Dead Men's s Boots — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

Despite the harsh language, he didn’t seem angry: just matter-of-fact, and maybe slightly impatient at being snowed. Which could mean that he already knew more about this situation than I’d been assuming. Maybe more than I did myself: in spite of all my globe-trotting investigations, that wouldn’t have been hard.

I hesitated long enough for him to notice, but he didn’t seem to be in any kind of a hurry: he waited in silence for me to make up my mind.

‘Okay,’ I said at last, trying to find a way of putting it that got the essential point across without sounding ridiculously melodramatic. ‘There’s something going on down there. Something really strange, and really dangerous. Something illegal, maybe, but the laws don’t really cover this situation because it’s stuff most people consider impossible. But everyone who gets close to it ends up dead.’

That was enough to be going on with. I’d tossed him a quid: let’s see if he could offer me a quo.

Covington nodded, seeming to relax slightly. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Then you know. I wouldn’t have been able to explain it, but if you know then that makes it a lot easier. Yes, you’re right. There is something going on at Mount Grace. And I think your dead friend Mister Gittings wa»terthes investigating it when he died. In fact, I think that’s why he died.’ He looked at me searchingly.

‘John committed suicide,’ I pointed out, playing straight-man and wondering if that objection sounded as fatuous to Covington as it did to me.

The blond man shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘He did.’

‘In a locked room. With a shotgun.’

Covington conceded those points too with a cold nod.

‘Not an easy thing for someone to arrange,’ I hazarded.

‘That depends, I suppose.’ Covington stood and crossed the room to close the door, which I’d left open. He locked it too, turning the big, ornate key which had been left in the lock. Shutting me in, or shutting someone else out? ‘For an outside job, yes, it would be difficult. For someone working from the inside—’

The glass was on its way to my mouth: I almost poured that precious liquid into my shirt collar as I suppressed a start of unwelcome surprise.

‘From the inside?’ I repeated.

Covington stood over me, staring down. His hands were in his pockets and I was getting the distinct impression that we might be on the same side, but I still had to fight the urge to jump up and take a defensive crouch. He was a formidable man, I realised, seeing him from this close up: there was a sense of mass and solidity about him that suggested long hours on a bench press.

‘Yes. You know what I mean, Mister Castor. You’ve probably got your own reasons for pretending you don’t, but you do. Another man’s mind – another man’s soul, working from inside your friend’s body – could do all the things that John Gittings was said to have done. Locked the door. Put the shotgun barrel in his mouth. Pulled the trigger. He’d know, wouldn’t he, that his resurrection would follow in due course? So long as he could be sure that John’s body was going back to Mount Grace.’

I hadn’t consciously reached that conclusion until he said it, but every word was like a reel clanking to a halt on an enormous slot machine: chunk chunk chunk chunk, followed by the tinny jingling of the jackpot.

‘Why would he do it, though?’ I demanded. ‘If he – they – had already taken John over, then they didn’t have to worry about the investigation any more. If they did it to silence him, then the job was done. Why did they need to kill him?’

‘You tell me,’ Covington suggested, still staring down at me.

‘Because they don’t go for broken-down old men,’ I muttered. Chunk chunk chunk. ‘Because whoever got that gig – whoever possessed John – was just doing what had to be done to shut him up. Guided suicide. There was no need to stick around for the long-term.’

Covington nodded. ‘That’s the way I read it,’ he said. ‘I’m sure when they’re choosing their new wardrobe they go for the young and healthy. John struck me as anything but.’

Some of the reels were still spinning, still dropping into their final positions: a bell here, a lemon there. John’s fragmented notes and the crazy paranoid dance he’d led me proved that Carla had been right about him: his mind was starting to collapse in on itself. But some of the things she’d seen and described to me she hadn’t understood at all. How could she? When J»uld/i>ohn went around the house writing messages to himself and hiding them, then went around again and burned them or ripped them up, that had looked like the purest insanity. But not if it was a game for two players: not if John was fighting back against the passenger riding inside his mind and soul, and almost winning. But it wasn’t a fair fight, of course: at least, not after the other guy got the drop on him with a fucking shotgun.