“Where you been, then?” Dick said. “En’t seen you for weeks.”
“Things to do,” she said. “People to see. Books to read.”
“Hello, Lyra,” said Billy, an amiable boy who had been following Dick around since they were in elementary school. “How you doing?”
“Hello, Billy. Is there room for me there?”
“Who’s this?” said one of the girls.
They all ignored her. Billy moved up along the bench, and Lyra sat down.
“Hey,” said the other girl. “What you doing butting in?”
Lyra ignored her too. “You’re not still working in the market, Dick?” she said.
“No, sod that for a lark. Heaving spuds around, piling cabbages up. I’m working at the mail depot now. What you drinking, Lyra?”
“Badger,” she said, inwardly delighted. She’d been right about his job.
Dick got up and squeezed out past one of the girls, who protested, “What you doing, Dick? Who’s she?”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
He looked at Lyra with a lazy sort of smile in his eyes, and she looked back, bold and calm and complicit. Then he was gone, and the girl picked up her handbag and went after him, complaining. Lyra hadn’t looked at her once. The other girl said, “What’d he call you? Laura?”
“Lyra.”
Billy said, “This is Ellen. She works in the telephone exchange.”
“Oh, right,” said Lyra. “What you doing now, Billy?”
“I’m with Acott’s in the High Street.”
“Selling pianos? I didn’t know you could play the piano.”
“I can’t. I just move ’em. Like tonight, there’s a concert at the town hall, and they got a lousy piano there, so they hired one from us, a good ’un. Took three of us to move it, but you get what you pay for. What you up to? You done your exams yet?”
“Not yet.”
“What exams? You a student?” said the girl.
Lyra nodded. Dick came back with a half pint of Badger ale. The other girl had gone.
“Oh, a half. Thank you for my half pint, Dick,” said Lyra. “If I’d known you were short of money, I’d have asked for a glass of water.”
“Where’s Rachel?” said the girl.
Dick sat down. “I didn’t get you a pint because there was this article in the paper,” he said. “It says women shouldn’t drink all that much at once, it’s too strong for ’em, it sends ’em mad with strange lusts and desires.”
“Too much for you to cope with, then,” Lyra said.
“Well, I could manage, but I was just thinking of the innocent bystanders.”
“Has Rachel gone?” said the girl, trying to peer through the crowd.
“You’re looking very gyptian tonight,” Lyra said to Dick.
“You got to show off your best features, en’t you,” he said.
“Is that what you call ’em?”
“You remember my grandad’s gyptian. Giorgio Brabandt. He’s good-looking too. He’ll be in Oxford later this week—I’ll introduce you.”
“I’m fed up with this,” the girl said to Billy.
“Ah, come on, Ellen…”
“I’m going with Rachel. You can come or not, as you like,” she said, and her starling dæmon flapped his wings on her shoulder as she got up.
Billy looked at Dick, who shrugged; so Billy got up as well.
“See you, Dick. Cheers, Lyra,” he said, and followed the girl out through the crowded bar.
“Well, fancy that,” said Dick. “We’re all alone.”
“Tell me about the mail place. What is it you do?”
“It’s the main sorting office for the south of England. Stuff comes in on the mail trains in sealed sacks and we open them and sort the post into regions. Then we take it back out in boxes, different colors for different regions, and load ’em onto other trains, or on the zeppelin for London.”
“And that goes on all day?”
“All day and night. Round the clock. What you want to know for?”
“I got a reason. Maybe I’ll tell you, maybe I won’t. What shift are you on?”
“Nights this week. I’ll be starting at ten tonight.”
“Is there a man who works there—a big hefty man—who was working on Monday night, yesterday night, and who hurt his leg?”
“That’s a peculiar question. There’s hundreds of people working there, specially this time of year.”
“I suppose so….”
“But as it happens, I think I know who you mean. There’s a big ugly bugger by the name of Benny Morris. I heard off someone earlier today that he’d hurt his leg falling off a ladder. Pity it wasn’t his neck. Funny thing is, he was working last night, first part of the shift anyway, then he cleared off partway through. At least, no one saw him after about midnight. Then this afternoon I hear he’s broken his leg, or summing like that.”
“Is it easy to get out of the depot without anyone knowing?”
“Well, you couldn’t get out the main gate without someone seeing you. But it’s not hard to jump over the fence—or to get through. What’s going on, Lyra?”
Dick’s dæmon, Bindi, had jumped lightly up on the bench beside him and was watching Lyra with bright black eyes. Pan was on the table near Lyra’s elbow. They were both following the conversation closely.
Lyra leant in and spoke more quietly. “Last night, after midnight, someone climbed out the depot over the gate by the allotments, and walked along by the river and joined another man, who was hiding among the trees. Then a third man came along the path from the station, and they attacked him. They killed him and hid his body down among the rushes. It wasn’t there this morning, because we went to look.”
“How d’you know that?”
“ ’Cause we saw it.”
“Why en’t you told the police?”
Lyra took a long sip of her beer while keeping her eyes on his face. Then she put it down. “We can’t,” she said. “There’s a good reason.”
“What were you doing down there anyway, after midnight?”