In an emergency, Imran Haddad's body made the decisions and his mind followed along behind it like a clerk with a clipboard.

He had killed his torch before he knew he'd moved. He had Odette by the sleeve and Bernie by the elbow and was sliding the pair of them into the gap between two iron shelving units, a space eighteen inches wide that had been, until that second, the home of a family of spiders. Wim had vanished. A rustle and a whisper of "sorry" from somewhere in the dark suggested he had gone under a table.

"The box," breathed Odette. "We left the lid."

"I know."

"I'll fetch..."

"No." He held her where she was, his hand flat against her ribs, and felt her heart going like a trapped sparrow. "He's on the stair. If you move, he sees the torch."

Footsteps. The humming broke off and began again, a lilting, cheerful tune that Imran half-recognised from the wedding in Colchester: some old show number about a man who was going to be rich. A flashlight, a proper one, with a halo, swept the steel gate and came to rest on the lock. A key turned in it, and the gate clanged back on its hinges. Walter Osei-Lindqvist stepped into the Old Registry in his dinner jacket.

He was alone. That was the first thing. He carried a torch in one hand and, in the other, a small black briefcase of the type that people in films hand to people in other films. His hair was perfectly combed. Under the beam his face was damp and amiable and slightly tired, a man who had come down to the cellar for the same reason as other men go to the garden: to be alone with his own thoughts, among familiar things.

Under a table three aisles away, Wiremu Tane-Vos was having the worst and most heroic minute of his life. He had a torch in each fist and both thumbs on the switches, and he held them there with the ferocious concentration of a boy holding back a sneeze in church. The dust was in his nose. It had been in his nose since the stairs. Somewhere in the dark of his head a small voice, which sounded a lot like his mother, was saying *don't, don't, don't*, and another, which sounded like himself, was saying *sorry, sorry, sorry*, and between them, with dreadful tenderness, his sinuses began to prepare a statement.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. He thought of the Dutch tulip trade of 1637. He thought of the capital of Mongolia, and of the number of bones in the human hand. The sneeze went away, offended, and sat in the back of his skull with its arms folded.

"Evening, boxes," he said.

Beside Imran, Bernie made a very small noise. He found her wrist and pressed it. *Quiet.*

"Is anybody down here?" Walter called, lightly. "Clement? Dennis? The log said the gate had been used at ten. I thought, now who on earth would go to the cellar in the dark, apart from rats and Collections?" He laughed at his own joke, an easy rolling chuckle. The beam moved across the aisles and the shadows leaped. "No? No one? Well."

He walked down the aisle. Imran counted his steps: eight, nine, ten. The torchlight crawled along the shelving, brushing the edges of cardboard, the lids, the nests of dust. Eleven. Twelve. The man stopped, almost level with the third aisle, and Imran could see the cut of his lapel and, between two cartons, a slice of his polished shoe.

"Ah," said Walter.

He had found the box.

Neither of them breathed. The lid, Imran knew, was lying against the shelf where he and Odette had dropped it, with the six manila folders stacked on top in a hurried fan. A careful man would take one look at that and know the room was not empty. A careful man would raise his voice, or reach for his phone.

Walter Osei-Lindqvist bent and picked up a folder. He turned it to the torch. Then, to Imran's astonishment, he chuckled again, warmly, fondly, like a man finding his own childhood drawing in an attic.

"There you are," he said to the folder. "Number six. My favourite."

He set his briefcase on the lid of the box. He opened it. Imran could see, at an angle, the glint of papers and a slim silver laptop, and a green felt-tip pen resting in the lid. The chairman sat down on a stack of document crates, with the briefcase across his knees like a child with a picnic, and drew a phone from his pocket. The screen lit his chin from below. He dialled, put it to his ear, and waited, tapping the pen against his teeth.

"Hello, dear boy," he said, after a moment. "No, I'm in the Vault. A bit of tidying. I wanted to ring before you left for the airport." A pause, warm and indulgent. "Yes. Yes, it is rather late. I've had the most extraordinary week, I'll tell you all about it." Another pause. "No. Quite the contrary. The sergeant's behaving beautifully. He's a delight. I couldn't have written him better."

Odette's hand closed on Imran's wrist, hard enough to bruise.

"No, no, of course. The engagement is a bonus, I think, a *marvellous* stroke. I had no notion she had it in her. Fourteen years, and then a man in a fleece. If you ask me, she has begun to fall for him, God bless her, which is the loveliest thing, and a very useful one." The pen tapped. "The Board has gone soft over the video. Lund's practically in tears. We shall have to be rather clever. If they award him the Provision, he's tied to the Yard for three years on a business grant, and that's... well. Awkward. You can't buy out a lease on a funded business, not without a most unpleasant hearing."

*Three years.* Imran's mind snagged on it. So that was what the grant did. It would hold him in place. It would also, therefore, hold the Yard in place, with its anchor, its last unit, its sentimental sergeant, beyond Walter's reach.

"So we mustn't let him win. Yes, I know. Delicately. Via the other couple. Tam and Dex are such earnest children, they'll do what's wanted if they're led. And then once the Provision's with the Spoons, and our friend has fallen on his feet and out of his lease, we pay the little girl her promotion and everyone's happy." A soft, appreciative sigh. "I do like to leave everyone happy."

Beside him Odette gave a tremor. It travelled through her shoulder into his chest. She was shaking with fury, he realised, an absolute, silent, helpless fury, like a kettle held down on a hob.

"No, I haven't forgotten the baker. The baker is a sentimental young man with a tin." Walter's voice sharpened by exactly a degree. "I have it in hand. He'll read his little note on the night, I expect. I've said as much to Margit. She's drafting a statement. Do you know what a man looks like when he's accused of something in front of a lantern festival and responds by agreeing with every word?" He chuckled. "Magnificent. Everybody loves a man who apologises. I shall be mentioned in the Cathedral Green's little history."

A long silence. The phone crackled a reply Imran couldn't hear. Walter nodded, as though the other person could see him.

"Quite. Give my love to Lisbon. And dear boy, for God's sake, try not to put anything in writing." He ended the call.

For a time he sat there. The torch lay on its side on the briefcase lid, throwing a wide pale wedge up the shelves. His face, in the underlight, was quiet and almost kind, a man at the end of a long day with his hands folded on his stomach. He hummed a bar or two of the song, absently, and then said to the empty cellar, in an entirely ordinary voice, "I know you're down here, Odette."

Nothing moved.

"The log said ten. Margit's reconciliation said Clement, and Clement said he'd gone to see his sister, and Clement is the worst liar in the Midlands." He looked up. His eyes moved along the black upper line of the shelves with grave, gentle patience. "It's all right. I'm not cross. I'd be disappointed if you hadn't come. Fourteen years you've been the cleverest woman in my building. I always knew you'd find your way downstairs."

Bernie's hand slid into Imran's, wet and trembling.

"I wonder," said Walter, "if we might have a word. Just the two of us." The torch beam swung, lazily, and touched the end of the aisle. "It would be so much simpler than bringing in the porter. Or the police. Or the sergeant."

*He thinks she's alone.* It came to Imran with perfect clarity, in the heartbeat before he moved. Walter had not seen the folders spread, or the hairgrip on the floor, or the extra footprints in the dust. He had simply guessed. He knew the Registry log, and he knew Odette; he did not know about the Colonel in the lane, or the headwrap in the shadows. If she stepped out, he would believe he had her to himself.

He turned his head. In the dark, her face was a pale blur a hand's breadth away, and he found her eyes, which were open, and wet, and absolutely steady.

"Don't," he breathed.

"I have to."

"He'll..."

"He'll talk," whispered Odette. "That's what he does. If I'm alone, he'll tell me everything, because he thinks I'm his." The ghost of a smile touched her mouth. "For the avoidance of doubt, I'm very good at being underestimated."

She kissed his cheek.

It was the lightest thing, a brush, hardly more than a breath, over before he understood it. It was not in any clause. It could not have been performed for anyone. Then she stepped out from between the shelves into the torchlight, smoothing her sleeves, and said, in the clear cool voice of the Head of Collections, "Good evening, Walter."