Bead’s Boats was at the very end of the beach, and consisted of a large shack in the shape of an up-turned boat, although it had been constructed from tin. It was hot and stuffy inside. The floor was made of concrete, but the sand had encroached, making it feel gritty underneath Linua’s flip flops. There was a man sitting in a deckchair a little way in, but he appeared fast asleep, his head tipped back and his mouth sagging open.

He had ruddy skin, with dishevelled hair that was stiff with salt and bleached blonde at the ends. There was golden stubble on his chin. He had probably been good-looking once, but his waist had thickened and the beginnings of a beer belly strained against his faded t-shirt. A couple of empty beer bottles sat beside him on the floor.

Eret clapped his hands loudly.

“Hoy! We’re looking for Bead!”

The man snorted awake and blinked at them muzzily.

“Does he know you’re drinking on the job?” Eret asked.

The man raised his brows, rubbed his face to wake himself up, and hitched himself higher up in the chair. Linua stepped forward, holding out a hand towards Eret to stop him saying anything else.

“Sorry to disturb you,” she said, darting a quick frown of warning at Eret. “We would like to speak to Mr Bead please.”

A slow smile crossed the man’s face.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he drawled, “it’s a good idea if you do the talking.”

Eret opened his mouth and Linua hit him lightly on the arm.

“Don’t say anything,” she hissed between her teeth. She turned back to the man. “Are you Bead?”

He scratched his belly.

“You lovebirds want a boat?” Despite the beach bum look, his Keretic accent was middle-class and educated, although his voice sounded like it had been roughened by years of smoking and drinking.

“Actually,” Eret began.

“We want to speak to Mr Bead about something else,” Linua interrupted hastily.

The man’s eyes travelled between them.

“And what would that be?”

“We’re not going to tell you if you’re not him,” Eret said before Linua could stop him.

“He used to study archaeology,” Linua said. “We had some questions about that.”

At the mention of archaeology the man’s amused expression flattened out.

“You’re Bead, aren’t you?” Eret demanded.

The man looked at Linua again.

“Like I said before. You do the talking, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call her—” Eret began.

“Eret, please stop!” Linua turned back to Bead.

She held out a sheet of paper on which was printed the two photographs from the archaeological report, one showing the missing artefact, and the other showing the four students. Eret had brought it with him and shown it to her earlier. Bead took it, his face expressionless as he looked over it.

“Do you recognise that artefact?”

Bead pursed his mouth.

“Not really. I remember there was some kind of pot filled with Ancient Kāruan bits and pieces, and for a bit we were excited, but it turned out to be just junk. There’s not a lot of interest in First Intermediate stuff. We only went on the dig because of the University’s mandatory requirement for field work.”

“Who’s we? The four of you?”

“Yeah.” He looked at the photograph again.

Linua stepped up beside him and pointed.

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“That’s Kala, right? But we couldn’t work out who the others were.”

Bead rubbed his chin as he thought. He pointed at the tousled haired man with the ill-fitting suit.

“That’s me.” His thick finger moved to the left, to the sharp-faced man in the fashionable suit with the white piping. “Leofryn. And this is Horn.” That was the guy in jeans and sunglasses.

“Where are they now?”

“Leofryn I haven’t seen in years. Horn lives in Shinboa. He was the only one of us who went on to do archaeology as a career.”

The information he had given on Horn tallied with what Pickle had discovered so far. Bead hesitated now, looking down at the photo.

“Kala died.”

“What? How?”

“She drowned. That was only a few months after this was taken.”

“How did she drown?”

“I don’t know. The police thought she went out on a boat by herself and got drunk and fell overboard. She washed up on a beach down the Panathelo coast.”

“I’m sorry,” Linua said.

“Yeah.” Bead was silent, remembering. “Anyway, it was a long time ago. Why are you interested in us?”

“We wanted to see if anyone could tell us anything about the artefact.”

Bead snorted.

“None of us gave a crap about the dig. We mostly wanted to get drunk and smoke weed on the beach.” He grinned suddenly. “Those were good times. I wanted them to last forever. But, you know. Life goes on.” He glanced between Linua and Eret. “Why do you want to know about the artefact?”

Linua hesitated.

“Because it was stolen,” Eret said coolly. “Do you know anything about that?”

Bead stared at him, but his eyes were seeing something else.

“No,” he said after a while. “Why would anyone want to steal a piece of rubbish like that?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Would any of the others?” Linua asked.

Bead stared at the photograph of the students again.

“Horn wouldn’t. Horn was a nice guy. He’d wanted to be on an Ancient Kāruan dig, like everyone else, but he didn’t have the money or the connections. So it was off to scrub around in bits of First Intermediate dirt with poor old Professor Relta, as usual. But he wouldn’t have risked being kicked out for stealing an artefact, even if it was a piece of junk.”

Bead’s finger moved to Kala.

“Kala, now. She was a nutcase. I mean, I loved her to bits, we all did. She was a wild one, but she wasn’t a thief. She might have stolen something for a lark or a dare or whatever, but she would have put it back afterwards. Anyway, she was all into women’s archaeology and stuff. She talked about Ancient Kāru as being afflicted by the patriarchy and rubbish like that.”

Beat’s finger paused on Leofryn and tapped on his face.

“This guy, now.” Bead paused. “He was one of those hungry types.” He pulled a face. “Always into his conspiracy theories.”

“Leofryn sounds like he might have stolen it,” Eret said.

Bead rolled his eyes.

“I thought I told you, only the girl can speak. Anyway, no, Leofryn wouldn’t have done it, and you know why? His old man made a packet selling metal detectors to wannabe treasure hunters. He could have bought the bloody thing if he’d really wanted it. He was loaded.”

“And what about you?” Eret asked, in a confrontation manner.

Linua could see Bead’s face crease in genuine irritation.

“Sorry,” she said hurriedly. “What Eret wants to know is, would there be any reason to suspect you stole it? Assuming you would tell us even if you did. But we have to ask. Sorry.”

Bead’s irritation died away and he let out a laugh that shook his whole frame, and set his belly fat jiggling.

“You are a poppet. You should dump that idiot, sweetheart.”

Linua’s finger flew out and landed on Eret’s lips before he could say anything. Eret froze. His lips were surprisingly soft and left a trace of moisture on her finger.

“Yeah.” Bead grinned. “That’s one way to shut him up.”

Linua lowered her finger, feeling her cheeks heat up.

“Alright, alright,” Bead said. “Me. Why would I steal it?” He thought about it. “I never wanted to do archaeology, you know? My old man was really keen on it. It was something he’d always wanted to do but didn’t have the opportunity when he was young, and I was his chance.”

“Oh,” Linua said, struck by this. “Yeah.”

Bead glanced at her.

“Okay yeah, you get it. Well, I did my degree to please him, but the moment I got my diploma I had other goals. Stuff him!” He made a rude gesture to his absent father. “Spent a year chasing…” he paused. “Spent a year wasting my time, ran out of money and in then in the end I just walked onto the beach, and took over this place. So no, sweetheart, I wouldn’t have stolen it because I wasn’t ruddy interested.”

Eret and Linua absorbed that.

“So,” Bead said. He heaved himself out of his chair and went to a small fridge humming at the back of the shack, from which he extracted another bottle of beer. He dug in his pocket for a bottle opener, opened the beer, and then flipped the cap expertly into a plastic bin, where it rattled around like a ball circling a hoop. “I’ve answered all your questions. How about you answer mine?”

“What do you want to know?” Linua asked.

“Why do you care about this thing?”

“We were doing a project for the Observatory museum, going through the inventory and cataloguing the artefacts. We noticed one was missing. So we looked into it.”

Bead took a sip of his beer.

“Does anyone know that you’re doing this? Like, you know, actual adult supervisors?”

“The head of the Observatory agreed on the project.”

“Did you check with him if it was okay to come and ask me questions?”

“Not … yet,” Linua said. “We thought we’d find out more, first. We wanted to make sure the artefact hadn’t just been misplaced. Although from what we’ve found it does seem like it was deliberately stolen.”

Bead appeared to study his beer. After a while he stared up at the ceiling.

“Dear Lord Nimras,” he said. “It appears that I am going to have to act like a responsible adult for a short while. Please don’t tell anyone.” Then he looked at Eret and Linua. “Stop looking into this. Stop asking questions about it. If someone did steal that Nimras-cursed thing, then they’re not going to want you poking around and trying to find out what happened to it. It could be dangerous.” He strode up to Eret and poked him in the chest, hard enough that Eret fell back a step. “And you, stop dragging your girlfriend into stupid situations like this. You need to look out for her better, man. What if I had stolen it? And decided I didn’t like you asking questions? You two might never have been seen again.”