Dead Men's s Boots

’ Staying inconspicuous had been Nicky’s highest priority from way back before he died: the world is a web, he said, and every time you touch one of the strands of the web you tell the spiders where you are. When he accessed the internet, he did it through a string of proxy servers as long as the great wall of China – and, like China, he treated information as though it was both a weapon and a shield. You couldn’t get a fix on Nicky: you couldn’t find him in any search. Even his electricity was hand-pumped from deep artesian wells rather than coming straight out of the national grid. He was the closest thing I’d ever met to an invisible man, and his paranoia was a thing of beautiful, terrible purity.

So this had to be, not the real Nicky, but some kind of lifelike – or rather deathlike – facsimile.

‘The small footprint is still a good working goal,’ Nicky said, almost off-handedly. ‘But think about it for a second, Castor. I kept a small footprint for years, and it didn’t stop this place being torn apart by Fanke and his fucking Satanists. I’m working on a different strategy now.’ ‘Which is?’

‘Which is my business. When it turns out to be yours, I’ll tell you about it.’

‘Okay.’ I gave up. The most likely diagnosis, as far as I could see, was that being winkled out of his shell by a crazed mob had made Nicky’s psychosis metastasise into a new form. And he was right. I’d find out about it somewhere down the line, so there was no point worrying at it now.

I threw the box down on top of what looked like a baby’s changing table and strolled past Nicky into the room. He back-pedalled, keeping pace with me and staying in between me and his nice, shiny new projector. Evidently it was a look-don’t-touch kind of deal.

‘So let’s get down to business,’ I suggested. ‘I asked you what you were doing for John Gittings, and you came out with all that client-privilege palaver. Then I asked you to find me a curio that used to belong to a dead killer and you almost jumped out of your dry-cured skin. I noticed it at the time, but I didn’t know what it meant. Now I do. It was because John had been asking you to do the same thing on a bigger scale – death-row souvenirs by the bucketload – and you thought I might be playing some kind of mind-fuck on you. Trying to make you give yourself away.’

Nicky spread his hands in a ‘there you have it’ gesture. ‘And I don’t know what in our previous relationship could have caused me to have so little trust in you,’ he said sardonically.

‘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 openƒ7;swased 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.