more interesting. Do tell.”
“He reads objects,” Max said, watching for her reaction. “Some call it psychometry, or psychic reading. Blake calls it his curse and he truly is a reluctant psychic, not someone who broadcasts his skills.”
Jamie considered what Max had said and weighed it against her bullshit detector. She trusted Max, even though his techniques could sometimes be a little unorthodox, and although skeptical, she had seen enough of the supernatural to not reject what he was saying outright.
“So how do you know him?” Jamie finished the cigarette and put the butt in her tin, slipping it back into her bag.
“I met him during a case at St Paul’s Cathedral over a missing relic,” Max said, thrusting his hands in his pockets as he jogged up and down on the spot in the freezing wind. “Blake was called in as an expert witness, but he knew things that I knew he shouldn’t. I took him for a drink afterwards and he became quite chatty after a few tequilas. Talking of drinks, you coming out tonight? Streeter’s leaving.”
Jamie turned to go and mounted her bike.
“You know I never drink with you guys, and besides Streeter’s going off to do something in business right? Which means in about three months, he’ll discover he’s not happy. He’ll miss the justice side, the making a difference …”
“The crappy pay, the long nights, the lack of weekends.”
Jamie smiled. “But we love it, Max, you know we do.” She pulled on her helmet. “I’ll check out Blake Daniel. Thanks for the tip.”
As she pulled away, she saw him raise a hand in a wave. For a moment, she regretted not going out for drinks over the years he had been asking, but at least he continued to try and persuade her. Everyone else had stopped and Missinghall hadn’t even tried, knowing her reputation for staying aloof. But her nights belonged to Polly, and sometimes to tango. There was no room for anything else.
Chapter 7
Blake Daniel bought a venti double shot latte with vanilla syrup and added more sugar before sipping the hot liquid and crossing the road back into the grounds of the British Museum. It had already been a difficult day, and he was severely behind on his workload. A pulsing hangover had kept him on the edge of nausea most of the afternoon, finally easing to a dull ache. The sugar was helping though, and when his stomach calmed, he would go to the greasy spoon down the road for a late bacon sandwich.
He rubbed his gloved hand over the rough stubble on his jaw and chin. It was thicker than he usually let it grow, almost at the point of softness now. Perhaps it was time to let it grow into a proper beard. He knew it made him look more like a serious academic and less like the lead singer of a boy band. His hair needed a cut too. He kept it at a number one buzz-cut: any longer and it tended towards the tight curls of the Nigerian heritage on his mother’s side, incongruous with the piercing blue eyes that he had inherited from his Swedish father.
Last night was a blank, yet again, but the girl he woke up with hadn’t seemed to mind much when he had politely asked her to leave. No regrets, he thought, holding onto a mantra that sounded more hollow each week. The London casual scene would continue to provide escape for as long as he needed it. He took a sip of the coffee and acknowledged that he did still need it. His nights were another life, far removed from his days shut in the bowels of the Museum, examining ancient objects and creating a past for them from painstaking research, augmented with his own special brand of insight. Right now, he was working on a series of ivory netsuke, miniature carved works of art that used to hang from the kimono sashes of traditional Japanese men. He found himself lost in each one, marveling at their intricacies and the echoes of past lives behind them. For Blake read the emotion in objects, and these were steeped in layers of its rich
Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko