Dead Men's Boots

by Mike Carey

  ‘It’s not about trust.’ I put my hand on the curve of the projector’s lens turret and Nicky swatted it away. ‘It’s about not making me run round in circles when life’s short enough already. Was there some reason to keep me in the dark about John’s hobby? Was there anyone whose interests could have been harmed in any way at all by you levelling with me?’

  ‘Not my call,’ Nicky deadpanned, wiping the turret with his shirt cuff where my hand had touched it. ‘His widow, maybe? His kids? Fuck do I know? First do no harm, is my motto.’

  ‘Since when, Nicky?’

  ‘Since now.’

  ‘Right. Or maybe you had the same idea Chesney had. That if nobody got to find out about this shit you could have a garage sale in due course and pocket the profit.’

  ‘Chesney?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  I’d been looking at the projector: I didn’t know enough about these things to tell if it was high-end or low-end, state-of-the-art or shoddy; I was just looking, like a prospective buyer in a second-hand car dealership. Now I looked at Nicky instead.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said.

  ‘I’m happy standing.’

  ‘No,’ I explained patiently. ‘This isn’t “Sit down and make yourself comfortable”. This is “Sit down, or I’ll have to sit you down and then you might break.”’ There was an office chair, on rollers, within the reach of my outstretched arm. I snagged it and rolled it across to him. It took him a moment or two to decide, but when I actually took a step towards him he sat down hurriedly.

  ‘This is bullshit, Castor,’ he said angrily. ‘And you wouldn’t pull it on someone who was still alive.’

  I wheeled the chair back over to the changing table where I’d dumped John’s box. I opened the lid again, took out Vince Chesney’s disc and thrust it into his hands.

  ‘You’re going to look this over for me,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah? Why am I going to do that?’

  ‘Because I’m asking you. Nicely, so far.’

  Nicky turned the disc over in his hands, examining it with a remote, bored expression. ‘You know Cesare Lombroso?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sure. I golf with him.’

  ‘Nineteenth-century anthropologist.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Nicky nodded. ‘That’s the guy. Starting to smell pretty fierce now. And his elbow gives on the backswing.’

  ‘He came up with this idea about criminal physiognomy,’ I said. ‘He called it recapitulation, and it made him the poster boy for the early eugenics movement.’

  He dumped the disc back in the box. ‘Eugenics? That was Annie Lennox and Dave—’

  Moving quickly, I slammed the box lid down on Nicky’s hand, trapping it. He yelled, but not in pain: his nerves were closed for business, so pain wasn’t a feature of the landscape for him any more. But that had made him obsessively careful about organic damage, since he knew he didn’t have the advantage of the early-warning system that the living take so much for granted. He also didn’t have self-repair: no white corpuscles, no platelets, no cell division. So where anyone still warm would have tried to snatch their hand back out of the box, Nicky froze up stiller than a startled possum.

  ‘Castor, enough with this stupid fucking schoolboy shit!’ he shouted. Shouting meant inflating his lungs fully and emptying them again – again, not easy for a dead man – and that meant a few moments of total silence after he was done.

  I went on as though I hadn’t been interrupted.

  ‘Recapitulation,’ I said. ‘It’s a bankrupt concept, but it seemed sexy enough until Darwin drove a stampede of finches and Galapagos turtles through it.’

  ‘What the fuck are you-?’

  ‘The idea, Nicky, is this.’ I leaned a little more weight on the box lid, and his free hand clenched as though he was considering punching me: but that’s a good way to break a knuckle, so I knew he wouldn’t. ‘Babies in the womb, so the story goes, run through all the previous stages of evolution before finally reaching full human form. It’s like Mother Nature has to scroll down through every template in the book before she can get to the human one, because that’s the one that’s most fully evolved. It’s bullshit, like I said, but are you with me so far?’

  ‘Let go of my fucking hand, Castor!’

  ‘But Lombroso thought there were glitches in the program. Sometimes babies get stuck on one of the more primitive forms, he said, and instead of being born fully human they’re born with ape-like features that really belong much earlier on in the series.

  ‘See, he’d taken a good look around, and he’d noticed how many hardened criminals have thick, heavy brow ridges like orang-utans, or abnormally long fingers like gorillas, and he had this light-bulb moment. Criminals are the way they are because they’re throwbacks to our non-human ancestry. And once you know that, you can spot them up front and run intercept. You don’t even have to wait for them to commit a crime.’

  I nodded towards the box. ‘That’s what John said he was doing with this stuff, if anyone asked. But that was just his cover story, and I’m hoping you might have some idea what it was covering. See, I know this isn’t really about your Hippocratic oath, Nicky. It’s about protecting the bottom line. And part of that is you not giving away for free any information that I might be persuaded to pay for later. So you want paying, fine, you come up with a starting price and then we’ll haggle. But time is fucking money and right now I’m hypersensitive to people who waste any of mine – because someone tried to kill me the other night by dropping me down a lift shaft. So this is personal and it’s at the top of my things-to-do list. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Yes what?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fucking understood. Open the box, you frigging arsehole!’

  I took my weight off the lid and Nicky retrieved his hand, checking it for damage in a frigid, resentful silence. There wasn’t any: I’d been careful.

  ‘He started collecting around the end of October,’ Nicky muttered sullenly. ‘And he was throwing money around like it had a use-by date on it. It wasn’t just me – he had a whole team of us working on commission, buying everything we could pick up.’

  ‘Anything that had belonged to a killer?’

  ‘You see the cigarette packet? One of my coolest finds. Jimmy Pick tortured supergrass Deggy Wheaton with the lit end of a fag from that very packet, after he fingered Les Lathwell for the Barclays Bank massacre. It’s a piece of history.’ Cost three grand, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘Cost you, or cost John?’ I asked, to keep things clear.

  ‘The dealer asked for two-five,’ Nicky conceded. ‘I took my cut. That was understood. Hey, I don’t normally do this stuff. It was a personal favour, because John wanted to work through proxies.’

  ‘You’re a friend in need, Nicky.’

  ‘That’s the Samaritans, Castor. I work on margins.’

  ‘Tony Lambrianou. Ronnie Kray. George Cornell. Les Lathwell. Aaron Silver.’ I counted the names off on my fingers. ‘They’re all there in John’s notebook. What else have they got in common, Nicky?’

  He grimaced, as if he found the question hard to swallow. ‘We didn’t name a price yet,’ he said.

  ‘Put it on the slate.’

  ‘Not what you said. You said I could name a—’

  I opened the box lid wide, and the hinges gave a creak which was surprisingly eloquent and persuasive.

  ‘They’re all from the East End,’ Nicky said, holding up his hands in surrender – or maybe just to keep them well away from the box. ‘That was the brief, right? Lambrianou and Lathwell were in the Kray gang. Cornell worked for Charlie Richardson and was murdered by the Krays. That leaves Aaron Silver as the odd one out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s a couple of generations earlier. Pre-war, even. He was a mad rat-bastard Jewish immigrant who came over from Poland and tried to get work as a tailor. But his needlework sucked and he couldn’t get a start-up. So he has a brainwave one day and he starts going
round all the other tailors, taking voluntary contributions for the Brick Lane Fire Service. You pay up front, they don’t burn your house down.’

  ‘It’s not exactly the Krays.’

  ‘You’re wrong. He was the ur-Krays. The Krays before the Krays, the great precursor. Protection was just where he got his foot in the door. Pretty soon it was prostitution, gambling, the tail end of the opium business – you name it. Silver wasn’t his real name, by the way. He was born Aaron Berg, but he went by Aaron Silver so that his family wouldn’t be shamed. Nice boy. Loved his mother.’

  I nodded, turning these dusty old facts over in my mind. I’d been wondering ever since I met Chesney whether any of this might turn out to be connected in some way with Jan’s theory of a vengeful Myriam Kale wandering around London forty years after her death, but it seemed not. An American contract killer would still sit oddly with a bunch of East End gangsters.

  ‘You did your homework,’ I said to Nicky.

  He looked at me, pulled his lower eyelid down with the tip of his middle finger – an unsettling gesture when a zombie does it, because the eye is desiccated and it’s not that firm in its socket to start with. ‘Only way to avoid getting ripped off is to know your stuff,’ Nicky told me. ‘John the Git was hungry for anything to do with those East End bad boys. Big premiums for stuff that hadn’t changed hands too many times since, and for stuff that they’d owned as kids.’

  That explained the lead soldier and the toy car. But it still didn’t give me even the beginning of a clue as to what John had been looking for. I only knew – with absolute certainty – that the Lombroso stuff was a smokescreen. John had dropped out of university without finishing his degree, just as I had – but while my discipline was English, his was biology. And what little I knew about Lombroso came from a late-night drunken conversation in which John had told me at length what an utter wanker Lombroso had been.

  ‘So what was he looking for?’ I asked Nicky.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ There was a sneer lurking behind the words. Nicky pushed the box away and stood up.

  ‘He had some animal pathologist running tests on these things. Checking them for fingerprints; for blood and DNA in the few cases where that was possible; probably for a lot of other things too.’

  ‘Then I guess he was looking for correlations. For patterns in the data.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like I’ll have to look the disc over for myself and get back to you. It’s way past time we named that price, Castor.’

  ‘So name it.’

  ‘Five hundred. Plus I get to keep what’s in the box.’

  ‘Jesus!’ I did my best to sound appalled. ‘You just told me one item in there is worth three grand, Nicky. Why the hell should I let you pocket the whole lot?’

  He threw his arms in the air. ‘Because it’s no skin off you,’ he said.

  ‘The five hundred is. I’m not going to clear that myself. Carla isn’t paying me, and the Myriam Kale thing is pretty much on spec.’

  ‘Okay, say two hundred,’ he conceded magnanimously. ‘And the stuff in the box.’

  ‘Two hundred is fine. You sell off the stuff in the box and split the proceeds fifty-fifty with Carla Gittings.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘But everything stays here until I tell you it’s okay to sell it. I still don’t know where we’re going with this. I’d hate to come back here looking for something in particular and find you’d already hocked it on eBay.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Nicky said. ‘Better than fair. I’m on the case, Castor, in spite of the shit you just pulled. And just as a token of good faith, just so you know I’m on the level, I’ll tell you something for free.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I asked. ‘What’s that, Nicky?’

  ‘You were stiffed. There should be at least thirty or forty other things in the box.’

  I blinked. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Am I sure? I can give you the fucking inventory, if you want me to. It’s a lot of the choicest stuff that’s missing, too – lots of Kray memorabilia. Including a pair of high-heeled shoes that used to belong to Barbara Windsor which I bought from a priest in Flitwick, Bedfordshire. Long, surreal story. And that’s just the items I got for John: there’s a lot more that he bought through other people or picked up for himself.’

  Son of a bitch. So that was why Vince Chesney had caved in so fast: he’d given me the bargain-basement stuff and kept the top-drawer items for himself.

  ‘I’ll get you the rest, too,’ I promised. ‘In the meantime, work through whatever the fuck is on that disc and give me a précis. Anything at all that you think looks interesting. I’m completely in the dark on this, Nicky. A single candle might be all I need.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ He herded me towards the door, anxious to be rid of me now that the deal was sealed. But when I was halfway down the stairs he called out to me. I stopped and he came down to meet me, fishing in the pocket of his jeans.

  ‘Here,’ he said. He handed me the key, which I’d forgotten I’d given to him. ‘I almost forgot. Left-luggage lockers, Victoria station.’

  A hundred yards from where John Gittings and Vince Chesney had had their meets. Yeah, it figured. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘You’re welcome. I await your lavish apology.’

  ‘It’s coming,’ I said. ‘Sooner or later. This makes it sooner.’ I tucked the key away in one of the many hidden pockets of my coat. ‘What’s your first screening going to be, Nicky?’

  ‘That Friedkin movie.’ He snapped his fingers, pretending to consult his memory. ‘The one where the exorcist gets thrown through the window and bleeds out on the pavement. I’ll do it as a double bill with Day of the Dead. You know me. I love a happy ending.’

  ‘Call me,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘A single candle. Sure. Just don’t leave the gas on, Castor. Naked flames are dangerous things to have around. Hey, is your mobile turned off?’

  ‘No,’ I said, automatically, without checking. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m turning into your fucking answering service. That cop friend of yours called to say he might have something juicy for you in a day or so. And I do not appreciate you giving him my number.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And Pen Bruckner rang three times since I got back from seeing you this morning. Wants to know where you are. She said you were due in court or something.’

  From Walthamstow to Barnet isn’t that far as the crow flies. As the taxi crawls along the North Circular Road, though, it’s a fair way. Out of sheer desperation I offered the driver an extra twenty if he could cut some corners, and he peeled off onto some back streets where we seemed to go faster but cover less ground.

  I was right about the phone: it was still turned on. But the battery, which is old and needs replacing, had run out of power, so the point was moot. Sometimes I can coax a minute or two longer out of it by ejecting it and then sliding it back into place, but not this time: it was definitively dead.

  By the time I got to the courthouse it must have been almost four o’clock. I was hoping that the case might have started late, but as soon as I saw Pen sitting on the courtroom steps I knew it was beside the point to hurry now. I also knew from her face how the hearing had gone.

  I sat down next to her. She didn’t look around, or seem to notice.

  ‘What happened?’ I demanded. She didn’t answer, so I asked again. ‘Pen, what happened?’

  ‘He said he’d looked at the composition of the panel,’ said Pen slowly, sounding almost as though she was reading the words from a badly printed sheet. ‘And it wasn’t right. They were supposed to make sure the panel were completely independent – no conflicts of interest or anything – and they hadn’t. So any decision the panel made wasn’t valid.’

  I blinked. That sounded like good news as far as it went. ‘Then we’re—’

  ‘But he also said he’d thought about the power-ofattorney thing, and he’d changed his mind about it not being in his ju
risdiction.’ She looked at me, her face strained and pale. ‘He said someone had to look out for Rafi, and it had to be someone who could be trusted to make decisions in his best interests. Someone who understood the medical background and knew what was at stake, and wasn’t going to act out of emotion or prejudice. Someone with an independent mind, and an expert grasp of the issues.’

  I saw the punchline coming, but common sense rebelled at it. So did my stomach. ‘You’re not fucking telling me-?’ I protested.

  Pen nodded.

  ‘He gave it to Jenna-Jane Mulbridge. She’s got power of attorney, now, and she’s already signed the consent forms. She brought them with her, Fix. She knew this was going down. Then Runcie let them convene the hearing right there because all the panel were present, and it was one, two, three, you’re done.’ She blinked away tears. ‘I thought he was trying to do what was right for Rafi, but he’s just railroaded us. That cow is going to take Rafi away to the MOU tomorrow and then she can do what she likes to him.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ I promised.

  But that was the kind of knee-jerk response you have to be wary of. It only took a few moments of sober reflection before I thought better of it.

  ‘Better yet,’ I amended, ‘over hers.’

  13

  I was staring down the barrel of another long night, and I knew it. I had the ultimate ordeal of dinner with Juliet and the lovely Mrs Juliet to look forward to. But first I was going to get some errands run.

  I got to the Paragon at about six, which according to the desk clerk, Merrill, was when Joseph Onugeta’s shift began. Merrill was sitting at the desk reading the Evening Standard when I walked in. He gestured with his thumb, backwards over his shoulder. ‘He’s in the cupboard,’ he said, and went back to his paper.

  The cupboard turned out to be a room on the ground floor, the same size as the bedrooms or at least the same size as the one I’d seen, lined with shelves and stacked with boxes of cleaning materials. Joseph Onugeta was changing into his work overalls when I knocked and entered. I was seeing Onugeta as an East African name, but his skin was the rich, near-violet black of the Orissa Dalits. He had a frizz of ash-grey hair, so tightly curled that it almost looked sheer, which came down to a widow’s peak above intense, brown-black eyes with heavy lids. His mouth was set in the dour line of someone who’s seen a lot of shit and expects to see a lot more. But then again, I have that effect on a lot of people.