Dead Men's s Boots

She waved me to a chair, with a visible lack of enthusiasm. I stayed standing: I didn’t feel like I had a right to any hospitality. She sat down herself in one of the armchairs. It was a surprise, and not a happy one, to see a half-empty whisky bottle and a half-full glass on the occasional table next to her.

‘What I wanted to do,’ I explained, ‘was to play the first few notes of an exorcism – an exorcism for Juliet.’ Susan’s eyes went big and wide and she started to speak, but I hurried on, talking over her. ‘Not the binding or the sending, Sue – just the summoning.

Juliet said she’d hear that, wherever I played it, and come and –’ rip your throat out had been her actual words; I groped for a mealy-mouthed substitute ‘– stop me from finishing.’

Susan glared at me in deep, almost speechless outrage. She was trembling now. ‘Oh, she’d stop you,’ she assured me.

‘Believe me, Sue, I’m not underestimating her. I’m just hoping I can explain why I’ve come before she cuts in and does something irrevocable to me.

That’s why I want to do it here. I’m thinking maybe she’ll hesitate before doing something really violent in front of you. She wouldn’t want to hurt or scare you.’

That didn’t seem to make Susan any happier. Exhausted as I was, and desperate as I was to be moving on and doing what had to be done before I fell down and passed out and deflated like a punctured balloon, I tried to explain.

‘There’s a woman,’ I said. ‘Someone she met. Not . . . romantically. Met in the line of duty. And this woman needs help, that’s the plain truth.

Which is what Juliet is trying to do. But I don’t think the help that Juliet is giving her is what she needs. This is what we argued about, back in Alabama. There’s more to it, but I’m hoping that Juliet will accept a compromise solution if I offer one.’ I shrugged. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘The whole thing. So it’s up to you. I’m going to do this anyway, but if you tell me not to do it here I’ll go somewhere else.’

Susan picked up her whisky glass, but she didn’t drink from it.

She just turned it in her hands and stared into the shallows of the half-finished drink.

‘This woman-’ she said. ‘It’s the woman you were talking about before you went away? The killer?’

Warily, I nodded.

‘Who did sheÛ216alk kill?’

‘Most recently, a middle-aged gay guy who was looking for a bit of rough trade. Before that –’ I picked my words with care ‘– a lot of people, but mostly people who’d hurt her. Or people who she thought might hurt her.