tried to say something; but his breath was overtaken by the vomit rising in his throat. He made a feeble lunge for the nearest Belfast sink, but he didn’t make it. He spewed up uncontrollably all over the shavings on the floor; all down his own front. James swung away, grabbing a grubby handkerchief from his apron pocket and pressing it to a face turned green. Sven just stood, paralysed, giant hands clenched so tight the knuckles showed white. Only Hermione kept her cool, though she was ghost-pale. She stepped to one side, and I saw it, at the distance of ten yards. I never wanted to get any nearer.
A tiny skull, tilted, peered out of the box. Below it, there might have been fabric; but it was mottled with patterns of green and brown, like damp patches on a ceiling; like mould on cheese.
They all came bundling towards the door where I stood, like a routed army, stumbling, groping. I got aside quickly, to let them past. Rory was half-carrying Lenny, who was making a weird keening noise in his throat.
Hermione came out last. She said, faintly, ‘You’d better ring the police.’
For some reason I said stupidly, ‘An abortion?’ Perhaps I thought that if it was an abortion it wouldn’t be quite so bad.
‘No.’ Her words came out slowly, one by one, as if she was inventing them. ‘Somebody . . . cared. It’s . . . wrapped . . . in some kind of shawl. There’s a little crucifix on its . . . chest.’
I got them all into my kitchen, and put a kettle on before I rang the police.
‘Whisky, Morgan, for Christ’s sake. Bloody tea won’t do any good.’ It was not really her voice. ‘I’ll stand on guard at the shed door. Before anybody else blunders in and sees it.’
I must say the police were quick. Two uniformed constables leaping out of the panda. Perhaps they were not well informed; they came out of my workshop a damned sight quicker than they went in. I offered them a tot of whisky as well, and for once they didn’t refuse. One said weakly, ‘Jeez, I thought I’d seen everything in this game, but . . .’
None of us seemed able to move from the kitchen, till they came and took it away.
After supper, I felt a bit better; I took a stroll up to the Pond. I don’t know what drew me. There was nothing to see; no kids, no students on guard. Nobody at all, really, except one elderly man walking his elderly fox-terrier, and bullying it into hurrying up to do its business. It was a grey cloudy dusk; it was as if a pall lay over the whole Pond; as if that smell, from my workshop, had driven everyone out of Wheatstone, like an outbreak of plague.
Chapter 6
We held a meeting, the next morning, in the workshop. Hermione said we’d better hold it there; get them in there again quickly, before they got spooked with the place. There were fifteen of us, I recall. Ten students, Hermione, James, Sam my other furniture restorer, me and Sergeant Crittenden. Of Lenny, there was no sign. And the rest of us looked weary and wretched. I kept on sniffing, surreptitiously, to see if I could still smell that smell. So did everybody else.
I must say, Crittenden was very good. He sort of got us on a war-footing. I didn’t reckon he’d ever rise higher than sergeant, but he was a good sergeant. Immaculately turned out; none of this tie-halfway-down-his-chest, like most of the CID. His dark hair brylcreemed like a shining black cap. He was not so young as I’d thought at first; quite wrinkled in his pale way, but oddly handsome in a stark fashion.
‘First a bit of good news,’ he said. ‘That revolver you found – it has been of some help to us. It was used in a murder – of an old occult book-dealer called Solomon Hertz. Down the Charing Cross Road. The bullets match two taken from the body. So that’s cleared up. The murder was never solved . . .’
Suddenly everyone was intensely interested. Everyone likes to be part of a hunt.
Then he gave a wry smile. ‘But since the murder took place in 1921 – before most of your parents were born – it doesn’t get us much further. However, you will be relieved to know that since sixty-six years have passed, we think it unlikely the murderer will