Juliet telling Todd in a calm and neutral tone that if he didn’t step way back out of her face he was likely to lose some internal organ that he couldn’t do without. No more from Todd after that.
The foxy priest asking if everyone would please, please sit down again so that the cremation could continue. Juliet telling him that he could go ahead and burn whoever he liked – she hadn’t come along to watch.
Carla asking Juliet who in hell she was, and Juliet saying that it was funny she should ask.
I must have been out for all of ten seconds. Ten seconds was more than enough, though, if Juliet was in a sour mood. It was lucky for all of us – and probably for Todd most of all – that she’d got out of the right side of Susan Book’s bed this morning.
I was lying on the ground, though, and that was a bad sign. If Juliet had put me down to free up her hands, things could be about to escalate. I started to sit up, my stomach lurching slightly as gravity sloshed around me like cooling soup.
‘Fix, are you all right?’ Carla knelt beside me and supported me as I tried to get my upper body vertical.
‘I’m fine, Carla,’ I said, and it was true that the blood-red haze was fading out to the corners of my eyes. I could think again, without feeling as though my brain was about to explode out of my ears like silly string. It was obvious I could think because I was doing it: I was thinking about Juliet’s legs, which were on a level with my face. Juliet’s legs are long and shapely, and they deserve a lot of very serious thought – especially when, as now, they were encased in tight black leather trousers and stiletto-heeled boots. But it wouldn’t help to restore dignity to the proceedings if I started howling like a wolf.
I stood up, taking in the rest of her outfit only in my peripheral vision. More blacks – her favourite colour, and she goes for every possible shade of it. Her arms and shoulders were bare, though, because her shirt was really only a vest, and it was made out of something almost diaphanous that allowed you to guess at the shape of the body underneath it. Sometimes, with Juliet, even peripheral vision was too much.
Todd was taking her in his stride, though, which was an impressive feat. Her threat to eviscerate him had made him stop talking, but he was staring at her with a cold composure that I still haven’t managed to master. Maybe lawyers are wired differently from the rest of us.
‘Mister Castor,’ he said, ‘is this a friend of yours?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Juliet, this is Carla Gittings – John’s widow. And Maynard Todd. John’s solicitor. Both of you, Juliet Salazar, a former colleague of mine.’
She gave each of them a glance that you could only call minimal. ‘You left a message with Sue,’ she said to me. ‘Something you wanted to ask me about.’
‘Yeah, but-’ I was about to ask her how she’d found me here, but I realised before I got the question out that it was like asking a dog how it had found a bone it had once buried. Juliet was a predator, and she had my scent: she could find me any time, anywhere, without the benefit of my number, my address or my permission. ‘I meant . . . afterwards,’ I finished lamely, conscious of the little priest looking at me with bristling resentment. ‘Could you wait for me outside? I’ll just be another ten minutes or so.’
Juliet considered, then nodded. ‘Ten minutes,’ she agreed, and she turned and walked out without another word. Again, Juliet walking out is something that stays in your mind for a long time after you’ve seen it, but I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that I’m obsessive in any way: it’s a side effect of what she is, that’s all. I tore my stare away, apologised to Carla and discovered with wry amusement that she was still staring at Juliet’s departing back.
But this wasn’t a wedding, it was a funeral, and I’d disrupted it more than enough. We went back to our seats. I looked across at the coffin, and listened, too – listened on the frequencies that the living don’t use all that much. Nothing. The dead still kept up their cricket-chirping from the garden of remembrance, but from John there wasn’t so much as a tinker’s fart. I had my answer now, at any rate: John’s vengeful ghost had anchored itself in his flesh again and come along with us for the ride. But if I’d been hoping that falling in with his plans for the afterlife would sweeten his disposition, then it looked as though I’d been mistaken.
On the credit side that last attack, if it was an attack, had spent him: as the priest pressed the switch again John Gittings in his sustainable-hardwood casket rolled through the furnace doors into eternity without valediction. What happened next would be a combination of the banal and the unknowable. His body would burn: the rest of him would start out on a different journey, and there were no maps or roadside services. I was obscurely sorry that my last goodbye to him had taken the form of a psychic wrestling match: even sorrier, maybe, that he’d had me on the ropes.
When it was all over I asked Carla if she’d be okay going back without me. She was easy on that score, because she’d already decided to cut loose and take a cab: she found that a little of Todd’s company went a long way, and it didn’t help at all to know that he was going out of his way to be friendly. From her point of view he’d still played a major part in the nightmare of the last few days, and he stuck in her craw no matter what.
I gave her a hug, promised to be back in touch the next day to see how she was, and headed for the door. Todd ran an intercept, and I stopped because otherwise I’d have had to trample him. He gave me a firm handshake and a hard, speculative glance.
‘Thanks for all your help, Mister Castor,’ he said.
‘My pleasure.’
‘You feeling okay now?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Nervous condition?’
‘Something like that.’ I pushed on past him: I liked the man well enough, but I wasn’t interested in talking about it right then.
Juliet was leaning against the wall in between the Lion of Saint Mark and the Eagle of Saint John, looking like the odd one out in a police line-up. She checked her watch meaningfully as I appeared. It was kind of cute: it’s not like she gives a damn about time in the days, hours and minutes sense, but it’s exactly the sort of human mannerism that fascinates her – and watching her reproducing it is like hearing someone talk in a sexy foreign accent.
‘Pushed for time?’ I asked.
‘I’ve got other places to be, yes,’ she confirmed, kicking off from the wall and falling in beside me. ‘I came all the way over here because Sue said you sounded worried. She thought it might be something urgent. If it’s not, just tell me: I’ll go back to where I belong and you can send me a letter.’
‘Where you belong?’ I raised an eyebrow. That’s something of a loaded proposition when you’re an earthbound demon.
‘You know what I mean.’
We walked down the steps and out into bright, clear winter sunlight: the clouds had rolled away while we were inside and the day had taken on an entirely different cast. I welcomed it with something like relief.
‘It’s about a crime scene you read for Gary Coldwood,’ I said, as we walked down the curved drive back towards the street. Silence now from the gardens: the dead were in communion, maybe welcoming a newbie into their hallowed ranks.
‘Alastair Barnard,’ Juliet said.
‘Lucky guess.’
‘Gary called me. He said you were taking an interest in the case, and he reminded me that I’d signed a confidentiality agreement with the Met when I took their retainer.’
‘Good money?’
‘You did it for three years, Castor. I assume that’s a rhetorical question.’
‘So he told you not to talk to me?’
‘Not in so many words. But he’s concerned to do things by the book. He has a past association with you, and now you’ve taken on a commission from somebody – the accused man’s wife? – who has a real interest in sabotaging his case. He doesn’t want to make life difficult for you, but he doesn’t trust you overmuch.’
I laughed at that. ‘He’s right not to,’ I admitted. ‘But I like the delicate nuances there. He’s saying that he
