‘Come and get me, dipshits,’ it said. ‘You think you’re so fucking powerful. What do you think you can do?’
And a few lines lower down:
‘Ha ha! Agent Bishop, you can stick your gun up your ass. You can’t fucking touch me, and you know it.’
The rants went on and on. Alex scanned down them to the bottom, where Baxter’s fans had posted hundreds of comments in response. ‘WTF????’ asked one bemused poster. ‘What is Baxter on about? Is he nuts?’
‘Baxter is not nuts,’ said another. ‘His new part in
‘What’s VIA?’ asked another. ‘Sounds like some kinda government department? I looked it up but can’t find it. Is Baxter under investigation for something?? Worried.’
‘Shit,’ Alex said. ‘Not good.’ Suddenly, the rest of her case-load would have to wait. She was going to have to deal with this fast, before this idiot splashed the Federation across the whole human media.
Chapter Fifteen
A cold, thin morning drizzle was falling over the city centre as Chloe Dempsey got off the Oxford Park and Ride bus, pulled her coat collar up around her ears and set off at a brisk walk towards the museum where her father worked. In the duffel bag over her shoulder were the broken stone fragments she’d found, each piece carefully bundled up in tissue and bubble-wrap.
As the church-like facade of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History on South Parks Road came into view, Chloe smiled to herself. One of the benefits of having taken the plunge and come to study in England was that she could zap down the motorway to see her dad as often as she wanted. She treasured the chance to catch up on the lost years every bit as much as he did. He was a little fatter now, a little greyer, possibly a little scattier, but still the same old dad she’d loved and missed. The quirk that had most exasperated her mom was the thing that most endeared him to Chloe — the way he could just lose himself in his work, passionately absorbed for hours on end. Sometimes Chloe thought that if nobody ever disturbed him, dear old Dad could sit staring at some historic relic until he died of hunger.
The inevitable divorce had come when Chloe had been fourteen. It still hurt her, the way her mother had treated him back then. The kindly, gentle New Jersey academic had never been quite ambitious enough for his wife; dusty, half-forgotten books held infinitely more appeal for Professor Emeritus Matt Dempsey than aspiring to membership of the country club.
That was where Chloe’s mother had first met Bernie Silberman, the millionaire cosmetic dentist. Within six months she’d packed her bags, moved out of the cluttered, rambling old family home and traded the life of a professor’s wife for the glamour of Bernie’s high-society circles and the house in the Hamptons, dragging the reluctant teenage Chloe with her.
The sudden split had plunged Matt Dempsey into a bout of depression that had cost him his job and, if he’d carried on drinking the way he had been in those days, almost his life. It was his passion for history, the thing that had driven his ex-wife so crazy, that had saved him. When Chloe was sixteen, her father had cleaned himself up and taken the radical step of emigrating to England and settling in Oxford. With his academic record he’d had no problem in getting a job as curator at the prestigious Pitt Rivers Museum, the home of one of Britain’s most extensive and valuable collections of antiquities from across the world.
Chloe had detested living with her mom and Bernie, and it would have been easy for her to slip into a disaffected teen rebel rut — not that either of them would have noticed. Instead, she’d poured her angst and frustration into her school work, excelling in academic subjects but especially at sports. When she’d announced that she’d gained a place at the University of Bedfordshire in England to take a degree in Sports Studies, her mother — whose life now orbited solely around her teeth, her tan, her wardrobe and her golfing buddies — had barely batted a Botoxed eyelid.
Entering the Natural History Museum, Chloe took the familiar path across the ground floor to the Pitt Rivers entrance on the far wall. Walking into the small, cluttered, somewhat musty museum was like stepping back into the past. Chloe skirted around the display cabinets filled with ancient model ships and the giant carved totem pole and headed towards the workshops and staff section. Her father could usually be found at his desk, utterly absorbed in some old artifact. Today it was a sheaf of yellowed documents in a forgotten language Chloe wasn’t even going to try to identify. As ever, the small office was a crazy clutter, papers everywhere, bookshelves threatening to split from the sheer weight of the volumes stuffed into and piled on top of them, more books piled on chairs, on the floor.
‘Hi, Dad.’
‘It’s great to see you again.’ Matt Dempsey rose up quickly to hug her, then started clearing a space for her to sit down. ‘When did you get back from Romania?’
‘Just last night.’
‘I was about to make a coffee. Want one?’
‘From your third-century BC percolator? Love one.’
‘How’s the course?’ he asked as he fiddled with the battered machine.
‘Loving it. Did I tell you — I’m starting training for next year’s national inter-college pentathlon championships?’
‘Ah, the noble pentathlon, sport of the mythological Jason, lauded by Aristotle. The magnificent discus of Perseus. The venerable art of wrestling.’ Matt paused. ‘Though that sounds a little rough, I have to say. Are you sure—’
She laughed. ‘Things have moved on a little since Ancient Greece, Dad. They dropped the wrestling, discus and javelin centuries ago. Nowadays we do cross-country running, swimming, horse-riding, fencing and shooting.’
Matt’s face fell. ‘They let you handle firearms?’
‘Just an air pistol.’
‘Honey, why did it have to be
Chloe sighed. ‘If you saw it, you’d see it’s just a competition target pistol. Nothing too dangerous, I promise. Unless you happen to be a flimsy paper target. Then you’re in
‘I just don’t want you getting hurt.’
‘Don’t sweat it, Dad.’
He handed her a coffee. ‘Anyway. Sounds like you’re having a great time. No regrets, then.’
‘About coming over here to study? Not a shred of a regret. And I get to come here and see you, don’t I?’
Matt smiled. ‘Have you heard from your mother recently?’
‘Not since the last facelift.’
He grimaced. ‘Heavens. How many is that now?’
‘Put it this way, I think Bernie started making secret calls to his accountant. She keeps on like this, she’ll bankrupt the sonofabitch. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.’ Chloe started unzipping her bag. ‘Listen, Dad, I actually came over here specially to bring you something I found in Romania. Here it is. It’s kind of in pieces, but I think you’ll find it interesting.’
Her father was already carefully unwrapping the fragments. He cleared a space on the desk, angled a bright lamp and examined them closely as Chloe quickly described how she’d stumbled over them at the foot of the mountain. ‘What they are,’ she said, ‘I have no idea.’
Matt started arranging the stone pieces into different patterns on his desk. ‘Well, they obviously all belong to the same object. Fascinating. It’s old, that’s for sure. Very old.’
