… for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen and sat down…

‘Thursday!’ cried my Aunt Polly crossly. ‘Do try to keep up. I’ll be asking questions later!’

She took me by the hand and led me away. I turned and waved my thanks to the Japanese tourist, who smiled genially back at me.

I returned to the museum a few times after that but the magic never worked again. My mind had closed too much by the time I was twelve, already a young woman. I only ever spoke of it to my uncle, who nodded sagely and believed every word. I never told anyone else. Ordinary adults don’t like children to speak of things that are denied them by their own grey minds.

As I got older I started to doubt the validity of my own memory, until by my eighteenth birthday I had written it off as the product of an overactive imagination. Rochester’s reappearance outside Styx’s apartment that night served only to confuse. Reality, to be sure, was beginning to bend.

I was in the SpecOps Memorial Cemetery in Highgate looking at Snood’s headstone. It read:

They say the job ages you—and it had aged Filbert a lot. Perhaps it had been for the best when he didn’t call after the accident. It couldn’t have worked and the break-up when it came—as it surely would—might have been too painful. I placed a small stone atop his headstone and bid him adieu.

‘You were lucky,’ said a voice. I turned and saw a short man in an expensive dark suit sitting on the bench opposite.

‘I’m sorry?’ I asked, taken aback by the intrusion into my thoughts. The small man smiled and stared at me intently.

‘I’d like to speak to you about Acheron, Miss Next.’

‘It’s one of the rivers that flow to the underworld,’ I told him. ‘Try the local library under Greek Mythology.’

‘I was referring to the person.’

I stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out who he was. He wore a small porkpie hat balanced on top of a rounded head that had been crew-cut like a tennis ball. His features were sharp, his lips thin, and he was not what you’d call an attractive-looking human being. He sported heavy gold jewellery and a diamond tiepin that twinkled like a star. His patent-leather brogues were covered in white spats and a gold watch chain dangled from his waistcoat pocket. He was not alone. A young man also in a dark suit with a bulge where a pistol should be was standing next to him. I had been so wrapped up in my own thoughts I hadn’t noticed them approach. I figured they were SpecOps Internal Affairs or something; I guessed that Flanker and Co. weren’t finished with me yet.

‘Hades is dead,’ I replied simply, unwilling to get embroiled.

‘You don’t seem to think so.’

‘Yeah, well, I’ve been given six months off due to work-related stress. The shrink reckons I’m suffering from false memory syndrome and hallucinations. I shouldn’t believe anything I say, if I were you—and that includes what I just told you.’

The small man smiled again, displaying a large gold tooth.

‘I don’t believe you’re suffering from stress at all, Miss Next. I think you’re as sane as I am. If someone who survived the Crimea, the police and then eight years of tricky LiteraTec work came to me and told me that Hades was still alive, I’d listen to them.’

‘And who might you be?’

He handed me a gold-edged card with the dark blue Goliath Corporation logo embossed on it.

‘The name’s Schitt,’ he replied, ‘Jack Schitt.’

I shrugged. The card told me he was head of Goliath’s internal security service, a shadowy organisation that was well outside government; by constitutional decree they were answerable to no one. The Goliath Corporation had honorary members in both houses and financial advisers at the Treasury. The judiciary was well represented with Goliath people on the selection panel for High Court judges, and most major universities had a Goliath overseer living within the faculty. No one ever noticed how much they influenced the running of the country, which perhaps shows how good at it they were. Yet, for all Goliath’s outward benevolence, there were murmurs of dissent over the Corporation’s continued privilege. Their public servants were unelected by the people or the government and their activities enshrined in statute. It was a brave politician who dared to voice disquiet.

I sat next to him on the bench. He dismissed his henchman.

‘So what’s your interest in Hades, Mr Schitt?’

‘I want to know if he’s alive or dead.’

‘You read the coroner’s report, didn’t you?’

‘It only told me that a man of Hades’ height, stature and teeth was incinerated in a car. Hades has got out of worse scrapes than that. I read your report; much more interesting. Quite why those clowns in SO-1 dismissed it out of hand I have no idea. With Tamworth dead you’re the only operative who knows anything about him. I’m not really concerned about whose fault it was that night. What I want to know is this: what was Acheron going to do with the manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit? ’

‘Extortion, perhaps?’ I ventured.

‘Possibly. Where is it now?’

‘Wasn’t it with him?’

‘No,’ replied Schitt evenly. ‘In your testimony you said he took it with him in a leather case. No trace was found of it in the burnt-out car. If he did survive, so did the manuscript.’

I looked at him blankly, wondering where all this was going.

‘He must have passed it to an accomplice, then.’

‘Possibly. The manuscript could be worth up to five million on the black market, Miss Next. A lot of money, don’t you think?’

‘What are you suggesting?’ I asked sharply, my temper rising.

‘Nothing at all; but your testimony and Acheron’s corpse don’t really add up, do they? You said that you shot him after he killed the young officer.’

‘His name was Snood,’ I said pointedly.

‘Whoever. But the burned corpse had no gunshot wounds despite the many times you shot him when he was disguised as Buckett or the old woman.’

‘Her name was Mrs Grimswold.’

I stared at him. Schitt continued.

‘I saw the flattened slugs. You would have got the same effect if you had fired them into a wall.’

‘If you have a point, why don’t you get to it?’

Schitt unscrewed the cap of a Thermos flask and offered it to me. I refused; he poured himself a drink and continued:

‘I think you know more than you say you do. We only have your word for the events of that night. Tell me, Miss Next, what was Hades planning to use the manuscript for?’

‘I told you: I have no idea.’

‘Then why are you going to work as a LiteraTec in Swindon?’

‘It was all I could get.’

‘That’s not true. Your work has been consistently assessed above average and your record states that you haven’t been back to Swindon in ten years despite your family living there. A note appended to your file speaks of “romantic tensions”. Man trouble in Swindon?’