salt-and-pepper hair. His face as he raised his head to look at us was as rucked up as a bulldog’s. ‘What can I do for you people?’ he snapped, as if he didn’t much want to know but was working from a script he had to follow. He had much less of an accent than the guy in the museum. I wondered whether that was because he’d come here from somewhere else and hadn’t quite blended into the local dialect, or if it was a relic of a college education in another state.
‘My name’s Castor,’ I said, ‘and this is Juliet Salazar. I think Nicky Heath contacted you and asked if it would be okay for us to pay you a call.’
He frowned, trying to place the name. ‘Nicky Heath?’ Then it came to him and his face sort of unfolded, some of the seams disappearing as his eyebrows went up and back. ‘Oh, wait. Dead man with a dot co dot uk suffix?’
‘Yeah, that’d be him.’
He got to his feet and thrust out a hand. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Gale Mallisham. Pleased to meet you. A lot of people walk in here in the mistaken belief that their lives qualify as news. I find that it’s a mistake to let such people get a running start.’
I took the hand and shook it, and I got the usual instant telegraphic flash of information about his mood – which was calm and only mildly curious. I got my fingers crushed, too, because he had a fierce grip.
He gestured us to sit down, realised there was only one chair on our side of the desk and went off to steal one from the other, empty desk. ‘The dead man said you were in a position to offer me a quid pro quo. He was deliberately vague about what you were offering, though.’
‘Well,’ I said, cautiously, ‘he probably told you that we’re chasing information about Myriam Kale. And yeah, we’ve got some to trade.
Gale Mallisham wheeled the other chair back across to us, and Juliet took it with a smile and a nod. He caught the smile full in the face and didn’t stagger, so it was clear that Juliet wasn’t back to anything like full proof yet – but his stare stayed on her as he walked back around to his own side of the desk. Even without her lethally addictive pheromones, Juliet is beautiful enough to make people walk into furniture and not feel the pain.
‘Something that might make a story,’ he repeated, swivelling his gaze back to me. ‘And would that be a Paul Sumner story, by any chance?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meet me halfway, Mister Castor. I won’t be coy with you if you’re direct and honest with me.’
I sighed and nodded. ‘Yeah,’ I admitted, ‘it’s that kind of story. Kale reaching out from beyond the grave to claim another victim.’
Mallisham sat back, resting his hands on his stomach with the fingers intertwined and steepled. ‘We don’t cover stories of that type,’ he said. ‘Not as a rule, anyway. You’ve got an uphill struggle, now, but I’m still listening.’
I told him in stripped-down form about the murder of Alastair Barnard, and then about the events of the past few days – touching not just on the testimony of Joseph Onugeta but also on John Gittings’s weird collection of gangster memorabilia and what Nicky had sieved out of it. He listened in complete silence, except when he wanted a detail repeated or clarified. About halfway through, he found an A5 notebook and a pencil in the clutter on his desk: he looked at me for permission, waving the pencil in the air, and I nodded, not breaking stride. After that he scribbled notes while I talked.
When I’d finished, he set the pencil down and massaged his wrist. ‘Shorthand hurts more and more as I get older,’ he grunted. He looked at what he’d written, reading it over silently with his lips moving slightly as though he was reciting the words to himself under his breath. ‘Quite a story,’ he said when he’d finished. His tone was dry.
‘It’s only half a story,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the other half.’
‘To stop this man Hunter from going to jail.’
I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable at having to define my stake in this. ‘I think Doug Hunter’s going to jail whatever we do,’ I said scrupulously. ‘Even if we turn up evidence that Myriam Kale was in that hotel room – in the spirit or in the flesh – there’s a better than even chance that the judge will kick it out of court. And it’s nearly certain that it was Hunter’s hand on the hammer, whoever was in the driving seat at the time.’
‘Then why is this worth crossing the Atlantic for?’
‘Because if there’s a connection between Myriam Kale and the East End gangsters who my dead friend John was researching, then she’s the odd man out. And the odd man out is sometimes the best way to crack the puzzle.’
Mallisham was staring at me thoughtfully. Perhaps he’d heard the slight hesitation in my voice when I described John Gittings as a friend. Perhaps he was wondering how much of this was made-to-measure bullshit to prise his lips and his files open. But when he spoke it was only to summarise again.
‘You’ve got a lot of dead men – dead
‘Yes. Exactly.’
‘So it’s about your friend, and his . . . unfinished business.’ Mallisham took off his glasses and stroked the pinch-marks on the bridge of his nose. ‘Would I be right in saying that finishing the business would make it more likely he’d lie down and stay down, instead of distressing his nearest and dearest?’
‘Yes,’ I said again. I thought about Carla, and realised that I hadn’t called her before I left. I didn’t even know whether John’s violently unhappy spirit had surfaced again since the cremation. I had to admit to myself that there were other factors operating here besides altruism. One of them was that when someone tries to kill me to keep me from finishing a job, it touches a stubborn streak in me that goes fairly deep.
‘Okay.’ Mallisham put his glasses on again, squinting and grimacing them into position. ‘I’m going to buy that. One out of two of you’s got an honest face, and these days that counts as better than average.’
‘One out of two of us?’ Juliet queried blandly.
Mallisham gave her a hard look. ‘Well, you’re a long way away from being what you look to be, missy,’ he said to her. ‘I’m not sure whether you’re dead or just something that never got born in the first place, but that body that looks so good on you – it isn’t really
There was a long silence. I didn’t rush in to fill it: this was Juliet’s question and I figured she’d field it by herself.
‘No,’ she murmured at last, looking down demurely into her lap. ‘It’s not me. It’s not even a body.’
‘Just something you ran up for the occasion, eh?’ Mallisham’s eyebrows flashed. ‘Well, in a way that makes me feel a little better. You’re, what, her
Juliet’s gaze jerked back up to meet his. She blinked. ‘You want to guess my lineage?’ she invited, with an edge to her tone. I hadn’t understood the ancient Greek, but it was clear that something in what Mallisham had said had hit home.
He laughed and shook his head. ‘No, no. I’m not of a mind to play twenty questions with you. I used to do a little exorcism on the side, in my early days, is all: that’s how I knew what you were. I gave it up a long time ago, on account of how journalism was what I really wanted to do. My daddy said God had put a sword in my hand for the smiting of the ungodly, but there’s lots of different ways of doing that.’ He shook his head again, a little ruefully this time. ‘Well, well. Succubus. But not hunting.’
‘No. Not hunting.’
‘Passing for human.’
Juliet shrugged.
‘You’re the second I’ve met who’s taken that course.’ Mallisham stared at Juliet with intense, unashamed curiosity. ‘I wonder – I hope this doesn’t give offence – I wonder if I’d have had a chance against you, in a straight draw.’
‘You’re not seeing me at my best,’ Juliet said, with a cold smile.
Mallisham smiled disarmingly back. ‘That’s hard to believe. Anyway, Myriam Kale. What was it you wanted to know, exactly?’
I took over again. ‘Any gaps in the official story,’ I said. ‘I mean, if you know of any link she had to England –
