12

The Dead Moon

Lyra soon fell into a comfortable enough way of life with Giorgio Brabandt. He wasn’t over-scrupulous as far as cleaning was concerned; she gathered that his last girlfriend had been a zealot for scrubbing and polishing, and that he was glad to live a little more casually. Lyra swept the floors and kept the galley sparkling, and that satisfied him. Where cooking was concerned, she had learned a few things in the Jordan kitchens, and she could make the sort of hefty pies and stews that Brabandt liked best: he had no taste for delicate sauces or fancy desserts.

‘What we’ll do if anyone asks who you are,’ he said, ‘is we’ll say you’re my son Alberto’s gal. He married a landloper woman and they live down Cornwall way. He en’t been on the water for years. You can be called Annie. That’ll do. Annie Brabandt. Good gyptian name. As for the dæmon … Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

He gave Lyra the forward cabin, a cold little place until he put a rock-oil stove in there. Wrapped up in bed at night, with a naphtha lamp beside her, she pored over the alethiometer.

She didn’t try the new method; she felt uneasy about it. Instead she gazed at the dial and let her mind hover, not setting off on to a wild sea so much as drifting over a calm one. She kept herself as free from conscious intention as she could manage, asking nothing and puzzling over nothing, and floated in her mind over the Sun or the Moon or the Bull, looking down on each one, taking in all their details with equal attention, gazing into the great depth of the symbol-ranges, from the highest levels that were so familiar now to the lower ones fading into darkness further down. She hovered over the Walled Garden for a long time, letting all the associations and connotations of nature, and order, and innocence, and protection, and fertility, and many, many other meanings float past like exquisite jellyfish, their myriad tendrils of gold or coral or silver drifting in a pellucid ocean.

From time to time she felt a little snag at the drift of her awareness, and knew that the young man she’d mistaken for Will was looking for her. She made herself relax, not fight it, not even ignore it, just float, and presently the snag disappeared, like a little thorn that catches for a moment on a traveller’s sleeve only to pull out when the traveller walks on.

She thought constantly about Pantalaimon: was he safe? Where could he be going? What did he mean by that brief and contemptuous note? Surely he couldn’t have meant it literally. It was cruel, he was cruel, and she was cruel too, and it was all a mess, all a dreadful mess.

She hardly thought of Oxford at all. She wondered about writing a note and posting it to Hannah, but that wouldn’t be easy: Brabandt seldom stopped during the day, and tended to moor at night on a lonely stretch of water far from any village where there might be a post office.

He was curious about why the CCD were interested in her, but when she kept saying she had no idea, he realised he wasn’t going to get an answer, and stopped asking. He had things to tell her about the gyptians and the Fens, though, and on the third night of their journey, when the frost was hardening the grass on the riverbank and the old stove was glowing in the galley, he sat down and talked with Lyra as she made their supper.

‘The CCD, they got a down on the gyptians,’ he told her, ‘but they daresn’t do much to make us angry. Whenever they tried to enter the Fens, we made damn sure they got lured into swamps and dead waterways where they’d never get out. There was one time when they tried to invade the Fens in force, hundreds of ’em, guns and cannons and all. Seems the will o’ the wykeses, the jacky lanterns – you heard of them? They shine lights out on the bogs, to lure innocent people off the safe paths – anyways, they heard the CCD was coming, and all the will o’ the wykeses come shining their lanterns and flickering this side and that, and the CCD men were so bewithered and bewildered that half of ’em drowned, and the other half went mad with fear. That was nigh on fifty year ago.’

Lyra wasn’t sure that the CCD had existed fifty years before, but she didn’t quibble. ‘So the ghosts and the spirits are on your side, then?’ she said.

‘Against the CCD, they’re on the gyptians’ side, aye. Mind you, they chose the wrong time o’ the month, them CCD men. They come in the dark of the moon. It’s well known that when the moon’s dark, all the bogles and boggarts come out, all the ghouls and the bloody-boneses, and they do powerful harm to honest men and women, gyptian and landloper alike. They caught her once, you know. Caught her and killed her.’

‘Caught who?’

‘The moon.’

‘Who did?’

‘The bogles did. Some say they climbed up and pulled her down, only there en’t nothing in the Fens high enough for that; and others say she fell in love with a gyptian man, and come down to sleep with him; and still others say she come down of her own accord, ’cause she’d heard terrible tales of the things the bogles got up to when she was dark. Anyway, she come down one night, and walked about among the swamps and the bogs, and a whole host of wicked creatures, ghasts, hobgoblins, boggarts, hell-wains, yeth-hounds, trolls, nixies, ghouls, fire-drakes, they come a tippy-toeing after her right into the darkest and doulest part of the Fens, what’s known as Murk-Mire. And there she turned her foot on a stone, and a bramble snagged her cloak, and the creeping horrors attacked her, the lady moon, they bore her down in the cold water and the filthy grim old bog, where there’s crawling creatures so dark and horrible they en’t even got names. There she lay, cold and stark, with her poor little old light just going out bit by bit.

‘Well, by soon after there come along a gyptian man and he’d wandered off his path by reason of the dark, and he was beginning to be fearful on account of the slimy hands he could feel a-gripping his ankles, and the cold claws that scratched at his legs. And he couldn’t see a bloody thing.

‘Then all of a sudden he did see something. A little dim light a-shining under the water it was, a-gleaming just like the mild silver of the moon. And he must have called out, because that was the dying moon herself, and she heard him and she sat up, just for a moment like, and she shined all around, and all the ghouls and boggarts and goblins they fled away, and the gyptian man could see the path clear as day; and he found his way out of Murk-Mire and back home safe.

‘But by that time the moon’s light was all gone. And the creatures of the night placed a big stone over where she lay. And things got worse and worse for the gyptians. The creeping horrors come out the murk and snatched away babies and children; the jacky lanterns and the will o’ the wykeses shone their glimmers over all the bogs and the marshes and the quicksands; and things too horrible to mention, dead men and ghouls and raw-heads and bonelesses, they come creeping round houses at night and swarmed over boats, fingering at the windows, snarling the rudders with weed, pressing their eyes against the slightest little bit of light shining between the curtains.

‘So the people went to a wise woman and asked what they should do. And she said, find the moon, and there’ll be an end of the trouble. And then the man who’d been lost, he suddenly remembered what had happened to him, and he said, “I know where the moon is! She’s buried in Murk-Mire!”

‘So off they set with lanterns and torches and burning brands, a whole pack of men, carrying spades and pickaxes and mattocks to dig up the moon. They asked that wise woman how to find her if her light had all gone out, and she said, look for a big coffin made of stone with a candle on top of it. And she made ’em put a stone in their mouths, each one of ’em, to remind ’em not to say a word.

‘Well, they traipsed on deep into Murk-Mire, and they felt slimy hands trying to grasp their feet, and scary whispers and sighings in their ears, but then they come to where that old stone was a-lying, with a candle glimmering made of dead man’s fat.

‘And they heaved up the stone lid, and there was the dead moon lying there, with her strange beautiful lady’s face cold and her eyes closed. And then she opened her eyes, and out there shone a clear silver light, and she lay there for a minute just looking at this circle of gyptian men with their spades and mattocks, all silent because of the stones in their mouths; and then she says, “Well, boys, it’s time I woke up, and I thank’ee all for finding me.” And all around there come a thousand little sucky sounds as the horrors fled back down under the bog. Next thing, the moon was shining down from the sky, and the path was as clear as day.

‘So that’s the kind of place that’s ours, and that’s why you better have gyptian friends if you come in the Fens. You come in without permission, the bogles and ghouls’ll have you. You don’t look like you believe a word of this.’

‘I do,’ Lyra protested. ‘It’s only too likely.’

She didn’t believe it at all, of course. But if it comforted people to believe that sort of nonsense, she thought it was polite to let them do so, even if the author of The Hyperchorasmians would have snarled with scorn.

‘Young people don’t believe in the secret commonwealth,’ Brabandt said. ‘It’s all chemistry and measuring things as far as they’re concerned. They got an explanation for everything, and they’re all wrong.’

‘What’s the secret commonwealth?’

‘The world of the fairies, and the ghosts, and the jacky lanterns.’

‘Well, I’ve never seen a jacky lantern, but I’ve seen three ghosts, and I was suckled by a fairy.’

‘You was what?’

‘I was suckled by a fairy. It happened in the great flood twenty years ago.’

‘You en’t old enough to remember that.’

‘No. I don’t remember it at all. But that’s what I was told by someone who was there. She was a fairy out of the river Thames. She wanted to keep me, only they tricked her and she had to let me go.’

‘The river Thames, eh? What was her name, then?’

Lyra tried to remember what Malcolm had told her. ‘Diania,’ she said.

‘That’s right! Damn me, that’s right. That’s her name. That en’t common knowledge. You’d only know that if it was true, and it is.’

‘I’ll tell you something else,’ she said. ‘Ma Costa told me this. She said I had witch-oil in my soul. When I was a little kid I wanted to be a gyptian, so I tried to talk in a gyptian way, and Ma Costa laughed at me and said I’d never be gyptian, because I was a fire person and I had witch-oil in my soul.’

‘Well, if she said that, it must be right. I wouldn’t argue with Ma Costa. What you cooking there?’

‘Stewed eels. They’re probably ready now.’

‘Dish up then,’ he said, and poured some beer for them both.

As they ate she said, ‘Master Brabandt? D’you know the word akterrakeh?’

He shook his head. ‘It en’t a gyptian word, and that’s a fact,’ he said. ‘Might be French. Sounds a bit French.’

‘And did you ever hear of a place somewhere called the Blue Hotel? Something to do with dæmons?’

‘Yeah, I did hear about that,’ he said. ‘That’s in the Levant somewhere, that is. It en’t a hotel of any kind, really. A thousand years ago, maybe more, it was a great city: temples, palaces, bazaars, parks, fountains, all sorts of beautiful things. Then one day the Huns swept down out the steppes – that’s the endless grasslands they have further north, what seem to go on for ever – and they slaughtered all the people in that city, every man, woman, and child. It was empty for centuries, because people said it was haunted, and I en’t surprised. No one would go there for love nor money. Then one day there was a traveller – he might have been a gyptian man – who went there exploring, and he come back with a strange tale, how the place was haunted all right, but not by ghosts: by dæmons. Maybe the dæmons of dead people go there, maybe that’s it. I dunno why they call it the Blue Hotel. Must be a reason, though.’

‘Would that be a secret commonwealth thing?’

‘Bound to be.’

And so they passed the time, as the Maid of Portugal sailed nearer and nearer to the Fens.

In Geneva, Olivier Bonneville was becoming frustrated. The new method of reading the alethiometer was refusing to disclose anything at all about Lyra. It hadn’t at first; he’d spied on her more than once; but now it was as if some connection was broken, a wire come loose.

He was beginning to discover more about the new method, though. For example, it only worked in the present tense, so to speak. It could reveal events, but not their causes or consequences. The classical method gave a fuller perspective, but at the cost of time and laborious research, and it required a kind of interpretation that Bonneville had little patience for.

However, his employer, Marcel Delamare, was directing all his attention to the forthcoming congress of all the constituent bodies that made up the Magisterium. Since it was Delamare himself whose idea this was, and since he had no intention of making its true purpose clear, but every intention of arranging for it to deliver the resolutions he wanted, and since that involved a great deal of complex politics, Bonneville found himself comparatively unsupervised for a while.

So he decided to try another approach to the new method. He had a photogram of Lyra, which Delamare had given him: it showed her among a group of other young women in academic dress, obviously on some university occasion. They stood formally facing the camera in bright sunlight. Bonneville had cut out the face and figure of Lyra and thrown the rest of the picture away; there was no reason to keep it, because the girls in it were too English to be attractive. He thought that if he looked at Lyra’s face in the picture, alethiometer in hand, it might help him focus more clearly on the question of where she was.

So, having swallowed some pills to protect against travel sickness, in case the nausea struck again, he sat in his little apartment as the evening lights came on in the city, turned all three wheels to the image of the owl, and focused his attention on the scrap of photo-paper with the picture of Lyra. But that didn’t work either, or not as he’d hoped it would. In fact, it generated a blizzard of other images, each of them pin-sharp for a moment and then succumbing to vagueness and blur, but each of them resembling Lyra for the second or so he could see them clearly.

Bonneville narrowed his eyes and tried to keep the pictures in focus for a little longer against the inevitable vertigo. They seemed to have the quality of photograms: all monochrome, some faded or creased, some on photographic paper, some on newsprint, some well-lit and professionally taken, others informal as if taken by someone who wasn’t used to a camera, with Lyra screwing up her eyes in the glare of the sun. Several of them seemed to have been taken surreptitiously when she was unaware, showing her lost in thought in a café or laughing as she walked hand in hand with a boy or looking around to cross the road. They showed Lyra at various periods in her childhood as well as more recently, her dæmon always in view. In the later pictures his form was clearly that of some large rodent: that was all Bonneville could tell.

Then with a lurch he seemed to fall into an understanding of what he was looking at. They were photograms. They were pinned to a board: he could see a cloth folded back at the top of it, so they were probably kept under cover. Gradually some details of the background emerged: the board was leaning against a wall papered in a faint floral pattern; it stood next to a window across which a curtain of lustrous green silk had been drawn; it was lit by a single anbaric lamp on a desk-top below; but whose eyes was he looking through? He had the impression of a consciousness, but—

Something was moving – a hand moved, and made Bonneville lurch again and almost vomit, as the viewpoint swung round instantaneously and showed him a white form sweeping across in a blur of wings that set some of the pictures stirring on the board – just a swift dash – a bird – a white owl, just for a moment, and it was gone again …

Delamare!

The owl was Delamare’s dæmon. The hand was Delamare’s. The floral wallpaper, the green silk curtain, the board of pictures was in Delamare’s apartment.

And although Bonneville couldn’t see Lyra herself for some reason, he could see pictures of her because it wasn’t her he was focusing his mind on, but a picture of her … All this came to him in a second, as he sank back into his armchair, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply to settle the nausea.

So Marcel Delamare had collected dozens, scores of pictures of Lyra. He’d never mentioned them.

And no one knew. He’d thought that his employer’s interest in the girl was professional, so to speak, or political, or something. But this was personal. This was bizarre. It was obsessive.

Well, that was worth knowing.

Next question: why?

Bonneville knew very little about his employer, mainly because he wasn’t interested. Perhaps it was time to find things out. The new method would be little use for that, and besides, Bonneville’s nauseous headache made him reluctant to think of using the alethiometer again for a while. He’d have to go and ask people: be a detective.

With no clue about where Lyra might have gone, Malcolm and Asta went over and over his conversation with her at La Luna Caprese in Little Clarendon Street.

‘Benny Morris …’ said Asta. ‘That name came up at some point.’

‘Yes. So it did. Something to do with …’

‘Someone who worked at the mail depot—’

‘That’s it! The man who was injured.’

‘We could try the compensation stunt,’ she said.

So after some work with Oxford city directories and voting registers, they found an address in Pike Street in the district of St Ebbe’s, in the shadow of the gasworks. In the character of a personnel manager from the Royal Mail, Malcolm knocked on the door of a terraced house the next afternoon.

He waited, and no one answered. He listened, but heard only the clanking sound of railway trucks being shunted into a siding on the other side of the gasworks.

He knocked again. Still there was no response from inside. The trucks had begun to empty their coal, one by one, into the chute below the railway line.

Malcolm waited till the whole train had gone through and the series of distant thunders was replaced by the hollow clank of shunting again.

He knocked a third time, and then heard a heavy limping step inside, and the door opened.

The man standing there was thick-set and bleary-eyed, and a strong smell of drink hung around him. His dæmon, a mongrel with mastiff in her, stood behind his legs, and barked twice.

‘Mr Morris?’ said Malcolm, smiling.

‘Who wants me?’

‘Your name is Morris, Benny Morris?’

‘What if it is?’

‘Well, I’ve come from the Personnel Department of the Royal Mail—’

‘I can’t work. I got a certificate from the doctor. Look at the state of me.’

‘We’re not disputing your injury, Mr Morris, not at all. It’s a matter of sorting out the compensation you’re due.’

There was a pause.

‘Compensation?’

‘That’s right. All our employees are entitled to injury insurance. Part of your wages goes towards it. All we have to do is fill in a form. May I come in?’

Morris stood aside, and Malcolm stepped into the narrow hall and shut the door behind him. Boiled cabbage, sweat, and pungent smokeleaf joined the smell of drink.

‘May we sit down?’ said Malcolm. ‘I need to get out some papers.’

Morris opened a door into a cold and dusty parlour. He struck a match and lit the gas mantle on a wall bracket. A yellowish light seeped out of it, but didn’t have the energy to go far. He pulled out a chair from under a flimsy table and sat down, taking care to demonstrate the pain and difficulty the process caused him.

Malcolm sat on the chair opposite, took some papers from his briefcase, and uncapped a fountain pen. ‘Now, if we could just be precise about the nature of your injury,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How did it happen?’

‘Oh. Yeah. I was doing some work outside in the yard. Clearing a gutter. And the ladder slipped.’

‘You hadn’t braced it?’

‘Oh, yeah, I always brace a ladder. Common sense, innit?’

‘But it still slipped?’

‘Yeah. It was a wet day. That’s why I was clearing the gutter, like, ’cause there was all moss and dirt in it and the water couldn’t flow proper. It was all gushing down outside the kitchen window.’

Malcolm wrote something down. ‘Did you have anyone helping you?’

‘No. Just me.’

‘Ah. You see,’ said Malcolm in a concerned tone, ‘for full compensation to be paid, we need to be sure that the client – that’s you – took every sensible precaution against accident. And when working with ladders, that normally involves having another person to hold the ladder.’

‘Oh, yeah, well, there was Jimmy. My mate Jimmy Turner. He was with me. He must’ve gone inside for a second.’

‘I see,’ said Malcolm, writing. ‘Could you let me know Mr Turner’s address?’

‘Er – yeah, sure. He lives in Norfolk Street. Number – I can’t remember his number.’

‘Norfolk Street. That’ll do. We’ll find him. Was it Mr Turner who went for help when you fell?’

‘Yeah … This, er, this compensation … how much is it likely to be?’

‘It partly depends on the nature of the injury, which we’ll go into in a minute. And on how long you’re likely to be away from work.’

‘Right, yeah.’

Morris’s dæmon was sitting as close as she could get to his chair. Asta was watching her, and already the dog was beginning to twitch and look away. The faint beginning of a growl came from her throat, and Morris’s hand reached down automatically to grasp her ears.

‘How long has the doctor recommended you to stay off work?’ Malcolm said.

‘Oh, two weeks, about. Depends. It might heal quicker, it might not.’

‘Of course. And now the injury itself. What damage did you actually do?’

‘Damage?’

‘To yourself.’

‘Oh, right. Well, I thought at first I’d broke me leg, but the doctor said it was a sprain.’

‘Which part of your leg?’

‘Er – the knee. Me left knee.’

‘A sprained knee?’

‘I sort of twisted it as I fell.’

‘I see. Did the doctor examine you properly?’

‘Yeah. My mate Jimmy helped me inside, right, and then he went to fetch the doctor.’

‘And the doctor examined the injury?’

‘That’s what he did, yeah.’

‘And said it was a sprain?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, you see, this is a little confusing for me, because the information I have is that you were rather badly cut.’

Asta saw the man’s hand tighten on the ears of his dæmon. ‘Cut,’ said Morris, ‘yeah, I was, yeah.’

‘It was a cut as well as a sprain?’

‘There was glass around. I repaired a window the week before and there must have been some broken glass … Where’d you get this information from anyway?’

‘A friend of yours. He said you were rather badly cut behind the knee. I can’t quite picture how you came to be cut there, you see.’

‘Who was this friend? What’s his name?’

Malcolm had an acquaintance in the City of Oxford police, a friend from his boyhood – a docile and affectionate child then, and a man of honest decency now. Malcolm had asked him, without saying why, if he knew of a constable at the police station in St Aldate’s who had a heavy, thick voice and a Liverpool accent. Malcolm’s friend knew the man at once, and his expression told Malcolm what he thought of him. He gave Malcolm the name.

‘George Paston,’ said Malcolm.

Morris’s dæmon uttered a sudden yelp and stood up. Asta was already on her feet, tail slowly swinging from side to side. Malcolm himself sat quite still, but he knew where everything was, and how heavy the table was likely to be, and which leg of Morris’s was injured, and he was balanced partly on the chair but partly on his feet, ready to spring. Very quietly, as if from an immense distance, and only for a moment or two, both Malcolm and Asta heard the sound of a pack of dogs barking.

Morris’s face, until then heavily flushed, went white.

‘No,’ he said, ‘wait a minute, wait a minute. George Pas— I don’t know anyone called George Paston. Who is he?’

Morris might already have lashed out, except that Malcolm’s calm and concerned expression had him utterly confused.

‘He says he knows you well,’ Malcolm said. ‘As a matter of fact he says he was with you when you got that injury.’

‘He wasn’t – I told you, it was Jimmy Turner who was with me. George Paston? I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Well, he came to us, you see,’ Malcolm said, watching carefully without seeming to, ‘and he was anxious to let us know that your injury was genuine so that you wouldn’t suffer any loss of earnings. He said it was quite a bad cut – a knife was involved – but oddly enough he didn’t mention anything about a ladder. Or about a sprain.’

‘Who are you?’ Morris demanded.

‘Let me give you my card,’ said Malcolm, and took from his breast pocket a card that named him as Arthur Donaldson, Insurance Assessor, Royal Mail.

Morris peered at it, frowning, and put it on the table. ‘What’d he say then, this George Paston?’

‘He said you’d suffered an injury, and your absence from work had a good reason for it. Your situation was genuine. And as he was a police officer, naturally we believed him.’

‘A police— No, I don’t know him at all. He must’ve got me confused.’

‘His account was very detailed. He said he helped you away from the place where the injury happened and brought you home.’

‘But it was here! I fell off a bloody ladder!’

‘What were you wearing at the time?’

‘What’s that got to do with it? What I normally wear.’

‘The trousers you’re wearing now, for instance?’

‘No! I had to throw them away.’

‘Because they were covered in blood?’

‘No, no, you’re getting me confused now. It wasn’t like that. There was me here and Jimmy Turner, and no one else.’

‘What about the third man?’

‘There wasn’t anyone else!’

‘But Mr Paston is very clear about it. There was no ladder in his account. He said you and he had stopped for a chat, and you were attacked by a third man, who cut your leg badly.’

Morris wiped his face with both hands. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I didn’t ask for no compensation. I can do without it. This is all mixed up. This Paston, he’s got me confused with someone else. I don’t know nothing about what he’s saying. It’s all lies.’

‘Well, I expect the court will sort it out.’

‘What court?’

‘The Criminal Injuries Board. All we need now is your signature on this form, and we can go ahead.’

‘It’s all right. Forget it. I don’t want no compensation, not if it comes with all these stupid questions. I never asked for this.’

‘No, you didn’t, I agree,’ said Malcolm, in his most bland and soothing way. ‘But I’m afraid that once the process has started we can’t go back and undo it. Let’s just get this business of the third man out of the way, the man with the knife. Did you know him?’

‘I never – there wasn’t no third man—’

‘Sergeant Paston says you were both surprised when he fought back.’

‘He en’t a sergeant! He’s a const—’ Morris fell silent.

‘I’ve got you,’ said Malcolm.

A slow dark red flush moved up from Morris’s neck to his cheeks. His fists were clenched, pressing down so hard on the table that his arms were trembling.

His dæmon was growling more loudly than ever, but Asta could see that she’d never attack: she was mortally afraid.

‘You en’t—’ Morris croaked. ‘You en’t nothing to do with the Royal Mail.’

‘You’ve only got one chance,’ said Malcolm. ‘Tell me everything, and I’ll put in a word for you. If you don’t do that, you’ll face a murder charge.’

‘You en’t the police,’ said Morris.

‘No. I’m something else. But don’t get distracted by that. I know enough already to put you in the dock for murder. Tell me about George Paston.’

Something of the defiance went out of Morris, and his dæmon backed away as far as she could get from Asta, who simply stood and watched.

‘He’s … he’s bent. He’s a copper all right, but he’s as twisted as hell. He’ll do anything, get you anything, steal anything, hurt anyone. I knew he was a killer, but I never seen him do it, not till …’

‘It was Paston who killed the other man?’

‘Yeah! It couldn’t’ve been me. He’d done my fucking leg by then. I was on the ground, I couldn’t move nowhere.’

‘Who was the victim?’

‘I dunno. No need to know. I didn’t care who the hell he was.’

‘Why did Paston want to attack him?’

‘Orders, I suppose.’

‘Orders from whom? From where?’

‘Paston … He’s got someone over him who tells him what jobs he wants done, right – I dunno who that is.’

‘Paston’s never given you any clue?’

‘No, I only know what he tells me, and he keeps a lot of it close to his chest. That’s all right with me. I don’t want to know anything that’ll get me into trouble.’

‘You’re in trouble already.’

‘But I never killed him! Never! That wasn’t part of the plan. We was just supposed to smack him a bit and take his bag, his rucksack, whatever he was carrying.’

‘And did you take it?’

‘No, ’cause he wasn’t carrying nothing. I says to George he must’ve had something, he must’ve left it in the station or passed it to someone else.’

‘When did you say that? Before or after he was killed?’

‘I can’t remember. It was an accident. We never meant to kill him.’

Malcolm wrote for a minute, two minutes, three. Morris sat slumped without moving, as if all the strength had gone out of him, and his dæmon was whimpering at his feet. Asta, still on guard in case the dæmon made a sudden move, sat down carefully but kept watching.

Then Malcolm said, ‘This man who tells Paston what to do.’

‘What about him?’

‘Does Paston ever talk about him? Mention a name, for instance?’

‘He’s a Scholar. That’s all I know.’

‘No it isn’t. You know more than that.’

Morris said nothing. His dæmon was lying flat on the floor, her eyes closed tight, but as soon as Asta took a step towards her she sprang up in alarm and backed away behind the man’s chair.

‘No!’ said Morris, flinching too.

‘What’s his name?’ said Malcolm.

‘Talbot.’

‘Just Talbot?’

‘Simon Talbot.’

‘College?’

‘Cardinal’s.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Paston told me. He says he’s got something on him.’

‘Paston knows something about him?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did he tell you what that was?’

‘No. He was probly just boasting.’

‘Tell me as much as you know.’

‘I can’t. He’d kill me. Paston – you don’t know what he’s like. There’s no one else that knows this, only me, and if he finds out you know, he’ll know it’s come from me, and – I’ve said too much already. I was lying. I never told you nothing.’

‘In that case I’ll have to ask Paston myself. I’ll make sure he knows how helpful you’ve been.’

‘No, no, no, please, don’t do that. He’s a terrible man. You can’t imagine what he’d do. Killing’s nothing to him. That man by the river – he killed him like killing a fly. That’s all it was to him.’

‘You haven’t told me enough about this Talbot man at Cardinal’s. Have you met him?’

‘No. How would I have done that?’

‘Well, how did Paston know him?’

‘He’s the liaison officer for that group of colleges. If they need any police contact, for any reason, he’s the one they speak to.’

That made sense to Malcolm. There were arrangements like that in place for all the colleges. The Proctors, the university police, dealt with most matters of discipline, but it was thought to be good for town–gown relations to have regular informal contact with the police.

He stood up. Such was Morris’s fear that he shrank back on his chair. Malcolm saw it, and Morris saw that he saw.

‘If you say one word to Paston about this, I’ll know,’ said Malcolm. ‘And you’ll be finished.’

Morris feebly caught at Malcolm’s sleeve. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t give me to him. He’s—’

‘Let go.’

Morris’s hand dropped away.

‘If you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of Paston, you’ll have to keep your mouth shut, won’t you?’ Malcolm said.

‘Who are you, anyway? That card en’t real. You don’t come from the Royal Mail.’

Malcolm ignored him, and walked out. Morris’s dæmon whimpered.

‘Simon Talbot?’ Malcolm said to Asta as they shut the door and walked away. ‘Well, well.’