Thicker Than Water

by Mike Carey

  I mulled that unpalatable fact over for a moment or two: brandy didn’t sweeten it.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the warning. Listen, Gary, you’re already digging into Kenny’s past, presumably. Any leads there? You know what happened to his wife and kid, right?’

  ‘Common-law wife,’ Coldwood corrected me. ‘She’s MIA. Walked out on him a year or so back, according to the neighbours. The son belonged to her, not to him, and he’s dead. We’re still getting the details.’

  ‘Would that include calling up the autopsy report?’ I asked.

  Coldwood shrugged and raised his eyes to Heaven.

  ‘Could I get a copy of that?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Fix!’

  ‘All right, all right. No harm in asking. What do you make of the other wounds on Kenny’s arms? The older ones?’

  ‘Botched suicide attempt? Wouldn’t be too surprising, would it? When you think about what he’s been through . . .’

  ‘I think he might have been self-harming,’ I said.

  Coldwood stared at me.

  ‘Why do you think that?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I - sorry, because whoever broke into the flat found a hurt-kit in the bedroom. Not the boy’s bedroom. Kenny’s.’

  ‘We already went over that room.’

  I blew out my cheeks. ‘Yeah, but I bet you did it politely. It isn’t a crime scene, and Kenny isn’t a suspect. I almost missed it myself.’

  ‘You keep defaulting back to that first-person stuff, Fix,’ Gary pointed out testily. ‘Work on it. So are you saying that Seddon—?’

  Matt stood up abruptly. ‘I am finding all this talk . . . unnerving,’ he confessed. ‘I think I might leave now. I’m teaching at a seminary in Cheam and I have a very full day tomorrow. If you don’t mind—’

  ‘I do mind,’ I said firmly. ‘Come on, Matt, we haven’t seen each other in, what, must be a year and a half. And I bet you hear a lot worse in the confessional.’

  ‘Well, I was leaving anyway,’ Gary said, putting his empty glass down. ‘I’ve got to be on my feet again in four hours. Mind how you go, Fix. And keep your fingers crossed that the floating-pronoun burglar didn’t leave too many prints behind him in Seddon’s gaff. Even my C2s can’t be relied on to miss everything that’s under their noses. I’ll tell them to take another stroll around that bedroom.’

  He thanked Pen for the booze and hospitality and let himself out. And then there were three.

  ‘So how are you doing, Matt?’ Pen asked my brother. ‘I didn’t know you were teaching now.’

  ‘For six years,’ Matt said, killing that line of conversation stone-dead. Pen was only trying to be nice because the last time Matt had come visiting she’d hit him in the nose with a tea-tray. It hadn’t been in the course of a theological debate, either, although that wouldn’t have been much of a surprise: Pen takes her spirituality pretty seriously.

  But I hadn’t insisted on Matty staying behind so that we could discuss the good of his soul. It was something else that was bugging me, and I needed an answer now.

  ‘We’ll see you in the morning, Pen,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘We’ve got some things we need to go over in private.’

  ‘Take the bottle,’ Pen suggested. I lifted it, started to say thanks and noticed it was empty. She was just making a point, in her own inimitable way. ‘I’ll get another in the morning,’ I promised.

  ‘Just pay me some rent,’ she riposted, stroking Arthur the raven’s glossy back.

  I led the way up the stairs. Matt lingered by the front door for a moment, as if contemplating making a break for it. ‘I’m serious, Matt,’ I said. ‘We’re having this conversation sooner or later, and I did you the courtesy of not having it in front of a copper. So let’s make it sooner, eh?’

  Without protest - in fact, without reacting at all - Matt followed me up to my attic room. That put two clear storeys between us and Pen: enough so that she wouldn’t be disturbed by raised voices or colourful language.

  There’s only one chair in the room. I waved Matt to sit down, but he crossed to the window instead and examined the badly repaired plasterwork around the sill. ‘This is where your sex-demon friend jumped through after she almost devoured you,’ he reminisced. It was such a transparent attempt to put me off balance that I felt a sudden wave of affection for him. It took me by surprise, reminding me of brotherly feuds long past, and the kind of dirty pool we always played against each other before he found God and lost the rest of us. Maybe for that reason, I came straight to the point instead of dancing around it looking for an unfair advantage.

  ‘What were you doing at the Salisbury, Matt?’ I demanded.

  He turned to look at me. His blue-grey eyes, otherwise unknown in the Castor family, held my gaze unblinkingly. ‘I was just walking,’ he said, with immaculate calm. But I knew from way back how good he was at the straight-faced kidding.

  I nodded. ‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Hell of a walk, from Cheam, but they’re your shoes. I saw someone else just walking there recently - Gwillam. That shitehawk from the Anathemata Curialis. You remember him?’

  ‘Of course I remember him,’ Matt said, with guarded emphasis.

  ‘When from?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Felix?’

  ‘When do you remember him from, exactly? When did you last see him, and what’s he got you doing on the Salisbury?’

  ‘Felix—’

  ‘Don’t get coy, Matty.’ I pushed the chair around so that it faced him. ‘That was Gwillam’s man you hauled off me right now, and you called him by name. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? He’s a self-righteous lunatic fighting a one-man crusade against the undead. You’re just a priest who can’t say no. Somewhere you were bound to meet.’

  Matt still refused to sit. ‘You’re wrong, Felix,’ he said.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes. It’s not a one-man crusade. The Anathemata probably has upwards of a thousand members - a couple of hundred in the UK alone. It’s not an official arm of the Church any more, but it’s still highly respected in many circles. And Thomas Gwillam is a hugely influential voice when it comes to . . .’ he faltered for the first time, but it was a short hesitation and a good recovery ‘. . . the more controversial aspects of the afterlife.’

  ‘Thomas,’ I mused. ‘Probably named after the popular saint.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Whose unique selling point was that he had those doubts, yeah? Amazingly, he wasn’t always a hundred per cent sure he was doing the right thing. I could really get behind a saint like that.’

  Matt sighed - a long-drawn-out sound that was more indicative of exhaustion than of resignation. He did look tired, now that I looked at him properly: tired and a bit beaten down, as though something serious and distracting was weighing on him. ‘Aquinas, Felix,’ he said. ‘Saint Thomas Aquinas, not the apostle Thomas. You know this. You went to church too, and to Sunday school. You only pretend to be ignorant.’

  ‘But we are what we pretend to be, Matty,’ I countered. ‘Kurt Vonnegut, chapter 1, verse 1. So if you pretend to be a carpet-chewing religious bigot, that’s how you end up. What the fuck are you doing mixing with the likes of Gwillam?’

  There was a long, strained silence.

  ‘You take a lot of things for granted,’ Matt said. His voice trembled slightly.

  I shrugged. ‘Well, that’s me,’ I said. ‘Always jumping to conclusions. I see the head of a secret Church organisation hanging around on a street corner. Then I see my brother, who’s a priest, hanging around on the same corner less than twelve hours later. And I think to myself, something’s going down. Something’s got the ‘if-it’s-dead-bust-its-head’ brigade well and truly steamed up. And I start wondering what that something might be.’

  Matt clenched his fist in a very uncharacteristic gesture, but then only massaged it absently with the other palm. ‘That’s absurd,’ he said. ‘I’m not even a member of the Anathemata.’

  I shrugged. ‘If yo
u say so. Lying’s a sin, so I’m sure you’d never do that. But you are from the arse-end of Walton. And you did take your holy orders at Upholland, just a few miles down the road from where we grew up. So if anyone was looking for a priest with a Liverpool 9 background, yours would be the first CV to pop up, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Who would look?’ Matt asked, still meeting my gaze and still looking both weary and unmoved. ‘Why would they look?’

  ‘Because of Kenny Seddon,’ I said, and I saw the name hit home. Matt shook his head wordlessly, but his expression was almost a wince. ‘There’s something really strange going on over at the Salisbury,’ I went on, not giving him a chance to interrupt. ‘Something in the air that’s driving people crazy. I don’t know what it is, even though I’ve felt it. It’s not an emotion I can give a name to. It’s more like an impulse, moving people in different ways. Tonight I saw a kid try to kill himself, and I think it was because he was possessed by this - whatever it is. This spirit. This peripatetic emotion.

  ‘And two nights ago, Kenny Seddon met a couple of guys a mile down the road for a quiet chat. Relaxed. Informal. Bring your own razor. And whatever it was they talked about, the conversation - as you just heard with no trace of surprise - ended with Kenny carved up like a Christmas turkey. And I mean the way Homer Simpson carves up a Christmas turkey.’

  Matt held up a hand as if to correct me on a point of fact. I rode right over him. ‘Now maybe those things aren’t connected, but I’m working on the assumption that they are. Because the last thing Kenny did, as his nifty little urban runabout filled up with his own blood, was to write my name on the windshield. He called in an exorcist, Matty. The only exorcist whose name he knew. Leaving me with a lot to explain to the boys in blue, but making bloody sure I got to hear about what had happened to him. Why do you think that was?’

  Matt’s brow constricted into a frown. ‘It wasn’t . . .’ he began, but then he shook his head as if despairing of shifting me from my point of view. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘I have no idea at all.’

  ‘Me neither. But if I’m right - if the Anathemata is sniffing after something at the Salisbury, and if Kenny is a part of that something, then is it too much of a stretch to imagine good Father Thomas Aquinas Gwillam sifting through all the tools in the box until he finds the one Catholic priest who happened to know Kenny when we were all kids? Like I said, he’s got that kind of mindset. So I could see him asking you, Matty. I think that’s well within the bounds of possibility. Don’t you? The only thing left to wonder about is what answer you gave him.’

  Instead of answering, Matt made to walk past me, heading for the door. I stepped into his way, forcing him to stop. Although I didn’t touch him, he backed away as if he was rebounding from a physical barrier. There was genuine pain on his face now.

  ‘Please, Felix,’ he said. ‘You really don’t understand. And I’m—’ He drew a slightly ragged breath. ‘I’m desperately sorry that you got involved in this. It’s unfortunate, and unforeseen. You should walk away, as quickly as you can. It’s not something that needs to concern you. It doesn’t bear on anything that you know about, or need to know about.’

  He was grinding his clenched fist into his open palm again.

  ‘Are your palms itchy?’ I asked. He looked down at his hands as if only just realising they were there. The skin of my own hands felt like it was crawling with bugs, although the sensation seemed to have peaked and was now starting to fade. I’d forgotten it until Matt’s nervous gesture brought it back into mental focus.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Matt said, with slightly too much emphasis to be convincing.

  I hesitated. We really don’t know each other all that well, Matt and me: that lost ground in our childhoods is somehow still there in between us, keeping us at a distance from each other no matter what else happens and what life turns us into. So now, for instance, I didn’t know if he wanted me to push it further or not, or even whether he saw me as a friend or an enemy.

  From one point of view, Gwillam and I ought to be natural allies. I used to be an exorcist, at least after a fashion, and that put me on one side of a line that more and more people seemed to be keen to draw: between us and them; between the people who still lived and breathed and the people who’d passed through the veil only to bounce right back again. The Anathemata were on the same side, building bulwarks of faith against the rising tide of the dead.

  But I didn’t like that company much. And I didn’t see the dead - or the undead, for that matter - as the enemy.

  ‘Matty,’ I tried again. ‘Toss me a bone, will you? I’m not walking away from this because I can’t afford to. You heard what Coldwood said: I’m in the frame here, and the woman in charge of the investigation hates my guts. So I really need to know what the hell it was that Kenny was trying to tell me. If I’m wrong - if what’s going on down on that estate has got nothing to do with him and nothing to do with me - then tell me what it’s all about and I’ll leave it at that. Swear to God, I’ll mind my own business. If you don’t trust my honest face, trust me to be a selfish bastard.’

  Matt was silent for long enough that I believed he was really giving that proposition some serious thought. But when he spoke it was only to repeat himself.

  ‘I’m sorry you’ve become involved in this. You need to get out of it again and stay out. Whatever happens - I don’t believe you’ll be incriminated.’

  ‘I’ve already been incriminated,’ I yelled, grabbing his lapels and giving them an exasperated shake. ‘Haven’t you been listening?’ It was the first time I’d touched him, and he brought up his arms to break the contact, smacking me away forcefully. In Matt that looked like a scary lack of control: he’s so used to turning the other cheek he can do the whole Linda Blair thing and rotate his neck three-sixty. It startled me, and made me take a step back, not sure for a moment if he was going to follow it up and turn this into a real fight.

  He didn’t. He just stood there with his hands raised in a guard stance, like an ecclesiastical Bruce Lee. The effect was a little spoiled, though, by how badly he was shaking.

  ‘You saw what happened tonight,’ he blurted out. ‘And what almost happened. I mean it, Felix. Keep your distance from it. Don’t even ask any more questions. Whatever it looks like - it’s not yours. Not your kind of thing. Nothing - nothing at all to do with you.’

  He was having to force the words out by this time. His face was pale and there was an audible catch to his breathing.

  ‘So you won’t trust me?’ I said, more quietly.

  ‘Oh, I trust you, Fix,’ Matt said tremulously. ‘I know exactly what I can expect from you. I’ve known ever since the first time I took your confession.’

  I didn’t see that one coming, and it silenced me as effectively as a punch in the gut. Before I could answer, Matt pushed violently past me, barging me out of his way, and ran from the room. By the time I got out onto the landing he was onto the second flight of stairs, taking them at a run.

  I followed more slowly, not trying to catch him. It seemed like we’d reached a conversational impasse.

  The door slammed below me, and as I came down into the hall Pen came up from the Stygian depths and met me at ground level. She looked at the door, then back at me.

  ‘Well, that was loud,’ she said.

  I shook my head, too uneasy about what had just happened to bother to hide it. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I took it as far away from you as I could. I’m sorry you got landed with Coldwood too. Did he ask you about Rafi?’

  Pen nodded. ‘I just said what you told me to say. I haven’t visited Rafi in more than a month, and I don’t know where he is.’

  ‘Good. There’s nothing to prove you had any part in it. He can’t get from me to you.’

  She didn’t seem to want to pursue that topic any further. ‘So did you sort it all out with Matt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t think so. Come on down and talk me through it.’

  I normally keep Pen at
arm’s length from my professional life, but on the few occasions when we’ve got down to cases, as it were, she’s turned out to have some pretty shrewd insights. I looked at my watch. Too little left of the night now to make an issue of it anyway, and I was at that stage where you’re too close to what you’re looking at to see it at all. Not to mention the fact that Pen had probably weaselled a lot of the story out of Coldwood already. Brandy is a potent lever in her hands, and with the home-team advantage she’s pretty hard to beat.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Okay.’

  Over lethally potent coffee from her stove-top Moka pot, Pen listened to the whole story in inscrutable silence.

  ‘What did he mean?’ she asked, when I got to the confession part. ‘You don’t go for all that stuff, do you, Fix?’

  I gave a scoffing laugh. ‘Too many sins,’ I said. ‘Can you imagine the queue that would build up behind me?’

  ‘Then why did Matt say that to you?’

  I didn’t answer for a moment. The memory came over me so strongly, I felt like I was there again. That last spring before I left home. The party we threw for Matt at the Railway Club on Breeze Lane, the day after his ordination.

  Pen waited, knowing me too well to push: and after a while, speaking softly because this too felt like a confession, I told her the story.

  The party was Dad’s idea: to celebrate Matt’s achievement and to rub everyone’s nose in the fact that he had a priest for a son. The Castors would be first in the queue for Heaven from now on: we had our very own inside man.

  I wasn’t exactly in the party spirit: I prowled around the edges of the good time that was being had, feeling the same old resentments coming to a boil in my mind. Matt had walked out on us back when ‘us’ was still the barely viable huddle of him, me and Dad: now Matt had come back the hero. I didn’t see anything much to celebrate here.