Dead Men's s Boots

‘Can I help it if I’m irresistible?’ I asked. ‘How are the new drugs working?’

Larry shrugged expansively. ‘They’re great,’ he said. ‘I’ll live until something else kills me. Can’t ask for more than that.’

Larry was always amazingly upbeat about his condition, which was the result of the sort of arbitrary bad luck that would fill mo duwould fst people with rage or despair to the slopping-over-the-top, foaming-at-the-mouth point. He’d contracted HIV from a bite he got when he was trying to subdue a loup-garou – you might call it a werewolf, except that the animal component here was something leaner and longer-limbed and altogether stranger than that word suggests. It wasn’t even a paying job: he just saw this monster chasing a bunch of kids across a Sainsbury’s car park, and stepped in without even thinking about it. The thing was looking to feed, but it turned its attention to Larry as soon as it realised he was a threat, and like I said it was sleek and fast and very, very mean. Larry took the damage, finished the job with one arm hanging off in strips, then walked a mile and a half to the hospital to get himself patched up. They did a great job: stabilised him, took the severed finger he’d brought with him and sewed it back on, stopped him from bleeding to death or getting tetanus, and eventually restored ninety-five per cent of nervous function. About ten or eleven months later he got the bad news.

For an exorcist, it all falls under the heading of occupational hazard: there aren’t very many of us who get to die of old age.

I changed the subject, which sooner or later was going to bring us around to the even more painful issue of how John Gittings had died – locked in the bathroom with the business end of a shotgun in his mouth. I’m not squeamish, but I’d been shying away from that particular image all afternoon.

‘Business good?’ I asked, falling back once more on the old conversational staples.

‘It’s great,’ Larry said. ‘Best it’s ever been.’

‘Three bloody jobs all at once yesterday,’ Louise confirmed. ‘He’s fast.’ She nodded at Larry. ‘You know how fast he is, but even he can’t do three in a day. They get in the way of each other. The second’s harder than the first, and the third’s impossible. So I did the middle one, and of course that was the one that turned out to be an absolute bastard. Old woman – very tough. Fought back, and I lost my lunch all over the client’s carpet.’

‘Your breakfast,’ Larry corrected. ‘It was only eleven o’clock.’

‘My brunch. And this bloke – company director or something, lives in Regent Quarter – he says “I hope you’re going to clean that up before you go.” And I would have done, too, but not after he said that. I hit him with the standard terms and conditions and walked out. Now he’s saying he won’t pay, but he sodding will. One way or another he will.’

As changes of subject go, it hadn’t got us very far away from death. But that’s exorcists’ shop talk for you.

After a few more pleasantries Lou and Larry strolled away arm in arm, and I walked back over to the grave to say my goodbyes. Carla was now standing in deep conversation with the priest. Maybe a little too deep for comfort: at any rate, she took the opportunity as I walked up to extricate herself, thank him and disengage.

‘I’m heading out,’ I said. ‘Take care of yourself, Carla. I’ll be in touch, okay?’ But she was holding something out to me, and the something turned out to be her car keys.

‘Fix,’ she said apologetically, ‘could you drive me home? I really don’t feel up to it. And there’s something I want to ask you about.’

I hesitated. They say misery loves company but I’m the kind ot Q;m the f misery who usually doesn’t. On the other hand, I’d missed Bourbon’s charabanc and I needed a lift back into town. Maybe a half-second too late to look generous, I nodded and took the keys. ‘Thanks again, father,’ Carla called over her shoulder. I glanced back. The priest was watching us as we walked away, the expression on his face slightly troubled.

‘He asked me if I had any doubts,’ Carla said, catching the movement as I looked around. ‘Any bits of doctrine I wanted to talk over with him. Then, before I could get a word in, he was pumping me for clues.’

‘Men of the cloth are the worst,’ I agreed. ‘They don’t approve, but they have to look. It’s the same principle as the News of the World.’ That was slightly unfair, but it’s something you come across a lot. People assume that we’re sitting on a big secret: we have to be, because how could we do what we do without knowing how it’s done? But it’s not like that at all. Would you ask Steve Davis for an explanation of Brownian motion, or Torvill and Dean how ice crystals form? We’ve got a skill set, not the big book of answers.