Free The Orpheus Trail by Maureen Duffy Page B

death.’
    ‘That’s what I could read. But that was only one facet because of the way the sheet was folded in four. The others may have, will have, different bits of text.
    ‘If I emailed you a photograph of this leaf could you tell if it’s what you saw before?’
    ‘I can try. Depends on the definition in the photograph.’
    ‘I think it’s a different bit but as you know I don’t read Greek.’
    ‘I’ll see what I can come up with.’
    It would be good to go to the police with something they didn’t know, something I could contribute as an expert, even if only at second hand.
    Jack’s answer came quickly. ‘It’s Greek, alright. But there’s something weird. I thought I’d seen it before and then I remembered. It’s in a book on the Derveni papyrus.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘It’s something the Greeks found when they were building a road.’
    ‘Which Greeks? When are we talking about?’
    ‘In the sixties, as far as I recall. Anyway the whole text was published in 2005. There’d been a gap because the academic who’d ended up with it didn’t want to let go. Then a samizdat version began to circulate and finally the whole thing went public.
    ‘How does this fit in with our text round the boy’s neck?’
    ‘It’s part of it and, as I said at first, it’s an Orphic text.’
    ‘Instructions for the dead?’
    ‘Not this one. This bit is all about creation. Zeus swallowing “the glorious firstborn of the egg”. It isn’t exactly the same but it’s close enough for me to recognise where it comes from. There’s a later, fuller version of the creation story according to Orpheus in something called The Rhapsodies in English.’
    ‘Where do we go from there?’
    ‘That I don’t know. I’ll have to dig around some more. But what’s clear is that someone is mixed up in this who knows the whole field, maybe even better than I do. Didn’t I say that if there was more to this than just a game being played with the toys of Dionysus, that something else would happen to confirm it? Well this is it.’
    ‘What do I say to the police?’
    ‘You’ll have to play it by ear, tell them what you can without them thinking we’ve all completely lost it. Crazy professors: that sort of thing.’
    As I made my way to the police station that afternoon I felt less and less sure. All I had to offer was some mad conspiracy theory, maybe involving ancient cults. I was shown into an interview room, and left kicking my heels for ten minutes by the clock on the wall, time enough to begin to feel that I was the criminal. I became convinced that I was being observed and tried to sit looking relaxed and dignified, resisting the impulse to keep shifting on the hard chair or crossing or uncrossing my legs. Finally the door opened and Inspector Hobbs came in,followed by a uniformed policeman, and a man I judged to be in his forties, with short black curly hair and very blue eyes.
    ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr Kish. This is Detective Chief Inspector Hildreth of the Met and our own Constable Jenkins.’
    I stood up to shake hands with the man from the Met while the constable positioned himself at the table beside some kind of recording equipment.
    ‘Peter Hildreth but I’m usually called Hilo,’ the detective said. The voice was strong with a north of Watford accent I couldn’t identify. Brought up on the south suburban fringes of London I was bad at differentiating anything other than refined estuary or cockney.
    ‘You don’t mind if we take a record of this do you, sir?’ Hobbs asked.
    ‘No, no, go ahead.’ We all sat down.
    ‘Gerald here says you run the local museum.’
    ‘I’m the director,’ I said rather stiffly. ‘My chairman has given me the job of liaising with the police.’
    ‘But why, if you don’t mind me asking, does he, or you, come into it? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not doubting your legitimate interest. I’m just trying to understand the set-up.’
    ‘It’s our responsibility.