Dead Men's s Boots

‘Okay,’ he said, straightening only after he’d tugged on each of my arms and satisfied himself that my hands didn’t have enough free play to reach my coat or trouser pockets. He didn’t bother to search me: probably he surmised, rightly, that there was nothing I was carrying that could trump a .38.

He went back around the desk, opened the top drawer and took out a very serious piece of ironmongery: the blade was only four or five inches long but it was curiously shaped, with a slight thickening an inch below the point and an asymmetrical profile.

The grip was of black polymerised rubber. This was a knife designed for lethal use in difficult circumstances: a weapon of very intimate and individual destruction.

‘You’ve come a long way from Mile End,’ I said, for something to say.

‘Oh yes,’ Todd agreed, testing the edge of the blade on the ball of his thumb. ‘But it’s an easy commute. You’re about to find out how easy.’

‘You think I was stupid enough to walk in here alone?’

‘Well, you arrived alone, so yes.

That’s exactly what I think. If I’m wrong, I may end up being seriously embarrassed. But let’s look on the bright side: I’m not wrong and that’s not going to happen.’

He ambled back around to my side of the desk where he half-sat, half-leaned against it: the posture of a man settling in for the long haul. ‘So who are you working for?’ he asked

I wasn’t interested in misdirection or strategy: I just wanted to find an answer that would, for as long as possible, keep me from getting carved up: the longer I stalled, the better the chance that something might come up that I could use against Todd.

Okay, I was clutching at straws here: I knew how bad the situation was, but hope – even pathetic, bargain-basement hope – springs eternal.

‘A woman named Janine Hunter,’ I said. ‘Her old man’s up on a murder charge and she—’

The tip of the knife dipped, then flicked across my cheek. Something warm and wet spilled down over my face, and IÓ my;&# was tasting my own blood.

‘Janine,’ Todd said.

‘Yes. We know about Janine.’ He sounded so detached that I thought he might be on the verge of wandering away and finding something better to do with his time. ‘She works reasonably well as a cover story. Full marks for effort there. But what I want to know, obviously, is who told you about us. About Mount Grace, and Lionel Palance, and the whole operation. The way we come back. We saw it happen with Gittings, and then we saw it again with you.