Dead Men's s Boots

I think you said it was my turn to scratch your back, or something to that effect.’

‘Yes. That’s what I said. And that’s what you did, Castor. That sad wreckage downstairs –’ he kissed his fingers. ‘– perfectly aged. The spirit filleted and pared from the flesh with great delicacy. I can’t remember when I last ate so well.’

I fought the urge to throw up. Moloch had walked around behind me and was busying himself with the handcuffs. I heard the links part with a loud, grating clank of metal against metal. Flexing my arms, I discovered that they were now free to move, although the cuffs still hung around my wrists like bracelets – and my right shoulder throbbed agonisingly where Todd’s knife had stabbed into the fleshy part of it

I stood up, a little shakily.

‘Well, it’s all part of the service,’ I said. ‘At least, it is now. I didn’t plan it this way.’

‘No,’ Moloch agreed. ‘But I’ve found you to be worth following. Serendipity is your whore. And I thought you’d work a little harder if you felt you were working without a safety net.

’

‘Pick him up,’ I said, pointing at Todd. ‘Put him in the chair.’ Moloch nodded amiably, bent down and hauled the lawyer to his feet. Todd wasn’t dead: he wasn’t even unconscious. But his face was deathly pale and he screamed when Moloch lifted him, flailing with his good arm as his bad one dangled loosely, at an impossible angle.

Moloch dropped him into the chair, then looked inquiringly at me. I’d crossed to the shattered window, and I was drinking in great gulps of the clean night air.

I’d supped full with horrors, but it wasn’t even midnight yet and I had daÓet redrker work still to do.

‘See if you can find some rope,’ I muttered, without looking round. ‘He probably won’t stay upright any other way.’

The sheet music had taken a bit of damage when Scrub-slash-Leonard had taken that last wild swipe at my chest and almost laid my insides open to the world. Nothing that wouldn’t heal, though. I laid it out on the desk and smoothed it down with the flat of my hand.

Todd watched me with a shell-shocked lack of curiosity, his injured arm lashed across his chest, the other tied behind him. It turned out that the room where Scrub had been stowed contained a builder’s drum of rope – about two hundred feet, unstarted. Moloch had used all of it to secure Todd to the chair, virtually weaving a cocoon around him and leaving very little of him still in view apart from his pale face.