“We ought to, though,” she said, and he said, “Yes. Come on.”
They turned back and wandered along the bank of the river, making for the willow and the oak, where rushes grew thickly and the path was muddy. Lyra looked casually all around, but there was no one sinister or threatening: just some children playing by the stream further back, a few men working their allotments, and an elderly couple on the path ahead, walking arm in arm and carrying shopping bags.
They passed the old couple, who smiled and nodded when Lyra said, “Good morning,” and then they were under the oak tree. Pan leapt up from Lyra’s shoulder and showed her where he’d lain along the branch, and then sprang down again and flowed along the grass towards the willow.
She followed him, looking for signs of a struggle on the ground, but seeing only grass and trampled mud that was no different from the rest of the path.
“Anyone coming?” she said to Pan.
He jumped up to her shoulder and looked around. “A woman with a small child and a shopping bag coming over the footbridge. No one else.”
“Let’s look in the rushes. About here, was it?”
“Yes. Right here.”
“And he pulled the dead man down to the water?”
“In among the rushes, but not all the way down. Not when I was watching, anyway. He probably came back later and did that.”
Lyra stepped off the path and down the slope where the rushes grew. They were tall, and the slope was steep, and only six feet or so from the path she was invisible from anywhere in the meadow. It was hard to keep her footing and her shoes would be ruined, but she found her balance and crouched down low and looked around carefully. Some of the rushes had been bent over, their stems broken, and something had been pulled down over the mud, something that might easily have been the size of a man.
But there was no sign of a body.
“We can’t lurk about here too long,” she said, clambering out. “We really will look suspicious.”
“Station, then.”
As they walked along the path next to the mail depot, they heard the great bell of Cardinal’s College tolling eleven, and Lyra thought of the lecture that she should be attending just then, the last of the term. Annie and Helen would be there, though, and she could borrow their notes; and perhaps that good-looking shy boy from Magdalen would be sitting at the back, as before, and perhaps this time she could have gone to sit right next to him and see what happened; and everything would go back to normal. Except that as long as that locker key was in her pocket, nothing would be normal.
“It used to be you who was impulsive,” said Pan, “and me who kept holding you back. We’re different now.”
She nodded. “Well, you know, things change….We could wait, Pan, and go back to St. Aldate’s when that policeman goes off duty. Like this evening, about six, maybe. They can’t all be in a conspiracy with him. There must be someone honest there. This isn’t…this isn’t just shoplifting. This is murder.”
“I know. I saw it.”
“And maybe by doing this we’d be helping the murderer get away with it. By interfering with the investigation. That can’t be right.”
“That’s another thing,” he said.
“What?”
“You used to be optimistic. You used to think that whatever we did would turn out well. Even after we came back from the north, you used to think that. Now you’re cautious, you’re anxious…you’re pessimistic.”
She knew he was right, but it wasn’t right that he should speak to her accusingly, as if it was something to blame her for.
“I used to be young” was all she could find to say.
He made no response.
They didn’t speak again till they reached the railway station. Then she said, “Pan, come here,” and he leapt up at once into her hands. She put him on her shoulder and said quietly, “You’re going to have to look out behind. Someone might be watching.”
He turned around and settled as she climbed the steps to the entrance. “Don’t go straight to the lockers,” he murmured. “Go and look at the magazines first. I’ll see if there’s anyone just hanging about watching.”
She nodded and turned left inside the station doors and wandered over to the bookstall. While she flicked through one magazine after another, Pan looked at all the men and women queuing for tickets, or sitting at tables drinking coffee, or checking the timetables, or asking something at the inquiry desk.
“Everyone seems to be doing something,” he said quietly. “I can’t see anyone who’s just hanging about.”
Lyra had the locker key ready in her pocket. “Shall I go?” she said.
“Yes, go on. But don’t hurry. Just walk naturally. Look at the time or the departures and arrivals board or something….”
She replaced the magazine and turned away from the bookstall. It seemed to her that a hundred pairs of eyes could have been watching, but she tried to look nonchalant as she sauntered across the floor to the other end of the booking hall, where the left-luggage lockers stood.
“All right so far,” said Pan. “No one’s watching. Just do it now.”
Locker number 36 was at waist height. She turned the key and opened the door, and found a battered canvas rucksack inside.
“Hope it’s not too heavy,” she murmured, and lifted it out, leaving the key in the door.
It was heavy, but she swung it over her right shoulder with no difficulty.
“I wish we could do what Will did,” she said.
He knew what she meant. Will Parry had a power of becoming invisible that had astonished the witches of the north, who used to vanish from sight in the same way: by reducing what was interesting about themselves until they were almost unnoticeable. He had practiced it all his life, in order to avoid being spotted by people such as police officers and social workers who might have asked what this boy was doing out of school, and started to make inquiries that would have ended by separating him from his beloved mother, who was troubled by all kinds of unreal fears and obsessions.
When Will had told Lyra about the way he’d had to live, and how difficult it had been to remain unobserved, firstly she’d been astonished that anyone could live in such a solitary way, and secondly she had been moved by his courage, and thirdly she wasn’t surprised at all that the witches esteemed his skill so highly.
She wondered, as she did so often, what he was doing now, and whether his mother was safe, and what he looked like these days…and Pan murmured, “Good so far. But go a little bit faster. There’s a man on the station steps looking at us.”