Lottie had brought a phone to the table. It was for Bowden. He wiped his mouth with a napkin.

‘Yes?’

He looked up at me.

‘Yes, she is. We’ll be right over. Thanks.’

‘Problems?’

‘It’s your aunt and uncle. I don’t know how to say this but… they’ve been kidnapped!’

There were several police and SpecOps cars clustered around the entrance to my mother’s house when we pulled up. A small crowd had assembled and was peering over the fence. The dodos had gathered on the other side and were staring back, wondering what the fuss was all about. I showed my badge to the officer on duty.

‘LiteraTec?’ he said scornfully. ‘Can’t let you in, ma’am. Police and SpecOps 9 only.’

‘He’s my uncle—!’ I said angrily, and the officer reluctantly let me through. Swindon was the same as London: a LiteraTec’s badge held about as much authority as a bus pass. I found my mother in the living room surrounded by damp Kleenex. I sat beside her and asked her what had happened.

She blew her nose noisily.

‘I called them in for dinner at one. It was snorkers, Mycroft’s favourite. There was no answer so I went down to his workshop. They were both gone and the double doors wide open. Mycroft wouldn’t have gone out without saying anything.’

This was true. Mycroft never left the house unless it was absolutely necessary; since Owens had been meringued Polly did all his running around.

‘Anything stolen?’ I asked a SpecOps 9 operative who stared at me coldly. He didn’t relish being asked questions by a LiteraTec.

‘Who knows?’ he replied with little emotion. ‘I understand you’d been in his workshop recently?’

‘Yesterday evening.’

‘Then perhaps you can have a look around and tell us if there is anything missing?’

I was escorted to Mycroft’s workshop. The rear doors had been forced and I looked around carefully. The table where Mycroft had kept all his bookworms had been cleared; all I could see was the massive two-pronged power lead that would have slotted into the back of the Prose Portal.

‘There was something right here. Several goldfish bowls full up with small worms and a large book a bit like a mediaeval church Bible—‘

‘Can you draw it?’ asked a familiar voice. I turned to see Jack Schitt lurking in the shadows, smoking a small cigarette and overseeing a Goliath technician who was passing a humming sensor over the ground.

‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘If it isn’t Jack Schitt. What’s Goliath’s interest in my uncle?’

‘Can you draw it?’ he repeated.

I nodded, and one of the Goliath men gave me a pencil and paper. I sketched out what I had seen, the intricate combination of dials and knobs on the front of the book and the heavy brass straps. Jack Schitt took it from me and studied it with great interest as another Goliath technician walked in from outside.

‘Well?’ asked Schitt.

The agent saluted neatly and showed Schitt a pair of large and slightly molten G-clamps.

‘Professor Next had jury-rigged his own set of cables to the electrical sub-station just next door. I spoke to the electricity board. They said they had three unexplained power drains of about 1.8 megawatts each late last night.’

Jack Schitt turned to me.

‘You better leave this to us, Next,’ he said. ‘Kidnapping and theft are not part of the LiteraTec’s responsibility.’

‘Who did this?’ I demanded, but Schitt didn’t take crap from anyone—least of all me. He wagged a finger in my direction.

‘This investigation is nothing to do with you; we’ll keep you informed of any developments. Or not. As I see fit.’

He turned and walked away.

‘It was Acheron, wasn’t it?’ I said, slowly and deliberately. Schitt stopped in mid-stride, and turned to face me.

‘Acheron is dead, Next. Burned to a crisp at Junction twelve. Don’t spread your theories around town, girl. It might make you seem more unstable than you actually are.’

He smiled without the least vestige of kindness and walked out of the workshop to his waiting car.

‘Astounding!’ said Acheron quietly as he surveyed Mycroft’s Prose Portal. ‘Truly astounding!’

Mycroft said nothing. He had been too busy wondering whether Polly was still alive and well since the poem closed on her. Against his protestations they had pulled the plug before the portal had reopened; he didn’t know if any human could survive in such an environment. They had blindfolded him during the journey and he was now standing in the smoking lounge of what had once been a large and luxurious hotel. Although still grand, the decor was tatty and worn. The pearl-inlaid grand piano didn’t look as though it had been tuned for years, and the mirror-backed bar was sadly devoid of any refreshment. Mycroft looked out of the window for a clue as to where he was being held. It wasn’t hard to guess. The large quantity of drab-coloured Griffin motor-cars and the absence of any advertising hoardings told Mycroft all he needed to know; he was in the People’s Republic of Wales, somewhere well out of reach of the conventional law enforcement agencies. The possibility of escape was slim, and if he could get away, “what then? Even if there was a chance he could make it back across the border, he would never be able to leave without Polly—she was still imprisoned in the poem, itself now little more than printed words on a scrap of paper that Hades had placed in his breast pocket. There seemed to be little chance of regaining the poem without a fearsome struggle, and besides, without the bookworms and the Prose Portal, Polly would stay in her Wordsworthian prison forever. Mycroft bit his lip nervously and turned his attention to the other people in the room. Besides himself and Hades there were four others—and two of them held guns.

‘Welcome, Professor Next,’ said Hades as he grinned broadly, ‘from one genius to another!’

He gazed fondly at the machine. He ran a finger along the rim of one of the goldfish bowls. The worms were busy reading a copy of Mansfield Park and were discussing where Sir Thomas got his money from.

‘I can’t do this alone, you know,’ said Hades without looking up. One of the other men shuffled to get more comfortable on one of the few original upholstered armchairs.

‘The next step for me is to gain your full support.’ He looked at Mycroft with a serious expression. ‘You will help me, won’t you?’

‘I would sooner die!’ replied Mycroft coldly.

Acheron looked at him, then broke into another broad grin.

‘I don’t doubt it for one moment, but I’m being rude! I have abducted you and stolen your life’s work and haven’t even introduced myself!’ He walked up to Mycroft and shook him warmly by the hand, a gesture that Mycroft didn’t return.

‘My name is Hades, Acheron Hades. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?’

‘Acheron the extortionist?’ asked Mycroft slowly. ‘Acheron the kidnapper and the blackmailer?’

Acheron’s smile didn’t leave his lips.

‘Yes, yes and yes. But you forgot murderer. Forty-two times a murderer, my friend. The first one is always the hardest. After that it doesn’t really matter, they can only hang you once. It’s a bit like eating a packet of shortbread; you can never just have one piece.’ He laughed again. ‘I had a run-in with your niece, you know. She survived, although,’ he added, in case Mycroft erroneously believed there was a vestige of goodness in his dark soul, ‘that wasn’t the way I had planned it.’