Read Online Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey - Free Book Online Page B

stare.
    “Seriously,” he said. “You think I enjoyed turning up at the funeral looking like the bad guy in a silent movie, terrorizing
     widows, breaking up the show? I didn’t. I didn’t enjoy it one bit. But my client’s wishes were absolutely specific.”
    I didn’t answer right away; I was only here to check the dates. But since he’d given me the opening, it seemed churlish not
     to at least poke a stick into it. “Carla thinks that John was suffering from some kind of dementia.”
    Todd looked pained. “Mrs. Gittings has that luxury. I don’t. Not unless she can prove it in court. I have to assume that John
     meant what he said, and I have to act on it.”
    “There’s something else you should know about,” I said. “Mrs. Gittings is being haunted by her husband’s ghost.”
    I left it out there, looked at his face. Like I said, the law takes a while to catch up with how the world turns, and a lot
     of people with a rational mind-set somehow manage never to see anything that might challenge their basic assumptions. For
     all I knew, Todd was one of them: a vestal, to use Pen’s word. Someone who’d never seen a ghost, or any of the other manifestations
     of the risen dead, and couldn’t quite bring himself to make the conceptual leap in advance of the evidence.
    But he surprised me. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, and he looked as though he meant it.
    “It gets worse. Whether or not John was in his right mind when he died, he’s pretty much out of it now. The ghost is restless.
     Violent. It’s become—”
    “Geist,” Todd finished, and I nodded, impressed that he knew the technical term. He blew out his cheek. “Damn,” he said simply,
     and then for a long time he stared at the floor, his thumb running absently along the edge of his desk. “Well, that—yes, that’s
     distressing. She must be very distraught. To see someone you loved—
still
love, I suppose—”
    There was a long silence at the end of which Todd looked at me and nodded as though I’d been pressing an argument. “I want
     this to give her as little stress as possible,” he said. “Especially after what you’ve said. So what I’m proposing is a wake.”
    I thought I must have misheard him. “A wake?” I echoed him. “You mean a party?”
    Todd shook his head brusquely. “No, not a party. Just a night when the coffin goes back to the house—when Mrs. Gittings can
     sit with it, and John’s spirit can become a little bit more reconciled to… his violent end. Do you think that would be a good
     idea?”
    I mulled it over, and I had to admit—to myself, at least—that it did. It might or might not provide closure for Carla, but
     it ought to do John’s ghost a power of good to see that his last request was being carried out to the letter. In theory, it
     ought to stop the haunting. You didn’t need an exorcism if you gave the dead what they wanted.
    What I said, though, was “It doesn’t really matter what I think. I’ll talk it over with Carla. See what she says.”
    Todd pushed the papers back into the file, closed it, and stood up very abruptly. “You do that,” he said. “If there’s a way
     of doing this that spares her feelings, then that’s the way we’ll do it. Thanks for coming in, Mr. Castor. I’m glad you told
     me all this.”
    “The cremation,” I reminded him. “When is it going to be?”
    “Wednesday, most likely. But it depends how soon I can get the disinterment done. It might have to be Thursday. Talk to Mrs.
     Gittings and let me know what she says. Oh, and please leave a number with Carol. I think under the circumstances Mrs. Gittings
     won’t appreciate a call from me, so if you don’t mind continuing to act as a go-between—”
    “Happy to,” I said stolidly. “Thanks for listening.”
    I went downstairs again and left my address and phone numbers with the bored brunette. The photocopier was in a state of even
     more advanced disassembly, and Leonard was