Thicker Than Water

I raised my hands. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I said. ‘I’d love to see you in action, but I’ve got places to be and crimes to solve. You know how it is.’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed, nodding. ‘I think so. Down the - what-d’you-call-it - mean streets . . .’

‘A man must walk. Exactly.’

‘You’re dead laid-back for a detective, aren’t you, Sergeant Basquiat?’

‘I used to be on the drug squad,’ I said. ‘The ganja gets to you after a while. Cheers, Petra.’

I left her rolling Kenny carefully onto his side. Sooner her than me.

The cop on the door gave me less than half a glance as I left Kanc

I looked at my watch. Still nowhere near midnight, but by the time I got over to Walworth the witching hour would be over and done with.

Good. I had things to do over there that I didn’t want the daylight to look upon.

7

The Salisbury at night was if anything even less prepossessing than it was by day. The light of a hunter’s moon bleached the unresisting pastels from the faces of the towers, so that they looked like titanic ribs of bone, and shadows accreted like crusted blood under the walkways.

But the air was alive. While the residents slept, it seemed that the emotional miasma I’d felt on my first visit woke and stirred. It had been an annoying distraction when I’d been here before, setting my teeth on edge until I finally attuned to it and let it fade into the perceptual background. But it was in the foreground now with a vengeance, buzzing in my ears like an angry mosquito.

No, not angry. It wasn’t anger I was feeling, it was something else - but reaching for the word made the feeling disappear, the droning whine shutting down like a mosquito does as soon as you’ve got the rolled-up newspaper at the ready. And it wasn’t really in my head that the mosquitoes were buzzing: it was in my fingers and in the palms of my hands, as if there was something that I had to do that was getting more urgent by the moment.

Yeah, that was it, now that I thought about it. It was the same feeling of urgency and greed that I’d got when I’d touched the old wounds on Kenny’s wrist.

I came in from the north this time, and because I knew my way I walked more quickly. Maybe I could be in and out before this oppressive presence gave me a headache and ruined what was left of my night.

It was getting on for one o’clock in the morning and the place seemed deserted. Most of the lights in the flats were out, too, suggesting that the good people of Walworth had called it a night and turned in early. Maybe they were afraid of werewolves, although in real life it was the dark of the moon that caused most of the problems on that front: that was when the animal flesh fought back hardest against the human spirit that was riding it, resulting in some truly scary amalgamations of man and beast.

I scanned the graffiti wherever the moon shone its torchlight on a wall or pillar. I didn’t see the peculiar symbol again, but the slogan NOW IT BLEEDS was emblazoned on the wooden slats of the wheelie-bin corral, and underneath it in a different hand - or at least a different colour - GONNA GET HURT.

I found my way back to Weston Block and up to the eighth floor. It was as silent as the grave - not that that particular simile has a whole lot of meaning these days. I was half-afraid that the external door would be locked after dark. It wasn’t, but it opened with an extended, rust-stopped groan like a homage to a Boris Karloff movie. I opened it just to my own body’s width and Neneslipped inside. Then I wedged it open with an empty Silk Cut packet that was lying on the floor so that we wouldn’t get the same performance again when it slid to.

Kenny’s door held out against my lockpicks for about a minute and a half: it would have been less than that if I’d been able to turn on the landing light, but it seemed a better idea not to. As soon as the cylinder click-clacked its laconic surrender I slipped inside and closed the door silently behind me. I could relax now. So long as I didn’t make any loud noises, I was unlikely to be disturbed.

I took the penlight I’d brought out of my pocket and flicked it on. Its strong but narrow beam showed me a dismal hallway, cluttered up with boxes and discarded shoes. Three hooks on the right-hand wall bore about sixty-three coats. The carpet, which looked to be of 1970s vintage, had a mandala pattern in a lot of vivid colours, none of which did anything for any of the others. There was the faint, sad smell of an unlived-in space ruminating on old meals, stale cigarette smoke and rising damp.

I searched the coat pockets. Since I had no idea what I was looking for, one place was as good as another. There were betting stubs in one, keys in another. The rest came up blank apart from fluff and orphaned matchsticks.