Dead Men's s Boots

’ Staying inconspicuous had been Nicky’s highest priority from way back before he died: the world is a web, he said, and every time you touch one of the strands of the web you tell the spiders where you are. When he accessed the internet, he did it through a string of proxy servers as long as the great wall of China – and, like China, he treated information as though it was both a weapon and a shield. You couldn’t get a fix on Nicky: you couldn’t find him in any search. Even his electricity was hand-pumped from deep artesian wells rather than coming straight out of the national grid.

He was the closest thing I’d ever met to an invisible man, and his paranoia was a thing of beautiful, terrible purity.

So this had to be, not the real Nicky, but some kind of lifelike – or rather deathlike – facsimile.

‘The small footprint is still a good working goal,’ Nicky said, almost off-handedly. ‘But think about it for a second, Castor. I kept a small footprint for years, and it didn’t stop this place being torn apart by Fanke and his fucking Satanists.

I’m working on a different strategy now.’ ‘Which is?’

‘Which is my business. When it turns out to be yours, I’ll tell you about it.’

‘Okay.’ I gave up. The most likely diagnosis, as far as I could see, was that being winkled out of his shell by a crazed mob had made Nicky’s psychosis metastasise into a new form. And he was right. I’d find out about it somewhere down the line, so there was no point worrying at it now.

I threw the box down on top of what looked like a baby’s changing table and strolled past Nicky into the room. He back-pedalled, keeping pace with me and staying in between me and his nice, shiny new projector. Evidently it was a look-don’t-touch kind of deal.

‘So let’s get down to business,’ I suggested. ‘I asked you what you were doing for John Gittings, and you came out with all that client-privilege palaver. Then I asked you to find me a curio that used to belong to a dead killer and you almost jumped out of your dry-cured skin.

I noticed it at the time, but I didn’t know what it meant. Now I do. It was because John had been asking you to do the same thing on a bigger scale – death-row souvenirs by the bucketload – and you thought I might be playing some kind of mind-fuck on you. Trying to make you give yourself away.’

Nicky spread his hands in a ‘there you have it’ gesture.