Dead Men's s Boots

I told Carla about the letter inside the watch case, but not about the lift. She nodded, looking resigned. ‘That’s what I was talking about,’ she said. ‘He’d hide things, and then lose them, and then find them and hide them all over again. I had it for months, Fix. I thought I’d got to know most of his hiding places, by the end, but that’s a new one.’

I hesitated. All I knew about John’s death was what Bourbon Bryant had told me, and that was the bare fact that John had stood up one Sunday night while Carla was watching the omnibus edition of Eastenders, locked himself in the bathroom and decorated the walls with the inside of his head.

I found that after reading the letter I wanted to know more. What I didn’t want to do was to drag Carla over territory she’d rather not revisit.

‘Did any of those other notes survive?’ I asked. ‘The messages he wrote to himself?’

She thought about that. ‘No,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I’m pretty sure they didn’t. Like I said, he was always changing his mind.

Spending most of a day scribbling on bits of paper and envelopes, then burning it all or tearing it up, and then the next day starting all over again.’

‘Those hiding places you mentioned – have you checked them at all, since he died?’

Carla looked at me a little blankly. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘I don’t know. Because there might be something there that would tell us what he was up to. “One for the history books” – remember? Maybe it was as big as he thought it was. Maybe there’s a reason why it turned out to be too much for him to take.

’

Carla put down her fork and pushed her plate away. She blinked a few times, quickly, as if there were tears in her eyes that she wanted to keep inside.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, lifting up my hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Forget I asked, Carla. You’ve got enough on your plate without this.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s all right, Fix. It just brought it all back, that’s all.’

‘Exactly. I’ll shut up.’

‘You don’t have to.’ She stood up.

‘It’s not like there’s any getting away from it, is there? There are a few places we can look, if you want to.’

Carla walked through into the living room, then off down a short hallway that led to the bedroom. I followed, a little uneasily, sending up a silent apology to John’ [to offs slumbering shade.

The bed had red satin sheets and a coverlet with the Playboy-bunny logo on it: matching his-and-hers pillows, with a halo for her and horns for him.