Dead Men's s Boots

It didn’t work: the letters that were present were all Ds, Ts and Ks, and they were sprinkled around the page seemingly at random. As far as I could tell, there was nothing there: which just meant that I was still missing too many jigsaw pieces to guess what the picture was.

Missing pieces. Yeah, there were a lot of those. The other death-row souvenirs, for starters: the ones that Chesney had swiped for himself after he h‹sel=""2eard about John’s death and before I scared the shit out of him by calling him up.

An idea dropped into my head out of nowhere. I was reaching for my phone when I realised that I hadn’t managed yet to recharge the goddamn battery. I delved into my pocket instead, fished out my remaining small change and sifted it for silver. Enough for a local phone call, surely: and this was very local.

I crossed to the payphones. It was stupidly late, but hadn’t Chesney’s colleague – Smeet – said that they worked until ten o’clock? There was a good chance that Chesney would still be at the lab.

I dialled Chesney’s mobile number – the one from John’s matchbook. He picked up on the third ring.

‘This is Vince,’ he said brightly. ‘What’s up?’

‘Funny you should ask,’ I said.

‘Castor!’ Not so bright, suddenly.

‘Hi, Vince. Working late at the office?’

‘Yes.’ He sounded surly and defensive now. ‘So?’

‘So I was wondering when it would be convenient for me to come over and collect the rest of John’s stuff.’

‘What rest? I gave you all there is.

‘Please, Vince.’ I did my best to sound world-weary and bored. ‘Don’t make me read you a fucking itemised list. For one thing, Barbara Windsor’s high heels would be on it, and I don’t want casual passers-by to think I’m some sort of pervert. I’m assuming you kept the stuff you thought was going to bring the highest prices. I’m also assuming – because I like you and I’d hate to see pieces of you twisted or broken off – that you’ve still got them. Now if both of those assumptions are correct, the next word you say should be “yes”.

A long pause, during which I had to feed the phone the last meagre remnants of my small change. ‘Yes,’ Vince said finally, with flat, tired resignation.

‘Good. Thank you. Now here’s another question for you.’ I tried to keep my tone casual, but this was the big inspiration that had come to me just now as I sipped my whisky, and the real reason why I was calling Chesney now rather than tomorrow morning.