"Yeah."

"Which means what?"

"Preserving, cataloguing, that sort of stuff." Billy fiddled with his glasses so he did not have to meet anyone's eye. He tried to see which way the woman was looking. "Consulting on displays, keeping stuff in good nick."

"Always done it?"

"Pretty much."

"And ..." Baron squinted at a note. "It was you who prepared the squid, I'm told."

"No. It was all of us. I was ... it was a group effort." The other man sat by Baron, saying nothing and looking at his own hands. The young woman sighed and prodded her phone. She appeared to be playing a game on it. She clicked her tongue.

"You were at the museum, weren't you?" Billy said to her. She glanced at him. "Was it you who called me? Last night?" Her Wine-housey hair was distinctive. She said nothing.

"You ..." Baron was pointing at Billy with a pen, still sorting through the papers, "are too modest. You are the squid man."

"I don't know what you mean." Billy shifted. "Something like that comes in, you know ... We were all working on it. All hands on deck. I mean ..." He indicated hugeness with his hands.

"Come come," said Baron. "You've got a way with them, haven't you?" Baron met his eye. "Everyone says so."

"I don't know." Billy shrugged. "I like molluscs."

"You are an endearingly modest young man," Baron said. "And you are fooling no one."

Curators worked across taxonomies. But it was a standing claim in the centre that Billy's molluscs in particular were special. The stress could be on either word-it was Billy's Billy's molluscs, and Billy's molluscs, and Billy's molluscs molluscs, that kept pristine for ages in their solutions, that fell into particularly dramatic enjarred poses and held them well. It made no sense: one could hardly be any better at preserving a cuttlefish than a gecko or a house mouse. But the joke did not die, because there was a tiny something to it. Though in truth Billy had been pretty cack-handed when he had started. He had shattered his way through a fair few beakers, tubes, and flasks; had splayed more than one dead animal sodden on the lab floor before rather abruptly coming into his skills.

"What's this got to do with anything?" Billy said.

"It has the following to do with what for," Baron said. "See we've got you down here, or up here, depending which way you hold your map, for two reasons, Mr. Harrow. One, you're the person who found the giant squid missing. And two, something a bit more specific. Something you mentioned.

"You know, I have to tell you," Baron said. "I've never seen anything like this. I mean I've heard of stealing horses before. Plenty of dogs, of course. A cat or two. But ..." He chuckled and shook his head. "Your guards've got a lot to answer for, haven't they? I gather there's a fair old degree of mea culpa-ing going on right now, as it goes."

"Dane and that lot?" Billy said. "I guess so, I don't know."

"I didn't mean Dane, actually. Interesting you bring him up. I was referring as they say to the other other guards. But certainly Dane Parnell and his colleagues, too, must be feeling a bit daft. And of them more later. Recognise this?" guards. But certainly Dane Parnell and his colleagues, too, must be feeling a bit daft. And of them more later. Recognise this?"

Baron slipped the page of a notepad across the table. On it was a vaguely asterisk design. Maybe it was a burst of radial sunbeams from a sun. Two of the several arms coiled at their ends, longer than the others.

"Yeah," said Billy. "I drew that. It was what that bloke on the tour was wearing. I drew it for the guy interviewing me yesterday."

"Do you know what this is, Mr. Harrow?" said Baron. "Can I call you Billy? Do you know?"

"How should I know? But the bloke who had this on, he was with me all the time. He never had any time to go off and do anything, you know, dodgy. I would've seen ..."

"Have you seen this before?" The other man spoke, for the first time. He gripped his hands as if holding them back from something. His accent was classless and without any regional pitch-neutral enough that it had to have been cultivated. "Does it jog your memory?" jog your memory?"

Billy hesitated. "I'm sorry," he said. "Can I just ... Who are you?"

Baron shook his head. The large man's face did not change but for a slow blink. The woman glanced up from her phone, at last, and made some little tooth-kissing noise.

"This is Patrick Vardy, Mr. Harrow," Baron said. Vardy clenched his fingers. "Vardy's helping with our investigation."

No rank, Billy thought. All the police he had met had been Constable So-and-so, DC This, Inspector That Constable So-and-so, DC This, Inspector That. But not Vardy. Vardy stood and walked to the edge of the room, out of the immediate light, made himself an illegitimate topic.

"So have have you seen this before?" said Baron, tapping the paper. "Little squiggle ring any bells?" you seen this before?" said Baron, tapping the paper. "Little squiggle ring any bells?"

"I don't know," said Billy. "Don't think so. What is it? Do I get to know?"

"You told our colleagues back Kensington-side that the man wearing this seemed quote het up het up unquote, or something?" Baron said. "What about that?" unquote, or something?" Baron said. "What about that?"

"Yeah, I told Mulholland," Billy said. "What were those names you said?" he said to Vardy, who did not answer. "I don't know whether the bloke was weird or what," Billy said to Baron. He shrugged. "Some people who come see the squid are a bit ..."

"Seen more like that recently?" Baron said. "The, ah, oddballs?" Vardy leaned forward and muttered something in his ear. The policeman nodded. "Any people getting unusually excited?"

"Squid geeks?" Billy said. "I don't know. Maybe. There's been a couple in costumes or weird clothes." The woman made a note of something. He watched her do so.

"Alright, now tell me this," Baron said. "Has anything strange been going on outside the museum recently? Any interesting leaflets being handed out, any pickets? Any protests? protests? Have you clocked any other interesting bits of jewellery on any other visitors? I know, I'm asking as if you're a magpie, all googly-eyed at shinies. But you know." Have you clocked any other interesting bits of jewellery on any other visitors? I know, I'm asking as if you're a magpie, all googly-eyed at shinies. But you know."

"I don't," Billy said. "I don't know. It has happened that we get nutters outside. As for this bloke, ask Dane Parnell." He shrugged. "Like I said yesterday, I think he recognised the guy."

"We would of course indeed like to have words with Dane Parnell. What with him and Mystery Pin Man seeming like they know each other and so forth. But we can't." Vardy whispered something else to him and Baron continued. "Because a bit like the specimen he was paid to look after, and indeed like Pin Man, Dane Parnell's disappeared."

"Disappeared?"

Baron nodded. "Whereabouts unknown," he said. "No one on the phone. Give the dog a bone. Not at home. Why might he disappear, you might ask. We are very keen very keen to have him help us with the old enquiries." to have him help us with the old enquiries."

"You spoken to him?" said the WPC abruptly. Billy jumped in his chair and stared at her. She put her weight on one hip. She spoke quickly, with a London accent. "You talk a lot, don't you? All sorts of chatting you shouldn't be supposed to."

"What ...?" Billy said. "We haven't said more than ten words to each other since he started working there."

"What did he do before that?" Baron said.

"I've got no clue no clue ..." ..."

"Listen to him squeak!" The woman sounded delighted.

Billy blinked. He tried to take it in good humour, smiled, tried to get her to smile back, failed. "To be honest," he said, "I don't even like the bloke. He's chippy. Couldn't be bothered to say hello, let alone anything else."

Baron, Vardy and the woman looked at each other in speechless conclave. They communicated something with waggled eyebrows and pouted lips, repeated quick nods.

Baron said, slowly, "Well if you should think of anything, Mr. Harrow, do please let us know."

"Yeah." Billy shook his head. "Yeah, I will." He put up surrender hands.

"Good man." Baron stood. He gave Billy a card, shook his hand as if the gratitude were genuine, pointed him to the door. "Don't go anywhere, will you? We might want to have another chat."

"Yeah, I think we will," the woman said.

"What did you mean 'Pin Man's disappeared'?" said Billy.

Baron shrugged. "Everything and everyone's vanishing, isn't it? Not that he 'disappeared' really; that would imply he was ever there. Your visitors have to book and leave a number. We've called everyone you were escorting yesterday. And the gentleman with the sparkle on his lapel ..." Baron tap-tapped the design. "Ed, he told your desk his name was. Right, Ed Ed. The number he gave's unregistered, and no one's answering."

"Hie thee to your books, Billy," Vardy said as Billy opened the door. "I'm disappointed in you." He tapped the paper. "See what Kooby Derry and Morry can show you." The words were weird but weirdly familiar.

"Wait, what?" said Billy from the doorway. "What was that?" Vardy waved him away.

BILLY TRIED AND FAILED TO PARSE THE ENCOUNTER ON HIS BEWILDERED way south. He had not been under arrest: he could have left at any time. He had his phone out, ready to do a tirade for Leon, but again for reasons he could not put into words, he did not make the call. way south. He had not been under arrest: he could have left at any time. He had his phone out, ready to do a tirade for Leon, but again for reasons he could not put into words, he did not make the call.

Nor did he go home. Instead, full of an unending sense of being under observation, Billy went to the centre of London. From cafe to bookshop cafe, mooching through paperbacks on his way through too much tea.

He did not have a phone with Internet connection, nor did he have his laptop with him, so could not test his intuition that his own reveal the previous night notwithstanding, there would be no information about the squid's disappearance in the news. The London papers certainly did not cover it. He did not eat, though he stayed out late enough, hours, that it was past time, until it was evening, then early night. He did not really do anything but moodily consider and grow frustrated, did not call the centre, only tried to consider possibilities.

What came back and back to him, what grew to gnaw him most throughout those hours, were the names that Vardy had said. Billy was absolutely certain he had heard them, that they meant something to him. He regretted that he hadn't insisted on more from Vardy: he did not even know how to spell them. He scribbled possibilities on a scrap of paper, kubi derry, morry, moray, kobadara kubi derry, morry, moray, kobadara, and more.

Got some bloody poking around to do, he thought.

On his way home at last his attention was drawn, he was not sure why, to a man on the backseat of his bus. He tried to work out what he had noticed. He could not get a clear view.

The guy was big and broad, in a hoodie, looking down. Whenever Billy turned, he was hunched over or with his face to the glass. Everything they passed tried to grab Billy's attention.

It was as if he were watched by the city's night animals and buildings, and by every passenger. I shouldn't feel like this I shouldn't feel like this, Billy thought. Neither should things. He watched a woman and man who had just got on. He imagined the couple shifting straight through the metal chair behind him, out of his sight.

A gust of pigeons shadowed the bus. They should be sleeping. They flew when the bus moved, stopped when it stopped. He wished he had a mirror, so he could watch without turning his head, see that man in back's evasive face.

They were on the top deck, above the most garish of central London's neon, by low treetops and first-floor windows, the tops of street signs. The light zones were reversed from their oceanic order, rising, not pitching, into dark. The street on which lamps shone and that was glared by shopwindow fluorescence was the shallowest and lightest place: the sky was the abyss, pointed by stars like bioluminescence. In the bus's upper deck they were at the edges of deep, the fringe of the dysphotic zone, where empty offices murked up out of sight. Billy looked up as if down into a deep-sea trench. The man behind him was looking up, too.

At the next stop, which was not his, Billy waited until the doors had closed before bolting from his seat and down the stairs, shouting, "Wait, wait, sorry!"

The bus left him and headed into the dark like a submersible. Through the dirty window at the rear of the top, he saw the man look straight at him.

"Shit," Billy said. "Shit."

He jerked his hand defensively out. The glass flexed and the man jerked backward as the bus receded. Billy's own glasses shivered on his face. He saw no one moving behind the window, past a crack in the glass that had suddenly bisected it. The man he had seen was Dane Parnell.

Chapter Four

BILLY SAT UP LATE THAT WEIRD DEEP NIGHT. HE CLOSED THE curtains of his living room, imagining the unsavoury squirrel watching him as he poked around on his laptop. Why would Dane have followed him? How? He tried to think like a detective. He was bad at it. curtains of his living room, imagining the unsavoury squirrel watching him as he poked around on his laptop. Why would Dane have followed him? How? He tried to think like a detective. He was bad at it.

He could call the police. He'd seen Dane commit no crime, but still. He should. He could call Baron, as he had requested. But despite his discomfort-call it fear-Billy did not want to do that.

There had been such a strange gaming edge to all his interactions with Baron, Vardy and the woman. It had been so clear that he was being played, that information was being held from him, that they had no consideration for him at all except insofar as he pushed forward whatever their opaque agenda was. He did not want to be involved. Or, and or, he wanted to understand this himself.

He slept a very little at last. In the morning, he discovered that it was not as hard to regain entry to the Darwin Centre as he had imagined. The two police at the entrance were not terribly interested, and examined his pass peremptorily. They interrupted his carefully constructed story of why he had to go back in to sort out some stuff on his desk that wouldn't wait but that he'd be careful and quick and blah blah. They just waved him past.

"Can't go to the tank room," one of them said. Alright Alright, Billy thought. Whatever Whatever.

He was looking for something, but he had no idea what. He hesitated by retorts and sinks, by plastic containers of diaphanised fish, their flesh made invisible by enzymes, their bones made blue. A common room was full of stacks of posters for the Beagle Project, a retracing of those crucial early days of Darwin's journeys, a rerun in a floating laboratory kitschly made to look like the Beagle Beagle.

"Hey, Billy," said Sara, another curator who'd been granted entry, for whatever reason. "Did you hear?" She looked around and lowered her voice, passed on some rumour so evanescent and vapid it left his head as soon as she said it. Folklore was self-generating. Billy nodded as if he agreed, shook his head as if it were a shocking possibility, whatever it was she was talking about.

"Did you hear?" she said as well. "Dane Parnell's disappeared."

Well that that he heard. It gave Billy another cold sensation, as he had had the previous night when he had seen Dane all those yards away, through the bus's glass, and as if Billy had touched him back. he heard. It gave Billy another cold sensation, as he had had the previous night when he had seen Dane all those yards away, through the bus's glass, and as if Billy had touched him back.

"I was talking to one of the police," Sara said, "doing stuff in the tank room, and he was saying that they've heard things since, you know, it went. Something clattering."

"Whooo," said Billy, like a ghost. She smiled. But Those are Those are my my hallucinations hallucinations, he thought. It was like theft. Those were his imaginings that the police were hearing.

He logged in at a workstation and searched, trying endless different spellings of the names Vardy had said, referring to his scribbled paper and crossing them off, one by one. Eventually he entered the renditions "Kubodera" and "Mori." "Oh man," he whispered. Stared at the screen and sat back. "Of course."

No wonder those names had tantalised. He was ashamed of himself. Kubodera and Mori were the researchers who, a few months previously, had been the first researchers to catch the giant squid on camera in the wild.

He downloaded their essay. He looked again at the pictures. "First-ever observations of a live giant squid in the wild" the paper was called, as if ten-year-olds had taken control of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Proceedings of the Royal Society B. First ever ever.

More than one of his colleagues had printouts of those pictures above their desks. When the images were released, Billy himself had turned up at the office with two bottles of Cava, and had proposed that the anniversary should henceforth be an annual holiday, Squid-day. Because these pictures, as he had said to Leon at the time, were momentous shit.

The first was the most famous, the one they had used on the news. Ajut into view in dark water almost a kilometre down, an eight-metre squid. Its arms blossomed, curved left and right around the bait at the end of the perspectived line. But it was the second picture at which Billy stared.

Again the line descended; again there in ominous water was the animal. But this time it was coming mouth-on. It was caught in a near-perfect radial limb-burst: at the apex, the bite. The two hunting arms, longer limbs with paddle-shaped hands, were recoiled in the dark.

A tentacular explosion. That picture banished all slanderous theories of Architeuthis Architeuthis as sluggish predator-by-accident, tentacles adangle in deepwater lethargy for prey to bumble into, no more a hunter than some idiot jellyfish. as sluggish predator-by-accident, tentacles adangle in deepwater lethargy for prey to bumble into, no more a hunter than some idiot jellyfish.

That image had been cherished by fan-partisans of Mesonychoteuthis Mesonychoteuthis, the "colossal squid," Architeuthis Architeuthis's huge, squat-bodied rival. Which, Mesonychoteuthis Mesonychoteuthis, yes, had also been emerging into the camera and video gaze with highly and historically unusual enthusiasm recently. And it was, yes, a terrifying animal. True, it had greater mass; its mantle was longer; granted, its tentacles grabbed not with suckers but with cruel cat-curved claws. But whatever its shape, however its stats and the Architeuthis Architeuthis's compared, it would never be the giant squid giant squid. It was a parvenu monster. Hence the trash-talk of those who researched it, eager to demote the long-term kraken for their new favourite: "without parallel," "... even larger," "an order of magnitude meaner."

But observe the Kubodera/Mori images. Hardly the weak opportunist the haters had dreamed up. Architeuthis Architeuthis did not wait and dangle. did not wait and dangle. Architeuthis Architeuthis loomed, jetted from the abyss, hunting. loomed, jetted from the abyss, hunting.

Billy stared at the screen. Ten arms, five lines crisscrossing; two longer than the others. The silver design on the pin he'd seen was of this predator incoming. As seen by prey.

HE WALKED THE CORRIDORS CARRYING PAPERS SO HE LOOKED AS IF he was going from somewhere to somewhere else. He entered rooms he was allowed to enter, nodded in greeting to the police guarding those he was not. His revelation notwithstanding, he still had no idea what it was he was hoping to find. he was going from somewhere to somewhere else. He entered rooms he was allowed to enter, nodded in greeting to the police guarding those he was not. His revelation notwithstanding, he still had no idea what it was he was hoping to find.

He left the Darwin Centre for the main museum. He saw no police there. He walked the route he used to take as a boy, past the staring ichthyosaur, stone ammonites, past where was now the cafe. There at last, in the middle of everything and everyone, he thought perhaps he heard a sound. The noise of a jar rolling. Very faint.

It came-or sounded as if it did to him, he corrected himself-from a door off-limits to visitors, that led downstairs to storage areas and undercorridors. He listened at it, crowds to his back. He heard nothing. He entered the keycode and descended.

Billy walked windowless halls underground. He told himself that he did not think he was listening for anything real. That whatever hint it was he was looking for came from inside him. So alright So alright, he said to himself. Help me out. What am I looking for? What are you-what am I-on about? Help me out. What am I looking for? What are you-what am I-on about?

Guards and curators raised their hands as he passed in brief greetings. The rooms and hallways were lined with industrial shelving, on which were cardboard boxes labelled in thick pen; glass cases empty, or full of surplus specimens; papers; unneeded furniture. There below the heating pipes, by high brick walls and pillars, Billy heard the noise again. From around a corner. He followed it like bread crumbs.

The corridor opened out, not a room but a sudden large hallway. It was stacked quite full of taxidermy, charnel Victoriana. Mammal heads watched from walls, like a hundred Faladas; bisons stiff as aging soldiers by a plaster iguanodon and a tatty emu. There was a thicket of the preserved necks-up of giraffes, their heads a canopy above.