Dead Men's s Boots — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

But I knew beyond any doubt that when I finally got the full story of Mount Grace and the born-again killers, it would turn out to be Palance’s story too. And – less than a conviction, but a very strong feeling – it was going to be a story lacking a happy-ever-after ending.

I backed quietly out of the room and rejoined Covington on the landing. There was nothing in his face or manner to indicate that he’d been moved or upset a few minutes earlier: he was cold and functional now, almost brusque.

‘What do you think you’ll do?’ he asked me, as we walked back down the stairs. ‘I mean, you came here for a reason, didn’t you? You’re looking into this, and it’s not just because you want John’s widow to have closure.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘I came here for a reason. Too many people have died, Covington. And the body count its higher now than it was this time yesterday. I’m going to Mount Grace, and since I’m going to be outnumbered a hundred to one, I’m taking the reconnaissance pretty fucking seriously.’

‘It won’t be enough,’ he said flatly. ‘Whatever you find out, and however you play it, you’re not going to be able to do it alone.’

‘Are you offering to help?’ I asked.

Covington laughed without the smallest trace of humour. ‘No. Absolutely not. I’m just saying, that’s all. No point putting the gun in your mouth if suicide’s not what you’re after. Get yourself some back-up – expert help. Maybe some other people in your profession.’

‘I’ll take it under advisement,’ I muttered. ‘Is there anything you can do from this end? Get me a plan of the building, maybe. And a list of who’s been cremated there over the past fifty or sixty years, say.’

‘Maybe. But I’d have to ask Todd, and I doubt he’d cooperate. He doesn’t like me very much.’

‘Todd the lawyer?’

‘Todd the lawyer, Todd the son and Todd the holy ghost. Todd the president of the board of trustees.’

Chunk chunk chunk.

‘Don’t bother,’ I said. ‘I’ll ask him myself.’

I walked down to the North Circular, hoping to catch another cab, but the night bus came along first and I rode it around to New Southgate, all alone for most of the way but sharing it with a small crowd of friendly drunks on the last stretch. Their old man, anachronistically enough, said follow the van. I wanted to invite them to jump under a fucking van, but they were mostly big drunks so I closed my eyes and let the crumbling brickwork of the wall of sound break over me.

Half past two in the morning. I walked down towards Wood Green with my head aching. Most of that was from where Juliet had done the laying-on of hands, but some of it was because of the implications of what Nicky and Covington had told me. I’d have to go to Mount Grace, but if I just walked in off the street I’d be outgunned and easy meat. After all, I had no idea what I’d be facing there or even if they’d know I was coming. I had to map the terrain, and I didn’t know how.

I was bone weary and not my usual happy-go-lucky self as I got back to the block and trudged up the endless stairs – lifts were all »lifh=""still out, inevitably – to Ropey’s flat. Maybe the tiredness was why I didn’t notice that the door unlocked on a single turn of the key, when I’d double-locked it on my way out as I always did.

But as soon as I stepped over the threshold I knew, even in the pitch dark, that I wasn’t alone. My scalp prickled, and then the rest of me too: I was being watched in the dark by something that was neither wholly alive nor wholly dead.

I stepped hastily away from the door so I wouldn’t be silhouetted against the light from the corridor outside: but whoever was in here had dark-adapted eyes already, and they could pick me off at their leisure if that was what they wanted. Slowly, silently, I snaked my hand into my coat and slid out the tin whistle. The silent presence had a distinct feel to it, and it was starting to resolve into notes – fragmented, for now, but the links would come if I could stay alive long enough.

‘You might as well turn on the light,’ said a dry, brittle, utterly inhuman voice. ‘If I was going to rip your throat out, I’d have done it as soon as you walked in.’

I didn’t need to turn on the light: that voice was imprinted on my mind almost as powerfully as Juliet’s scent.

‘Moloch,’ I snarled.

A faint snicker ratcheted out of the darkness like a rusty thumbscrew being laboriously turned.

‘I thought it was time we pooled our resources,’ the demon said.

20

I turned the light on, shrugged off my coat and threw it over the back of the sofa, then stepped out of my shoes as I advanced into the room. I managed to do all of this stuff fairly matter-of-factly: after all, like the fiend-in-the-shapeof-a-man said, he’d already had an open goal and refused to take the shot.