Dead Men's s Boots

But it was Juliet who was being evasive here, and I didn’t have to say anything else. I just waited for her to fill in the blanks, staring out of the window at the King’s Cross marshalling yar karshinds while my pulse came down again.

‘There is something else,’ she admitted at last. ‘A residue that’s very strong, and very noticeable. Perhaps it is a woman. The physical scents are just of the two men, but perhaps, yes. A woman’s feelings. Angry, negative feelings. Disgust, and fear, and defiance – all feeding into anger.

‘Was it here already?’ I asked, ‘or did it come in with Hunter and Barnard? Was it following them? Does it leave with them? Was one of them being haunted by this . . . residue?’

I glanced at Juliet as I delivered the last word. She shrugged eloquently, her breasts shifting under the tantalisingly translucent fabric of her shirt. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, with visible reluctance.

I couldn’t resist pressing my advantage. ‘I want to go and visit Doug Hunter in jail,’ I said, ‘and get his take on what happened.

Juliet looked blank. ‘Why?’

‘Well, have you ever met him?’

‘No.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to meet him, if your testimony is going to send him down for twenty or thirty years?’

‘No.’

I was amazed, and a little exasperated. ‘What, you’re not the slightest bit curious?’

‘Not the slightest bit,’ Juliet confirmed equably. ‘However, I will admit one thing. The possibility that I might have made a mistake in this does trouble me.

‘So is that a yes? You’ll come with me?’

After a fractional pause, Juliet nodded. ‘Yes. Very well. Not today, though. Today I have other things to do.’

‘I’ll need to arrange it with Jan Hunter in any case,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you.’

‘Fine. If I’m not home, leave a message with Sue.’

She turned and walked out of the room without another word. In a human woman it would have seemed spectacularly abrupt, but with fiends from the pit you have to make allowances: after all, Juliet had only been living on Earth for a little over a year, and you have to assume that in Hell a lot of the normal conversational rules don’t operate in quite the same way.

I lingered in the room for a few minutes more, searching it myself now with my eyes tight shut.