Dead Men's s Boots

But some massive, subterranean chain of cause and effect was there, had to be there, just out of my line of sight. I felt like I’d been strolling along the banks of Loch Ness and I’d just glimpsed one coil of an otherwise hidden monster breaking the water in front of my startled eyes.

‘Castor? You still there?’ Chesney’s voice brought me out of my trance. ‘I said, why did you want to know?’

I checked my watch. Okay, it was going to be a tight squeeze. Tighter than tight: I’d turn up at Juliet’s late, and Sue Book would look at me with reproachful tears in her eyes and a burned casserole in her oven-gloved hands. Then Juliet would rip out my intestines for making Susan cry.

‘Because I need it right now,’ I said. ‘Have it ready for me, okay? I’m at Victoria, so I should be with you inside of ten minutes.’

‘No!’ he protested. ‘I’m not on my own here. Smeet’s in the lab doing a dissection. This is a lousy time.’

‘Chesney, I don’t care. I’m coming over.’

‘Fuck! Okay, I’ll be waiting on the stairs. Outside the porno studio, yeah? On the first floor?’

‘Fine. See you there.’

I hung up and headed for the exit. Belatedly I realised that I should have called Juliet too, and told her I was going to be late. But I could do that on the return arc – and at least then I could tell her, with my hand on my heart, that I was on my way. And maybe the trophy I’d be bringing back with me would take the edge off her demonic strop.

I left the station and crossed the road, looking behind me by force of habit. No tails – and no sense of a tail: no premonitory prickling at the back of my neck or the back of my mind. If something dead had been sticking close to me over the past few days, it was gone now.

I turned into the small cul-de-sac where Nexus Veterinary Pathologists had set up their shingle: I could see from the other end of the street that their door was standing open, presumably because Vince had already come downstairs and left it ajar for me.

But hadn’t he said that there was a security guard on at night? The bare foyer beyond the door was brightly lit and it seemed to be deserted.

I was a little wary as I approached the door and stepped inside. I’m prolific with threats but I didn’t want to get Vince disciplined or sacked if there was nothing to be gained by it.

The security post was empty, but the monitor behind the counter was switched on, showing a stretch of empty stairwell. Perhaps the guard was on his rounds.

Or perhaps not. As I came forward past the security post, heading for the stairs, I caught a glimpse of something dark behind the counter, close to the ground. It was a slicked mass of hair, the top of a man’s head. I stopped and leaned over the counter, looking down.

The guard was lying on the floor, his back propped against the rear wall of his narrow domain. It was hard to see his face because his head was bowed forward onto his chest: but the sheer amount of blood dribbling down onto his torso and spreading across the floor around him suggested that there might not be that much face left to ‹h f thsee in any case.

Still dribbling. Still spreading.

This had only just happened.

The urge to run away from danger is one of the hallmarks of sanity, and I like to think I’m as sane as the next man – although in London that’s probably not saying very much. There were two reasons why I sprinted up the stairs rather than back out into the street: one was the conviction – maybe unreasonable – that whoever had done this was the same whoever who’d tried to drop me down a lift shaft; the other was that I wanted answers, and sticking my head into the lion’s mouth seemed to be the only way I was going to get them.

The thought that Vince and Smeet might still be alive up there occurred to me as I hit the first landing, so I can’t say it was part of the initial impetus that launched me. Maybe it kept me moving as I took the next flight, running towards the door of the vet’s office, which was not only open but off its hinges.

I slowed on the threshold as a wave of stink hit me – hot, sharp animal pheremones, so pungent they thickened the air. A loup-garou: it had to be. Nothing natural smells like that. I reached inside my coat for my tin whistle, turning slowly as I advanced into the room to minimise the chances of an attack from behind. But whatever it was, this thing would probably be quick and ruthless: the guard downstairs had died at his post, and seemed just to have fallen where he stood, with no sign of struggle or flight.

There were plenty of signs of struggle up here, though. The lab had been trashed with spectacular thoroughness and violence: desks and cabinets upended and thrown around the room, splintered shelves sagging and bleeding books and files onto the floor. Broken glass crunched under my feet as I circled.

I saw Vince first.