Dead Men's s Boots

Like I said, Carla generally goes for older men, but when she finally took possession of her hand again I thought I could detect a little reluctance on her side at least.

I was half-hoping that Blondie would offer the same hand to me, for curiosity’s sake – he had a lot of poise for a guy ten years my junior, and I would have been interested in reading him, but he just stepped back and indicated the doors with a gesture that was almost a bow.

‘I presume everything is ready inside,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been able to check – I’ve got a lot to do elsewhere, and I’m running late already.

And I wouldn’t presume to join you for the actual ceremony. But my very best wishes to you all – and especially to you, Mrs Gittings. If there’s anything I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to call.’

He took a card from his pocket and gave it to her with a decorous flourish. Carla took it without even looking at it. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured throatily.

The personable young man swept us all with a frank blue-eyed gaze, and then with a final murmur of farewell to Todd he headed off towards a small sleek black sports car parked at the other end of the drive.

Todd watched him go, his attention taken up to the exclusion of everything else around him.

‘The owner?’ I said, as the bearers slid John’s coffin noisily onto the runners and drew the lawyer out of his reverie

Todd looked surprised for a moment, then he laughed with a slightly odd inflection. ‘No, Mister Castor. The owner is a man named Lionel Palance.

He lives a long way from here, in Chingford Hatch, and he hardly ever leaves his house at all now. No, that was Peter Covington, a man who Mister Palance employs as a sort of – personal assistant.’ He rattled off these facts with a lawyer’s precision, as though it mattered that I should get the details straight in my head. Then he seemed to recollect himself, and his tone became more formal and solemn. ‘Mrs Gittings, shall we go in?’

We crossed the drive, following behind the bearers.

Carla was still holding Covington’s card, because she’d left her handbag inside the car. ‘Fix,’ she said. ‘Would you . . . ?’ I took the card and secreted it away in the well-worn leather wallet where I keep my mostly useless credit cards.

The front doors of the crematorium opened onto a narrow entrance hall, almost long enough to count as a corridor, whose dark woods and vaulted ceiling confirmed the impression of age I’d got outside.