Dead Men's s Boots

barricade that was his desk. Runcie was standing, so rigid with indignation that he was vibrating slightly, like a tuning fork. He really looked unwell: the pallor going beyond ashen into waxy.

‘How dare you play at charades in a court of law?’ he demanded as soon as we were alone, waving a finger at the urn. ‘What’s the meaning of this . . . thing?’

I gave the urn a wipe, because the bronze was a bit tarnished here and there. ‘Well,’ I explained, ‘it’s a mark of respect for the dead, primarily, but it also gives the living a focus for their grief. Otherwise you could just flush your ashes down the khazi and use the money for—’

‘Don’t give me all that . . . nonsense,’ Runcie interrupted me, forcing the words past clenched teeth. ‘Why did you bring it here? Why are you showing it to me?’

‘Ah!’ I said, shaking my head ruefully at my own misunderstanding. ‘Yeah, I get you now. Not so much “What the hell is that?” as “What the hell is that doing in my courtroom?” Well, Mister R, it’s a great, huge, festering, bloated bastard of a memento mori. Which if your Latin isn’t up to it means—’

‘I know what it means.’

‘-A reminder of death; a vivid or stirring testimony to human mort—’

‘I know what it means!’ Runcie screamed. ‘Get it out of my courtroom or I’ll find you in contempt. You’ll do thirty days, you understand me?’

I massaged my nose thoughtfully. ‘Thirty days is a long time,’ I observed.

Runcie shook his head, his eyes a little wild. ‘Oh no. Thirty days is my opening bid, Mister . . . whatever your name is. Carson? Carter? I know you. I know what you’re aiming to do here. You can’t intimidate a magistrate. But you can get yourself into a lot of trouble trying.’

I didn’t bother to answer. I turned the urn to face him. The name on it wasn’t Runcie, but it made him moan and fall backwards into his chair, all the fight knocked out of him in a second.

‘Now,’ I said easily, ‘we know where we stand. You, on that road with all the paving slabs made out of good intentions you never cashed in. And me, on your balls.’

Runcie said something. It wasn’t that easy to hear, but the name on the urn was in there along with some protest or disclaimer or denial. I turned the slightly dented bronze vessel around again and examined the name. ‘John Colmore,’ I read. ‘A.k.a. Jack Spot, the King of Aldgate. That’s you, isn’t it? You would have been one of the early ones, I’m guessing. And far from the worst. I gather you charged the Jewish businesses around Mile End a lot of money for “protection” – but then when the blackshirts rolled up you actually weighed in and provided some, which is something of a novelty. And you’ve improved yourself since then, obviously. Aaron Silver told me some of you had trained as lawyers for tactical reasons, but bloody hell, eh? A beak. You can take the boy out of the gutter.’

Runcie gave me a look that was pure poison, but I forgave him because he had nothing at all to back it up.

‘So don’t get me wrong, Jack,’ I concluded. ‘I’ve got nothing against you personally. But I’ve got to look out for me and mine, and right now, from where I’m sitting, you’re part of the problem. So here’s how it’s going to go. You’re going to serve an injunction against Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, immediately restraining her against taking Rafi Ditko out of the Stanger clinic. You’ll also rule yourself ultra vires on the power-of- attorney thing, and bump it up to one of your mates in the Court of Appeal with a quiet nudge and a wink to decide in Pen Bruckner’s favour. These things you will do now, while I watch. And then you might want to clock off early and have a G&T, because you’ll have earned it.’

Runcie was still glaring at me like I’d trodden dogshit into his Persian carpet. ‘The law can’t be bought, Mister Castor.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of trying,’ I protested, throwing out my arms in injured innocence. ‘Although I suspect Jenna-Jane did. But this – this is extortion, not bribery.’

‘You can’t threaten me.’

‘Can’t I? Well, let me paint you a picture, then. You’re a ghost sitting in a body which if I’m any judge –  pardon the pun – is already starting to reject you. Your friends aren’t around any more to help you get the whip hand again: no more inscriptions, now or ever, so there’s no going back. Which leaves you with three options. Sing along if you know the words.’

I counted them off on my fingers. ‘One. You hold on for dear life, and savour every last second of your fleshly existence until finally the last one of your fingernails is prised loose and you go sailing off into eternity like a balloon with its string cut.

‘Two – and this is a risky one – you let go. Leave now while you’re still strong, instead of wearing yourself out with a fight you can’t win. Find yourself a fresh corpse to nest in or a dog to redecorate. Come back as a zombie or a loup-garou and live to fight another day. If you opt for two I can even give you some pointers. I’ve been around the track a few times when it comes to borrowed flesh.

‘But then there’s three. Are you ready for three?’

Runcie had his head buried in his hands and he didn’t give any sign of hearing me, but I knew he was listening.

‘Three is this. You piss me off, and I play you a short, merry tune. And then it’s all over, Jack. Right here and right now. Because I’m the bingo caller from Hell and I’ve got your number. And some of my friends are dead because some of your friends liked to shoot first before anyone could ask them any questions, so I don’t owe you a single fucking favour in the whole wide world.’

I stood up. ‘Your choice. And because I’m in a bright, bubbly, expansive mood today, I’m going to give you until I reach the door.’

28

That counted as a happy ending, in my book. It was a case I was able to walk away from, which put me among the front runners if you look at the statistics. Rafi was safe from Jenna-Jane’s scientific curiosity, for the moment at least: he could relax and unpack in his padded cell made for two. And that in turn put me in good with Pen again, to the point where she could actually bear to talk to me for whole minutes at a time. I even had grounds for hope that she might break down and let me come and live in her attic again when Ropey Doyle came back from Ireland with a snow-white tan and a broader accent.

The righteous will get their reward in the Kingdom of Heaven. The rest of us poor sons of bitches have to content ourselves with what we can scrape together here on Earth.

I think back, in idle moments, to when I was a kid in Walton, Liverpool. Sometimes in summer, on really hot days, we’d go down to a place called the Sisters. It was a series of bomb craters, on a huge expanse of waste ground next to a closed-down railway track. The bigger craters had filled up with water over time and become ponds.

Even on the hottest day the water would be freezing cold. You’d stick your foot in, then swear a lot and back off, and get jeered at both by kids who’d already gone in and by kids who had no intention of trying. So you’d wade in a bit deeper, and a bit deeper – foot, to calf, to knee, to hip – and the cold would be biting into your legs and it would be agony. Then it was lapping at your stomach and it was worse. You kept hoping you’d acclimatise, but the more you drew it out the more it hurt. Until suddenly you were in over your shoulders and – just like that – it was absolutely fine. Cool, refreshing, the best thing ever. Best of all, you got to laugh at all the other poor bastards who were still at the toe-dipping stage.

And I always envied the few hardy souls who just took a running jump, hit the water all curled up into a ball and then opened up, laughing, already there: the whole incremental ordeal bypassed in a single moment of raw courage.

So what I’m getting at is this. Okay, maybe it’s cold in the grave. Maybe you come out of the light and you think, Fuck your mother, this is bad. This is worse than anything I would have guessed. But the trick is to clench your teeth, get a running start and dive.

When I hit that other country, from whose bourne no traveller back-pedals, I’m going to be moving fast. I’m gambling that the first ten seconds or so will be the worst.