The Ipsissimus drew in a breath. ‘That’s quite some theory.’
Maybe, but it felt right. I knew it in my bones.
‘He wouldn’t get very far,’ Maidmont protested. ‘Even if he is some kind of magical null, as you say, there are thousands of witches and only one of him. We wouldn’t need to use magic to stop him.’
‘But,’ Winter said, with a troubled expression, ‘how many would die before we got to that point?’
I sat up straight. ‘Fewer now that we have regained the element of surprise. He doesn’t know that we know what his plans are. We lost the upper hand by accident when we were in Dartmoor. We need to make damn sure we don’t lose it again.’
‘The media embargo is in place,’ the Ipsissimus said.
I shook my head. ‘Even with the best will in the world, someone will end up blabbing something. The police need to back off from the coven’s homes. Everyone needs to lay low. Then, when Blackbeard arrives for his supposed interview, we take him down before he so much as shakes anyone’s hand. We don’t need magic, we just need a baseball bat to whack him over the head with. Job done.’
A fleeting smile crossed Winter’s lips. ‘You make it sound very easy. It will be even easier if we can find out his real identity and get to him before he gets close to the Order.’
The Ipsissimus sighed. ‘The police have been looking at crematoria but there are a lot of them and they operate under very strict guidelines, as you would imagine. So far there’s been no one who meets the description of our killer. Whatever he’s been doing to burn the bodies of coven members, we haven’t found it yet.’
‘Maybe he works somewhere with industrial fires that get to the required temperatures to cremate bone,’ Winter suggested.
‘He may do – but bear in mind that the police are trying to conduct their enquiries without tipping him off. With more time, we might get somewhere. If we broadcast a photofit of the man, we certainly would.’
I sighed. ‘But if we do that, we could well be unleashing hell. What about the mail redirection? All the coven’s post has to be going somewhere. It can’t just disappear into thin air.’
‘All the letters have been sent to a PO box. The police have discovered that it’s registered under a fake identity.’ The Ipsissimus looked grim. ‘A Mr Ripper.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘He’s not very imaginative, is he?’
Winter cocked his head. ‘You named him Blackbeard because he has a … black beard.’ Touché.
‘I’m here,’ Maidmont said helpfully, ‘because I’ve been researching nulls. I’ve managed to trace several historical figures who may or may not have been nulls in the past. It’s quite interesting, really.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘There are bloodlines we can follow?’
He slumped into his chair. ‘No. It appears to be a condition that just occurs at random. Truthfully, there haven’t been enough nulls for us to conclude any definitive evidence about them. That’s probably why we didn’t know anything about them. The trouble is that absence of evidence doesn’t equate to evidence of absence.’
We lapsed into silence. There had to be some way of working through the problem of Blackbeard’s real identity. Winter, Maidmont and the Ipsissimus were super-clever; If they thought hard enough, I was confident they’d come up with an answer.
Rather than tax my brain pointlessly when there were others around who could do it for me, I leaned back in my chair and yawned. The past few days had been considerably more energetic than I liked. If it weren’t for the creepy stuffed animals, I’d probably have asked the Ipsissimus if I could bed down for a quiet nap but, with all those dead eyes staring at me, I wouldn’t manage to sleep – and, for me, that was saying something.
Brutus, slightly braver now that none of the stuffed creatures had twitched, ventured out towards the horned cat, sniffing warily. He raised a paw and struck it sharply on the head then backed away again, as if more disturbed by the stuffed cat’s lack of response than that it looked like Dr Frankenstein’s favourite pet. Why anyone ever thought that taxidermy was a good thing was beyond me. I loved Brutus to bits but if he died before me, he was either going in a hole in the ground or…
I shot to my feet. ‘Pets!’
The others stared at me in alarm. Winter’s eyes flicked from side to side. ‘Who are you talking to this time, Ivy?’
‘You! I’m talking to you! Look,’ I said, feeling an ecstasy of urgency flood my veins that was most unusual. ‘The police have investigated the crematoria, yes?’
‘All the ones with a reasonable radius of Dorset and Dartmoor,’ the Ipsissimus answered.
‘All the crematoria?’ I pressed. ‘Or just the human ones?’
Maidmont looked confused but Winter immediately grasped my meaning. ‘Pet crematoria,’ he said. ‘The temperatures to cremate the body of a dog must be the same as those required to burn a human’s.’
I nodded. ‘And while I’m sure they have strict rules, they’re probably not as rigorously inspected as human crematoria.’
‘There won’t be that many of them,’ the Ipsissimus said. ‘It wouldn’t take long to pinpoint any which Blackbeard might have used.’
‘How would he sneak a human corpse into a pet funeral service?’
I shook my head. ‘Maybe he works in one. Maybe he lives next to one.’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But it has to be worth checking out.’
Maidmont got to his feet. ‘Give me fifteen minutes,’ he promised. ‘I’ll find out if there are any around that area.’
‘They probably won’t be in Weymouth or on Dartmoor,’ Winter said. ‘He’ll be using different locations to avoid detection.’
‘But,’ I added, ‘he won’t want to travel too far for the same reason.’
Maidmont frowned. ‘You do know I’m a librarian? Research like this is my bread and butter. I know what to look for.’
I grinned. ‘Sorry. We trust you, Phil!’ He raised his eyes to the heavens and left.
The Ipsissimus knitted his fingers under his chin and watched me. ‘Are you sure, Ms Wilde, that you wouldn’t like to return to the Order? I really do think you might fit in better than you realise.’
‘She’s sure,’ Winter snapped. Then he looked apologetic. ‘I’m not trying to speak for you,’ he muttered to me.
I gave him a quick, reassuring smile. ‘I know.’
‘Pfffft!’
I jumped as Ipsissimus Grenville’s head appeared next to the stuffed bear’s. Brutus hissed and darted away again. ‘He should speak for you,’ the ghost said. ‘He’s a man. He has a far better understanding of Order matters than you ever could.’
I gritted my teeth. ‘Yes, he does, but only because he used to be in the Order. Not because he happens to be a man.’
Grenville frowned. ‘What do you mean used to be in the Order? Has he been expelled? Did you conspire to have this good man thrown out?’
I didn’t deign to answer that question. I’d already had words once with Grenville about his rudeness and I wasn’t going to repeat myself. Frankly, at this point in time he needed me a great deal more than I needed him.
Ipsissimus Collings looked fascinated. ‘Is that Ipsissimus Grenville?’ He clapped his hands. ‘How wonderful! I’ve been reading his old journals. They’re quite fascinating.’
Grenville harrumphed loudly and floated down from the bear to the Ipsissimus’s face. ‘You’ve been reading my journals? Those are private, sir! In my day a gentleman would never stoop to such an act.’
‘I’ve just reached the part where you went back and perused the diaries of one of your predecessors,’ Ipsissimus Collings burbled happily. ‘And you realised that there was a lot you could learn from the past. Now we can communicate with each other through Ms Wilde, we can learn from you. This is truly a fortuitous opportunity.’
I snorted at Grenville’s expression. His face contorted further and he whipped round. ‘Shut up, woman!’ he thundered. ‘This is all your fault,! Do you have any idea what a mess you’ve created? Just as things finally seemed to be looking up, I’m getting spirits from all over the damn country complaining to me because of what you’ve done!’ His voice was still rising. Whether that was a special gift granted to all ghosts, or whether he’d managed to achieve similar decibels when he was alive, I didn’t know but it was an impressive sound.