‘I assume he took it to the meeting?’
‘No, obviously not. Look, I've added my number to your phone. Call me if you think of anything. Make yourself a coffee and stay away from men with guns.’
Standing up, she gave him a small bow and then headed out the back door. Julius looked after her, perplexed. Something was wrong, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. He had a strong urge for a cup of coffee, so he flicked on the kettle and began to tidy up the kitchen. After one sip of coffee he shot out the back door, hoping to catch sight of which way the strange woman had gone. What the hell was wrong with him? He had blurted out all that stuff about the egg without so much as asking to see her ID card. If she was the police, why did she break in?, And why did she leave so quickly?
Angry with himself, he tried to replay the past half hour, but it seemed ridiculous. Monsters and burglars? Verbal diarrhoea and strange women? And no egg. He tried to remember what she had said. “It was obvious that they didn't have the egg?” Why? He took another sip and chided himself for his stupidity. If they had the egg, they wouldn’t have broken in looking for it. What else did she say? He pulled out his phone and opened his contacts, scrolling to the Ns. He hit dial. She answered after the first ring.
‘Hello Julius. Have you had any coffee?’
‘Yes, but what’s that got to do with anything. I want —’
‘Good. Now, like I said, call me if anything new happens. You did really well today. Goodbye.’
‘I’m going to call the police!’
‘Okay. Goodbye.’ This time she hung up.
He dialled again, but the phone went straight to voice mail. Picking up the nested Russian dolls, he placed them in his backpack and cycled straight to the police station.
The police officers took his statement and looked at the dolls with mild interest, then said they would send officers to investigate the house again. The idea that a Fabergé egg may be involved had tweaked their interest, and they said that the London detectives were sure to get in touch soon. For some reason he hadn't mentioned Neith; he had felt a strange sense of gratitude to her for helping him out, plus he felt they had bonded over their mutual annoyance at the books being thrown about. If he was honest, he felt that if he had to explain her presence, he would also have to explain the weird visions and the fact that he blabbed his mouth to a total stranger. He’d had enough of acting like a total idiot for the day, nor did he want to be sectioned for the evening.
He left the station deflated; the officers hadn't even asked to keep the doll, so he cycled home and placed it on his mantelpiece, then poured himself a large glass of red wine. His head ached and he just wanted Charlie to be alive.
#17 Neith – Beta Earth
The weather was miserable. Something cold fell from the sky, and it was either wet snow or thick rain. I hurried back to our house. The heating pads on my base layer had worn out and I was shivering badly. I know I'm supposed to be stronger than this, and I am. I have spent hours holed up in snowdrifts above Uppsala. I even trudged through the Siberian tundra in November. I can do cold. But there’s something about the damp wet sludge of the British mainland in winter that just destroys me. I'd only been here a fortnight, but I was already missing the baking mud of the banks of the Canopus, the light breezes by the Saharan oasis. Hell, I’d been homesick since day one.
I pulled my phone out of my padded jacket pocket and called Clio. We needed to know everything about Charles’ friends, in particular who had access to his house keys. Before I hung up, I told her to run a hot bath, then continued along the street. My hood was up and I was hunkered down against the elements and the general population. The man I’d met had been interesting. Betas never attracted me much. I mean, don’t get me wrong, my blood runs red and he was unbelievably hot. But what I meant was that he had caught my attention. Despite the horrors of the psychedelic bang, he had managed to not soil his pants, which was more than we could say about the two goons who had been downstairs. He’d done some pretty impressive research, and I liked his theory about the sand. Brave and intelligent beats pretty, any day.
The egg was somewhere here in Cambridge, I was certain of it. In three days it would surface, as it rolled out of someone's hand and under the path of a double-decker bus.
We had booked a private house rather than a hotel. In a small city like Cambridge this gave us greater privacy. Hotels here were too intimate and we would draw attention to ourselves. Instead, I hurried back to our city centre house and ran up the staircase and into the bathroom, shedding my layers as I went. I shouted out to the team that we would debrief in the bathroom.
The room was steamy, and from the smell, Clio had poured half a box of aromatic salts into the water. Peeling off my bottom layer, I slipped into the water and let out a deep, contented sigh.
‘Shall I join you?’ said a grinning Ramin as he walked in with the others.
‘Bugger off. There's barely room in here for one and I am not sharing.’
Paul had booked the best he could, but the only ones with steam rooms or saunas were miles out in the countryside, so baths it was. And this small one was mine. The British on either earth were not
