Dead Men's s Boots — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

‘It was Silver – I mean, Les Lathwell – who brought Myriam Kale in, wasn’t it? So there he is, taking the lead again. Actively recruiting for the cause. I bet a real psycho killer was a real feather in your caps.’

Todd flared up, raising the knife in his clenched fist but then thinking better of it and giving me an openhanded smack across the face instead. ‘Are you really that fucking stupid?’ he demanded. ‘Or are you trying to make me kill you before you talk? Kale was a goddamned disaster, right from the start. I told him: she’s sick in the head. For the rest of us, killing’s just a means to an end. For her it’s an addiction. A disease. She’s never gonna stop, and she’s always gonna draw the wrong kind of attention to herself. She’s the last thing in the world we want. Someone who shits in the nest because she doesn’t know any better and you can’t teach her any better. Fucking – madwoman!’

Todd was right about the veneer of civilisation. Something earthy, East End and broad was creeping into his accent as his emotions got the better of him. I decided to encourage it: if he was angry then he was off balance and not thinking straight, and you never knew what kind of options might open themselves up.

‘But it was Silver’s choice,’ I said, ‘because it was his game. Mister Rourke said if I could take Silver out then everything else would fall apart of its own accord.’

Todd laughed incredulously, shaking his head. ‘Take Silver out? Fuck, if I’d known that was on your agenda, I’d have waited and let you take a shot. We’d do it ourselves, except he’s too cagey to give us an opening. Him and his American whore have fucking ruined us. Made us visible again, after we worked for years to cover our tracks. Live for ever. Live like kings for ever. Build up an empire, stronger and safer than anything we had when we were alive. That was what was in the prospectus – and it was his own fucking prospectus! “We can own this city.” And we do! We do own it! We take our cut and we take our pleasure and nobody even knows – or if they find out they die, and their wives and kids die, and their gardens are sown with fucking salt. We’ve got it all. But you know what they say about love being blind. He wouldn’t listen to reason. From the moment he met her, he was a changed man. Take Silver out?’ He laughed again, but there was a bitter, choking sound in it. ‘You should have fucking said.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed, switching tack. ‘Kale was your weak spot all along. Every time you ÓEveuckgave her a new body, she’d kill again . . .’ Todd was nodding, so I went on. All I was doing was what mediums do: using the stooge’s feedback to refine the guesswork, zeroing in on the truth so it looks like you’ve known it all along. ‘The old psychosis showing itself again, every time. But you couldn’t just stop. Couldn’t just leave her in the ground. Silver wouldn’t let you. So I guess Mister Rourke was right about the pecking order.’

‘We’re a collective,’ Todd growled. ‘Democratic and egalitarian. Everything is fair, and everything is set out nice and clear in the rules. You spend a year up on top, riding one of the bodies with the influence and the power and the celebrity lifestyle – then you spend a year as one of the grunts, earning your keep, minding the shop. We don’t trust anyone else to maintain the crematorium, or to guard it. We keep it all in the family.

‘But that cunt-bubble is as strong as the rest of us put together. He started to write his own rules. And because he’s the oldest we’ve got to go carefully. Time isn’t just money, it’s power too. We don’t know what kind of safeguards he put in place for himself back when he was the only one. Just in case of emergencies. He’s not ever going to let himself be caught with his pants down. If we did kill him-’ Todd didn’t finish the sentence, but his shrug conveyed his meaning: that killing Aaron Silver, in flesh or spirit or both, would be the start of something, not the end of it.

‘So that was your brief,’ he said, coming back to the point. ‘Not the rest of us. Just Silver. That’s why you went out to Alabama? Tracing his steps?’

‘Looking for information about Kale. She seems to be his weak spot.’

Todd nodded. ‘Yeah, you’re right there. But the paraphernalia you collected from Chesney – most of that wasn’t anything to do with Silver. So what was the deal there?’

‘I didn’t know what Chesney had,’ I temporised. ‘I had to take a look.’

Todd looked surprised at that – and suspicious. ‘Then you weren’t working with Gittings?’

I had the feeling of thin ice starting to crack under me. ‘Not directly,’ I said. ‘Gittings and Langley were the first string. I was the second. Rourke didn’t activate me until they crashed and burned.