Dead Men's s Boots

Something illegal, maybe, but the laws don’t really cover this situation because it’s stuff most people consider impossible. But everyone who gets close to it ends up dead.’

That was enough to be going on with. I’d tossed him a quid: let’s see if he could offer me a quo.

Covington nodded, seeming to relax slightly. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then you know. I wouldn’t have been able to explain it, but if you know then that makes it a lot easier. Yes, you’re right. There is something going on at Mount Grace.

And I think your dead friend Mister Gittings wa»terthes investigating it when he died. In fact, I think that’s why he died.’ He looked at me searchingly.

‘John committed suicide,’ I pointed out, playing straight-man and wondering if that objection sounded as fatuous to Covington as it did to me.

The blond man shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘He did.’

‘In a locked room. With a shotgun.’

Covington conceded those points too with a cold nod.

‘Not an easy thing for someone to arrange,’ I hazarded.

‘That depends, I suppose.’ Covington stood and crossed the room to close the door, which I’d left open. He locked it too, turning the big, ornate key which had been left in the lock. Shutting me in, or shutting someone else out? ‘For an outside job, yes, it would be difficult. For someone working from the inside—’

The glass was on its way to my mouth: I almost poured that precious liquid into my shirt collar as I suppressed a start of unwelcome surprise.

‘From the inside?’ I repeated.

Covington stood over me, staring down. His hands were in his pockets and I was getting the distinct impression that we might be on the same side, but I still had to fight the urge to jump up and take a defensive crouch. He was a formidable man, I realised, seeing him from this close up: there was a sense of mass and solidity about him that suggested long hours on a bench press.

‘Yes. You know what I mean, Mister Castor.

You’ve probably got your own reasons for pretending you don’t, but you do. Another man’s mind – another man’s soul, working from inside your friend’s body – could do all the things that John Gittings was said to have done. Locked the door. Put the shotgun barrel in his mouth. Pulled the trigger. He’d know, wouldn’t he, that his resurrection would follow in due course? So long as he could be sure that John’s body was going back to Mount Grace.