Thicker Than Water

He threw the briefest of glances towards the back of the van. ‘Should be,’ he said. ‘So long as she hadn’t got any inner-ear problems.’ There was an observation window which presumably opened into the van’s rear space, but when I went to open it Cheadle put his hand on mine and shook his head.

‘No no no. The magical mystery tour is waiting to take her away. This is a full professional service, satisfaction guaranteed, and we put the blanket over the top of the cage so the little birdie can sleep. You» ca he got my money?’

I handed over the notes that Gwillam had magicked up from somewhere. Cheadle fanned them out and nodded, apparently satisfied.

We drove around South London for forty minutes, taking every alley and back crack that Cheadle could find. He turned the radio on, but only a dull bass-line thudding came out of it.

‘Your speakers are bust,’ I said.

‘Nope,’ Cheadle replied. ‘They work all right - but they’re mounted in the back of the van. If her indoors is trying to figure out where we’re going by the sounds of the city, she’ll have her work cut out for her. As for you and me, well, we’ll have to make do with witty repartee, won’t we?’

That turned out to mean dead silence. I sat back and watched him work.

It wasn’t just a case of randomly tacking across the city. He was checking for tails, too, his eyes on the rear-view mirror for so much of the time that I was really afraid we were going to hit something. At one point he stopped, took his own phone out of the reinforced box, turned it on and made a call. He didn’t speak but he listened for half a minute, then turned it off and replaced it.

‘You do this sort of thing a lot?’ I asked, as we drove down Camberwell Church Street.

Cheadle made a tutting sound. ‘I do what I’m paid to do.’

‘Nicky said you’d worked for him before,’ I observed.

‘I don’t know any Nicky,’ Cheadle said shortly, in a tone that made it clear that further questions would not be welcomed.

We rolled up to Imelda’s place just as the moon rose, so I guess I’d put the time at about one in the morning. Cheadle waited at the back of the van, leaning against the doors, while I went around the back and up the stairs to talk to Imelda.

She wouldn’t have been happy to see me even if my knocking hadn’t got her out of bed. She wrapped her tent-like floral-patterned nightgown around her and stared me down with a face like a volley of small-arms fire.

‘We had this conversation, Castor,’ she growled.

‘We did,’ I admitted. ‘But the situation has changed, Imelda. A kid’s life is at stake. You have to let me do this.’

It was - I admit it - a cheap shot. But it was the obvious cheap shot, and I’m way too cheap not to take it when it offers. Imelda is a mother herself, and Lisa is the one thing in her life that she can’t be hard-bitten and cynical about.

So I told her about Bic, and I let her make the call. That’s how big a bastard I am.

Five minutes later she was unlocking Rafi’s »locbasdoor, having previously removed the wards from it. Trudie was with us: Cheadle had freed her hands, but she still wore the helmet and mask. Rafi stared at us in blank amazement as we trooped into the room: me first, with Bic in my arms: then Cheadle, steering Trudie by her shoulders; and Imelda last of all, her expression somewhere close to hangdog.

More explanations, while Trudie sat like a slightly kinky version of Blind Justice on a chair in a corner of the room, and Bic lay moaning and murmuring on the couch. Rafi was unhappy, and scared. Since he’d moved in here, he’d got used to being the only inhabitant of his own brain, and I was proposing to wake up the sleeping sub-letter with a vengeance.

‘Is there no other way of doing this?’ he asked.

‘None that I can think of,’ I said. ‘But believe me, Rafi, I’m open to suggestions.’

Rafi looked to Imelda in mute appeal, and Imelda shook her head: the rock, crying out no hiding place. ‘If you’re asking me if this is safe,’ she said sternly, ‘then, honey, I’m going to have to tell you I don’t know. Castor and me have been up to the job so far, more or less - kept that nasty little thing under his rock most of the time. But this is different. We’re waking him up and we’re letting him off the leash. Whether we can put him down again afterwards is a blue-breezing blind guess, and anyone who’d tell you any different would be lying.’

‘But it’s not just the two of us this time,’ I pointed out.

Imelda looked at Trudie, who was missing all the finer points here because of the BDSM harness.

‘Can you let her out of that thing now?’ Imelda asked Cheadle.

‘No,’ Cheadle answered shortly. ‘But you can. I don’t mind what you do here in this room, so long as she’s all wrapped up in the ribbons and bows again when we come to leave. I’ll be waiting at the bottom of the stairs. And you can tell madam that if she comes down them with her eyes open, I’ll bounce five pounds of loose change off the back of her neck. She might survive the experience, but she won’t appreciate it.’