Neddo took the skull from my hand and returned it to its place beside the others.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. It sounded hollow.

“Tell me about what I brought, or I’ll inform some people of what you have here,” I said. “Your life will become very difficult as a result, I guarantee it.”

Neddo stepped out of the closet doorway and returned to his desk.

“You knew it was there, didn’t you, the mark inside the skull?” he said.

“I felt it with my fingertips, just like you did. What is it?”

Neddo appeared to be growing smaller as I watched, deflating in his chair. Even his robe suddenly seemed to fit him less snugly.

“The numbers inside the first skull indicate that its origins were recorded,” he said. “It may have come from a body donated to medical science, or from an old museum display. In any event, it was originally legitimately acquired. The second skull bears no such number, only the mark. There are others who can tell you more than I can about it. I do know that it is very inadvisable to become involved with the individuals responsible for making it. They call themselves ‘Believers.’”

“Why was it marked?”

He answered my question with another.

“How old do you think that skull is, Mr. Parker?”

I drew closer to the desk. The skull looked battered and slightly yellowed.

“I don’t know. Decades, maybe?”

Neddo shook his head.

“Months, perhaps even weeks. It has been artificially aged, run through dirt and sand, then soaked in a preparation of urine. You can probably smell it on your fingers.”

I decided not to check.

“Where did it come from?”

He shrugged. “It looks Caucasian, probably male. There are no obvious signs of injury, but that means little. It could have come from a mortuary, I suppose, or a hospital, except that, as you seem to have surmised from the additions to my storeroom, human remains are hard to acquire in this country. Most of them, apart from the ones donated to medical science, have to be purchased from elsewhere. Eastern Europe was a good source, for a time, but it is now more difficult to obtain unregistered cadavers in such countries. China, as you’ve gathered, is less particular, but there are problems with the provenance of such remains, and they are expensive to obtain. There are few other options, apart from the obvious.”

“Such as supplying your own.”

“Yes.”

“Killing.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what that mark means?”

“I believe so.”

I asked if he had a camera, and he produced a dusty Kodak instant from a drawer in his desk. I took about five photographs of the outside of the skull, and three or four of its interior, adjusting the distance each time in the hope that the mark would come out clearly in at least one of them. In the end, I got two good images, once the photographs had developed on the desk before us.

“Have you ever met any of these ‘Believers’?” I said.

Neddo squirmed in his seat. “I meet a great many distinctive people in the course of my business. One might go so far as to say that some of them are sinister, even actively unpleasant. So, yes, I have met Believers.”

“How do you know?”

Neddo pointed at the sleeve of his gown, about an inch above his wrist.

“They bear the grapnel mark here.”

“A tattoo?”

“No,” said Neddo. “They burn it into their flesh.”

“Did you get any names?”

“No.”

“Don’t they have names?”

Neddo looked positively ill.

“Oh, they all have names, the worst of them anyway.”

His words seemed familiar to me. I tried to remember where I had heard them before.

They all have names.

But Neddo had already moved on.

“Others have asked about them, though, in the relatively recent past. I was visited by an agent of the FBI, perhaps a year ago. He wanted to know if I’d received any suspicious or unusual orders relating to arcana, particularly bones or bone sculpture, or ornate vellum. I told him that all such orders were unusual, and he threatened me in much the same way that you have just done. A raid upon my premises by government agents would have been both inconvenient and embarrassing to me, and potentially ruinous if it led to criminal charges. I told him what I told you. He was unsatisfied, but I remain in business.”

“Do you remember the agent’s name?”

“Bosworth. Philip Bosworth. To be honest, had he not shown me his identification, I would have taken him for an accountant, or a clerk in a law office. He looked a little fragile for an FBI man. Nevertheless, the range of his knowledge was most impressive. He returned to clarify some details on another occasion, and I confess I enjoyed the process of mutual discovery that ensued.”

Once again, I was aware of an undertone to Neddo’s words, an almost sexual pleasure in the exploration of such subjects and material. The “process of mutual discovery”? I just hoped that Bosworth had bought him dinner first, and that the encounters with Neddo had brought him more satisfaction than my own. Neddo was as slippery as an eel in a bucket of Vaseline, and every useful word that he spoke came wrapped in layers of obfuscation. It was clear that he knew more than he was telling, but he would only answer a direct question, and the replies came unadorned with any additional information.

“Tell me about the statue,” I said.

Neddo’s hands began to tremble again.

“An interesting construction. I should like more time to study it.”

“You want me to leave it here? I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Neddo shrugged and sighed. “No matter. It is worthless, a copy of something far more ancient.”

“Go on.”

“It is a version of a larger bone sculpture, reputedly eight or nine feet in height. The original has been lost for a very long time, although it was created in Sedlec in the fifteenth century, crafted from bones contained in its ossuary.”

“You said that the bone candleholders were also replicas of originals from Sedlec. It sounds like someone has a fixation.”

“Sedlec is an unusual place, and the original bone statue is an unusual piece, assuming it exists at all and is not simply a myth. Since no one has ever seen it, its precise nature is open to speculation, but most interested parties are in agreement on its appearance. The statue you have brought with you is probably as accurate a representation as I have ever seen. I have examined only sketches and illustrations before, and a great deal of effort has gone into this piece. I should like to meet whoever is responsible for its construction.”

“So would I,” I said. “What was the purpose of the original? Why was it made?”

“Versions upon versions,” said Neddo. “Your sculpture is a miniature of another, also made in bone. That larger bone statue, though, is itself a representation, although the model for its construction is made of silver, and thus extremely valuable. Like this one, it is a depiction of a metamorphosis. It is known as the Black Angel.”

“A metamorphosis of what kind?”

“A transformation from man to angel, or man to demon to be more accurate, which brings us to the point upon which opinions differ. Clearly, the Black Angel would be a considerable boon to any private collection simply for its intrinsic value, but that is not why it has been so avidly sought. There are those who believe that the silver original is, in effect, a kind of prison, that it is not a depiction of a being transforming, but the thing itself; that a monk named Erdric confronted Immael, a fallen angel in human form, at Sedlec, and that in the course of the conflict between them Immael fell into a vat of molten silver just as his true form was in the process of being revealed. Silver is supposedly the bane of such beings, and Immael was unable to free himself from it once he had become immersed. Erdric ordered that the silver be slowly cooled, and the residue poured from the vat. What remained was the Black Angel: Immael’s form, shrouded in silver. The monks hid it, unable to destroy what lay within but fearful of allowing the statue to fall into the hands of those who might wish to free the thing inside, or use it to draw evil men to themselves. Since then, it has remained hidden, having been moved from Sedlec shortly before the monastery’s destruction in the fifteenth century. Its whereabouts were concealed in a series of coded references contained in a map. The map was then torn into fragments, and dispersed to Cistercian monasteries throughout Europe.