Dead Men's s Boots

Winded, I stared into the cold, hard glare of Nicky Heath: I took hold of the briefcase as he let go of it. Nicky examined my swollen, discoloured face with something like satisfaction. He had a rolled-up newspaper in his hand, and he used it to point at my bruised cheek.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I can see you had a bad on³ou apee. Great! I’m really happy the suffering is being spread around. Where’s the lap-dancer from Hell?’

‘Flying under her own steam. Why? You got something for us, Nicky?’

The glare shot up the emotional register towards the hysterical.

‘Yeah, Castor, and what I got is a fucking newsflash. You did it to me again, you bastard. Pulled me into your stupid grandstanding shit so people are knocking on my door because they want to cut pieces out of you. So this is the parting of the fucking ways. I just came over here to sign off on the job and tell you not to fucking bother to write.’

I stared at him in numb perplexity. I was running on empty, and I didn’t want to have to work out the translation for myself.

‘Someone tried to lean on you?’ I asked.

‘Someone tried to torch me. That someone is now dog meat. But they know where I live, so presumably someone is gonna send someone else to finish the fucking job.’

There was something surreal about the scene. Nicky was keeping his voice level and conversational so that people wouldn’t look around and try to tune in to the conversation, but his teeth were bared in a snarl and his pale, waxen face looked like the mask of an angry ghost in a Noh play.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘It’s starting to look as though the opposition is a bit better organised than I was expecting. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’

‘Yeah?’ Nicky smiled grimly. ‘Well, save some of that sorry for when you hear the rest of the story, Castor. Get us a cab. I’ll ride back into town with you and tell you what I got. After that you’re on your lonesome fucking own.’

I raided a cashpoint machine, scraping the bottom of the hollow barrel that was my bank account. It was getting on for midnight, but there were a few taxis in the rank and one of them crawled towards us as we came out from the terminal onto the pick-up bay.

‘Not that one.’

‘What? Why?’

The taxi driver, a burly guy with way too much hair on his arms, was looking at us expectantly.

‘Roll on, motherfucker,’ Nicky told him.

The cabbie’s face went blank with surprise and then livid.