I held up the box, my mind churning, the speckled light making the white box a dull grey. Is that what it had held? Those little metal spears? And, if so, what the hell was Lorelei hiding them for? I couldn’t for a single second picture the beautiful actress who wore furs firing a weapon. The idea seemed wholly impossible.

Of course, they could have been for someone else – but then, in a sense, it didn’t matter: whatever her purpose in storing them, it was placing us all in danger. Another creak from the house startled me and made me catch my breath.

I put the box on the bed and stepped back on to the chair. Once more I reached into the void and patted my hand around to see if there was anything else up there. I felt nothing and was about to jump down when my fingers touched the corner of something hard. Stretching up, with my feet unsteady on the chair, I just managed to pull it out.

It was a thin hardback book with plain leather covering, like a ledger I thought, and about the dimensions of a school exercise book. Curious, I opened it to find blocks of writing, but before I could examine them, I heard a violent metallic ringing from outside that told me the police car was coming back. I crept to the window with my heart in my mouth. The car was drawing closer, from the end of the street, then to within fifty metres, finally stopping abruptly on the other side of the road, a few houses up. I waited to see, trying to think if I could run – but where to? For a few moments nothing happened, then three plain-clothes officers jumped out and charged up to the nearest house, where they began hammering on a red door until it opened and they all rushed in. I felt relief. They hadn’t come for me, but I knew that I should leave.

After replacing the light fitting, with my hands trembling a little, I went into Lorelei’s bedroom in search of a bag to hide what I had found. At the back of a wardrobe I found one with a stiff flat base inside. I tore away some of the thread and managed to slip the book between the base and the outer fabric. The box that I had taken was designed to fold flat, so that went in too. I dropped in my purse, handkerchief, and a silk scarf I found on the floor of the wardrobe to cover it all, put the bag over my shoulder and went out the back of the house, checking around carefully before hurrying away in the dark.