Dead Men's s Boots

‘What can I do for you people?’ he snapped, as if he didn’t much want to know but was working from a script he had to follow. He had much l£. H#82ess of an accent than the guy in the museum. I wondered whether that was because he’d come here from somewhere else and hadn’t quite blended into the local dialect, or if it was a relic of a college education in another state.

‘My name’s Castor,’ I said, ‘and this is Juliet Salazar. I think Nicky Heath contacted you and asked if it would be okay for us to pay you a call.’

He frowned, trying to place the name. ‘Nicky Heath?’ Then it came to him and his face sort of unfolded, some of the seams disappearing as his eyebrows went up and back. ‘Oh, wait. Dead man with a dot co dot uk suffix?’

‘Yeah, that’d be him.’

He got to his feet and thrust out a hand. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Gale Mallisham. Pleased to meet you. A lot of people walk in here in the mistaken belief that their lives qualify as news. I find that it’s a mistake to let such people get a running start.’

I took the hand and shook it, and I got the usual instant telegraphic flash of information about his mood – which was calm and only mildly curious. I got my fingers crushed, too, because he had a fierce grip.

He gestured us to sit down, realised there was only one chair on our side of the desk and went off to steal one from the other, empty desk. ‘The dead man said you were in a position to offer me a quid pro quo. He was deliberately vague about what you were offering, though.’

‘Well,’ I said, cautiously, ‘he probably told you that we’re chasing information about Myriam Kale. And yeah, we’ve got some to trade. Recent information, if you take my drift. Something that might make a story.’

Gale Mallisham wheeled the other chair back across to us, and Juliet took it with a smile and a nod. He caught the smile full in the face and didn’t stagger, so it was clear that Juliet wasn’t back to anything like full proof yet – but his stare stayed on her as he walked back around to his own side of the desk. Even without her lethally addictive pheromones, Juliet is beautiful enough to make people walk into furniture and not feel the pain.

‘Something that might make a story,’ he repeated, swivelling his gaze back to me. ‘And would that be a Paul Sumner story, by any chance?’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meet me halfway, Mister Castor. I won’t be coy with you if you’re direct and honest with me.’

I sighed and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ I admitted, ‘it’s that kind of story. Kale reaching out from beyond the grave to claim another victim.’

Mallisham sat back, resting his hands on his stomach with the fingers intertwined and steepled. ‘We don’t cover stories of that type,’ he said. ‘Not as a rule, anyway. You’ve got an uphill struggle, now, but I’m still listening.’

I told him in stripped-down form about the murder of Alastair Barnard, and then about the events of the past few days – touching not just on the testimony of Joseph Onugeta but also on John Gittings’s weird collection of gangster memorabilia and what Nicky had sieved out of it. He listened in complete silence, except when he wanted a detail repeated or clarified. About halfway through, he found an A5 notebook and a pencil in the clutter on his desk: he looked at me for permission, waving the pencil in the air, and I nodded, not breaking stride. After that he scribbled notes while I talked.

When I£th=sio’d finished, he set the pencil down and massaged his wrist. ‘Shorthand hurts more and more as I get older,’ he grunted. He looked at what he’d written, reading it over silently with his lips moving slightly as though he was reciting the words to himself under his breath. ‘Quite a story,’ he said when he’d finished. His tone was dry.

‘It’s only half a story,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the other half.’

‘To stop this man Hunter from going to jail.’

I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable at having to define my stake in this. ‘I think Doug Hunter’s going to jail whatever we do,’ I said scrupulously. ‘Even if we turn up evidence that Myriam Kale was in that hotel room – in the spirit or in the flesh – there’s a better than even chance that the judge will kick it out of court. And it’s nearly certain that it was Hunter’s hand on the hammer, whoever was in the driving seat at the time.’

‘Then why is this worth crossing the Atlantic for?’

‘Because if there’s a connection between Myriam Kale and the East End gangsters who my dead friend John was researching, then she’s the odd man out. And the odd man out is sometimes the best way to crack the puzzle.’

Mallisham was staring at me thoughtfully. Perhaps he’d heard the slight hesitation in my voice when I described John Gittings as a friend.