building and rode up in the elevator to the top floor.
She let herself into the flat and then froze in the doorway. The sitting
room had been ransacked - even the rugs had been pulled up and the
paintings ripped from the walls. In a daze she picked her way through
the litter of broken furniture and smashed ornaments. She glanced into
the bedroom as she went down the passage, and saw that it had not
escaped. Her clothes and those of Duraid were strewn over the floor, and
the doors of the cupboards stood ajar. One of these was smashed off its
hinges. The bed was overturned, and the sheets and bolsters had been
flung about.
She could smell the reek of broken cosmetic and perfume bottles from the
bathroom, but she could not yet bring herself to go in there. She knew
what she would find.
Instead she continued down the passage to the large room that they had
used as a study and workshop.
In the chaos the first thing that she noticed and mourried was the
antique chess set that Duraid had given her as a wedding present. The
board of jet and ivory squares was broken in half and the pieces had
been thrown about the room with vindictive and unnecessary violence. She
stooped and picked up the white queen. Her head had been snapped off.
Holding the queen in her good hand she moved like a sleepwalker to her
desk below the window. Her PC was wrecked. They had shattered the screen
and hacked the mainframe with what must have been an axe. She could tell
at a glance that there was no information left on the hard drive; it was
beyond repair.
She glanced down at the drawer in which she kept her floppy disks. That
and all the other drawers had been pulled out and thrown on the floor.
They were empty, of course; along with the disks, all her notebooks and
photographs were missing. Her last connections with the seventh scroll
were lost. After three years of work, gone was the proof that it had
ever existed.
She stumped down on the floor, feeling beaten and exhausted. Her arm
started to ache again, and she was alone and vulnerable as she had never
been in her life before. She had never thought that she would miss
Duraid so desperately. Her shoulders began to shake and she felt the
tears welling up from deep within her. She tried to hold them back, but
they scalded her eyelids and she let them flow. She sat amongst the
wreckage of her life and wept until there was nothing more left within
her, and then she curled up on the littered carpet and fell, into the
sleep of exhaustion and despair.
the Monday morning she had managed to restore some order into her life.
The police had come to the flat and taken her statement, and she had
tidied up most of the disarray. She had even glued the head back on her
white queen. When she left the flat and climbed into the green Renault
her arm was feeling easier, and, if not cheerful, she was at least a
great deal more optimistic, and sure of what she had to do.
When she reached the museum she went first to Duraid's office and was
annoyed to find that Nahoot was there before her. He was supervising two
of the security guards as they cleared out all Duraid's personal
effects.
