Dead Men's s Boots

I know because I paid for it to be installed: cost a small fortune, but it’s worth it because for at least some of the time it keeps Rafi’s passenger from getting too frisky.

Friskiness didn’t seem to be an issue right now, though: in preparation for transit, Webb had Rafi trussed up tighter than a Christmas turkey.

They’d built – or perhaps Jenna-Jane had supplied – a massive steel frame, about seven feet high by four wide, standing on three sets of wheels like a mobile dress rack. The resemblance didn’t end there, either: Rafi was hanging inside this construction, in an all-over-body straitjacket fitted with a dozen or more steel hoops to which lengths of elasticated cable had been attached.

Like a spider trussed in his own web he dangled at the centre of the frame on a slight diagonal, his face the only part of him that was visible. I would have expected that face to be livid with demonic rage, but it was a near-perfect blank, the eyes – all pupil, no white – staring at me and through me.

‘OPG?’ I asked Paul.

‘Yeah.’

‘Inhaled or injected?’

‘Both.’

‘Bastards.’ I could smell the stuff in the air now – although it was the propellants rather than the gas itself that I was smelling: OPG itself is too volatile to linger for more than a couple of seconds after it’s been used. It was produced as a weapon – a nerve toxin, derived from the less potent Tabun – but was banned for military use decades ago. You can still use it on the mentally ill, though, because of a sweet little legal loophole: in tiny, almost homeopathic amounts it’s been proven to slow the onset of Alzheimer’s and to have a sedative effect on manic patients.

I was willing to bet that the amounts we were talking about here were more in the bulk haulage range.

‘I’m gonna leave you to it,’ Paul said. ‘And if anyone asks I’m gonna lie and say I never saw you. Sorry, Castor. Bastards they are, but for now I still work here. We’re meant to be wheeling him out to the front in a few minutes, so you’d best keep it short.

’ He stepped out and pulled the door almost to behind him.

‘Hey, Castor,’ said Rafi, his voice crystal clear despite the zoned-out stare.

‘Hey, Rafi,’ I answered, giving him the benefit of the doubt until I could be sure. I came in a little closer, but not too close: I wasn’t sure how much give there was in those elastic straps. ‘Asmodeus in there too?’

‘Yeah, he’s here. He’s not happy with you.’

‘I bet. Can I have a word?’

There was a long silence.