to the street, into the shifting plant life. Bits of rubbish shifted in gusts, crawled on the pavement like bottom-feeders.
“You’re part of some conspiracy that trapped their god,” Vardy said. “But more than that. You’re the go-to squid guy, Mr. Harrow. You seem to have got someone interested. As far as they’re concerned, you’re a person of interest.”
He stood between Billy and the wind. “You found the squid gone,” he said. “You put it there in the first place. It’s always been you who’s had magic mollusc fingers.” He twiddled his own. “Now you found this dead bloke. Is it any wonder they’re interested?”
“You’ve been feeling … like stuff’s going on,” Baron said. “Would that be fair to say?”
“What’s happening to me?” Billy managed to speak calmly.
“Don’t worry, Billy Harrow. That’s perspicacity, not paranoia, that, what you’re feeling.” Baron turned, taking in the London panorama, and wherever he looked, whenever he paused facing some particular patch of blackness, Billy looked too. “There is something wrong. And it’s noticed you. That’s not always the best place to be.” Billy sat in the middle of that world’s notice, like a tiny prey.
“What is it you want to do?” Billy said. “I mean, find out who killed that guy. Right? But what about me? Are you going to get the squid back?”
“That would be our intent, yes,” Baron said. “Cult robbery, after all, is part of our remit. And now there’s murder, too. Yes. And your safety is of, shall we say, no little concern to us.”
“What do they want? What’s Dane in all this?” Billy said. “And you’re some secret cult squad, right? So why are you telling me this?”
“I know, I know, you’re feeling a little exposed,” Baron said. “A bit out in the glare of it all. There are ways we might help. And you could help us back.”
“Like it or not, you’re already part of this,” Vardy said.
“We have a proposal,” Baron said. “Come on in out of the cold. Shoot on over with us back to the Darwin Centre. There’s a proposition on the table, and there’s someone you should meet.”
Chapter Seven
THE ROOMS SETTLED AROUND THEM, AS IF FINICKETY GENII LOCI were adjusting. Billy felt like an outsider. Was that glass he heard, clank-sliding out of sight? A clatter that might be bones?
The two uniforms guarding the tank room did not react to Baron with any visible respect. “Clocked that, did you?” Baron muttered to Billy. “Right now they’re coming up with hilarious jokes about what FSRC stands for. The first half is always ‘Fucking Stupid.’”
Inside was the disdainful young woman again, glancing at Billy perhaps a shade more friendly than before, her uniform as casual as ever. She had a laptop open on the table where the squid no longer was. “Alright?” she said. She mock-saluted Vardy and Baron, raised an eyebrow at Billy. She typed one-handed.
“I’m Billy.”
She looked oh-really? “There’s trace, man,” she said to Baron.
“Billy Harrow, WPC Kath Collingswood,” Baron said. She clucked her tongue or chewing gum and turned her computer round, but not enough that Billy could see.
“Quite a spike,” Vardy murmured.
“With the strike and all that, you wouldn’t expect to see shit like this,” she said. Vardy looked lengthily around the room, as if the dead animals might be responsible.
“Do you want to know what any of these things are?” said Billy.
“No no,” said Vardy thoughtfully. He approached the oarfish caught decades before. He looked at an antique alligator baby. “Ha,” he said.
He circumnavigated. “Ha!” he said again abruptly. He had reached the cabinet of Beagle specimens. He wore an unrecognisable expression.
“This is them,” he said after awhile.
“Yeah,” said Billy.
“My good God,” Vardy said softly. “Good God.” He leaned very close and read their labels a long time. When finally he rejoined Collingswood, as she ran information through the computer, he glanced back at the Beagle cabinet more than once. Collingswood followed his glance.
“Oh yeah,” she said to the jars. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Are you who I’m supposed to meet?” Billy said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m him. Come down the pub.”
“Uh …” Billy said. “I don’t think that’s in my plans …”
“Best thing for you, a drink,” Baron said. “Best thing. Coming?” he said to Vardy.
Vardy shook his head. “I’m not the persuasive one.” He waved them out.
“Nah,” said Collingswood to Billy. “Not so much. It ain’t that he’s not interested in, like, persuasiveness, get me? He’s interested in it. Like something in a jar.”