‘Oh, you know. Busy. Fine.’
I started to make small talk, but he wasn’t tuning in. Instead he nodded, picked up his mobile and flicked it
open.
‘They’ll ring,’ he said, as if I’d not said anything at all. Then he replaced it on the table and moved his hands back to the napkin. There were circles of moisture on the phone where his fingers had been.
‘Who is this mystery visitor then?’ I asked, trying to lighten up. This is what he wanted to talk about, I could see. ‘Are they here?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘On their way hopefully. I’ll get a call when they’re in the vicinity.’
‘You going to give me a clue to how they fit in?’ I asked.
He tossed his head back and laughed. ‘You’ll find out. It’d be a shame to spoil it for you.’ Then, he tapped the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘Listen, I’ve got something to show you.’
‘I know,’ I said.
‘You know?’ His eyebrows rose right up under his fringe. ‘You can’t.’
‘The interviewee …’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘Not that. This.’ He reached inside his pocket and pulled out a transparent plastic bag. Something white glimmered inside it. The pipe.
‘That,’ I said and pushed back my chair to get away
from it. The blood drained from my face. ‘Why have you got it?’
Felix gave me a quizzical look. He appeared not to have noticed my pallor. ‘What’s the big deal? I know it’s a little ghoulish, but …’ He opened the plastic bag and brought it out. ‘It’s just an old pipe made of bone. Not unusual apparently for the time.’ He put it on the table.
I stared at it, a rash of goosebumps spreading out across my arms. ‘Which was?’
‘Mid-seventeenth century. Or thereabouts.’
‘Hopkins’ time,’ I said slowly.
‘I know,’ he said, turning it over in his hand. ‘Curious that it all comes back to that.’ He glanced at me.
I was too fixated on the pipe to pick up on that last comment. I shivered and pushed his hand further from me. ‘Put it away. Please Felix. It makes me feel bad. I think Hopkins had a pipe like that. I think he might have used it to …’ I broke off. I couldn’t say it. I didn’t know for sure that it was the same pipe. But it looked just as spiteful.
Felix’s face wrinkled into deep lines as he picked it up. An involuntary shudder went through me.
‘How does it make you feel?’ I asked him.
‘Like I own it,’ he said, replacing it in his breast pocket like a ten-year-old secreting his favoured conker. Then he grinned and his eyes crinkled. For a second it seemed to me that it was the other way round – that the pipe owned Felix and if he wasn’t careful, then something terrible might try to snare him.
Seized by an impossible desire to try and communicate the dread I was feeling, I laid my hand on his arm. ‘Listen, Felix, you have to get rid of this. It’s …’ But I was never to complete the sentence as his mobile went off.
Felix jumped up like a cat and scooped it off the table. Darting a smile at me he flicked it open and walked quickly towards the door. ‘Yes, she’s here with me now,’ I heard him say.
The person on the other end of the phone was talking at length. Felix scowled into the mouthpiece, then rubbed his head and bit his lip. ‘Really?’ He cast a sidelong glance at me.
A couple came through the front door, allowing Felix to duck out past them into the street.
I looked around the place. So I was back here again. At HIS headquarters. Where he had tortured Rebecca and so many more. And what if Felix had brought the pipe back to his master? Jeez. Perhaps after the interview I’d venture so far as to tell him what I thought. Maybe I’d tell him everything that I’d learnt. Over dinner. But not here. Somewhere else. Further away. There was no way I was going to spend the night here. I’d drive into Colchester later and find a hotel. I would be more anonymous in a large town. That would help me get under Cutt’s radar. And, I thought, it was right to tell Felix. After all, forewarned was forearmed, and he’d been pretty good to me.
The fire popped and spluttered in the grate, making me jump. The newcomers were warming their hands against the flickering glow. I took a gulp of coffee and stretched back into