Dead Men's s Boots

Is Mrs Gittings ready?’

Todd could hear the sound of the shower as well as I could, so I gave him the only answer that question seemed to deserve. ‘Almost.’ He wasn’t listening, in any case: he was prowling around the room looking at the damage that the ghost had done, which of course he was seeing for the first time. He assessed it with a thoughtful, even professional eye, as if he was considering what it might be worth as part of a lawsuit. I finished my coffee and watched him in silence. He seemed nervous and eager to be on his way, which he probably was.

I didn’t know how much he charged for estate work, but it didn’t seem likely that John had paid him enough to cover two visits to Waltham Abbey and a slap-up funeral in the East End. Or maybe I was underestimating the strength of John’s determination to have his last wishes respected. Maybe he’d given Todd a big enough retainer to cover all eventualities.

The lawyer’s circuit of the room brought him back to the door at last. It was still open because he hadn’t closed it behind him on the way in.

He looked at John’s old wards with the same clinical eye, then glanced at me.

‘These ought to go,’ he said. ‘Before we take the body out.’

It was slightly embarrassing that I hadn’t thought of that myself. Of course, that could be what had caused John’s ghost to be separated from his body and stranded here in the first place. It was hard for the dead to cross magical wards if they’d been put together right in the first place – and although they were mostly used to keep ghosts and zombies out of places where they weren’t wanted, they’d work just as effectively to imprison them.

Jenna-Jane’s cheerfully sadistic experiments at the MOU in Paddington had proved that a hundred times over.

I took down the birch sprig myself: it brought my dream back more vividly than I liked. ‘Not much left of me now . . .’ Todd wiped over the chalked ekpiptein with the palm of his hand, and I levered off the mezuzah.

Between the two of us, we cleared the doorway inside of a minute. Todd tactfully didn’t point out that as the resident exorcist this was something I ought to have done myself before he arrived.

Carla still hadn’t put in an appearance, and the cars weren’t here yet either, so I went back through into the kitchen and brewed some more coffee – I’d bought a packet the night before, on the same expedition from which I brought back the curries and the beer.