Dead Men's s Boots

‘And I don’t know what in our previous relationship could have caused me to have so little trust in you,’ he said sardonically.

‘It’s not about trust.’ I put my hand on the curve of the projector’s lens turret and Nicky swatted it away. ‘It’s about not making me run round in circles when life’s short enough already. Was there some reason to keep me in the dark about John’s hobby? Was there anyone whose interests could have been harmed in any way at all by you levelling with me?’

‘Not my call,’ Nicky deadpanned, wiping the turret with his shirt cuff where my hand had touched it.

‘Since when, Nicky?’

‘Since now.’

‘Right. Or maybe you had the same idea Chesney had. That if nobody got to find out about this shit you could have a garage sale in due course and pocket the profit.’

‘Chesney?’

‘Never mind.’

I’d been looking at the projector: I didn’t know enough about these things to tell if it was high-end or low-end, state-of-the-art or shoddy; I was just looking, like a prospective buyer in a second-hand car dealership.

‘Sit down,’ I said.

‘I’m happy standing.’

‘No,’ I explained patiently. ‘This isn’t “Sit down and make yourself comfortable”. This is “Sit down, or I’ll have to sit you down and then you might break.”’ There was an office chair, on rollers, within the reach of my outstretched arm. I snagged it and rolled it across to him. It took him a moment or two to decide, but when I actually took a step towards him he sat down hurriedly.

‘This is bullshit, Castor,’ he said angrily. ‘And you wouldn’t pull it on someone who was still alive.’

I wheeled the chair back over to the changing table where I’d dumped John’s box. I openƒ7;swased the lid again, took out Vince Chesney’s disc and thrust it into his hands.

‘You’re going to look this over for me,’ I said.

‘Yeah? Why am I going to do that?’

‘Because I’m asking you. Nicely, so far.’

Nicky turned the disc over in his hands, examining it with a remote, bored expression.

‘Sure. I golf with him.’

‘Nineteenth-century anthropologist.’

‘Yeah.’ Nicky nodded. ‘That’s the guy. Starting to smell pretty fierce now. And his elbow gives on the backswing.’

‘He came up with this idea about criminal physiognomy,’ I said. ‘He called it recapitulation, and it made him the poster boy for the early eugenics movement.’

He dumped the disc back in the box.