at six o’clock, after the museum closed.
Matt examined the grand Victorian building. It looked like something out of a fairy tale with its terracotta and blue bricks, its Gothic towers and its menagerie of carved stone animals poking out of every nook and corner. There was a stream of people pouring out of the main entrance, down the curved walkways, past the line of wrought-iron lamps and on to the lawns on either side.
“Let’s go in,” Richard said.
They went up to the gate, where a security guard stood, blocking their way. “I’m very sorry,” he said. “You’re too late for today…”
“We have an appointment with Professor Dravid,” Richard told him.
“Professor Dravid? Yes, sir. Of course. You can ask at the enquiries desk.”
They climbed the steps and went in. There were certainly plenty of dinosaurs. As Matt entered the museum he was greeted by the black skull of a huge creature. The skull was at the end of an elongated neck, suspended from an arch that swept over the entrance. He looked around him. The dinosaur skeleton was the centrepiece in a vast hall which – with its many arches, its glass and steel roof, its broad staircase and mosaic floor – looked like a cross between a cathedral and a railway station.
They went to the enquiries desk, which, like the rest of the museum, was just closing.
“My name is Richard Cole. I’m here to see Professor Dravid.”
“Ah, yes. The professor is expecting you. His office is on the first floor.”
A second guard pointed at a stone staircase that led up to a balcony overlooking the main entrance hall. They walked towards it, passing many other dinosaur skeletons, some in glass cases, others standing free. A few last remaining visitors went by, on their way out. The museum seemed bigger and somehow more mysterious now that it was empty. They climbed the stone stairs and continued along a corridor to a solid wooden door. Richard knocked and they went in.
Professor Sanjay Dravid was sitting in the middle of a room stacked high with books, magazines, files and loose bundles of paper. The walls were covered with charts, graphs and maps. He was typing something into a laptop, working at a desk which was itself crowded with more papers, dozens of specimens in glass cases, bits of bone, and pieces of crystal and stone. He was in his late forties, Matt thought. His hair was black and neatly brushed and he had dark, tired eyes. His jacket hung over the back of his chair.
“Professor Dravid?” Richard asked.
The man looked up. “You’re Richard Cole?” He finished typing his sentence, pressed ENTER and closed the laptop. “Susan Ashwood telephoned me after she met you.” His voice was warm and cultured. “I’m glad you decided to get in touch.”
“How do you know Miss Ashwood?”
“We’ve known each other for many years.” Dravid turned to Matt, examining him minutely. “You must be Matt. Nobody’s told me your full name.”
“I’m just Matt.”
“Well, please sit down. I’m sorry I can’t offer you any refreshments. There is a cafe here, although of course it’s closed now. But perhaps you ate on the train…”
Richard and Matt sat down in front of the desk. “What’s the exhibition about?” Richard asked.
“It is without question the most remarkable exhibition of dinosaur fossils ever assembled in London,” Dravid replied. “You saw the diplodocus as you came in?” He spoke very quickly and all the time his eyes never once left Matt. Matt could feel himself being weighed up, assessed. “Very hard to miss it. It’s about one hundred and fifty million years old and probably the longest land animal that ever lived. Shipped all the way from the United States, bone by bone, just for the exhibition. And then there’s a first-rate ceratosaurus – a recent find. It would tear you apart in seconds if it were still alive. And then there are the museum’s own specimens, including a virtually intact paracyclotosaurus skeleton. It resembles a crocodile, although in fact it’s no relation.”
He stopped suddenly.
“But of course that’s not why you’re here.”
“We want to know about Raven’s Gate,” Richard said.
“So Miss Ashwood told me.”
“She wouldn’t tell us anything. She said we had to meet you.”
“Do you know what it is?” Matt asked.
“Raven’s Gate? Yes, I do.”
“Can you tell us?”
“That depends. I’m not entirely sure…”
Matt ran out of patience. “Why is it that nobody wants to help me?” he demanded. “You sit here, tapping away at your laptop and talking about dinosaurs. You don’t know what I’ve been through. I’ve been dumped in Yorkshire. I’ve been pushed around and terrorized, and the only people who have tried to help me have ended up dead. Richard doesn’t want me hanging around with him, and now we’ve come all the way down here and you’re not saying anything either. You were the one who wanted to see us. Why won’t you tell us what we want to know?”
“He’s right,” Richard agreed. “We’ve spent hours on a train to King’s Cross, not to mention the price of the tickets. You’ve got to make it worth our while.”
Dravid had sat silently through all this. Now he looked at Matt more carefully. “Matt… I take it you were the boy on the Internet.”
“In the library at Greater Malling. Yes.” Matt nodded. “How did you know I was searching for Raven’s Gate?”
“Thanks to a simple piece of software. Whenever anyone, anywhere in the world, enters those two words, I am informed at once.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that. Yet. And I apologize for mistrusting you, Matt. We live in a world with so many dangers that we have to be careful whom we trust. Please bear with me for a moment. There are things I need to ask you.” He paused. “You were in Greater Malling. Is that where you live?”
“No. I’m living in Lesser Malling. It’s a village-”
“I know Lesser Malling,” Dravid interrupted. “How long have you been there?”
“I don’t know. Two or three weeks.”
Dravid pressed his hands together underneath his chin. “You must tell me everything,” he said. “I want to know everything that has happened to you. I need to know exactly what brought you to me here today.” He leant back in his chair. “Begin at the beginning and don’t leave anything out.”
There was only one guard on night shift at the museum. There should have been four but, like many of London’s institutions, a shortage of funds had led to cutbacks. Two of the men had been laid off and one was sick. The one remaining guard was in his twenties. He had only recently come to England, from Bulgaria. He didn’t speak much of the language but he was learning. He liked London, although he could have done without the job.
He found it creepy patrolling the museum. There were all the dinosaur bones… they were bad enough. But the creatures in the glass cases were even more horrible: stuffed rats and leopards, eagles and owls. Spiders and scorpions and huge winged beetles. He could feel their eyes following him as he did his rounds. He should have got a job at McDonald’s or KFC. The pay would have been only fractionally worse.
He had just come out of the main door and was walking towards the gate when he heard a soft sound like the breaking of a twig. What now? It was getting dark and there was no moon tonight.
“Who is it?” he called out.
He looked up and smiled to himself, turning the torch off again. One of the ornate lamps, illuminated for the night, had blown a bulb. That was what he had heard.
“I am scared,” he muttered to himself. It was a phrase he had learned at foreign-language school only the day before. “You are scared. He is scared.”
A second bulb blinked out. Then a third and a fourth. Rapidly the darkness made its way along the whole line of lamps, squeezing the life out of the bulbs until none of them remained alight. The guard rubbed his shoulders. It suddenly felt much colder. He breathed out and saw his own breath frost. It was crazy. It was almost the end of April but it seemed that winter had just returned.
He pressed the switch of his torch. The bulb exploded in his hand, grey smoke curling beneath the glass. That
