The Book of Dust: The Secret Commonwealth (Book of Dust, Volume 2)

by Philip Pullman

  There was a pause.

  “Compensation?”

  “That’s right. All our employees are entitled to injury insurance. Part of your wages goes towards it. All we have to do is fill in a form. May I come in?”

  Morris stood aside, and Malcolm stepped into the narrow hall and shut the door behind him. Boiled cabbage, sweat, and pungent smokeleaf joined the smell of drink.

  “May we sit down?” said Malcolm. “I need to get out some papers.”

  Morris opened a door into a cold and dusty parlor. He struck a match and lit the gas mantle on a wall bracket. A yellowish light seeped out of it but didn’t have the energy to go far. He pulled out a chair from under a flimsy table and sat down, taking care to demonstrate the pain and difficulty the process caused him.

  Malcolm sat on the chair opposite, took some papers from his briefcase, and uncapped a fountain pen. “Now, if we could just be precise about the nature of your injury,” he said cheerfully. “How did it happen?”

  “Oh. Yeah. I was doing some work outside in the yard. Clearing a gutter. And the ladder slipped.”

  “You hadn’t braced it?”

  “Oh, yeah, I always brace a ladder. Common sense, innit?”

  “But it still slipped?”

  “Yeah. It was a wet day. That’s why I was clearing the gutter, like, ’cause there was all moss and dirt in it and the water couldn’t flow proper. It was all gushing down outside the kitchen window.”

  Malcolm wrote something down. “Did you have anyone helping you?”

  “No. Just me.”

  “Ah. You see,” said Malcolm in a concerned tone, “for full compensation to be paid, we need to be sure that the client—that’s you—took every sensible precaution against accident. And when working with ladders, that normally involves having another person to hold the ladder.”

  “Oh, yeah, well, there was Jimmy. My mate Jimmy Turner. He was with me. He must’ve gone inside for a second.”

  “I see,” said Malcolm, writing. “Could you let me know Mr. Turner’s address?”

  “Er—yeah, sure. He lives in Norfolk Street. Number—I can’t remember his number.”

  “Norfolk Street. That’ll do. We’ll find him. Was it Mr. Turner who went for help when you fell?”

  “Yeah…This, er, this compensation…how much is it likely to be?”

  “It partly depends on the nature of the injury, which we’ll go into in a minute. And on how long you’re likely to be away from work.”

  “Right, yeah.”

  Morris’s dæmon was sitting as close as she could get to his chair. Asta was watching her, and already the dog was beginning to twitch and look away. The faint beginning of a growl came from her throat, and Morris’s hand reached down automatically to grasp her ears.

  “How long has the doctor recommended you to stay off work?” Malcolm said.

  “Oh, two weeks, about. Depends. It might heal quicker, it might not.”

  “Of course. And now the injury itself. What damage did you actually do?”

  “Damage?”

  “To yourself.”

  “Oh, right. Well, I thought at first I’d broke me leg, but the doctor said it was a sprain.”

  “Which part of your leg?”

  “Er—the knee. Me left knee.”

  “A sprained knee?”

  “I sort of twisted it as I fell.”

  “I see. Did the doctor examine you properly?”

  “Yeah. My mate Jimmy helped me inside, right, and then he went to fetch the doctor.”

  “And the doctor examined the injury?”

  “That’s what he did, yeah.”

  “And said it was a sprain?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you see, this is a little confusing for me, because the information I have is that you were rather badly cut.”

  Asta saw the man’s hand tighten on the ears of his dæmon. “Cut,” said Morris, “yeah, I was, yeah.”

  “It was a cut as well as a sprain?”

  “There was glass around. I repaired a window the week before and there must have been some broken glass….Where’d you get this information from anyway?”

  “A friend of yours. He said you were rather badly cut behind the knee. I can’t quite picture how you came to be cut there, you see.”

  “Who was this friend? What’s his name?”

  Malcolm had an acquaintance in the City of Oxford police, a friend from his boyhood—a docile and affectionate child then, and a man of honest decency now. Malcolm had asked him, without saying why, if he knew of a constable at the police station in St. Aldate’s who had a heavy, thick voice and a Liverpool accent. Malcolm’s friend knew the man at once, and his expression told Malcolm what he thought of him. He gave Malcolm the name.

  “George Paston,” said Malcolm.

  Morris’s dæmon uttered a sudden yelp and stood up. Asta was already on her feet, tail slowly swinging from side to side. Malcolm himself sat quite still, but he knew where everything was, and how heavy the table was likely to be, and which leg of Morris’s was injured, and he was balanced partly on the chair but partly on his feet, ready to spring. Very quietly, as if from an immense distance, and only for a moment or two, both Malcolm and Asta heard the sound of a pack of dogs barking.

  Morris’s face, until then heavily flushed, went white.

  “No,” he said, “wait a minute, wait a minute. George Pas—I don’t know anyone called George Paston. Who is he?”

  Morris might already have lashed out, except that Malcolm’s calm and concerned expression had him utterly confused.

  “He says he knows you well,” Malcolm said. “As a matter of fact, he says he was with you when you got that injury.”

  “He wasn’t—I told you, it was Jimmy Turner who was with me. George Paston? I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, he came to us, you see,” Malcolm said, watching carefully without seeming to, “and he was anxious to let us know that your injury was genuine so that you wouldn’t suffer any loss of earnings. He said it was quite a bad cut—a knife was involved—but oddly enough he didn’t mention anything about a ladder. Or about a sprain.”

  “Who are you?” Morris demanded.

  “Let me give you my card,” said Malcolm, and took from his breast pocket a card that named him as Arthur Donaldson, Insurance Assessor, Royal Mail.

  Morris peered at it, frowning, and put it on the table. “What’d he say then, this George Paston?”

  “He said you’d suffered an injury, and your absence from work had a good reason for it. Your situation was genuine. And as he was a police officer, naturally we believed him.”

  “A police— No, I don’t know him at all. He must’ve got me confused.”

  “His account was very detailed. He said he helped you away from the place where the injury happened and brought you home.”

  “But it was here! I fell off a bloody ladder!”

  “What were you wearing at the time?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? What I normally wear.”

  “The trousers you’re wearing now, for instance?”

  “No! I had to throw them away.”

  “Because they were covered in blood?”

  “No, no, you’re getting me confused now. It wasn’t like that. There was me here and Jimmy Turner, and no one else.”

  “What about the third man?”

  “There wasn’t anyone else!”

  “But Mr. Paston is very clear about it. There was no ladder in his account. He said you and he had stopped for a chat, and you were attacked by a third man, who cut your leg badly.”

  Morris wiped his face with both hands. “Look,” he said, “I didn’t ask for no compensation. I can do without it. This is
all mixed up. This Paston, he’s got me confused with someone else. I don’t know nothing about what he’s saying. It’s all lies.”

  “Well, I expect the court will sort it out.”

  “What court?”

  “The Criminal Injuries Board. All we need now is your signature on this form, and we can go ahead.”

  “It’s all right. Forget it. I don’t want no compensation, not if it comes with all these stupid questions. I never asked for this.”

  “No, you didn’t, I agree,” said Malcolm, in his most bland and soothing way. “But I’m afraid that once the process has started, we can’t go back and undo it. Let’s just get this business of the third man out of the way, the man with the knife. Did you know him?”

  “I never—there wasn’t no third man—”

  “Sergeant Paston says you were both surprised when he fought back.”

  “He en’t a sergeant! He’s a const—” Morris fell silent.

  “I’ve got you,” said Malcolm.

  A slow dark red flush moved up from Morris’s neck to his cheeks. His fists were clenched, pressing down so hard on the table that his arms were trembling.

  His dæmon was growling more loudly than ever, but Asta could see that she’d never attack: she was mortally afraid.

  “You en’t—” Morris croaked. “You en’t nothing to do with the Royal Mail.”

  “You’ve only got one chance,” said Malcolm. “Tell me everything, and I’ll put in a word for you. If you don’t do that, you’ll face a murder charge.”

  “You en’t the police,” said Morris.

  “No. I’m something else. But don’t get distracted by that. I know enough already to put you in the dock for murder. Tell me about George Paston.”

  Something of the defiance went out of Morris, and his dæmon backed away as far as she could get from Asta, who simply stood and watched.

  “He’s…he’s bent. He’s a copper, all right, but he’s as twisted as hell. He’ll do anything, get you anything, steal anything, hurt anyone. I knew he was a killer, but I never seen him do it, not till…”

  “It was Paston who killed the other man?”

  “Yeah! It couldn’t’ve been me. He’d done my fucking leg by then. I was on the ground, I couldn’t move nowhere.”

  “Who was the victim?”

  “I dunno. No need to know. I didn’t care who the hell he was.”

  “Why did Paston want to attack him?”

  “Orders, I suppose.”

  “Orders from whom? From where?”

  “Paston…He’s got someone over him who tells him what jobs he wants done, right—I dunno who that is.”

  “Paston’s never given you any clue?”

  “No, I only know what he tells me, and he keeps a lot of it close to his chest. That’s all right with me. I don’t want to know anything that’ll get me into trouble.”

  “You’re in trouble already.”

  “But I never killed him! Never! That wasn’t part of the plan. We was just supposed to smack him a bit and take his bag, his rucksack, whatever he was carrying.”

  “And did you take it?”

  “No, ’cause he wasn’t carrying nothing. I says to George he must’ve had something, he must’ve left it in the station or passed it to someone else.”

  “When did you say that? Before or after he was killed?”

  “I can’t remember. It was an accident. We never meant to kill him.”

  Malcolm wrote for a minute, two minutes, three. Morris sat slumped without moving, as if all the strength had gone out of him, and his dæmon was whimpering at his feet. Asta, still on guard in case the dæmon made a sudden move, sat down carefully but kept watching.

  Then Malcolm said, “This man who tells Paston what to do.”

  “What about him?”

  “Does Paston ever talk about him? Mention a name, for instance?”

  “He’s a Scholar. That’s all I know.”

  “No, it isn’t. You know more than that.”

  Morris said nothing. His dæmon was lying flat on the floor, her eyes closed tight, but as soon as Asta took a step towards her, she sprang up in alarm and backed away behind the man’s chair.

  “No!” said Morris, flinching too.

  “What’s his name?” said Malcolm.

  “Talbot.”

  “Just Talbot?”

  “Simon Talbot.”

  “College?”

  “Cardinal’s.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Paston told me. He says he’s got something on him.”

  “Paston knows something about him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he tell you what that was?”

  “No. He was prob’ly just boasting.”

  “Tell me as much as you know.”

  “I can’t. He’d kill me. Paston—you don’t know what he’s like. There’s no one else that knows this, only me, and if he finds out you know, he’ll know it’s come from me, and—I’ve said too much already. I was lying. I never told you nothing.”

  “In that case, I’ll have to ask Paston myself. I’ll make sure he knows how helpful you’ve been.”

  “No, no, no, please, don’t do that. He’s a terrible man. You can’t imagine what he’d do. Killing’s nothing to him. That man by the river—he killed him like killing a fly. That’s all it was to him.”

  “You haven’t told me enough about this Talbot man at Cardinal’s. Have you met him?”

  “No. How would I have done that?”

  “Well, how did Paston know him?”

  “He’s the liaison officer for that group of colleges. If they need any police contact, for any reason, he’s the one they speak to.”

  That made sense to Malcolm. There were arrangements like that in place for all the colleges. The Proctors, the university police, dealt with most matters of discipline, but it was thought to be good for town-gown relations to have regular informal contact with the police.

  He stood up. Such was Morris’s fear that he shrank back on his chair. Malcolm saw it, and Morris saw that he saw.

  “If you say one word to Paston about this, I’ll know,” said Malcolm. “And you’ll be finished.”

  Morris feebly caught at Malcolm’s sleeve. “Please,” he said, “don’t give me to him. He’s—”

  “Let go.”

  Morris’s hand dropped away.

  “If you don’t want to end up on the wrong side of Paston, you’ll have to keep your mouth shut, won’t you?” Malcolm said.

  “Who are you, anyway? That card en’t real. You don’t come from the Royal Mail.”

  Malcolm ignored him and walked out. Morris’s dæmon whimpered.

  “Simon Talbot?” Malcolm said to Asta as they shut the door and walked away. “Well, well.”

  Pantalaimon knew he’d have to move at night and hide during the day: that was a given. It was also necessary to follow the river, because that would take him to the heart of London and thence to the docks, and whereas there were plenty of places to hide along the riverbank, there would be far fewer beside the main roads. He’d deal with the city when he got there.

  It was harder going than he’d thought it would be. Roaming through Oxford under the moon was one thing, because he knew every corner so well, but he soon realized how much he’d miss Lyra’s ability to look things up, to ask questions, to function successfully in a world of human beings. He missed that even more at first than he missed the softness of her flesh, the scent of her warm hair when it needed washing, the touch of her hands, and he missed those terribly: on his first night away he couldn’t sleep, no matter how comfortable the mossy fork of an old oak where he curled up.

  But it had been impossible. They couldn’t live together. She’d become unbearable, with her ne
w hard, dogmatic certainty and the condescending half smile she couldn’t conceal when he spoke of things she’d once been eager to hear about, or criticized that loathsome novel which had so warped her understanding.

  And The Hyperchorasmians was the center of his quest, for the time being. He knew the author’s name: Gottfried Brande. He knew Brande was, or had been, a professor of philosophy at Wittenberg. That was all he knew in the way of facts and reason, and it would have to do. But in the realm of dreams and thoughts and memories, he was perfectly at home and perfectly certain: someone had stolen Lyra’s imagination, and he was going to find it, wherever it was, and take it home to her.

  * * *

  * * *

  “What do we know about this Simon Talbot?” said Glenys Godwin.

  The Oakley Street Director was sitting in Charles Capes’s rooms in Wykeham College together with Capes, and Hannah Relf, and Malcolm. The morning was clear and fresh, and the sun shone through an open window onto the richly spotted fur of Godwin’s paralyzed dæmon, where he lay on Capes’s desk. Godwin and Capes both had now read all the documents Malcolm had copied, and they had listened with interest to what Malcolm had found out from Benny Morris.

  “Talbot’s a philosopher,” said Capes. “So-called. He doesn’t believe in objective reality. It’s a fashionable attitude among undergraduates with an essay to write. A flashy writer—witty, if you like that sort of thing—very popular lecturer. He’s beginning to acquire a bit of a following among the younger Scholars, mind you.”

  “More than a bit, I think,” said Hannah. “He’s rather a star.”

  “Do we know of any connection between him and Geneva?” asked Malcolm.

  “No,” said the whisper of Godwin’s dæmon. “There could hardly be any common ground, if he means what he says.”

  “I think the point is that he says nothing means anything very much,” said Capes. “It might be quite easy for him to play at supporting the Magisterium. I’m not sure they’d trust him, though.”

  “This police liaison business,” said Glenys Godwin. “Talbot’s college is Cardinal’s, is that right?”

  “That’s right,” said Hannah. “The colleges are organized in groups for that sort of thing. The others in that group are Foxe, Broadgates, and Oriel.”