Thicker Than Water

Richie gave a sardonic snort. ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘But I already told you, I’m no good at that stuff. I must be a throwback or something, mustn’t I? A Walton kid with no taste for aggro.’

He sounded like he meant it; and the accusation hadn’t got the smallest response beyond that weary, self-hating derision. ‘Okay,’ I said, feeling obscurely relieved. ‘Then answer me this and I’m out of your hair. Can you think of any reason why Kenny would have had a grudge against Matt? A big enough grudge that he’d frame him for murder? Because that was the last thing he did, as he was drowning in his own blood. And it seems like a strange . . .’

I tailed off into silence, because Richie was looking at me with enormous, astonished eyes.

‘Why Kenny would hate your brother?’ he echoed.

‘Yeah.’

‘Castor, who do you think you’re talking to? And what fucking tree did you just fall out of?’ Richie’s tone was pained and angry.

‘Okay,’ I said, cautiously. ‘I’m assuming those were rhetorical questions. You think there’s something obvious I’m missing, then? Something you know, and you think I should know, too?’

He stood up. ‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me in that car. I already told you that. But if it had been, and if I was someone else instead of me - a macho psycho killer kind of someone, in the real Walton style - then I wouldn’t have stopped at Kenny.’

He brushed the grass off his jacket, wincing as the movement chafed his blistered finger.

‘I’d have killed your brother, too,’ he said.

Then he seemed to recollect where he was; or perhaps he read the expression on my face. Either way, his gaze fell from my face to the name on the he« naizeadstone we’d been leaning against, and he had the decency to look abashed.

‘Okay,’ he muttered. ‘Shitty thing to say. I’m sorry. It’s just - fucking priests, you know? Is there one of them out there who can—? Never mind. Forget it. There are degrees, aren’t there? Maybe he said a few Hail Marys and squared himself with God. But he’ll never square himself with me.’

He walked away before I could ask him what he meant by that. I was left staring at the gravestone, still feeling the ghost-echo of it against my back. Feeling as though her name had been burned on my skin, through the cool stone and through the fabric of my coat.

CATHERINE PAULINE CASTOR

BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER

Just those words, and the two dates: the two dates so very close together.

My phone, which I’d set to vibrate, squirmed like a rat in my pocket, startling me out of a grim reverie. I put it to my ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Castor.’ I couldn’t place the voice at first, but the slight muffling effect caused by a fat lip gave me the clue I needed.

‘Gwillam. How’s life?’

He didn’t bother to answer. ‘You were right,’ was all he said. ‘Get back here as soon as you can, because we need to talk.’

The mix of old tragedies and current irritations made me curt. ‘Do we? About what?’

‘About the Salisbury. Come and save these people, Castor, because they’re in Hell. And I’m not strong enough to get them out.’

19

The towers were silent, and most of the lights were out. Here and there a single window blazed yellow-white, the random elevations and distances making the Salisbury seem like a constellation that nobody had got around to naming yet. I watched some of those windows for a fair old while, but nothing moved behind them.

Nothing was moving where I was, either. I’d taken a taxi from Kings Cross, but told the driver to stop on the overpass where Kenny had been attacked, now open to traffic again but not so busy at this time of night that we’d be in anyone’s way. I’d thought about calling in on Matt on the way, but I didn’t know how to frame the question I wanted to ask him. If I was wrong, it was the sort of thing that could wreck a sturdier relationship than ours.

So here I was: the Lone Ranger riding to the rescue with no six-guns. All I had was another piece of the puzzle, and the sour knowledge growing inside me that the price for anything better was going to be higher than the one that Faust paid.

With the taxi driver’s suspicious gaze on me every step of the way, I got out of the cab and®/di walked over to the edge of the parapet, staring out towards the Salisbury. I didn’t bother with the whistle because I really didn’t need it: I just focused my concentration on my death-sense, closing down my eyes and ears the better to see and hear what was in front of me.

It was seething. The miasma hadn’t widened, but it had deepened: it was an indelible skein of screaming wrongness impaled and spread out across that sector of the skyline. It hung in front of me like mouldering curtains, so vividly present that I felt I could reach out and touch it: part the veil and look into some other place entirely.

A penny for the peep-show.

‘Are we going anywhere, mate?’ the cabbie asked from behind me. Even on the meter, he clearly didn’t like his time being wasted. Which was a pity, because I would have been happy to draw this out a lot longer.