Dead Men's s Boots

Move along, please, or I’ll do the both of you together.’

I was about to protest at this ugly threat, but the noise of our voices made Coldwood stir and open his eyes, so we both shut up hurriedly.

‘Fix,’ he mumbled. ‘Is that – fuck, it is.’

I hurried back to his bedside, ignoring the toxic glare of the nurse.

‘It’s me, Gary,’ I said, kneeling down beside him in a posture familiar from a million tear-jerking movie scenes.

‘Yeah.’ He voice was slurred and slow. ‘Thought I was just having a bad dream.’

‘You dream about me? Then what they’re saying down at Uxbridge Road nick is true.

’

‘Shut the-’ He tailed off in the middle of the abuse, his eyes defocusing. When they found me again he winced with the effort of concentration, obviously not sure what the hell I was doing there.

‘Ruthven, Todd and Clay,RËd aed 17; I reminded him. ‘You had something juicy.’

He nodded slowly. ‘Client base.’

‘Big-time gangsters?’

A shake of the head. ‘Judges. Politicos. Big businessmen. Ten pages of – fucking Who’s Who.

’

‘So?’

‘So they meet once a month for a shindig at a fucking crematorium. Why’d you suppose that is?’

‘They all went to the same school. Gary, once a calendar month, or-?’

The nurse interrupted me, looming at my shoulder. ‘I think you’re getting Sergeant Coldwood agitated,’ she chided me coldly.

‘Lunar month,’ Coldwood mumbled. ‘Twenty-eight days. Every twenty-eight days. When it’s—’

Dark of the moon.

Inscription night.

Its got to be on INSCRIPTION night, so you can get them all together.

I clapped him on the shoulder, even though he probably didn’t feel it, and stood up. ‘Thanks, Gary,’ I said. ‘Feel better.’ When I left, the nurse was putting rubber gloves on. I wonder why people fetishise those things: they always scare the shit out of me.

I met Luke/Speedo at the National Gallery, because in his day job he worked there as a tour guide: that didn’t seem to fit the profile somehow, but maybe I stereotype drummers unfairly.

He was a bit of a let-down to look at, as well.

Very young, for one thing, and very short-sighted for another, wearing thick lenses of the kind that make you look not so much like an intellectual as like some human-alien hybrid. His hair was short and neatly combed, with a faint sheen to it as of gel or pomade. When he spoke, in a quiet and diffident voice, I was inclined to think that I’d been put onto a bum steer.

‘You’re a friend of Lou’s,’ he said.

‘Yeah.