Thicker Than Water

The Liver Building is the iconic face of Liverpool: pure white stone, golden at sunset like an emperor’s palace floating on the muddy Mersey, and guarded by those two mythical cormorants with their well-chronicled fondness for honest men and virtuous women. The Cunard is the big ugly bread box right alongside: as squat as a stool and as elegant as the stump of a limb. I worked there myself in the summer before I went off to college, as an office assistant for the Regis Shipping and Forwarding Company. I’d almost died, but that was mainly the systemic shock of having to get up at half past six in the morning and put in a full day’s work. I was pretty sure that my destiny lay elsewhere: God couldn’t be that cruel.

That was eighteen years ago, but the place hasn’t changed much. The war memorial with its winged Victory is still standing in the forecourt. The foyer is as imposing and unwelcoming as ever, with its massive Doric columns designed to put generations of junior clerks firmly in their place. And the elevators still play Dvorak’s Slavonic Dances with enough crackle and hiss to drown out the music, which makes you wonder if in some secret chamber in the heart of the building they’ve got an endless supply of identical pre-Dolby eight-track tapes that Mr Cunard boosted from some fire sale in a spirit of waste not, want not.

A single phone call to Nicky from the Orrell Park had established the fact that Steven Seddon, MSSP, worked as a law clerk for Sedgewick & Stacey, a firm of solicitors specialising in contract law, with three partners on permanent retainer to half a dozen Liverpool-based shipping lines. ‘Clean, as far as that goes,’ Nicky had said. ‘No obvious bad smells, anyway. Seddon. Any relation to the late Kenneth Seddon?’

‘Brother,’ I confirmed.

‘He’s been there three years and a month. Should have been promoted last year when he got his paralegal diploma, but he squeaked in with the lowest pass grade you can get. It was a skin-of-the-teeth kind of thing, and they decided to bump him a year.’

‘You got all that from their website, Nicky?’

‘Nope. I’m in their personnel files. It’s all up on the office intranet. Restricted log-in, but what’s a password between £sswm" friends? I’m currently one of the senior partners, a Mister John Loose. As in “fast and . . .” Oh, and by the way, guess which demon-haunted estate in South London made the news last night?’

I felt a prickling on my scalp and the back of my neck. ‘What happened?’ I demanded.

‘There was a fight. Couple of gangs met up by prior arrangement and had a bit of an altercation. Nobody dead, but lots of blood spilled. Cops came in to break it up, and here’s the bizarre part. The good citizens sided with the gang-bangers. Cops were pelted with all kinds of shit from up on the walkways. Bricks. Bottles. A widescreen TV. It got kind of intense. And while I’m watching this on the nine o’clock news, what do I see but the other bastard walking right past the camera.’

‘What other bastard?’

‘Good old Tom Gwillam. The Pope’s plausibly deniable leg-breaker.’

‘So he’s still there,’ I mused. ‘Well, he can’t have too many illusions about what’s happening now. And maybe he can do some good.’

‘What, with the power of prayer?’

‘Something like that.’ Actually, Gwillam was an exorcist, and a pretty damn powerful one. He got the drop on Juliet once, which was more than I’d ever managed. ‘Thanks, Nicky. I owe you, man.’

‘Oh, indubitably.’

So here I now was, sitting in Sedgewick & Stacey’s reception area, which was about the size of Lime Street station but had considerably more potted palms, waiting for Steve to put in an appearance. He seemed to be in no hurry at all to do that, but I was prepared to be patient. That was my main bargaining chip. I was comfortably dressed in my jeans and greatcoat, and I had a good greasy breakfast under my belt, so I just sat reading the magazines while other clients came and went, and while the receptionist, shooting the occasional frosty glare in my direction, called Steve on the intercom at ten-minute intervals - which I timed by the clock above her desk.

Steve broke before I did, which is where my money would have been if I’d been making book on this. He came out of the inner office after barely an hour, looking harassed and hunted. I knew him at once, even though his complexion had cleared and he didn’t have the words LOVE and HATE written on his knuckles in red biro, as he had when I’d seen him last. He’d grown up without filling out, so he was basically just an attenuated version of his childhood self with a line of bum-fluff on his upper lip. He was wearing a suit, and it looked like a pretty good one except that it was brown. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a brown suit, but I was nearly certain that Norman Wisdom had been wearing it.

Steve nodded a begrudging acknowledgement to the receptionist to show that he was taking care of this, then crossed to me as I folded my magazine and stood up.

‘Hey, Steve,’ I said.