She went to the book on the lectern. Haversham took a fob watch from a pocket of the spidery gown. Ross found her own notebook, but Haversham raised a finger. ‘You are not to take notes,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t part of the bargain. You have fifteen minutes. From now.’

Ross opened the book and found the pages to be smooth with dust. The lists were written in a precise, looping hand, the scratches of the quill visible. There were, as with the catalogue, no pictures and no descriptions. She noted the dates on the pages and saw that the auction was four times a year, yes, on the solstices and equinoxes, so she had nineteen to search. She flipped back, started with the first of them, and worked forwards in time, running her finger down the lists. She knew what the thing was called in the translations she read, the Bridge of Spikes, and had seen a few variations. The familiar name of a person leaped out at her. There were sometimes celebrities at these auctions, then. At the winter solstice auctions in particular, there were a number of them. Four years ago, a famous singer had bought … something the name of which meant nothing to her. What he had offered? Oh, that was so terrible for him.

She stopped at the winter solstice of three years ago when she saw another familiar name. Oh. Oh, but that meant…!

It meant she had found something useful for the investigation. She had come here for her own ends, but here, in what she was staring at in amazement, she had found something new to go on for her team, some startling new leverage they could apply. What could she do about it?

She called Costain over.

‘You can’t show him—’ began Haversham.

‘I can tell him!’ shouted Ross. She whispered the name and item and given address in his ear.

He stared at her, astonished, started to say something.

She pushed him away and quickly turned back to the book. She had to put that out of her mind now and get back to her original aim. The object she was after wasn’t in the first two years of auctions she looked through, to the point where she started to panic at the thought that she’d missed it, because she wasn’t going to get to the front of the book before the time ran out, but then—