Dead Men's s Boots

Worse still, the couple next door were in the throes of noisy passion, which meant that they’d be swearing and throwing things at each other some time within the next hour.

I felt the call of the wild. So I put my coat back on and went down to the Lord Nelson. Let the Breathers follow me in if they wanted to. If they did, they were going out through the fucking window.

Okay, ‘the call of the wild’ is a relative term, because this is Wood Green we’re talking about: but you’ve got to love a pub that’s painted like a fire engine, even if the beer is shit; and the alternative was Yates’s Wine Lodge, which for someone born in Liverpool arouses deep atavistic impulses of fear and suspicion.

It wasn’t a football night, so the place was quiet. Quiet felt like what my nerves needed right then. A bunch of students were playing pool for pints over in the corner, and Mike Skinner was talking about his love life on the jukebox. I waited at the bar while Paul put a new barrel on, then when he came over I nodded towards the IPA pump.

‘Usual,’ I said.

‘Someone wants to meet you, Fix,’ he said as he pulled the pint.

‘What sort of someone?’

‘Woman.’

‘Young? Old? Nun? Policewoman?’

‘See for yourself.’

As Paul handed me the pint he nodded his head, barely perceptibly, off to my right. I handed him a fiver, took a sip on the beer and then, casually, took a glance in that direction.

There was a woman sitting by herself at a table off to one side of the door, dressed in a smart cutaway jacket over shirt and slacks, the whole outfit built around a motif of rust-red and black.

Something about her look reminded me of Carla: the intangible suggestion of widow’s weeds, which was odd and unsettling because she couldn’t have been more than thirty. Dark brown hair in a tightly curled perm: bronzed eyelids and metallic highlights on her lips. She was staring at the wall, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t seeing it. The gin and tonic in front of her hadn’t been touched.

I could have played coy, but I was curious about how she’d tracked me down here and what she wanted: and maybe I just jumped at the chance of a distraction from the thoughts that were weighing on my own mind right then.

I crossed to the table, gave her a nod as she turned to stare at me.

‘Paul said you were asking after me,’ I said.

She sat bolt upright, roused from whatever reverie she’d been in. ‘Felix Castor?’

‘That’s me.’

‘I’m Janine. Jan. Jan Hunter.’ She put out a hand and I shook it.