Dead Men's s Boots

Do copycat killers rest up for more than a decade between outings, Mister Castor?’

‘I’ve never known any,’ I admitted. ‘Maybe they’re cyclical, like locusts.’

‘And there’s something else,’ Jan said, with the look of someone who was turning over their hole card to reveal a big fat ace. ‘The cleaner at the Paragon Hotel – Joseph Onugeta – said in his statement that he walked past room seventeen sometime around five o’clock. That was about an hour after Doug and Barnard went in there. And he heard voices – people arguing.

Two men and a woman, he said. Definitely three voices, because one of the men had a really cut-glass BBC voice – that would have been Barnard – and the other had a thick accent that he couldn’t understand properly.’

‘Doug was –?’ I interjected.

‘He was from Birmingham, and he never lost it. I couldn’t understand him myself when we started going out together. It used to really embarrass me. And then the third voice, the woman’s voice, she had an accent too. He said “like on the TV, or in a cinema.

” I think that means an American accent. It was Myriam Kale, Mister Castor. It was Myriam Seaforth Kale, and whatever else he may have done, my husband isn’t going to prison for a murder that was done by some bloody ghost.’

I assumed that when Jan said ‘whatever else’, she was talking about the cottaging and the sodomy. So she’d somehow rolled with the blow of finding out that her husband was trawling the streets of London for anonymous sex with other men. I was torn between being impressed by her faithfulness and wondering what inconceivably spectacular shit-storm Doug would have to put her through before she decided that their ship was on the rocks.

I didn’t say any of that. I just asked her whether she’d mentioned her theory to the police. She snorted contemptuously. ‘Oh yes. Of course I did. The detective in charge – Coldwood – didn’t even listen to me. He’d made up his mind already, and it didn’t matter what I said, he wasn’t going to—’"

"‘Coldwood?’ I interrupted, making sure I hadn’t misheard.

‘Yes. Coldwood. He’s a sergeant.’ She read it in my face. ‘Do you know him or something?’

‘I worked with him a few times. I used to do consulting work for the Met when business was thin.’

That seemed to knock Jan back a little. ‘The police use exorcists?’

I nodded. ‘Sometimes we can get a fix on how or where someone died. Sometimes we can confirm that someone who’s missing isn’t dead at all.