Dead Men's s Boots — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

‘But Jules is with you,’ Susan protested, confused.

‘Not any more,’ I admitted. I told her about my little difference of opinion with Juliet at the Golden Coffee House in Brokenshire, omitting some of the more colourful details like her kicking my arse around the room. Susan got more and more unhappy as she listened.

‘But how will she get home!’ she protested. ‘Felix, you shouldn’t have just left her there. She doesn’t know how to behave without scaring or upsetting people. She’s going to get into trouble.’

The anxiety in her voice made me ashamed, even though there hadn’t been any point in the proceedings where I’d felt like I had a choice. ‘She just walked out on me,’ I said, hearing the words as I said them and realising how lame and evasive they sounded. ‘She was really angry and she warned me not to follow her. Which I wasn’t in any position to do in any case: long story, don’t ask.’

‘But does she have her ticket? Her passport?’

‘Susan,’ I said, trying to head off her alarm and anger, ‘she’s back in the country already. She got back before I did. If she hasn’t come home, that’s because she’s been . . . well, busy with other things. I was just hoping she might have got in touch with—’

‘What kind of other things, Felix? What do you mean?’

I hedged. I didn’t want to tell Susan Book that the woman [sic] she loved had been involved in a jailbreak – to free another woman (although one who was forty years dead and very convincingly disguised as a man) so that she wouldn’t have to stand trial for murder. It was probably a conversation that the two of them needed to have between themselves at some point, maybe over a glass of wine and a candlelit supper for two.

‘It’s something to do with the work she was doing for the Met,’ I said. Truth as far as it goes. ‘I’m sure she’s fine, but it was something she felt very strongly about and she didn’t want to wait. That’s what I need to talk to her about, in fact. I’ve got some new information that I want to go over with her. If she comes home, or gets in touch, could you tell her Æed to call me?’

Susan said she’d pass the message along, but her tone was cold. She was blaming me for all this, in spite of my weasel words: as far as she was concerned, she’d invited me over for dinner and I’d dragged a big bag of crap and chaos in with me and dumped it all over her floor. Even without knowing the whole story, she knew that much: and she was right.

I fixed myself a quick breakfast of toast and dry cereal – the milk in the fridge having transubstantiated into something green and malevolent. My neck and back ached so badly that I was moving like an arthritic grandad. The day was off to a great start.

Nicky said they had Gary Coldwood in traction over at the Royal Free. A hop, a skip and a jump and I was treading the streets of Hampstead, a place where I’ve always felt as welcome as a slug in a salad. It didn’t help that I’d forgotten to shave. Or maybe it did: at least people didn’t seem inclined to intrude on my privacy.

There were two uniformed cops on duty outside the private ward where Coldwood was holed up, but they didn’t stop me going in or ask to take my name or anything: I wasn’t sure whether they were there to stop Gary leaving – in which case they should probably have had more faith in his broken legs – or if they’d been assigned to protect him from his screaming fans. Either way, they were earning their overtime fairly painlessly.

Coldwood wasn’t feeling any pain either, but that was because he was doped up to the eyeballs and only about one-tenth conscious. I sat there for ten minutes or so, wondering if he was going to surface far enough to realise that he wasn’t alone. I wasn’t even sure why I was there: or at least where the balance lay between apologising and debriefing.

Eventually I admitted defeat and got up to leave. Coldwood mumbled something, but it wasn’t to me and it wasn’t intelligible. As I headed for the door, though, a nurse walked briskly in and cut off my escape. She was about forty and built like a Victorian wardrobe: a solid trapezoid with a single undifferentiated mound of breast like a continental shelf.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded brusquely.

‘Friend of the family,’ I hedged.

‘Well, you’ll have to come back after I’ve given the sergeant his bed bath.’

‘I was hoping I could have a word with him about—’

‘After his bed bath. Move along, please, or I’ll do the both of you together.’

I was about to protest at this ugly threat, but the noise of our voices made Coldwood stir and open his eyes, so we both shut up hurriedly.

‘Fix,’ he mumbled. ‘Is that – fuck, it is.’

I hurried back to his bedside, ignoring the toxic glare of the nurse.