George looked at me. Lockwood glanced up, frowning. ‘Write down what, Luce?’
‘What he just said.’
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
‘He said: “Please come with me.” Clear as day.’
Lockwood hesitated. ‘Didn’t hear that. Write it anyway, George. And move back a bit. I’m watching his lips and you’re blocking the light.’
We shuffled aside and waited. We waited a long time.
‘Lockwood,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I think that might have been it.’
None of us said anything. None of us moved.
Death is fugitive: even when you’re watching for it, the actual instant somehow slips between your fingers. You don’t get that sudden drop of the head you see in movies. Instead you simply sit there, waiting for something to happen, and all at once you realize you’ve missed it. Time to move along now, nothing to see. Nothing to see there, ever again.
We knelt beside the relic-man, as motionless as he was, holding our breaths, sharing the moment of transition. It was as if we were trying to stay with him, those first few seconds, wherever he was, wherever he was going.
It was the only thing we could do.
When it was obvious that he really had gone, life reclaimed us. We all sat back, one after the other, breathed deeply, coughed, rubbed our faces, scratched ourselves, did trivial stuff to prove that we were still capable and alive.
Between us was an object, just an empty, hollow thing.
‘Will you look at this rug?’ George said. ‘I’ve only just cleaned out the stain from the cocoa we spilled the other night.’
‘What did the ambulance people say, Lucy?’ Lockwood asked.
‘The usual. They’re waiting for protection. Barnes is arranging that.’
‘OK. We’ve got ten, fifteen minutes. Time enough for what George has got to do.’
George blinked. ‘What’s that?’
‘Search his pockets.’
‘Me? Why me?’
‘You’re the most light-fingered of us.’
‘Lucy’s got smaller hands.’
‘She’s also the best at drawing. Lucy, take the notebook. I want a sketch of the murder weapon, accurate as you can.’
While George, white-faced, busied himself with the dead man’s jacket, Lockwood and I moved along to the dagger sticking out of his back. My hands shook a little as I drew the rough shape of the hilt; I had to concentrate to keep the pencil firm. Funny how an actual death always hits you so hard. Visitors are scarier, sure, but they don’t have quite that power to shock. Lockwood seemed as cool and in control as ever, though. Perhaps deaths didn’t have the same effect on him.
‘It’s a Mughal dagger,’ he was saying. ‘From India, maybe sixteenth century. The curved hilt’s inlaid with ivory and gold. Grip’s made of black cord, tightly wound around the metal. Lots of decorative pieces fixed to the pommel and at the end of the hand-guard. Milky white stones – not sure what they are. Opals, you think, Lucy?’
‘Not a clue. How on earth do you know this is a Mughal dagger?’
‘My parents studied oriental traditions. Got whole books on this stuff. Ceremonial piece, I think. Is the blade thin and curved?’
‘Can’t see, mostly. It’s in him.’
‘Odd thing to kill someone with,’ Lockwood mused. ‘Who has one of these, outside a museum?’
‘An antiques dealer might,’ I said. ‘Like Winkman.’
He nodded. ‘How very true. Finish the sketch. What have you found there, George?’
‘A lot of money, mainly. Look at this.’
He held out a narrow brown envelope, stuffed almost to bursting with the quantity of banknotes inside. Lockwood riffled through it swiftly.
‘All used twenties,’ he said. ‘Must be close to a thousand quid. Find anything else?’
‘Coins, cigarette paper and tobacco, a lighter, and a crumpled note in your handwriting addressed to the Graveyard Fellowship. Also some tattoos, which have given me a lot to think about.’
‘The note in the café worked better than I expected,’ Lockwood said. ‘I’ll take that. You can put the rest back. Yes, the money too. Then we’ll put him on his front again. Barnes will soon be here. By the way: we don’t let slip anything we’ve uncovered so far. I don’t want Kipps getting hold of it.’
George gave a sudden curse. ‘Barnes! The ghost-jar! I told Barnes I’d got rid of that.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. Go shut the oven door, then – quickly. We haven’t got much time.’
Lockwood was right. We were just lowering Carver back down when we heard the ambulance crew arriving at the door.
It’s never a massive pleasure to have Inspector Barnes and his DEPRAC forensic squad barging about the house, particularly when they’re dealing with a dead man in your hall. For hours they stomped about in their hobnail boots, taking photographs of body, knife and blood-stain from every angle; emptying the corpse’s pockets, photographing the contents and taking them away in little bags; and all this while we were confined to the living room to keep us out of the way.
What made it especially irritating was that Kipps had turned up too, together with several of his team. Barnes didn’t seem to mind them interfering. Tall, shaggy-haired Ned Shaw stalked the ground floor, interrogating the medics, arguing with the clean-up crew and generally being objectionable. Tiny Bobby Vernon loitered with his clipboard by the body, sketching the dagger just as we had. He watched the pocket-emptying closely, shaking his head and giving us hard looks through the living-room door. Meanwhile humourless Kat Godwin tried listening for psychic traces that might have been left by the murdered man. She stood so long in a corner of the hall, eyes shut and frowning in sharp-chinned concentration, that I was tempted to creep up with one of George’s jackets and use her as a coat-rack.
The body was eventually zipped up in a bag and taken to the van outside. The rug was rolled up and removed. The forensic team used salt guns to cleanse the hall. One of the operatives, chewing methodically on his gum, stuck his head round the living-room door. ‘That’s all done,’ he said. ‘You want us to scatter iron?’
‘No, thanks,’ Lockwood said. ‘We can do it.’
The man made a face. ‘Murder victim. With murder victims, you’ve got a sixty-five-per-cent chance of them coming back in the first year. Thirty-five per cent after that. Fact.’
‘Yes, we know. It’s OK. We can seal the ground. We’re agents.’
‘First agent I’ve ever seen wearing shorts like that,’ the man said. He left.
‘Me too,’ Barnes said. ‘And I’ve been in the business thirty years.’ He tapped his fingers on the sofa-arm and glared at us for the umpteenth time. For half an hour now he’d been sitting there, giving us the third degree. Time and again he’d made us go over what had happened that evening, from the knock on the door to the ambulance crew’s arrival. We’d been moderately truthful, as far as it went, though we hadn’t mentioned what we’d heard Carver saying. The way we told it, he’d staggered in and dropped straight down dead, no whispered words on offer. Nor did we mention Lockwood’s note.
Quill Kipps stood leaning on a sideboard behind him, arms folded, watching us through narrowed eyes. Godwin and Vernon sat on spare chairs. Ned Shaw skulked in the shadows like a hyena that had just learned to stand on its hind legs, glowering at Lockwood the while. It wasn’t one of our usual merry living-room gatherings. We didn’t offer them tea.
‘What I still fail to understand,’ Barnes said, ‘is why Carver came here to you.’ His moustache rippled as he spoke; his face was heavy with suspicion.
Lockwood, sitting in his chair, pulled negligently at his sleeve. It was hard to look elegant in his current outfit, but he was doing his best. ‘I assume he somehow heard we were investigating the theft. Perhaps he wanted to speak with someone competent, intelligent and resourceful, in which case we were clearly the only option.’