Dead Men's s Boots

I thought back, trying to get the sequence straight in my own mind because the conviction had crept over me by slow degrees: there wasn’t any one moment when the light bulb had lit up above my head. ‘John didn’t work it out. But the letter you sent him was a part of it, I suppose. You told him to take back-up, and you told me the same thing when I came to see you. I guess that struck a chord. What was with the spelling, by the way? Just your instinct for camouflage kicking in?’

Covington made a slightly rueful face. ‘I can’t spell,’ he said.

‘There’s probably a name for this now – or there will be soon. Aaron Silver learned English late in life, and he never got his head around the orthography. Now I find that every new body I live in has the same limitations as the original. It’s possible to change, but it’s hard. And it doesn’t last. Old habits keep reasserting themselves. The past is . . . more present than the now. It’s easier for me to write like that than it is to look up the correct spellings. Was that all? Just that one coincidence? Me saying the same thing to you that I wrote to Gittings?’

‘No.

’

‘Then –?’

‘You really want me to run through all the loose change you were dropping?’

‘If you don’t mind, yes. I still find it hard to believe that I’ve developed a death wish, after working so hard for so long to stay alive. Indulge me.’

I delved into my scattered thoughts again. ‘I was actually looking for you,’ I said. ‘Or at least – not for you, specifically, but for someone behind the scenes who was making things happen.

You had to be there. Someone hired John, and gave him a small fortune to spend on those death-row trinkets. Someone told him about the set-up at Mount Grace, but for some reason let him grope around in the dark for weeks on end checking out cemeteries rather than just giving him the address. Someone playing games, in other words. Feeding him crumbs to keep him moving, but not wanting to show his hand. Maybe because if John went directly to Mount Grace, all your dead friends would know who sent him. ’

Covington smiled coldly – maybe at the word friends. ‘Go on.’

‘Jan Hunter had a mysterious benefactor, too – someone who called her up claiming to be Paul Sumner, but Paul Sumner was already dead. You again, I’m guessing, trying to keep the momentum going in spite of John’s death – and maybe also looking for a way to stop Doug Hunter going down for a murder he didn’t commit. Strings were being pulled all the way down the line.