21

Capture and Flight

Marcel Delamare was seldom angry. His disapproval took the form of a quiet, cold, precisely measured punishment administered to those who had annoyed him. It was done so subtly that those who suffered it were at first flattered to think they had attracted his attention, until they realised its unpleasant consequences.

But what Olivier Bonneville had done was more than annoying. It was direct and flagrant disobedience, and the punishment it deserved was exemplary. The Consistorial Court of Discipline was the body best able to deal with offences of that kind, and Delamare made sure they had every detail necessary to find Bonneville, arrest and interrogate him, including some facts about his background that Bonneville himself didn’t know.

The young man was not as cunning as he thought he was, and his trail wasn’t hard to follow. The ticket he’d bought in Dresden would allow him to travel all the way downriver to Hamburg, so the CCD agents at various cities along the Elbe kept watch at all the stopping-points; and as soon as Bonneville disembarked at the quay in Wittenberg, he was seen and followed by the single agent there, who promptly sent a message to Magdeburg, only a few hours downstream, asking for help.

Their quarry himself wasn’t aware that he was being followed. He was an amateur, and his tracker was a professional, after all, who watched Bonneville check into a shabby little guest house, and then sat in the café opposite waiting for his colleagues to arrive from Magdeburg. They had hired a fast engine-boat; they wouldn’t be long.

Bonneville had spent much of the day with the alethiometer, hunched over his lap in the airless cabin watching Pantalaimon’s movements through the city, from his conversation with the girl at the school for the blind to the rooftop journey and his second conversation with a young girl, who was rather prettier than the first one. But the nausea was too much for Bonneville at that point, and he had to sit out on deck to clear his head of it, and by the time he’d recovered, Lyra’s dæmon was talking to some old man about philosophy. It was so difficult: looking made him sick, but hearing told him nothing about where the dæmon was. He had to look occasionally, or know nothing.

His room at the guest house was no less stuffy than his cabin on the boat, the only difference being the smell of cabbage rather than the smell of oil; so, rather than bring on another bout of nausea, he decided to go for a walk in the evening streets and clear his head. If he kept his eyes open, he might see the creature anyway.

The CCD man watched from the café as Bonneville sauntered out, with his dæmon, some kind of hawk, on his shoulder. He was carrying a small bag, but he’d left his suitcase in the guest house, so presumably he’d be returning. The agent left a few coins on the table and followed.

As for Pantalaimon, he was in the garden at St Lucia’s School for the Blind, curled up in the tree where he’d hidden that morning. He wasn’t asleep; he was watching all the evening activity through the lighted windows, and hoping that the girl Anna would come out to visit her book again. But of course she wouldn’t: it was cold and damp, and she’d be eating supper with her friends in the warm. Pan could hear their voices across the dark lawn.

He thought about Gottfried Brande and Sabine. Perhaps they were still there, still quarrelling, in that tall house with the barren attic. Pan reproached himself: he should have questioned Brande differently. He should have tried to speak to that mysterious dæmon Cosima. He should have been more patient with the girl, above all. She was so like Lyra in some ways – and the thought brought an almost physical pang of longing. He supposed that Lyra was at the Trout still, and he imagined her talking to Malcolm, and Asta the beautiful gold-red cat joining in. He imagined Lyra tentatively reaching out to touch her, knowing everything about what that gesture would mean. But no: impossible. He banished that thought at once.

But he couldn’t go back to her without what he’d come to seek. He was restless. For the first time he wondered what he’d meant when he spoke of Lyra’s imagination. He didn’t know, but he knew he wouldn’t go back without it.

It was no good: he’d never go to sleep. He was too irritated with himself. He stood up and stretched, and leaped on to the wall and left the garden for the darkness of the streets.

Bonneville strolled towards the Stadtkirche, looking into every doorway, every alley, and up to every roof. In order not to attract attention, he tried to seem like a tourist, or a student of architecture. He wondered whether it would help to have a sketch pad and pencil, but mist was gathering, and no one would be out sketching in conditions like this.

In the bag he carried, as well as the alethiometer, was a coal-silk net, extremely strong and light, in which he intended to catch the girl’s dæmon before taking him to somewhere private and interrogating him. He could see that happening in his mind’s eye, because he’d practised it many times; and he was so quick with the net, so skilful, that he thought it was a great pity that no one would see him in action with it.

He stopped at a café in the main square and drank a glass of beer, looking all around, listening to the conversations nearby, talking quietly with his dæmon.

‘That old man,’ he said. ‘The old man in the attic.’

‘We’ve heard those kinds of arguments before. The things he said. He’s probably famous.’

‘I’m just trying to place him.’

‘You think the dæmon’ll still be with him?’

‘No. They weren’t being friendly. The dæmon was accusing him of something.’

‘Something to do with her.’

‘Yes …’

‘You think he’ll go back there?’

‘Maybe. If we knew where the house was, perhaps.’

‘We could talk to him.’

‘I don’t know, though,’ he said. ‘If the dæmon’s gone, the old man won’t necessarily know where. They weren’t on those kind of terms.’

‘The other girl might know something,’ said his dæmon. ‘She might be his daughter.’

Bonneville found that suggestion more appealing. He was good with girls too. But he shook his head, and said, ‘It’s all too speculative. We need to focus on him. I’m going to try something …’

He reached into his bag. The hawk-dæmon, who suffered from the nausea just as he did, said hurriedly, ‘No, no, not now.’

‘I won’t look. Just listen.’

She shook her head and turned away. There were half a dozen customers in the café, mostly middle-aged men who seemed to be settled for the evening, talking and smoking or playing cards. None of them were interested in the young man at the corner table.

He held the alethiometer on his lap, with both hands around it. His dæmon fluttered from the back of his chair to the table. He closed his eyes and thought about Pantalaimon, and at first he could only summon up images of what he looked like, and the hawk-dæmon murmured, ‘No. No.’

Bonneville breathed deeply and tried again. He kept his eyes open, this time, looking at his half-empty glass, and listened for the scratch of claws on cobbles, the noise of traffic, busy city streets; but all he heard was the mournful blast of a foghorn.

Then he realised that he was hearing it in real life, because he saw two of the men at the other tables turn their heads in the direction of the river and speak to each other, nodding. There was the sound again, but coming into Bonneville’s mind from another place altogether was that scratch of claws, men’s voices, the splash of water, a deep thud as something large and heavy bumped into something large and immobile, the creak of rope on damp wood. A steamer tying up at the quay?

So Lyra’s dæmon was on the move again.

‘That’s it,’ Bonneville said, standing up and packing the alethiometer into his bag. ‘If we get there right now we might see him go aboard, and then we’ll have him.’

He paid the bill quickly and they left.

Pantalaimon was watching from the shadows at the side of the ticket office. According to the notice on the wall, this boat was going all the way upstream to Prague. That would do to be getting on with.

The quay was well-lit, though, and the numbers of people coming down the gangway or going up made it quite impossible for him to get on board that way, even in the fog that was blurring the edges of everything visible.

But there was always the water. Without stopping to think, he raced out from beside the ticket office and made for the edge of the quay. But he hadn’t got halfway across when something fell over him – a net—

He was snatched to a halt and tumbled over and dragged along the flagstones, struggling, twisting, snapping, tearing, biting; but the net was too strong, and the young man holding it was merciless. Pan felt himself swung into the air, caught a glimpse of his captor’s face, dark-eyed, vicious, of astonished passengers watching, unable to move, and then several other things happened at once. He heard the roar of a smaller engine-boat thrown into reverse gear as it pulled up to the quay, exclamations from the passengers, a violent curse from the young man swinging the net, and then the sound of running feet over the stones, and a deep man’s voice saying, ‘Olivier Bonneville, you’re under arrest.’

The net fell to the ground with Pan struggling harder than ever and only getting more entangled.

He didn’t stop tearing at it to watch, but he was aware of the men running from the engine-boat, of the young man (Bonneville! Bonneville!) loudly protesting, of the word dæmon coming from different voices in tones of shock and fear, and then of the hideous touch of an unknown human hand around his neck. It lifted him up and held him close to a man’s face, to a smell of beer and smokeleaf and cheap cologne, and to bloodshot eyes that bulged horribly.

The net was still tangled around him. He tried to bite through it, but that hand around his neck was tightening like an iron band. Dimly he heard the young man’s voice saying angrily, ‘I have to say my employer, Marcel Delamare of La Maison Juste, will not be at all pleased by this. Take me somewhere quiet, and I shall explain—’

That was the last Pan heard before he fainted.

Mignonne promised to be as light and graceful as Malcolm’s boyhood canoe La Belle Sauvage had been, but the sail that he found and tried to hoist was frail and rotting. That was clear even in the darkness: it came apart in his hands.

‘Oars it is, then,’ said Malcolm, who knew that a boat that sailed well might be a brute to row. But there was no choice, and in any case the sail was white, or had been, and would show up far too well on a dark night.

In the light of a match he saw that the boathouse gates were fastened with another padlock, and found it harder to shift than the one on the door had been. He finally wrenched it free, and there was the lake in front of them.

‘Ready, monsieur?’ he said, holding the little boat steady against the landing stage as the other man got in.

‘Ready, yes. If God wills.’

Malcolm pushed off and let the boat drift away from the shore until there was room to set the oars and start rowing. The boathouse stood in a small bay under the shelter of a rocky headland, and he expected the water to be more or less calm just there, and choppy outside the bay; but to his surprise, once they were out on the open water, with the whole length of the great lake curving away in front of them, the surface was as flat as glass.

The air felt heavy to move through, and clammy; everything was uncannily still. Malcolm enjoyed the sensation of using his muscles again, after days of travelling, but it was almost like being indoors. When he spoke to Karimov, he found himself lowering his voice.

‘You said that you had some dealings with Marcel Delamare,’ he said. ‘What was his business with you?’

‘He commissioned me to bring him some rose oil from the desert of Karamakan, but he has not yet paid me, and I feared he was holding back the money in order to keep me in Geneva because he wants to do me harm. I would have left before now, but I am penniless.’

‘Tell me about this oil.’

Karimov told him everything he’d told Delamare, and then added, ‘But there was something curious. When I told him of the destruction of the research station at Tashbulak, he seemed not to be surprised, though he pretended to be. Then he asked me questions about the men from the mountains, who attacked the station, and I answered truthfully, but again I felt that he knew what he expected to hear. So I held back one thing.’

‘What was the thing you didn’t tell him?’

‘The men from the mountains did not destroy the place entirely. They were forced to flee by— And this is where it becomes hard to believe, monsieur, because they were forced to flee by a monstrous bird.’

‘The Simurgh?’

‘How do you know that? I was not going to say that name, but—’

‘I read about it in a poem.’

That was true: it was a great bird that guided Jahan and Rukhsana to the rose garden in the Tajik poem. But it wasn’t the whole truth: Malcolm also remembered it from the diary of Dr Strauss, which the murdered Hassall had brought back from Tashbulak. The camel-herder Chen had told them that the mirages they saw in the desert were aspects of the Simurgh.

‘You know Jahan and Rukhsana?’ said Karimov, clearly surprised.

‘I have read it, yes. Naturally I took it to be a fable. Are you saying that such a thing as the Simurgh exists?’

‘There are many forms of existence, monsieur. I would not say that it was this one or that one, or any other. Possibly one we know nothing about.’

‘I see. And you said nothing about this to Delamare?’

‘That is correct. It is my belief, based on what I observed during my interview with him, that he knows a great deal about the men from the mountains, and he did not wish me to know that he did. It makes me afraid that he will have me arrested and imprisoned, or worse, and that is why he was keeping me trapped in this city. When I learned about your situation, monsieur, I felt it was my duty to tell you what I knew.’

‘I’m very glad you did.’

‘May I ask in turn what Monsieur Delamare wants with you?’

‘He believes I am his enemy.’

‘And is he correct?’

‘Yes. In the matter of Tashbulak and the rose oil, especially. I think he wants to use it for some evil purpose, and if I can stop him, I will. But first I need to know more about it. You found someone who was trading in it, for example. Is there much trade in this oil?’

‘Not very much. It is extremely expensive. It was used somewhat in the old days, when people believed in shamans who could enter the spirit world. But now not so many believe that.’

‘Is it used for anything else? Do people take it for pleasure, for example?’

‘There is not much pleasure to be had, Monsieur Polstead. The pain is extreme, and the visual effects are more easily obtained with other drugs. I think there are some doctors who use it to relieve various chronic conditions both physical and mental, but it is so expensive that only the very rich can afford it. It was only the learned investigators at Tashbulak who had any interest in it, and much of their work was secret.’

‘Have you ever visited the station at Tashbulak?’

‘No, monsieur.’

Malcolm rowed on. The silence over the lake was profound, the air stifling, almost as if all the oxygen had been withdrawn.

After some time Karimov said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘You see that castle?’ Malcolm said, pointing to a crag on the shore not far ahead of them. At the summit stood a building whose massive towers bulked against the skyline only dimly, because there was no light from moon or stars.

‘I think so,’ said Karimov.

‘That marks the border with France. Once we’re past that we should be safe, because Geneva has no jurisdiction there. But—’

Between the ‘b’ and the ‘t’ of that word the entire sky came alight, and then fell dark again. Then came another flash, even brighter, and this time Malcolm and Karimov saw the forked and many-branched lightning stab its way to the ground at the same moment as they felt the first drops of rain, heavy gouts that slammed hard into their faces. Only after both men had turned their collars up and pulled their hats on more tightly did the thunder arrive, with a deafening crack that seemed to split their heads open. It rolled around the lake, rebounding from the mountains and making Malcolm’s head ring with its force.

Already a wind was rising. It stirred the water up into waves, and then flung them into spray that lashed Malcolm’s face even more fiercely than the rain. He’d done some lake sailing in the past, and he knew how suddenly storms could arrive, but this was exceptional. There was no point in trying to get past the castle on the headland: he hauled the boat to starboard and rowed as hard as he could for the nearest shore, seeing his way by flashes of lightning as the huge whips of incandescence lashed the ground and threw a garish light over the mountains. The thunder followed close behind it now, loud enough to shake the little boat, or so they felt. Asta had crawled inside Malcolm’s greatcoat and was lying there warm and relaxed, with a perfect confidence that transmitted itself to him, which he knew was her intention, and he blessed her for it.

The little Mignonne was bobbing this way and that in the chaos, and shipping water fast. Karimov was using his fur hat to scoop out as much as he could. Malcolm hurled all the strength of his arms and his back into the labour, digging the oars deep into the water and straining every muscle to keep the boat from being tossed or blown further back on to the lake.

When he looked over his shoulder he could see little but darkness and deeper darkness, but the deeper darkness was looming high above them now. It was forest, growing right down to the shore. He could hear the wind in the pines now, even behind the deafening drumming of the rain and the monstrous crashing explosions of thunder.

‘Not far,’ Karimov shouted.

‘I’ll go straight in. See if you can grab a branch.’

Malcolm felt a shock and a grinding sensation as the Mignonne’s wooden hull met a rock. There was no avoiding it: he could hardly see anything, and there was no sandy beach for the boat to land on gently. Rocks, and more rocks, and after one final lurch and scrape, she was immobile. Karimov was trying to stand up and find a branch to seize, but he kept losing his balance.

Malcolm held on to the gunwale and stepped over the side, thigh-deep before his feet found anything solid. The rocks were tumbled and irregular, but at least they were large and they wouldn’t roll under his weight and break an ankle.

‘Where are you?’ Karimov called.

‘Nearly ashore. Keep still. I’ll tie us up as soon as I can.’

He felt his way towards the bow, and then found the painter. When he’d untied it in the boathouse he’d noticed how old and worn it was, but it had been good manila cord when it was made, and it might have a little strength still. Asta climbed up on to his shoulder and said, ‘Up and to your right.’

He reached in that direction and found a low-hanging bough, which felt solid enough to trust; but it was too far for the painter.

‘Karimov,’ he called. ‘I’ll hold the boat steady while you get out. We’ll just have to feel our way to the bank, but we’re wet enough already. Get everything you need and go carefully.’

A lightning flash, very close, threw a sudden searchlight on them. The bank was only a yard or two beyond the bow, thick with bushes, and rising steeply out of the water. Karimov gingerly put his left leg overboard, and felt around for something solid.

‘I can’t reach … I can’t find any rock—’

‘Hold on to the boat and put both legs down.’

Another lightning flash. Malcolm thought: what’s the drill for surviving a storm if you’re in a forest? Avoid tall trees, to begin with; but if you couldn’t see anything … The lightning had set off another of his spangled-ring episodes. The little thing twisted and scintillated in front of the lashing darkness all around, just at the moment when his hand found a branch low enough for the rope to reach.

‘Here,’ he shouted. ‘This way. Here’s the bank.’

Karimov was floundering towards him. Malcolm found his hand and gripped it tight, and pulled the older man along towards the bushes and then out of the water.

‘Got everything you need?’

‘I think so. What do we do?’

‘Keep together and climb up away from the water. If we’re lucky we’ll find somewhere to shelter.’

Malcolm hauled his rucksack and suitcase out of the boat and lugged them over the rocks and up into the undergrowth. It felt as if they were at the base of a steep slope, maybe even at the foot of a cliff … There might be an overhanging rock, if they were lucky.

They had only been climbing for a minute when they found something even better.

‘I think – here’s a … Just over this big rock …’

Malcolm shoved his suitcase ahead of him, and reached down to pull Karimov up.

‘What is it?’ said the Tajik.

‘A cave,’ said Malcolm. ‘A dry cave! What did I tell you?’

The officers took Olivier Bonneville to the nearest police station, and requisitioned the interview room. Strictly speaking, the CCD had no formal relations with the police force in Wittenberg, or anywhere else in greater Germany; but a CCD badge worked like a magic key.

‘How dare you treat me like this?’ Bonneville demanded, of course.

The two agents took their time settling on to the chairs on the other side of the table. Their dæmons (vixen and owl) were watching his, with unpleasant vigilance.

‘And what have you done with that dæmon?’ Bonneville went on. ‘I’ve been pursuing him, on the express orders of La Maison Juste, all the way from England. You’d better not have lost him. If I find that—’

‘State your full name,’ said the agent who’d first seen him. The other man was taking notes.

‘Olivier de Lusignan Bonneville. What have you done with—’

‘Where are you staying in Wittenberg?’

‘None of your—’

The interrogator had long arms. One of them reached out before Bonneville could move, and slapped his face hard. The hawk-dæmon screamed. Bonneville hadn’t been hit since his elementary school days, having learned very young that there were better ways than violence of making life miserable for his enemies, and he wasn’t used to shock and pain. He sat back and gasped.

‘Answer the question,’ said the agent.

Bonneville blinked hard. His eyes were watering. One side of his face was bright red and the other was dull white. ‘What question?’ he managed to say.

‘Where are you staying?’

‘A guest house.’

‘Address?’

Bonneville had to think hard to remember. ‘Friedrichstrasse seventeen,’ he said. ‘But let me advise you—’

That long arm shot out again and seized him by the hair. Before Bonneville could resist, his head was slammed face down on the table. His dæmon screamed again, and flew up flapping wildly before tumbling down.

The agent let go. Bonneville sat up trembling, with blood streaming from a broken nose. One of the agents must have rung a bell, because the door opened and a policeman came in. The note-taking man stood up and spoke to him quietly. The policeman nodded and went out.

‘You don’t advise me,’ said the interrogator. ‘I hope that alethiometer’s not been damaged.’

‘I’m not likely to damage it,’ said Bonneville thickly. ‘I read it better than anyone else, I know everything about it, I treat it with the utmost care. If it’s damaged, it wasn’t damaged by me. It’s the property of La Maison Juste, and I read it on the specific instructions of the Secretary General Monsieur Marcel Delamare.’

To his annoyance, he couldn’t keep his voice steady or stop his hands from shaking. He dragged a handkerchief from his pocket and held it to his face. His nose hurt abominably, and his shirt-front was drenched with blood.

‘That’s curious,’ said the interrogator. ‘Seeing as it was Monsieur Delamare himself who reported it missing and gave us your description.’

‘Prove it,’ said Bonneville. His disordered mind was beginning to pull itself together, and in the mist of pain and shock he could just make out the shape of a plan.

‘I still don’t think you’ve got this the right way round,’ the interrogator said, smiling. ‘I ask and you answer. Any minute now I’m going to hit you again, just to remind you. You won’t see where that one’s coming from, either. Where’s Matthew Polstead?’

Bonneville was baffled. ‘What? Who the hell is Matthew Polstead?’

‘Don’t tempt me. The man who killed your father. Where is he?’

Bonneville felt as if his mind was coming loose from his body. His dæmon, now on his shoulder again, gripped tightly with her claws, and he knew what she meant at once.

‘I didn’t know him by that name,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I’ve been looking for him. What have you done with that dæmon I caught? He was going to lead me to that Polstead man.’

‘The polecat or whatever he is is nicely tied up next door. I take it he’s not Polstead’s dæmon. Whose is he?’

‘The girl who’s got my father’s alethiometer – he’s hers. If the Geneva reader’s found out that much, then I have to say I’m surprised. He’s not usually that quick.’

‘Reader? What d’you mean, reader?’

‘Alethiometer reader. Look, I can’t concentrate with this bleeding. I need to see a doctor. Get me fixed up first and I’ll talk to you then.’

‘Trying to make conditions now? I wouldn’t if I was you. What’s that girl’s dæmon got to do with Polstead? And how come the dæmon’s running around without her? Creepy, that’s what that is. Unnatural.’

‘Come on, there are aspects of this that are confidential. What security clearance have you got?’

‘You’re asking me questions again. I did warn you about that. You know you’ve got another clout coming, any second now, I’d say.’

‘That won’t help,’ said Bonneville, who had managed to control the shaking of his voice by this time. ‘I don’t mind telling you what I’m doing, since we’re on the same side, but as I say, I need to know the level of your security clearance. If you tell me that, I might even be able to help you.’

‘Help us with what? What d’you think we’re doing? We been looking for you, boy. We got you now. And why the fuck should we help you?’

‘There’s a bigger picture. D’you know why you’ve been looking for me?’

‘Yeah. ’Cause the boss told us to. That’s why, you bit of jelly.’

Bonneville’s eyes were beginning to close. The blow must have bruised his cheekbones, or his eye sockets, or something, he thought, but don’t show pain, don’t be distracted. Stay calm.

He said steadily, ‘There’s a connection between my father, what my father was doing, and his death, and this man Polstead, and the girl Lyra Belacqua. Right? Monsieur Delamare has given me the job of finding out more about it, because I can read the alethiometer, and because I’ve already discovered a good deal. To start with, the connection involves Dust. Got it? You understand that? You know what that means? My father was a scientist, as they call them now. An experimental theologian. He was investigating Dust, where it comes from, what it means, the threat it holds. He was killed and all his notes were stolen, and so was his alethiometer. The girl Belacqua knows something about it, and so does that Polstead man. That’s why I’m here. That’s what I’m doing. That’s why you’d be much better advised helping me than wasting our time with this sort of thing.’

‘Then why did Monsieur Delamare tell the CCD that he wanted you arrested?’

‘You sure that’s what he said?’

The interrogator blinked. For the first time he looked a little unsure. ‘I know the orders we received, and they’ve never been wrong before.’

‘What’s just been happening in Geneva?’ Bonneville demanded.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean, what’s been going on? Why is the city full of priests and bishops and monks and so on? This congress, that’s what I mean. Obviously, since it’s the most important development in the Magisterium for centuries, it’s important to keep security tight.’

‘So?’

‘So messages get enciphered. Instructions are relayed by different routes. Codewords are used. Sometimes information’s deliberately scrambled. This Polstead, for example. Did they give you a description of him?’

The interrogator looked at his colleague, the man who was taking notes.

‘Yes,’ said the note-taker. ‘Big man. Red hair.’

‘Just what I mean,’ Bonneville said. ‘The information’s not meant for the public. I know what his real name is, and I know he doesn’t look like that. The red hair and the size – those details tell me something else about him.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t tell you, obviously, unless I know your security clearance. Maybe not then, depending on what it is.’

‘Level three,’ said the note-taker.

‘Both of you?’

The interrogator nodded.

‘Well, I can’t then,’ said Bonneville. ‘Look, I tell you what. Let me talk to that dæmon. You can sit in, you can hear what he tells me.’

There was a knock, and the door opened. The policeman who’d been sent to investigate the guest house came in, carrying Bonneville’s rucksack.

‘Is it in there?’ said the interrogator.

‘No,’ said the policeman. ‘I searched the room, but there was nothing else.’

‘If you were looking for the alethiometer,’ said Bonneville, ‘you only had to ask. I’ve got it with me, of course.’

He took it out of his pocket and placed it in front of him on the table. The interrogator reached out for it, but Bonneville moved it back.

‘You can look, but don’t touch,’ he said. ‘There’s a connection that builds up between the instrument and the reader. It’s easily disturbed.’

The interrogator peered closely at it, and so did the other man. Bonneville thought: a knife in his eye now – that would teach him a lesson.

‘How d’you read it, then?’

‘It works by symbols. You have to know all the meanings of each of those pictures. Some of them have over a hundred, so it’s not something you can just pick up and do at once. This one belongs to the Magisterium, and it’s going back there as soon as I’ve finished the mission they sent me on. So I’ll tell you again: let me talk to that dæmon before he thinks of a good story.’

The interrogator looked at his colleague. They both stood up and moved to a corner of the room, where they spoke too quietly for Bonneville to hear. In the pause, the tension that was helping Bonneville stay calm and stop his hands trembling began to seep away. His dæmon felt it, and gripped his shoulder so fiercely that she drew blood. It was just what he needed. When the men turned back to him he was calm and composed, despite the bloody mess in the middle of his face.

‘All right then,’ said the interrogator as the other man opened the door.

Bonneville put the alethiometer away and picked up his rucksack to follow them. They were speaking to the policeman, who turned and took a ring of keys from his pocket and looked through them for the right one.

‘We’re going to watch,’ said the interrogator. ‘And we’re going to make a note of everything you ask, and everything he says in reply.’

‘Of course,’ said Bonneville.

The policeman opened the door, and then stopped suddenly.

‘What’s the matter?’ said the interrogator.

Bonneville pushed him aside and went in past the policeman. It was a room just like the one next door, with a table and three chairs. The coal-silk net was lying on the table, bitten to shreds, and the window was open. Pantalaimon had escaped.

Bonneville turned to the CCD men in a fury that wasn’t in the least assumed. Blood flowing thickly over his mouth and chin, nearly blind with pain, he denounced them and the police for their bone-headed stupidity and criminal carelessness, and threatened them with the wrath of the entire Magisterium in this life, and the certainty of hell in the next.

It was a fine performance. He certainly thought so himself a few minutes later, as he sat in a comfortable chair under the hands of the police doctor, and shortly afterwards stalked away towards the railway station, with his possessions intact and his pride in full flower. The bandage covering his nose was the badge of an honourable wound; the loss of Pantalaimon irrelevant. He had a new target now, one so interesting and so unexpected that it was like a revelation, an epiphany.

It rang in his head like the tolling of a bell: the man who had killed his father, this large man with red hair, this man called Matthew Polstead.