Dead Men's s Boots

Some woman saying she’d just moved into a new house and there was a ghost in the bloody downstairs lavvy. He told her he’d come the next morning, but she started crying and pleading. Laying it on thicker and thicker, she was, and Stu’s too polite to hang up on her. So in the end he got dressed and went out there. I’d have told her to hold it in or piss out of the window.

‘Anyway, he gets to this place, out in Gypsy Hill somewhere, and look at that. There’s a house with a FOR SALE sign up, exactly where she said it would be, and the front door’s open.

So he went on in, like a bloody idiot. Didn’t stop to ask himself why there were no lights on, or why the sign still said FOR SALE if this whingeing old biddy had already moved in.

‘There were four of them, with baseball bats. They laid into him so hard they put him in a coma. He lasted for a week and then they turned the machine off. I’m telling you, Fix, they won’t be happy until they’ve killed us all.’

‘Won’t do them much good if they do,’ I observed, shaking my head as Louise offered me a drag on the cigarette.

‘Exorcism is in the human genome now. Probably always was, only it didn’t show itself until there was something there to use it on. Killing us doesn’t make the problem go away.’

She blew smoke out of her nose, hard. ‘No, but beating the shit out of a few of us gives the rest of us something to think about.’

Another knot of mourners walked on past us, heading for their cars. One of them was the acid-blonde girl, walking alongside two guys I didn’t know, and she gave me another killing look as she passed.

‘Any idea who that is?’ I asked Louise, rolling my eyes to indicate who or&indicatI meant without being too obvious about it.

‘Which one?’

‘The girl.’

Louise expelled breath in a forced sigh and made a weary face.

‘Dana McClennan.’

‘McClennan?’ Something inside me lurched and settled at an odd angle. ‘Any relation to the late, great Gabriel McClennan?’

‘Daughter,’ said Louise. ‘And she’s following on in the family tradition, Fix.

Bigger arsehole than he was, if anything. When she found out Larry was HIV positive, she backed off at a hundred miles an hour. You’d think he’d tried to give her a Frenchie or something. Or maybe she thinks you can catch it by talking about it, like my mum.’

I didn’t answer. The mention of Gabe McClennan’s name had triggered a whole lot of very unpleasant memories, most of them dating from the night when I’d killed him.