Dead Men's s Boots

Juliet telling him that he could go ahead and burn whoever he liked – she hadn’t come along to watch.

Carla asking Juliet who in hell she was, and Juliet saying that it was funny she shoul cunnch.d ask.

I must have been out for all of ten seconds. Ten seconds was more than enough, though, if Juliet was in a sour mood. It was lucky for all of us – and probably for Todd most of all – that she’d got out of the right side of Susan Book’s bed this morning.

I was lying on the ground, though, and that was a bad sign. If Juliet had put me down to free up her hands, things could be about to escalate.

I started to sit up, my stomach lurching slightly as gravity sloshed around me like cooling soup.

‘Fix, are you all right?’ Carla knelt beside me and supported me as I tried to get my upper body vertical.

‘I’m fine, Carla,’ I said, and it was true that the blood-red haze was fading out to the corners of my eyes. I could think again, without feeling as though my brain was about to explode out of my ears like silly string.

It was obvious I could think because I was doing it: I was thinking about Juliet’s legs, which were on a level with my face. Juliet’s legs are long and shapely, and they deserve a lot of very serious thought – especially when, as now, they were encased in tight black leather trousers and stiletto-heeled boots. But it wouldn’t help to restore dignity to the proceedings if I started howling like a wolf.

I stood up, taking in the rest of her outfit only in my peripheral vision. More blacks – her favourite colour, and she goes for every possible shade of it.

Her arms and shoulders were bare, though, because her shirt was really only a vest, and it was made out of something almost diaphanous that allowed you to guess at the shape of the body underneath it. Sometimes, with Juliet, even peripheral vision was too much.

Todd was taking her in his stride, though, which was an impressive feat. Her threat to eviscerate him had made him stop talking, but he was staring at her with a cold composure that I still haven’t managed to master.

Maybe lawyers are wired differently from the rest of us.

‘Mister Castor,’ he said, ‘is this a friend of yours?’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Juliet, this is Carla Gittings – John’s widow. And Maynard Todd. John’s solicitor. Both of you, Juliet Salazar, a former colleague of mine.’

She gave each of them a glance that you could only call minimal. ‘You left a message with Sue,’ she said to me. ‘Something you wanted to ask me about.