Not Dead Yet

then went along another narrow walkway. Then they climbed a long, steep ladder, Roy Grace nervously clinging on tightly as the Curator, above him, clambered as confidently as a mountain goat.
    Grace hauled himself on his knees on to a narrow platform, with the dome curving majestically skywards above him. And now he really did not dare look down.
    Then his phone rang.
    He debated for a moment whether to answer it, then very carefully pulled it out of its cradle. ‘Roy Grace,’ he said.
    It was ACC Peter Rigg, and he sounded anxious. ‘Roy,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I gather there’s a bit of an incident at the Royal Pavilion.’
    ‘Er – yes, sir, I have.’
    ‘I think you’d better get there PDQ.’
    Grace looked out across the city rooftops. ‘I am actually here, sir.’
    ‘Good, excellent! Anything to report?’
    ‘Yes, sir, I have a great view.’
    ‘View?’
    He saw Barry was crawling through a tiny inspection hatch door.
    ‘Can I call you back in a few minutes, sir?’
    ‘Please. The Chief Constable’s fretting.’
    ‘Yes, I know, sir.’ He ended the call and followed Barry through the hatch, having to ease himself in backwards, into almost total darkness and the musty smell of old wood, and something acrid and deeply unpleasant.
    ‘This is the second skin of the building,’ the Curator said, shining his torch beam around. ‘Outside you have the visible bottle-shaped shell of the dome. This is the wooden framework supporting it.’ Both men coughed. Grace’s eyes were stinging. He could see wooden slats, like a primitive ladder, rising above him and getting increasingly narrow.
    The Curator shone the beam upwards, illuminating a wooden cross beam, with a severed metal shaft suspended from it. It looked, to Roy Grace, the same diameter as the shaft sticking out of the top of the fallen chandelier. Wisps of smoke or steam werecurling upwards from it. Grace frowned, then coughed again. Then he looked down, and through a small hole, a large section of the Banqueting Room was visible beneath. He could see the two paramedics still on all fours, in the wreckage of the chandelier.
    The Curator swung the torch beam down and something glinted in the light. It looked like a metal bottle cap. Then Roy Grace noticed a discarded San Pellegrino bottle. Near it were fragments of broken plastic.
    ‘Bloody litter louts!’ the Curator said, reaching for the bottle.
    Grace grabbed his hand. ‘Don’t touch it – it could be a crime exhibit and it might contain acid.’
    ‘Acid?’
    Grace guided the beam up the severed shaft again. ‘What do you suppose that is?’
    Barry stared at him. ‘I don’t understand.’
    Then they both saw the rucksack wedged between two slats, a short distance above them. Grace took the torch and climbed up to it, then shone the beam inside. He saw an opened all-day-breakfast pack of sandwiches, a can of Coke, a bottle of water, a Kindle, a battered leather wallet, and what looked like an iron tyre lever.
    Tucking the torch under his chin, he again pulled a pair of protective gloves from his pocket and snapped them on. Then he took out the wallet and opened it. Slotted in one pocket he saw a photograph of a small boy in a baseball cap, and a plastic Grand Hotel room key jammed in another. He put the wallet into a plastic evidence bag and slipped it into his pocket.
    Then he coughed again, just grabbing the torch before it fell. He shone the beam back on the shaft. The end of it, with wisps of smoke still rising, had melted into a bulbous shape that reminded him of mercury in a thermometer. ‘What do you know about chemistry?’ he called down to the Curator.
    ‘Never my strong subject,’ David Barry said, staring up at the end of the shaft.
    ‘That makes two of us,’ Roy Grace said. ‘But I can tell you one thing. Your chandelier didn’t fall by accident.’
    ‘I don’t know if I’m happy to hear that or not.’
    Grace barely heard him. He was thinking about Gaia’s son Roan, who had apparently been sitting beneath the chandelier seconds before it fell. Had the boy been the intended target?
    No. He did not think so. His immediate hypothesis was that Gaia was the target. Something had gone wrong in the assailant’s plans. Timing? The appearance of Roan?
    Who was the man crushed beneath the chandelier? The perpetrator? Or a heroic innocent bystander?
    He did not think the latter. Innocence didn’t play any part in what had just