Thicker Than Water

I started in. ‘Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet—’ But it had been too long and I didn’t remember the words. Matt recited them for me and I parroted along, finding my feet again at ‘adiuvante gratia tua.’ It was just words, and I didn’t believe there was anybody listening.

tua="1em" width="1em" align="justify">But there was, of course. There was Matt.

He put his hand on my shoulder, gripping hard enough to hurt.

‘Your sins are forgiven, you drunken, selfish bastard,’ he said. ‘Go in peace.’

When I looked up, he was gone. Or maybe it’s fairer to say that I didn’t look up until I was sure: until his footsteps had faded into silence. The music and shouting rose to a peak and then fell to a rumble again, announcing the opening and closing of a distant door.

I sat breathing whisky fumes like profane incense, still feeling the weight of his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t feel like I’d been absolved: it was more like I’d had my collar felt by some holy constable of the spirit. I knew two things, and two things only: that Matt’s vocation was real, and that as far as absolution went, a few soggy prayers weren’t going to cut it.

Pen heard me out in silence. When she spoke - pagan gods bless her infallible instincts - it was to change the subject.

‘So this thing that you’re feeling when you’re over there at the Salisbury. Do you think it’s a geist of some kind?’

Pen speaks the argot, and she was using the word in its technical sense. To an exorcist, a geist is a human spirit that takes no visible form but can still have powerful - almost always destructive - effects.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, stating the obvious. ‘But I don’t think so. Most geists move things - physical things. They break bottles, throw furniture around, blow candles out, fling people through windows. This is . . . intangible. It’s just a feeling. And it seems to be really pervasive - I mean, it spreads across the whole estate, where a geist would tend to stick to one small locus.’

Pen inhaled the steam from her coffee cup, eyes closed, like Nicky drinking the wine breath. Then she downed it in one swallow. I waited patiently, knowing she was thinking it through.

‘The people on the estate,’ she said, when she finally opened her eyes again. ‘Do they know this thing is there? I mean, obviously it’s changing the way they feel and the way they behave, but are they aware that it’s happening or are they just submerged in it?’

‘The second, I think. I’m aware of it because—’

‘—Because of your built-in radar.’

‘Exactly. But to anyone else I think it would be like a sound that’s been in your ears for so long you can’t hear it any more - you just hear the silence when it stops. It’s subtle. Powerful, but really subtle. To tell you the truth, I’m starting to wonder if there’s a demon mixed up in this somewhere.’

Pen nodded as though she was coming to the same conclusion at the same moment.

‘Then csizat you should talk to an expert,’ she said.

10

As it happens there are two demons within my immediate circle of acquaintances. Pen had Rafi in mind, for many reasons besides the strictly pragmatic, but of the two of them Juliet is the easier to deal with by a factor of a million: and Juliet was already on the case, in a way, so I dropped in on her first.

I tracked her down at the library in Willesden where her partner, Sue Book, now works. Juliet was waiting for Sue to finish her shift, after which they were going to some kind of a book launch and public reading together. The two of us sat in the children’s section, because children at least were immune to Juliet’s lethally intense sexual aura. But there were a few mothers and fathers dotted around the room, too: Juliet ignored their uneasy, covetous stares and heard me out while I described my latest adventures at the Salisbury.

But she didn’t offer any insights of her own, and in the end I had to put the question directly.

‘So did you make it down there? If you didn’t, no pressure - I know you didn’t make me any promises and you don’t owe me anything. But this has got me scratching my head, Juliet. Anything you could throw me would be good.’

‘I was there,’ Juliet said.

I waited for more, but more didn’t come. Juliet looked down at the book she was reading: The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It was a subversive enough juxtaposition to throw me a little off my stride.

‘So what did you find?’ I asked, when it was clear that she wasn’t going to volunteer anything further.

She looked up at me again. A human woman - or man, for that matter - would have looked at the book in order to avoid eye contact, but Juliet was incapable of feeling embarrassment or social awkwardness. She was a stone-cold fact, exquisite and unapologetic, in a world of nuances. So she was looking at the book because something I’d said or something she was thinking had made a connection. To hunger? To caterpillars? To metamorphosis?

‘I can’t discuss this,’ she said.