Dead Men's s Boots

But for what it’s worth, I think you have a strong case. You should get yourself proper representation and do whatever it takes to prepare a full legal argument. My judgement, in the meantime, will focus on the make-up of the review panel.’

He stood up, taking the clerk by surprise so that his ‘All rise’ sounded a little panicked.

The magistrate gathered up his papers. ‘These proceedings are adjourned for three days,’ he said, ‘and will resume on Thursday, in the afternoon session. Make a note, Mister Farrier, if you please.’

He swept out of the room without a backward glance."

"Jenna-Jane put on her jacket while Pen just stood there looking like she’d lost a pound and found a plague sore. I knew what was going through her mind: with the power-of-attorney ploy kicked into the long grass, we had to shoot down Jenna-Jane’s stooges on the review panel or the whole thing would go through on the nod. On the other hand, the Honourable Mister Runcie – pompous and self-satisfied though he definitely was – struck me as being nobody’s fool. I still felt like we were in with a chance.

There were exits on both sides of the courtroom, so it had to be deliberate that Jenna-Jane took the longer route and paused in front of Pen on her way out.

‘I’m so sorry, Pamela,’ she said, looking limpidly sincere. ‘I want you to know that if Rafi is given into my care, all the resources of the unit will be brought to bear on him. If it’s possible to make him well again, we’ll do it.’

Pen stared at her in stunned silence for a moment. Then she drew back her arm in a staccato movement, fist clenched. But I was already moving, and I stepped in before she could bring it forward again, sliding between the two of them with my back to Pen. Felix Castor: human shield.

‘Jenna-Jane,’ I said, ‘you’re a sight for sore eyes. Actually, let me rephrase that. My eyes are scabbing over just from looking at you. I’m carrying a voice recorder, so why don’t you stop prejudicing your case and go play with your ECT machines?’

‘Felix.’ Jenna-Jane shook her head with mock exasperation. ‘You’re determined to hate me, but I have only respect and admiration for you. I’m hoping to welcome you back on board some day. There’s going to be a war, and I want you on my side. I’m determined on it. Perhaps your friend Rafi might actually be the bridge that brings us together.’

‘You mean you’re going to lay him down on the ground and trample on him?’ I said. ‘Tell it to the court.’

She raised hethoShe rair hands in surrender and walked on. I turned to Pen, who was trembling like a tuning fork.

‘Well, that went as well as could be expected,’ I said.

‘Fuck off, Fix,’ Pen answered, her eyes welling up with tears and instantly overflowing. ‘Fuck off and don’t talk to me.’

She turned her back and stalked away along the seats, tripping at one point over somebody’s briefcase and then kicking it out of her way as she righted herself. It wasn’t a dramatic exit, but it did the job.

What’s that old Groucho Marx line? No, never mind: I’ve got plenty of enemies. But if they ever start to thin out, most of my friends are right there in the wings ready to audition.

‘There’s going to be a war.’ Jenna-Jane Mulbridge actually believes that shit, and she isn’t the only one.

The dead only rose again because they were running ahead of the demons, the theory went, and now the demons had started to appear. There was a gaping hole in the walls of Creation: Hell was throwing its legions into the breach, and so far our side not only didn’t have an army, it didn’t even have a poster with a pointing finger on it.

The first and greatest of the exorcists, Peckham Steiner, had believed this too, and towards the end of his life he’d devoted his personal fortune to the building of defences that would give the living a fighting chance in that war when it was finally declared: the Thames Collective, a barracks for ghostbreakers on running water, where the dead and the damned couldn’t walk; the safe houses, protected by ramparts of water, earth and air, which I’d assumed were an urban legend until I’d actually seen one and figured out how it worked; a dozen wacky schemes full of customised craziness in every flavour you can think of. It was classic paranoid stuff: but at this point in my life I was finding it a lot harder to laugh it off.

If there was a war coming, then Rafi Ditko was conquered territory. Playing around with black magic, he’d opened up a door to Hell inside his own soul, and something – a big, bad bastard of a something that called itself Asmodeus – had stepped through. Now Rafi was locked up in a ten-by-ten cell in a mental hospital, because the law hadn’t caught up with the facts yet and the only diagnosis that fitted his symptoms was schizophrenia.