Dead Men's s Boots

‘You know what I’m taÓat belking about,’ I said, ‘don’t you? I’m an exorcist. I have power to bind and break you.’

This time he managed a faint, sickly smile. ‘Do you?’

‘Funny you should ask,’ I said, deadpan. ‘Normally if I’m this close to a ghost, no matter what it’s wearing, I get a ping on my radar. When I met you and Scrub – sorry, I mean Leonard – downstairs here, I got nothing. And every time I’ve seen you outside this building . . . nothing all over again. You’ve got good camouflage, I have to say. I’d love to know how it’s done.

But then, I guess you’ve been in the game long enough to have figured out a lot of the angles.’

Todd didn’t answer, but there was a glint in his eye as he looked at me: a hint of challenge, or mockery. Looking down at the music, fixing the opening beats in my mind, I slid my whistle out of my inside pocket again and shipped it into the operating position.

‘But here’s the bad news,’ I said. ‘John Gittings did manage to get a fix on you. I don’t know where he was standing, or what sort of tricks he used.

He wasn’t a particularly smart guy, in my opinion, but he did it anyway. He nailed you and he got you down on paper.’ I cleared my throat and spat on the floor. ‘And that’s what I’m going to play for you this evening,’ I muttered, not looking at Todd.

I put the whistle to my lips, tried to find the sense: I took one deep breath, held it for a second, then another second, until the seconds became beats and the music invited me in.

Open with a hot trill like manic birdsong: but the bird’s a dive-bomber, and it crashes down hard through the scale to level out a full octave lower in a welter of hard, pugnacious chords.

Bail out into C and hold it for a full four beats before dropping even further. It was all guesswork – and I was trying to cover both parts of John’s wacky notation, playing two voices on the same instrument. Todd looked at me with blank puzzlement, but beyond that he didn’t respond.

Change the key, change the time, start again. Still no reaction from Todd.

When I got to the hard part, where Luke Pomfret had told me a third drummer was meant to come in, I started to tap my heel against the wood of the desk in crude counterpoint to the music. It was hard not to tap on the beat, but John’s music was quite clear that the new voice should be at odds with the rest of the rhythm. I kept it up until the weird lack of synchronisation made me stumble, lose my sense of direction and stop dead in the middle of a bar.