, or even know why she was saying them. ‘You cheat, you thief, you let me down the other night when you let her – his dæmon, the cat – you let her see you with the wallet, and now you do this, you go behind my back—’

‘Because you wouldn’t listen! You’re not listening now!’

‘No. Because I can’t trust you any more. You’re a fucking stranger to me, Pan. I can’t tell you how much I detest it when you do this sort of thing—’

‘If I hadn’t asked him I’d never—’

‘And I used to – oh, how much I used to trust you – you were everything, you were like a rock, I could have … betraying me like that—’

‘Betray! Listen to yourself! You think I’ll ever forget you betraying me in the world of the dead?’

Lyra felt as if someone had kicked her in the heart. She fell back on the bed. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered.

‘It was the worst thing you ever did.’

She knew exactly what he meant, and her mind had flown back at once to the bank of the river in the world of the dead, and that terrible moment when she left him behind in order to go and find the ghost of her friend Roger.

‘I know,’ she said. She could hardly hear her own voice through the hammering of her heart. ‘I know it was. And you know why I did it.’

‘You knew you were going to do it, and you didn’t tell me.’

‘I didn’t know! How could I have known? We only heard you couldn’t come with us at the last minute. We were together, we’d always be together, that’s what I thought, what I wanted, always together for ever. But then the old man told us that you couldn’t go any further – and Will didn’t even know he had a dæmon, he had to do the same thing, leave part of himself behind – oh, Pan, you can’t think I planned it like that? You can’t think I’m that cruel?’

‘Then why haven’t you ever asked me about it? About what it felt like for me?’

‘But we have talked about it.’

‘Only because I brought it up. You never wanted to know.’

‘Pan, that isn’t fair—’

‘You just didn’t want to face it.’

‘I was ashamed. I had to do it and I was bitterly ashamed to do it and I’d have been ashamed not to do it and I’ve felt guilty ever since, and if you haven’t been aware of that—’

‘When the old man rowed you out into the dark I felt torn open,’ he said. His voice was shaking. ‘It nearly killed me. But the worst thing, worse than the pain, was the abandonment. That you should just leave me there alone. D’you realise how I gazed and stared and called out to you and tried so hard to keep you in sight as you moved off into the dark? The last thing I could see was your hair, the very last thing I could see till the dark swallowed it up. I’d have been willing just to have that, just a little gleam of your hair, just the faintest patch of light that was you, as long as it stayed there so I could see it. I’d have been waiting there still. Just to know you were there, and I could see you. I’d never have moved away as long as I could see that—’

He stopped. She was sobbing. ‘You think I …’ she tried to say, but her voice wouldn’t let her. ‘Roger,’ she managed, but that was all. The sobbing overtook her completely.

Pan sat on the table and watched her for a few moments, and then with a convulsive movement he twisted away, as if he were weeping too; but neither of them said a word, or made any attempt to reach for the other.

She lay curled in a ball, her head in her arms, weeping till the passion subsided.

When she could sit up she wiped the tears from her cheeks and saw him lying tense and trembling with his back to her. ‘Pan,’ she said, her voice thick with weeping, ‘Pan, I do realise, and I hated myself then and I’ll always hate myself for as long as I live. I hate every part of me that isn’t you, and I’ll have to live with that. Sometimes I think if I could kill myself without killing you, I might do it, I’m so unhappy. I don’t deserve to be happy, I know that. I know the – the world of the dead – I know what I did was horrible, and to leave Roger there would have been wrong too, and I … It was the worst thing ever. You’re completely right, and I’m sorry, I really am, with all my heart.’

He didn’t move. In the silence of the night she could hear him weeping too.

Then he said, ‘It’s not just what you did then. It’s what you’re doing now. I told you this the other day: you’re killing yourself, and me, with the way you’re thinking. You’re in a world full of colour and you want to see it in black and white. As if Gottfried Brande was some kind of enchanter who made you forget everything you used to love, everything mysterious, all the places where the shadows are. Can’t you see the emptiness of the worlds they describe, him and Talbot? You don’t really think the universe is as arid as that. You can’t. You’re under a spell – you must be.’

‘Pan, there aren’t any spells,’ she said, but so quietly that she hoped he wouldn’t hear it.

‘And no world of the dead, I suppose,’ he said. ‘It was all just a childish dream. The other worlds. The subtle knife. The witches. There’s no room for them in the universe you want to believe in. How do you think the alethiometer works? I suppose the symbols have got so many meanings you can read anything you want into them, so they don’t mean anything at all, really. As for me, I’m just a trick of the mind. The wind whistling through an empty skull. Lyra, I really think I’ve had enough.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘And stop breathing on me. You stink of garlic.’

She turned away in humiliation and misery. Each of them lay weeping in the darkness.

When she woke up in the morning, he wasn’t there.