Dead Men's s Boots

And the same thing happens to you and your friends, doesn’t it? The longer you stay inside a body that isn’t yours, the more it adjusts to having you there. The more it slides into the shape and form you remember having in your old body. That’s why you’re snow-white blond as Peter Covington, and why you were snow-white blond as Les Lathwell: because Aaron Silver’s soul remembered having snow-white hair. And that hammer, gripped in Doug Hunter’s hand as Myriam Kale came bubbling up out of his soul and into the driver’s seat—’

‘-Had Myriam Kale’s fingerprints on it.

Right. The hammer is behind the bar, by the way: I assume you’ll be wanting to take it with you when you go. And it won’t make any difference to me or to Mimi after tonight. Can I refresh your drink, Castor?’

I looked at my empty glass. ‘Probably better not,’ I said. ‘I need a clear head if I’m going to play you out.’

‘You don’t need to worry. ënee#82I won’t make it hard for you. But I’m in the mood to confess before I die. And I’ve got a favour to ask you, too.

Have another drink with me.’

Fuck it. Why not? It was his house, and his booze. I held out the glass and Covington filled it from the bottle he’d been drinking from. Well, alcohol is meant to be a good disinfectant.

‘How long has it been since your last confession?’ I asked him.

He laughed. ‘A hundred and some years. And I’m Jewish, not Catholic. Born Jewish, anyway: religion never meant very much to me – which is why I had myself burned rather than buried.

I didn’t believe in the bodily resurrection. All my life I just did what I had to do to get by, and that never seemed to leave much room for thinking about God. The last time I went to schul was on the day I was bar mitzvah. Three years after that I killed my first man. Probably the one thing had as much to do with growing up as the other did.’

Suddenly the prospect of hearing all this seemed a lot less attractive. ‘So you were a bad man,’ I said. ‘We can take that as read, if you like.

Move on to the atonement and the absolution.’

‘I’ve been handling the atonement in my own sweet way, Castor. And for your information, I haven’t started telling you my sins yet. I don’t think any of the men I killed back when I was Aaron Silver had any reason to complain. They would have done the same to me, if I’d given them an opening. One of them did, in the end. Henry Meyer-Lindeman got the drop on me in a whorehouse in Streatham. Actually on the job.