No, I said. Thanks for the thought, but no. To damage the armour this thoroughly, the sheer force involved must have been horrific. The impact alone would have I don t even want to think about the condition of the body inside this armour. I leaned in close to stare at my own distorted reflection in the featureless golden mask. Who were you? Did I know you? Did you die bravely? Of course you did. You were a Drood.

We went back inside and I tried another direction. Still looking for something I couldn t put a name to. I knew only that I d know it when I saw it. We rounded a corner and found ourselves facing a tall and very solid-looking door. Somehow still intact, somehow still standing firm and upright in its frame. The walls on either side were gone. Reduced to piles of rubble. I put one hand to the door and it just fell apart, crumbling and falling away, collapsing into sawdust. The doorframe still held its shape. I walked through it, into the room beyond. Most of the outer wall was missing, giving an almost uninterrupted view of the grounds outside. But there was still enough of the room left to stir an unexpected memory. The left-hand wall had shelves full of books with charred and fire-blacked spines. When I touched one, the whole row of books fell in on themselves, disintegrating and falling to the floor.

Eddie, look at this.

I moved over to join Molly. She d found a tall mirror on the right-hand wall. Completely untouched by the destruction all around it. In the mirror I hardly recognised the man standing beside Molly. I ve been trained to be a field agent, trained to blend in anywhere and not be noticed, to look like no one in particular. The man before me looked damaged and angry and dangerous. Anyone sensible would run a mile from such a man. Molly was still a delicate china doll of a woman, with big bosoms, bobbed black hair, huge dark eyes and a mouth as red as sin itself. She looked as beautiful as ever to me, in her own eerie, threatening and subtly disturbing way. Right now she was looking at me as though wondering where I d come from.