Dead Men's s Boots

‘Nothing,’ Carla said, with bitter satisfaction. ‘I ignored it. I thought fuck it, let the bastard sue me. I’ll do what my John wanted when he was still in his right mind. So I went ahead with the funeral, even though this Maynard Todd said he was going to stop me, and I moved the time from three o’clock back to half past one so as he’d miss it and get there too late. Which he did.’ Her voice had been getting thicker, and now she burst into shuddering sobs. ‘But it doesn’t matter any more, Fix. I don’t care what they do to John’s body. I just want him to be at peace. Oh God, let him find some peace!’

There wasn’t anything I could say to that, so I didn’t try. I just concentrated on making life hideous for the driver of the blue van. The League against Cruel Sports wouldn’t approve, but if you know you’re being tailed there are all sorts of subtle torments and indignities you can inflict on the guy who’s chasing you. By the time we’d reached the Stag Hill turn-off I’d shaken him loose and relieved some of my own tensions in the process.

I drove on in silence, turning off the motorway and coaxing the uncooperative car through the congested streets of Cockfosters and Southgate. Meanwhile Carla went through three handkerchiefs and most of what was left in the bottle.

When I pulled up at Aldermans Hill she was more than half drunk. I parked in front of the costume shop, which was closed for Sunday, leaving the car on a double yellow line because it seemed more important right then to get her back onto her home turf and more or less settled.

The flat was on the first floor, up an external flight of steps with a dog-leg. On the door frame there were a good half-dozen wards against the dead, ranging from a sprig of silver birch bound with white thread to a crudely drawn magic circle with the word ekpiptein written across it in Greek script. That translates as ‘Bugger off until you’re wanted, you bodiless bastards’: Greek is a very concise language.

Carla fumbled with her keys, and I noticed that her hands were trembling. I was quite keen to get out of there now that I’d done my civic duty: I’m fuck-all use as a shoulder to cry on.

‘I’m sure he is,’ I said clumsily – and belatedly. ‘At peace, I mean. John was a good man, Carla. He didn’t have any enemies in this world. You know I don’t believe in Heaven, but if anyone deserved—’

I stopped because she was looking at me with the sort of expression you give to dangerous madmen.

‘No,’ she said bluntly. ‘He’s not in Heaven, Fix, or anywhere else. He’s here. He’s still here.’

She turned the key and shoved the door open, but she made no move to go in. I stepped past her into the small hallway. I was aware of a slightly musty, unused smell as though nobody had been there in a few days.

Three steps tog ohree stok me on into the living room, and I stopped dead, if you’ll pardon the expression, taking in a scene of devastation and ruin. Most of the furniture was overturned. The television lay in the corner like a poleaxed drunk, staring blindly up at the ceiling: three deep dents scarred the screen, a fish-scale pattern of fracture marks spreading out from each one. Broken glass crunched under my feet.

And then a framed photo of John and Carla smiling, arm in arm, leaped up from the broken-legged dresser and shot through the air, spinning like a shuriken, to explode against the wall just inches from my head.

With a muttered oath I dodged back around the angle of the wall and turned to stare at Carla in dazed disbelief. She gave me a curt nod, her face bitter and despairing.

Despite his faults, most of which I’ve already mentioned, John had always been a pretty easygoing sort of guy. But that had been when he was alive.

In death, it was painfully obvious, he’d gone geist.

2

Some apostle not noted for charm or tact once told an appreciative audience somewhere near the Sea of Galilee that the poor would always be with us. He could have said the same thing about the dead. Of course, back in Jesus’s time there were only maybe a hundred million people in the world, give or take, but even then they were heavily outnumbered by the part of the human race that was already lying in the ground. The exact ratio wobbles up and down as we ride the demographic roller coaster, but these days you could bet on twenty to one and probably not lose your money.

Twenty of them to one of us. Twenty ghosts for every man, woman and child living on this planet. But that was an empty statistic until just before the turn of the second millennium. Until then, most of the dead were content to stay where they’d been put: in the words of a million headstones, they were ‘only sleeping’. Then, not too long ago, the alarm clock went off and they all sat up.