“Hades is dead,” I replied simply, unwilling to get embroiled.

“You don’t seem to think so.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been given six months off due to work-related stress. The shrink reckons I’m suffering from false memory syndrome and hallucinations. I shouldn’t believe anything I say, if I were you—and that includes what I just told you.”

The small man smiled again, displaying a large gold tooth.

“I don’t believe you’re suffering from stress at all, Miss Next. I think you’re as sane as I am. If someone who survived the Crimea, the police and then eight years of tricky LiteraTec work came to me and told me that Hades was still alive, I’d listen to them.”

“And who might you be?”

He handed me a gold-edged card with the dark blue Goliath Corporation logo embossed on it.

“The name’s Schitt,” he replied. “Jack Schitt.”

I shrugged. The card told me he was head of Goliath’s internal security service, a shadowy organization that was well outside government; by constitutional decree they were answerable to no one. The Goliath Corporation had honorary members in both houses and financial advisers at the Treasury. The judiciary was well represented with Goliath people on the selection panel for High Court judges, and most major universities had a Goliath overseer living within the faculty. No one ever noticed how much they influenced the running of the country, which perhaps shows how good at it they were. Yet, for all Goliath’s outward benevolence, there were murmurs of dissent over the Corporation’s continued privilege. Their public servants were unelected by the people or the government and their activities enshrined in statute. It was a brave politician who dared to voice disquiet.

I sat next to him on the bench. He dismissed his henchman.

“So what’s your interest in Hades, Mr. Schitt?”

“I want to know if he’s alive or dead.”

“You read the coroner’s report, didn’t you?”

“It only told me that a man of Hades’ height, stature and teeth was incinerated in a car. Hades has got out of worse scrapes than that. I read your report; much more interesting. Quite why those clowns in SO-1 dismissed it out of hand I have no idea. With Tamworth dead you’re the only operative who knows anything about him. I’m not really concerned about whose fault it was that night. What I want to know is this: What was Acheron going to do with the manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit?”

“Extortion, perhaps?” I ventured.

“Possibly. Where is it now?”

“Wasn’t it with him?”

“No,” replied Schitt evenly. “In your testimony you said he took it with him in a leather case. No trace was found of it in the burned-out car. If he did survive, so did the manuscript.”

I looked at him blankly, wondering where all this was going.

“He must have passed it to an accomplice, then.”

“Possibly. The manuscript could be worth up to five million on the black market, Miss Next. A lot of money, don’t you think?”