The gun in his hand was pointing at my chest, and his posture was completely relaxed.
‘Mister Castor,’ he said, pushing the chair on the client side of the desk out towards me with his foot. ‘How is it that you can never rely on religious cultists even to get a simple murder right? Take away their pentagrams and their mystic sigils, they’re like little kids. I was very disappointed to hear that you’d survived your little trip to Alabama. But I try to treat every setback as an opportunity. Come on in and sit down.’
I walked on into the room, but I didn’t take the chair: so long as I was standing, there was a chance I might get the drop on him at some point. Sitting down I was dead meat.
‘Working late,’ I commented.
Todd’s gaze flicked towards the corner of the room. Looking in that direction myself, I saw a fold-out bed. ‘I sleep here these days,’ he said, sounding a little flat and resigned. ‘Mrs Todd has filed divorce papers. She says I’m not the man she married. And you know what? She has a point. I asked you to sit down, Mister Castor. A bullet through your kneecap would force the issue.’
I sat down. I wondered why he hadn’t killed me already, if that was the plan. Maybe because he was worried about getting blood on the carpet: if that was it, his night was going to be ruined when he saw what was on the first-floor landing.
‘You’ve come a long way in a short while,’ Todd went on. ‘That’s a tribute to your detective skills.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Except that you’re not a detective.’ Todd’s tone hardened, and he gave me a look of actual dislike. ‘You’re just a man who gets rid of unwanted ghosts. One step up from a backstreet abortionist. What they do at the start of the life cycle, you do at the end. And, like them, you’re just doing it for the money. You don’t have either the brains or the motivation to figure us out.’
I didn’t bother to give him an answer, because he didn’t seem to need one. There was a photo of a beautiful if slightly austere-looking brunette on his desk. I picked it up and inspected it thoughtfully.
‘So who
‘An ambulance-chaser with a death wish.’
‘Whereas you . . . ?’
‘I’m nobody you’ve heard of. The way I see it, if a criminal gets a name for himself, it’s because he’s stupid enough to get noticed. But this isn’t a conversation we’re having here, Mister Castor. It may look like one, but that’s only because it’s hard to shake off the veneer of civilisation. I’m a bit out of practice when it comes to actually hurting people. That was a conscious decision on our part – switching over to legitimate enterprises as far as possible – but it’s got its drawbacks. You lose the professional edge.’ He leaned forward, putting the front legs of his chair back on the carpet, and stood up. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, coming around the desk, ‘back in Mile End I always preferred a knife to a gun. So I’ll probably start with a knife, if that’s all right with you. Just while I’m easing myself back in. You get more control that way, too. It would annoy me if you bled to death or went into shock before you tell me what I need to know.’
Aha. So that was how it was. I tensed as he approached, looking for a window of opportunity into which I could shove a low blow or a kick to the balls. But he stayed carefully out of my reach as he rummaged in his pocket. I expected his hand to come out with a knife in it, but it didn’t: he was holding a sturdy, slightly scuffed pair of police handcuffs. That was worse news, in a way.
‘Pass your hands through the bars of the chair back,’ Todd ordered me.
‘Tell me what you need to know,’ I temporised, meeting his cold, stern gaze. ‘Maybe we can do this the easy way.’
Todd shook his head. ‘The hard way is the way I know,’ he said. ‘And I tend to rely on the product more if I’ve squeezed it out myself, so to speak. Last time of asking, Mister Castor.’
I hesitated. There are ways of slipping out of handcuffs, but it helps if the guy who’s putting them on you is a bit of a dim bulb. Play along, or lose a kneecap? I made the call and did as I was told, not liking it much. Unfortunately, Todd was skilled and careful. He pressed hard, closing the cuffs as far as the ratchets would let him, and even though I clenched my fists and tensed the muscles of my forearms in the best traditions of Ian Fleming, I could feel that there was no leeway. I was firmly attached to the chair, and the only ways out were springing the lock on the cuffs – only possible with a pick – or smashing the chair itself to kindling. It didn’t seem all that likely that Todd would sit still for either.
‘Okay,’ he said, straightening only after he’d tugged on each of my arms and satisfied himself that my hands didn’t have enough free play to reach my coat or trouser pockets. He didn’t bother to search me: probably he surmised, rightly, that there was nothing I was carrying that could trump a .38.
He went back around the desk, opened the top drawer and took out a very serious piece of ironmongery: the blade was only four or five inches long but it was curiously shaped, with a slight thickening an inch below the point and an asymmetrical profile. The grip was of black polymerised rubber. This was a knife designed for lethal use in difficult circumstances: a weapon of very intimate and individual destruction.
‘You’ve come a long way from Mile End,’ I said, for something to say.
‘Oh yes,’ Todd agreed, testing the edge of the blade on the ball of his thumb. ‘But it’s an easy commute. You’re about to find out how easy.’
‘You think I was stupid enough to walk in here alone?’
‘Well, you arrived alone, so yes. That’s
He ambled back around to my side of the desk where he half-sat, half-leaned against it: the posture of a man settling in for the long haul. ‘So who are you working for?’ he asked.
I wasn’t interested in misdirection or strategy: I just wanted to find an answer that would, for as long as possible, keep me from getting carved up: the longer I stalled, the better the chance that something might come up that I could use against Todd. Okay, I was clutching at straws here: I knew how bad the situation was, but hope – even pathetic, bargain-basement hope – springs eternal.
‘A woman named Janine Hunter,’ I said. ‘Her old man’s up on a murder charge and she—’
The tip of the knife dipped, then flicked across my cheek. Something warm and wet spilled down over my face, and I was tasting my own blood.
‘Janine,’ Todd said. ‘Yes. We know about Janine.’ He sounded so detached that I thought he might be on the verge of wandering away and finding something better to do with his time. ‘She works reasonably well as a cover story. Full marks for effort there. But what I want to know, obviously, is who told you about us. About Mount Grace, and Lionel Palance, and the whole operation. The way we come back. We saw it happen with Gittings, and then we saw it again with you. A little bit of fumbling around, just for effect, and then you go right to where the answers are. Because someone’s driving from the back seat. That’s the name I need, Mister Castor. Confession is going to be good for your soul. And for – let’s say – your left eye.’ To add emphasis to the words, he held the knife in front of my eyes and showed me my own blood on the blade. ‘Then your right, after a very short interval for reflection.’
So the truth wouldn’t do, I thought: I’d have to fall back on bullshit.
‘I don’t know his name for sure,’ I said. ‘We only talked over the phone.’
‘Then how did he pay you? I’ve checked your bank account, and there’s even less action going on there than there seems to be in your sex life.’
It’s meant to be harder to lie to someone if you’re making eye contact with them. I made myself stare Todd straight in the face, just so he didn’t run away with any ideas about my reliability as an informant.
‘He’ll kill me,’ I said.
Todd shook his head. ‘No,’ he reassured me. ‘He won’t.
I bowed my head as if I was giving in to the inevitable. ‘Tall,’ I said. ‘Taller than me. About my age, maybe a little older. Wore a suit even more expensive than yours. Had a beard. Not full – trimmed. A guy who cares about his appearance.’
‘Eyes?’
‘Didn’t notice?’
‘Hair?’
‘Blond.’
