Dead Men's s Boots

Who had John been keeping secrets from? What had made him so obsessively careful? Nicky Heath, who ought to know, once told me that paranoia is a survival trait as well as a clinical condition: it hadn’t been that for John, but it looked as though he’d done all he could to keep what he was working on from falling into the wrong hands. Or any hands at all.

The ring tone sounded three times, then someone pick kn stheed up.

‘Hello?’ A man’s voice, brisk and cheerful. ‘What’s the score?’

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m a friend of John Gittings .

 . .’

There was a muttered ‘Fuck!’ and then the line went dead with a very abrupt click. Interesting. I tried again, and this time the phone at the other end rang six, seven, eight times before it was picked up. No voice at all this time: just an expectant silence.

‘I really am a friend of John’s,’ I said, trying to sound calm and reassuring and radiantly trustworthy. ‘My name is Felix Castor. I worked with John on a couple of jobs, a little while back. His widow, Carla, gave me some of his things, and your number was in there.

I called because I’m trying to find out what he was working on before he died.’

That was enough to be going on with, I thought. I waited for the line to go dead again. Instead, the same male voice said, ‘Why?’ Not so cheerful now – tense, with an underlying tone of challenge.

Actually, I had to admit that that was a pretty good question. ‘Because he seemed to think it was something really important,’ I said, slowly because I was picking my words with care in case any of them turned out to be loaded.

‘But he didn’t tell anybody what it was all about. I’m thinking that maybe finishing the job for him might make him rest easier. Because right now he’s not resting easy at all.’

There was a long, strained silence.

‘Not tonight,’ the man said at last. ‘Tomorrow. Twelve o’clock. The usual place.’

He hung up before I could ask the obvious question, and this time when I dialled again the phone just rang until I got a voicemail service.

I tried twice more, with the same results. For some reason – maybe creeping paranoia – I didn’t want to leave a message. But in any case, I thought I knew where the usual place had to be: there was presumably a reason why John had written this number down on the matchbook from the Reflections Café Bar – and fortunately he’d left the postcode showing when he tore off the cover. That plus the yellow pages ought to be enough to get me there.