Dead Men's s Boots

I sprinted after him, instinctively bearing right to cut him off if he headed for the station concourse: if he got inside there with even a few seconds’ lead on me, I’d never see him again.

But he wasn’t trying for the station: he sprinted straight out across Bridge Place, almost getting sideswiped by a bus which cost me a second or two as I slowed to let it pass. Then he plunged into a side street.

I was almost thirty feet behind him now, and by the time I got to the corner of the street he was already out of sight. I kept running anyway, scanning the street on both sides to see if there were any clues as to where he might have gone. Only one turn-off, on the left. I took that, and was just in time to see him vanish around another corner away up ahead of me.

Maybe I don’t exercise as much as I should. I know health experts recommend half an hour a day: I did half an hour back in 1999 and then sort of fell behind, what with all that excitement about the new millennium and all. I was already feeling winded when I reached the next corner, while the guy I was chasing seemed to be accelerating if anything.

I got a lucky break, though, when a door opened ahead of him and a woman came out into the street leading two children by the hand. They turned towards us, forming a pavement-wide barrier and giving him the choice between trampling them underfoot or making a wide detour. He skidded to a halt, almost slamming into the startled woman, then swerved across the street, past a skip full of someone’s defunct living-room furniture and into an alley.

I took the hypotenuse and won back enough time to snatch the base unit of a standard lamp from the skip as I passed it. Aerodynamically it was piss-poor, but this was no time to be picky. Putting on a last desperate spurt of speed, I held it out beside me like a vaulter’s pole: but then I flung it like a javelin.

It didn’t have the balance of a javelin, and the heavy end dipped at once towards the ground as it flew. Another couple of feet and it would just have hit the pavement and spun away, end over end. But I was riding my luck and it stayed with me: the shaft went squarely between the guy’s pounding feet and he tripped, smacking down heavily on the stone slabs.

He was winded, but he managed to scramble up again and limp forward another couple of steps. By that time, though, I was on him. I knocked him down again with a shoulder charge: then I jumped on top of him, planting one knee into the small of his back to pin him to the ground. He squirmed and tried to get up, but I had the advantage of weight and position.

‘What the fuck!’ he spluttered. ‘Let go of me! Are you frigging insane?’

‘We haven’t met,’ I panted, my pulse pounding and my breath coming in ragged hiccups. ‘Well, except on the phone. But I’m hoping we can be friends. I’m Castor. Who are you?’

‘I’m gonna scream,’ the guy snarled, still struggling. His head snaked around to glare at me, his nose looking like a raptor’s beak. ‘You think you can do this in broad daylight? Out on the street?’

‘I think,’ I said, still breathless, ‘that you wanted to take – a look at me without – committing yourself. And for some reason you got cold feet. I told you, I don’t want to hurt you. I’m just a friend of John’s.’

‘Then let me up!’

I did. He looked to be in even worse shape to run agai {pe ""2en than I was, but in any case I could see now that the alley was a dead end: there was nowhere for him to run to. I stood up and stepped back, letting him climb slowly to his feet.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him again. ‘And tell me the goddamn truth. I was in a bad mood when I got here and it’s not getting any better.’

He rubbed his knee, favouring me with a sneering grin. ‘Yeah, I’m not surprised,’ he sniggered. ‘Sitting there in the café, like you’re waiting for a blind date. Should’ve worn a white carnation in your- Chesney,’ he added hastily, as I took a step towards him. ‘Vincent. Vincent Chesney.’ He threw up his hands to protect himself.

I grabbed the right one, much to his surprise, and shook it hard. It probably looked absurdly formal given the fact that I’d just chased him down like a dog chases a hare, but I didn’t give a damn. I was here to collect information, and one way was as good as another.

Sometimes the impressions I pick up from skin contact are fleeting and ambiguous: other times they’re so sharp and immediate it’s like a movie with five-point surround sound. Vincent Chesney didn’t have any psychic barriers to speak of, and his emotions just arrived in my head unmediated, with almost painful clarity.

The grin was just bravado: underneath it, he was afraid. Afraid of me, mostly, but not just of what I might do to physically damage him. There was something else in the back of his mind: something else at stake.