He had not found Stackpoole’s body after all, but was certain that the constable was no longer among the living. At the station house, there was a telegram waiting for him in his message box, but Roman slipped it into his pocket without looking at it. Until he made his report, everything else would have to wait. He caught up to Superintendent Wickes at his desk, just as the senior officer was leaving for dinner, and laid Stackpoole’s heavy truncheon on the man’s desk. “I found that in the marsh grass along Ferry Road, below the air field.” Wickes’s hand froze as he reached for the baton. An enormous canine tooth was embedded in the thickest part of the wood. “That is Stackpoole’s badge number carved on the handle, Sir. If that tooth belonged to whatever attacked the Constable, surely, he is dead.” Wickes was a man who most appreciated facts. Roman could not tell Wickes of the wraith or the sadness he’d felt emanating from Stackpoole’s shade, or his own feelings of guilt and loss.
