ladder. There should be a pole around somewhere.’ He found it leaning in a corner, and hooked the end through the brass ring in the trapdoor above him. The hatch opened, and a set of steel steps telescoped down.
‘I won’t be following you up there with my legs, I’m afraid,’ said Bryant.
‘All right, I’ll report back.’
May climbed up and vanished. ‘My God,’ he called down. ‘You won’t believe this.’ Then an uncomfortable moment of silence.
‘What is it?’ asked Bryant impatiently.
‘Some kind of shrine. There are statues everywhere—all the same figure, but all different sizes. I wish you’d come up.’
‘I wouldn’t get back down.’
‘You’d make more of this than me. I recognize the image.’
‘Can you show me one?’
‘Here.’ May reappeared in the hole, smothered in chalk dust. He shifted the torchbeam on a foot-high plaster figure, broken at the neck. In his other hand he held the head of a jackal.
‘Well, that’s Anubis,’ said Bryant. ‘Ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, protector of the dead and the embalmers, guardian of the necropolis.’
‘There must be thirty or forty identical statues up here. They’re all broken, every single one of them.’
‘Let me see that one in your hand.’
May passed it down to his partner.
Bryant ran a finger across the figure’s snout and around its long pointed ears. ‘It’s a cheap replica of a genuine artefact,’ he sniffed dismissively. ‘The paintwork is far too vivid. Very few of the real article still have this kind of dense black colouring. What a pity. And they’re all broken? It’s easy to find replicas in one piece. How odd.’ He handed it back. ‘The Egyptians gave their god the head of a jackal because so many of the animals wandered about their graveyards. Priests would wear jackal masks during the mummification process. He’s inspired all kinds of worshippers. Perhaps our Mr Ubeda belongs to some kind of a cult.’
‘This is giving me the creeps,’ said May. ‘I don’t like dealing with obsessives, they’re unpredictable and dangerous. These things are on the floor, on shelves, everywhere. There are some on the walls, too, painted on papyruses. There’s even what looks like a mummified dog up here. Its head is severed from its body as well. What’s the point of collecting this sort of stuff if it’s damaged and worthless?’
Bryant had walked back into the office, and was trying the cupboard doors. ‘I think we’d better go before he returns,’ he called.
‘Why?’ asked May. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Let’s just say I agree with you about obsessives.’ Bryant was looking at the gun on the cupboard shelf.
19
* * *
FEET OF CLAY
It had taken Elliot Copeland all day to get the front yard of the builders’ merchant broken up and loaded on to his truck. Beneath the concrete slabs, the earth was as wet and heavy as a Christmas pudding. He had found fragments of horse bone buried deep in the brown London clay, remnants from the time when the Green Street Races were held in Kentish Town. Dozens of delicately curved white pipes poked out of the mud like bird ribs; each lay discarded where it had been smoked. The soil held more secrets than anyone could know. The roads traced the jigsaw patterns of ancient settlements, following their hedgerows and tributaries, titled after their landlords and hunting grounds, their mistresses and battles. Nothing was as arbitrary as it appeared. Even the public houses were still imprisoned by their nomenclature, despite numerous name-changes and makeovers.
His arms and back ached. He badly needed another drink, but had finished the quart of scotch he kept in the cab. At least the men in the builders’ machine shop were decent local types, not like the street’s new arrivals, who were incapable of painting a wall without calling for help. Somewhere along the line he had got the reputation of being cheap, and now it had proven impossible to raise his prices without them all complaining. He could have done with a work-mate today, but couldn’t afford to pay one. Was this, he wondered, what his life had boiled down to? He’d left art college with big ideas, but unfortunately so had everyone else. After the time of the Hornsey riots, everyone had wanted to be a rebellious art student, but what all that rebellion and popularity meant was that there were no jobs at the other end.
He was forty-six, the divorced father of a child he was no longer allowed to visit, because his inarticulate anger arose in drunkenness. And all people saw