Dead Men's s Boots

I gave it up a long time ago, on account of how journalism was what I really wanted to do. My daddy said God had put a sword in my hand for the smiting of the ungodly, but there’s lots of different ways of doing that.’ He shook his head again, a little ruefully this time. ‘Well, well. Succubus. But not hunting.’

‘No. Not hunting.’

‘Passing for human.’

Juliet shrugged.

‘You’re the second I’ve met who’s taken that course.’ Mallisham stared at Juliet with intense, unashamed curiosity. ‘I wonder – I hope this doesn’t give offence – I wonder if I’d have had a chance against you, in a straight draw.

‘You’re not seeing me at my best,’ Juliet said, with a cold smile.

Mallisham smiled disarmingly back. ‘That’s hard to believe. Anyway, Myriam Kale. What was it you wanted to know, exactly?’

I took over again. ‘Any gaps in the official story,’ I said. ‘I mean, if you know of any link she had to England – any factor that might help to explain her turning up in London, alive or dead – then that would be gravy.

‘That’s a laudable goal,’ Mallisham mused. ‘Not all that easy, though, after forty years of disinformation. You’ve presumably read Sumner’s . . . well, some call it a book.’

‘Inside Myriam Kale? Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ve read it.’

‘Then your best move now would be to forget it,’ Mallisham rumbled, making a sour face. ‘I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but that man made a career out of telling the kind of lies that would have turned Pinocchio’s nose into a goddamned national monument.

‘And that’s not an accurate summary?’ I hazarded.

The balding man snorted in a mixture of amusement and indignation. ‘No, sir,’ he said curtly, ‘it is not. It takes no account of what made her the way she was, and it ignores the way she killed – the reason why she killed. Paul Sumner blithely assumes that most of the murders attributed to Myriam Kale were bought and paid for, purely because the men concerned were known or thought to be mobsters.

‘If not money,’ Juliet asked, ‘then what?’

Mallisham stroked the bridge of his nose again, this time leaving his glasses in situ. ‘Well,’ he said, studying the clutter on his desk, ‘I’m not claiming to be an expert.