Dead Men's s Boots

’

‘Ruth didn’t believe that was his real name. The point was that he told her – told her so she knew it was the truth – that he’d worked for Myriam or done favours for her in the past. And he said he was still working on her behalf now. He insisted on that: all of this was for Myriam’s sake.

‘He gave Ruth the address and telephone number of the Illinois State Penitentiary, and he told her everything she needed to know about claiming Myriam’s body. She had an absolute legal right, he said: all she had to do was exercise it.

The body should be brought to the farm, and she should refuse all offers of help with the burial. If anyone asked, she was to say that it was all taken care of. And as soon as she was alone – as soon as the circus of cops and journalists and death-junkies was off the premises – she was to call him on a number he gave her.’

‘Ruth had her doubts, but she also felt she had good reasons to trust this man. She argued it backwards and forwards with herself, but in the end she did what she’d been told.

She called him and told him when is was safe to come.

‘He drove out in a flat-bed truck, with two other men. They loaded the casket onto the truck, and tied it down. They covered it with a tarpaulin. Then just before they left, Ruth screwed up her courage and asked the blond man where they were taking her dead sister. He didn’t want to answer, but she burst into tears and begged him. She was going to be left alone, she told him. More alone than she’d ever been.

She didn’t miss her father or her brothers in the slightest, but now Myriam was gone and she didn’t have anyone. The least he could do was tell her where he was taking her.’

‘And in the end he did. “To the next life,” he said.’

I let a forkful of mashed potato drop back into the mountainous mass I’d scooped it from.

‘Fuck,’ I said blankly. It wasn’t Oscar Wilde but it expressed my feelings. ‘What are we talking about here? Gangsters raising gangsters from the dead? Why? Out of professional courtesy? And how could he promise that if he hadn’t done it before? It’s like some kind of fucking resurrectionist assembly line.

Dead men pulling themselves up out of the grave by each other’s bootstraps . . .’

‘You may be exaggerating the scale of this,R³le he 17; Juliet told me coolly. ‘We still only know for sure about two cases. Kale, and the man who was both Aaron Silver and then Les Lathwell.’

She was right, but it didn’t make me feel much better.