Dead Men's s Boots

Nicky pushed the box away and stood up.

‘He had some animal pathologist running tests on these things. Checking them for fingerprints; for blood and DNA in the few cases where that was possible; probably for a lot of other things too.’

‘Then I guess he was looking for correlations. For patterns in the data.’

‘Like?’

‘Like I’ll have to look the disc over for myself and get back to you. It’s way past time we named that price, Castor.’

‘So name it.’

‘Five hundred. Plus I get to keep what’s in the box.’

‘Jesus!’ I did my best to sound appalled.

He threw his arms in the air. ‘Because it’s no skin off you,’ he said.

‘The five hundred is. I’m not going to clear that myself. Carla isn’t paying me, and the Myriam Kale thing is pretty much on spec.’

‘Okay, say two hundred,’ he conceded magnanimously. ‘And the stuff in the box.’

‘Two hundred is fine. You sell off the stuff in the box and splƒtheagnit the proceeds fifty-fifty with Carla Gittings.

‘Agreed.’

‘But everything stays here until I tell you it’s okay to sell it. I still don’t know where we’re going with this. I’d hate to come back here looking for something in particular and find you’d already hocked it on eBay.’

‘Fair enough,’ Nicky said. ‘Better than fair. I’m on the case, Castor, in spite of the shit you just pulled. And just as a token of good faith, just so you know I’m on the level, I’ll tell you something for free.

‘Yeah?’ I asked. ‘What’s that, Nicky?’

‘You were stiffed. There should be at least thirty or forty other things in the box.’

I blinked. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Am I sure? I can give you the fucking inventory, if you want me to. It’s a lot of the choicest stuff that’s missing, too – lots of Kray memorabilia. Including a pair of high-heeled shoes that used to belong to Barbara Windsor which I bought from a priest in Flitwick, Bedfordshire. Long, surreal story. And that’s just the items I got for John: there’s a lot more that he bought through other people or picked up for himself.

Son of a bitch. So that was why Vince Chesney had caved in so fast: he’d given me the bargain-basement stuff and kept the top-drawer items for himself.

‘I’ll get you the rest, too,’ I promised. ‘In the meantime, work through whatever the fuck is on that disc and give me a précis. Anything at all that you think looks interesting. I’m completely in the dark on this, Nicky.