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restricted section. Dave didn’t even know that the library closed on Thursday afternoons. Libraries were of no interest to Dave. If Dave wanted a book, such as an Ian Allen train-spotters’ book for instance, he simply stole it from W. H. Smith’s. Dave had no need for libraries.
    I undid the triple locks, swung open the iron door, switched on the lights, closed the door behind me and descended into the restricted section.
    It smelled bad. It always did. These books weren’t like the ones upstairs. Some of these books were deathly cold to the touch. Some of them had to be forcibly dragged from the bookshelves and prised open. They actually resisted you reading them. It was hard to concentrate upon a single sentence. Your thoughts kept wandering. There was one tiny green book with a lumpy binding that I never managed to get down from the shelf. I always wondered just what might be in that one.
    On this particular Thursday afternoon I didn’t bother with my usual assault upon it. I hastened to the voodoo section. Mr Seabrook had referred in his book to a tome called
Voodoo in Theory and Practice
, which had apparently contained the complete instructions for reanimating the dead, and I felt certain that a copy of this would be found somewhere here.
    It was.
    A greasy little black book with complicated symbols wrought in silver upon its spine. It gave itself up to me without a fight. It seemed almost eager to fall into my hands.
    I leafed through it. The actual ceremony involved seemed straightforward enough. But, and there was a big but, it required a great many herbs and difficult-to-acquire items all being stewed up in a human skull and fed to the corpse. This, I considered, might be problematic. This was Brentford, after all, not Haiti. Where, for instance, was I going to find powdered Mandragora? Not at the chemist in the high street. But, and this reduced the big but to a smaller but, I was the bestest friend of Dave and if anything could be found and nicked, then Dave would be the boy to find and nick it.
    It would have taken me ages to copy out the list of ingredients and all the details of the ceremony, so I slipped the copy of
Voodoo in Theory and Practice
into my pocket and prepared to take my leave.
    I was almost at the top of the stairs when I heard the noise. It was the noise of the rear and secluded door being unlocked.
    The noise caught me somewhat off-guard, because I was sure that the captain slept. So, who might this be? Well, whoever it was, I wouldn’t let them find me. I would wait, very quietly, until they had passed by the iron door and then I would slip out and be away smartly on my toes.
    “The restricted section is just down there,” I heard a voice say.
    I fled back down the stairs and ducked under them, bunched myself up in a corner and waited.
    “The door’s unlocked,” I heard another voice say. “Security around here is a joke. And look, the light’s on too.”
    “Hello,” the first voice called down the stairs. “Is someone down there? Captain Runstone, is that you?”
    “Of course it isn’t him,” said the other voice. “He’s drunk in his bed. He’s always drunk in his bed at this time on a Thursday. I’ve done my research.”
    “Hello,” called the first voice again. “Hello, down there.”
    “Stop all that. Come on, follow me.”
    “I’ll wait here. You go down.”
    “Don’t be such a sissy.”
    I heard a scuffle and the first voice saying, “All right, I’m going. There’s no need to push.”
    Down the stairs the two of them came. I saw the heels of their shoes through a crack. Shiny and black, those shoes. Then the trousers. They were black as well. And then, when they were both at the foot of the stairs and standing under the light, I could see all of them. Two young men in black suits, with short-cropped hair and pasty pale faces. They looked rather ill and I wondered whether perchance they were suffering from the curly worms that worried from within. I