Thicker Than Water

I stood, raising my hands in a shrug of acquiescence. Far be it from me to make any trouble. ‘Well, it’s been a pleasure, Steve,’ I said. ‘Using the word in the sense of “worth the bus fare into town”. Good luck with the law.’

‘You can drop dead. You and your bastard brother,’ Steve riposted. The word ‘brother’ almost stuck in his throat, it came out with such a freight of bristling hatred.

‘I’ll tell him you said hi,’ I promised.

The men in black saw me to the door, but with no laying-on of hands, and I walked out into bright sunshine. But after their ninety-three million mile sprint, the dazzling rays faltered in the final straight and didn’t seem to reach me. I was li£ch to ke some guy in a bloody Leonard Cohen song.

My mobile buzzed as I walked down towards the Pier Head. I took it out and put it to my ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Castor.’ The voice was instantly recognisable: Dick-Breath sounded like his balls still hadn’t dropped.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s me. Hello, Richie. Thanks for getting in touch.’

‘You’re welcome. Keighley said you wanted to talk. I want that, too.’

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Do you know where my mum is living now? It’s just on the—’

‘I can’t come to Walton,’ Richie said, categorically.

‘Why’s that, then, Richie?’

‘I just can’t. I’ll tell you when I see you. But choose somewhere off the street, Castor. Somewhere where nobody will see us. And it needs to be out in the open.’

‘Why?’ I asked again.

‘So I can see you coming,’ Richie said.

18

The Linacre Lane cemetery in Bootle was looking a lot less overgrown and graffitied than when I’d seen it last. There were fewer used condoms on the ground, too, so someone was clearly making a real effort; but I wasn’t here to admire the view.

The 61 bus put me off within sight of the gates, but I walked on by and did a circuit of the place first - both to see if I’d been followed and to think about what I’d already picked up while I’d been here.

Not the jackpot, obviously - that I could only get from Anita herself - but a few little nuggets of possibility. Kenny’s obsession with Anita meant that the two of them playing house together two hundred miles from home was a smaller camel to swallow: particularly since Kenny had done his level best to drive Anita away from the ’Pool in the first place. Mind you, I reflected, there wouldn’t have been a lot keeping her here: as a single mum in Walton with no man in tow, she would have taken a lot of cheap shots, a lot of innuendo and collateral contempt from the matriarchs of my mum’s generation. There would have been no shortage of places where she’d have set tongues wagging and heads shaking: and, little by little, that kind of shit wears you down.

And then there was Steve’s obvious hatred of Matt. It had shown in his face, both times he’d been mentioned. Steve disliked me cordially, that was obvious, and I didn’t blame him; but there was some additional weight of animus when he talked or thought about Matt: something that gave his aggression a whole lot more forward momentum. Maybe his mother had been frightened by a rabid priest while he was still in the womb: they say that leaves an impression.

Lastly, there was Richie’s paranoia about being seen in public, which I was evidently starting to share. What had he done that had caused him to drop off the map so precipitously? And did it have anything to do with either his missing sister or Kenny Seddon?

Finally, satisfied that nobody was dogging my shadow or shadowing my dog, I turned in at the gates. I’d told Richie exactly where to meet me, and I’d described the spot with enough circumstantial detail so that not even a blind man could have missed it. There was a chestnut tree, for one thing: one of the dozen or so mature trees that were still permitted to stand within the cemetery grounds, even though their roots spread out a long way and put some of the ground off-limits for burials. And there was a headstone a couple of aisles away where a stone angel had been painted by some street artist who for once had some ideas in his head besides writing his own name: painted in gilt and silver and metallic blue, so that she now looked like some cybernetic robot seraph come down from Silicon Heaven, which of course - as even Kryten finally had to acknowledge - doesn’t really exist.

Richie was pacing backwards and forwards under the tree, sucking on a fag: it wasn’t the first, either, as the dog-ends at his feet testified. He looked up as he saw me coming, took the nearly dead dimp out of his mouth and flicked it into the long grass with evident ill humour.

I watched it smoulder. ‘You remember seeing the Smokey the Bear cartoon at school that time?’ I reminisced.

‘You’re late,’ Richie said with asperity.

I nodded. ‘Which gave you plenty of time to get into position so you could see me coming. Your ground rules, Richie. Now what the fuck is going on?’

He tapped me on the chest with a finger. ‘You tell me,’ he suggested. ‘I’m only here because you asked me to come.’