Dead Men's s Boots

He’s never hurt me. He throws things around the room, but nothing’s ever hit me. He’s still my John, Fix. He’s scared, and because he’s scared he’s angry – but he’d never dream of harming me.’

I mulled that over and found nothing to say to it. The stuff I’d dodged on the doormat had certainly come a bit too close fteet too cor comfort. But then, John knew what I was, and what I could do to him: he had good reason to want me to keep my distance. And if Carla had been living with this for six days and not taken so much as a scratch, it was hard to argue with her conclusions.

Geists had been known to topple wardrobes on people’s heads and push them out of windows: clearly what was left of John Gittings was pulling its punches – at least as far as his widow was concerned.

I scooped the pet food back into the bowl and used it to change the subject. ‘I thought you hated animals,’ I said.

‘Stray cat,’ Carla muttered, distracted. She tapped the Cona machine with a fingernail as it started to make slupslup-slup noises.

‘It came in through the window one day, and John fed it some tuna. Then it wouldn’t stop coming. I asked him not to encourage it but he wouldn’t listen. Haven’t seen it in a few days, though. Maybe it’s true that they know when someone doesn’t like them.’

Over coffee, she came back to the question of options.

‘I’m going to have to let them do it, aren’t I?’ she asked me glumly, staring at the cream swirling on the surface of her drink. ‘Dig him up again, and burn him?’

I thought about that.

‘If the will’s as specific as you say it is . . . Your only chance would be to prove that John wasn’t in his right mind when he wrote it.’ I hesitated at that point, thinking about where I was going to be the following morning, and what a tangled thicket the whole question of sanity now was. In your right mind? Sure. But sometimes it all depended on who was in there with you.

‘How do you prove something like that?’ Carla asked, echoing my thoughts.

I took a swig of my coffee. I’d topped up both of the mugs heavily with what was left of the brandy, and it had a very pleasant afterburn.

But the bitterness was there too, and I let it seep through me. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Usually it comes down to expert opinions. In my experience you can find an expert who’s willing to say more or less anything, but it costs money. And since John wasn’t getting any kind of medical help before his death, it’ll be harder to make something like that stick.