Dead Men's s Boots

I was here to collect information, and one way was as good as another.

Sometimes the impressions I pick up from skin contact are fleeting and ambiguous: other times they’re so sharp and immediate it’s like a movie with five-point surround sound. Vincent Chesney didn’t have any psychic barriers to speak of, and his emotions just arrived in my head unmediated, with almost painful clarity.

The grin was just bravado: underneath it, he was afraid. Afraid of me, mostly, but not just of what I might do to physically damage him.

There was something else in the back of his mind: something else at stake.

I released his hand and he snatched it back, suspicious and faintly indignant.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Yeah. I did want to get a look at you first. What’s wrong with that, man? Calling me in the night. You could have been frigging anybody, seen? I’ve got to watch my back. I’m in a delicate position here.’

‘Are you?’ I asked politely. ‘Why is that then, Vincent?’

‘Vince.’

‘Question stands.’

‘Okay,’ he said again, hesitant, unhappy.

‘You’ve come for the items, right?’ He put the same sort of heavy, loaded stress on the word that the till assistant in a chemist’s would put on ‘something for the weekend’.

‘The items that John left with you?’ I hazarded. Chesney nodded, looking even glummer.

‘They’re one of the things I’ve come for,’ I lied.

‘Well, okay. Yeah. That’s what I thought. It’s just around the corner.’

The switch from plural to singular threw me. ‘What is?’ I demanded.

‘The place where I work.

I can get you the stuff, right? It’s just around the corner. But you’ll have to wait here while I-’ He broke off, because he could see from the look on my face that I wasn’t going to buy it. ‘Well, if you come up with me,’ he snapped sullenly, ‘you follow my lead, yeah? I mean, back me up, whatever I say about you. This is gonna look bad enough anyway. I don’t want to lose my frigging job, seen?’

‘I’ll follow your lead,’ I promised. I stepped aside and let him walk past me, back onto the street.

Then I followed him – not back towards Bridge Place, but further south. I was getting my breath back now, and Chesney was getting back some of the cocky cool I’d heard in his voice when he picked up the phone the first time.

get""-1em"" width=""2em"">‘So what are you?’ he asked me as we walked. ‘You said you worked with Gittings. Does that make you another ghosthunter? Get thee behind me, Dennis Wheatley kind of thing? Nothing wrong with it, mind you.