Dead Men's s Boots

He gave me a slightly nonplussed look. Jenna-Jane looked around too, and I took an unworthy pleasure in the way her thin lips thinned a little more at the sight of me.

‘And you are –?’

‘Felix Castor. Like Miss Bruckner said, I’m the other side of the coin when it comes to paying for Rafi’s fees at the Stanger and signing off on his monthly reviews.’

‘I see. And what is it that you do, Mister Castor?’

Anything honest, I thought. Which lets out most of what you do. ‘I’m an exorcist, your honour.’

‘An –?’

‘Exorcist. Ghostbreaker. Provider of –’ I ran my tongue around the white-bread phrase with a slight reluctance. ‘– Spiritual Services.’

The magistrate gave me an owl-eyed stare, the ripples seeming to spread away almost as far as his neckline now. ‘I see. And you agree with Miss Bruckner’s assertion that the tribunal’s members are not fully impartial?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I do. Doctor Smart worked at the MOU under Jenna-Jane – Professor Mulbridge – for five years. He still does all his consultancy work at Praed Street. And that guy Prentice who’s on the panel as the lay member – well, he’s “lay” in the sense of laying low. He’s in my profession, and Professor Mulbridge is more or less his regular employer. She can’t have exorcists on staff so she hires them as security and puts their pay cheques through a different budget. Prentice is as much of a fixture at Saint Mary’s as the scum behind the toilet.’ Prentice, who’d been giving me a hostile glare ever since I mentioned his name, surged to his feet and opened his mouth to speak. ‘If you’ll pardon the expression,’ I added, punctiliously. ‘I wasn’t comparing him to toilet scum in any personal or moral sense.’

‘Your honour-’ Prenti of#8217; ce spluttered. Runcie cut over him, giving me a severe frown. ‘Mister Castor, if I hear any repetition of that pugnacious tone, I’ll take it as a contempt of court. Are you seeing proof of association as proof of collusion?’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘Not automatically. But Professor Mulbridge is desperate to get her hands on Rafi because –’ better pick my words with care here ‘– his condition is so rare and it chimes so well with her own interests. And you’d have to admit, your honour, it smells a little off if the institution that’s trying to swipe Rafael Ditko – to take possession of him against his own wishes and the wishes of those close to him – is able to pad out the tribunal panel with its own staff. It looks like ballot-stuffing.’

Jenna-Jane put her hand up, and the magistrate turned his gaze on her.

‘Your honour,’ she said, sounding just a little reproachful, ‘could I make an observation? Not to rebut Miss Bruckner’s and Mister Castor’s allegations but to indicate the problem that the tribunal was faced with?’

Mister Runcie indicated with a gesture that she could. Jenna-Jane nodded her thanks.

‘The facility I run at Saint Mary’s,’ she said, sounding like someone’s grandmother reminiscing about the Queen’s coronation, ‘is for the study, treatment and understanding of a very specific range of conditions. Many of my patients believe themselves to be possessed by the dead; or to be themselves dead souls inhabiting animal bodies. As you know, the body of scientific evidence on such matters is small. In trying to enlarge it, I’ve had to call on the skills of a great many people whose knowledge is of an empirical rather than an academic nature.’

Knowing the Jenna-Jane juggernaut and how it rolls along, I was listening to all this with a detached interest. I had to give her a 5.9 for artistic effect, but only 5.6 for technical merit: she’d got the respectful tone right, but she’d overdone the beating about the bush. ‘Your point, Professor Mulbridge,’ the magistrate chided her.

‘My apologies, your honour. My point is that Rafael Ditko claims to be demonically possessed. Doctor Webb’s initial diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia, but he admits that there’s some anomalous evidence which brings that diagnosis into question. He wants Ditko transferred both because he represents a danger to the staff at the Stanger Home and because they don’t have the proper facilities there to treat him.

‘So a decision on Mister Ditko’s case requires an awareness of the paranormal as well as of the psychiatric factors presenting in his case. And it would be hard to find anywhere in the United Kingdom any practitioner in those areas – specifically, any exorcist – who hasn’t worked with me or for me at some point in the last ten years. Why, Mister Castor himself –’ with a tolerant smile she turned to indicate me, our eyes locking for the second time ‘– was a very valued colleague of mine at the Metamorphic Ontology Unit until comparatively recently.’

The magistrate looked at me with a certain mild surprise.

‘Is this true, Mister Castor?’

Damn. Sometimes when you’re not knife-fighting with Jenna-Jane on a day-to-day basis you forget how strong her instinct for the jugular really is.