Last Stand of Dead Men. Derek Landy

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      photograph of Valkyrie Cain was pinned to the exact centre of the wall. Radiating outwards and linked by different coloured thread were names, locations, dates and more photographs. Along the blue thread were pictures of Valkyrie’s family, including a publicity shot of the late horror writer Gordon Edgley. Red threads meant public incidents, and these threads linked newspaper reports and Internet printouts. The green thread led straight to a series of pictures of tall men in good suits, all under the banner of Skulduggery Pleasant. There were shots of a heavily scarred man, a black Bentley, and various other individuals. Some of these pictures were too blurry to make out, but most were of relatively high quality. The system for cross-referencing had started out as simple, but, as more information was collected, it had got decidedly complex.

      “I don’t get it,” said Patrick Slattery, scratching his beard in that way he did. “You’re saying that all of these guys are Skulduggery Pleasant? How does he manage that?”

      Kenny Dunne collapsed into his tattered old armchair. “I don’t know, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

      Slattery looked sceptical. It had become his default look over these past few months. “Really? The only thing that makes sense is that all of these men we’ve been photographing are the same person? That makes sense to you? They look nothing alike.”

      “They’re all tall, thin and have the same taste in well-tailored clothes. And look at their faces. The skin and hair might be different, but the bone structure’s the same.”

      “He wears disguises, then,” said Slattery. “For no reason, every day he wears a different disguise.”

      “I don’t know. Maybe. Who knows with these people?”

      Slattery shook his head, more to himself than to Kenny. “So why is he called the Skeleton Detective?”

      “For the last time, I don’t know, all right? Probably because he’s so thin. I don’t have all the answers.”

      “You don’t have any of the answers.”

      Kenny didn’t have a violent bone in his body, but there was nothing he would have liked to do more at that moment than jump up and smack Slattery right in the face. “I’m making educated guesses. It’s the only thing we can do with the information we have.”

      Slattery hesitated, then turned from the wall and looked straight at Kenny. “We need to have a talk.”

      “We’re talking now.”

      “We need to have a serious talk about what we’re doing here.”

      Kenny’s hand fluttered an invitation. “Go right ahead.”

      Slattery sat in the tattered old couch that had come with the tattered old armchair. “It might be time to rethink things,” he said. “When you came to me with this, I thought you’d cracked. I honestly thought you’d gone mad. Magic people and possession and super-powers. I thought to myself, Kenny’s gone round the bend. He’s lost it. All those years chasing stories have led him into the nuthouse. I thought you’d want me and my camera down the bottom of some garden, ready to photograph fairies or something.”

      Kenny nodded. “Happy to know you had so much faith in me as a journalist.”

      “But СКАЧАТЬ