Its staggered shape and ochre walls deliberately echoed the landforms surrounding it, but, as Mama had once pointed out, you could also think of it as a ship voyaging on the vanished Cretaceous seas, a kind of modern-day ark, huge and well-equipped, its storerooms filled with plaster-wrapped life forms awaiting preparation and, eventually, resurrection. The public carparks were empty; even the staff parking, tucked away behind the landscaping to either side of the main entrance contained only a dozen vehicles this early in the day. Anna slipped her pass into the reader and, inside, felt herself relax into the particular hum — almost, but not quite, silence — that was the sound of the working part of the museum. Anna wedged her office door open. Light filtered through the Venetian blinds in the farthest of the two rooms, illuminating, just, the closer, larger room where she kept equipment and specimens in use. Waiting on the workbench was the long skull of the mosasaur, Clidastes liodontus, right there where she had left it six weeks ago.
