12
Tucson, Arizona, USA. May 19 4.35pm
Joseph Everett sat back in the armchair his father had loved. The leather still creaked with the same tone it had when the old man got up to reach for another book. He and Michael had listened to it over and over when, as children, they had sat with ears pressed to the ever closed study door. Joseph had recreated the study here at his own house, sure that the secret to his father’s quest lay within the pages of one of these books. He was determined to find it.
The large desk he sat behind was teak, inlaid with rosy marble round the edges. There was an accountant’s lamp, green hooded with a pull down switch that sat on the corner of the desk next to the old professor’s fountain pens. His father had collected them, spent hours cleaning the tiny parts
