Thicker Than Water

‘So he was there for reasons of his own.’

‘Obviously.’

‘Before Kenny Seddon was attacked, or after?’

‘Like I said, ask Gwillam. There’s a church-based group called the Anathemata Curialis—’

At this point the main door of the ward swung open and Charge Nurse Petra Ryall walked in, wheeling the meds trolley. She immediately looked across at the little group by my bed, and her gaze lingered. Basquiat’s power dressing is multifunctional, but you couldn’t mistake Gary for anything but a cop.

‘Find Gwillam,’ I suggested again. ‘Ask him about all this. Matt is part of whatever he’s doing. You ought to be able to get chapter and verse on that from your two fucking sources—’

Basquiat stood up, so abruptly that I was taken by surprise and stopped in mid-curse. ‘I’ll do that,’ she said. ‘And in the meantime, I suggest you don’t leave town. Can you promise me that, Castor? Because if I have to come chasing after you, when I find you I’ll nail your balls to the table to make sure you stay where you’re put.’

I stared at her, mystified. The absence of handcuffs, verbal cautions and statutory phone calls caught me so far off balance that all I could think of to say was ‘What?’

‘Stay at your regular address,’ Coldwood interpreted. ‘Or check with us before you go anywhere. We’ll be in touch again soon.’

‘Ending interview at ten-sixteen a.m.,’ Basquiat said. She picked up the tape recorder, turned it off, and slipped it back into her pocket. ‘Very soon,’ she confirmed, and stalked away without even blowing me a kiss. She stopped and looked back, though, when she realised that Gary wasn’t following her. He was still loitering by the sunflowers.

‘I need a minute,’ he said.

‘Off the record?’ Basquiat’s tone was dangerous.

‘Off the record.’

‘No.’

‘How exactly are you going to stop me, Ruth?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘By telling you no,’ she said. ‘I’m senior officer on the case and I conduct the interviews.’

‘This isn’t an interview.’

‘Then send him a bloody postcard.’

Gary waited her out. In the end she made a gesture of disgust and walked on through the door, pushing the meds trolley out of her way. Petra Ryall muttered something that could have been either an apology or an imprecation, but Basquiat wasn’t listening in any case.

I looked up at Gary, and he looked down at me. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few folded sheets of paper, which he handed to me wordlessly. I looked a question at him.

‘Mark Seddon’s autopsy report,’ he said. ‘Only he’s down as Mark Blainey. They went by the birth certificate.’

‘Bloody hell.’ I picked up the sheets and stared at them with a certain wonder. ‘Thanks, Gary. I wasn’t expecting this.’

He didn’t answer, but it was clear from his face that there was something else on his mind, so I waited for him to spit it out. ‘Fix, I took a hard fall for you last year when you had me looking into that crematorium thing. And you never really told me what it was all about.’ It wasn’t an accusation. His expression was sombrely reflective.

‘A lot of people ended up dead,’ I reminded him. ‘I didn’t want to put you in an awkward situation.’

‘You never apologised to me for getting my legs broken, either.’

‘I said sorry in my own way, Gary.’

‘By never referring to it again and dodging the subject whenever I brought it up.’

‘Exactly.’

He sho‹sizdthok his head. ‘You can be a right bastard when you want to, Fix,’ he said.

‘All right,’ I agreed. ‘I’m a bastard. It’s a gift. But I failed the police entrance exam so I never turned it into a career.’

Gary didn’t seem to be listening, so my attempt to drag the conversation back onto the well-worn tracks of our usual repartee fell flat.

‘But bastard or not,’ he said, ‘you usually look as though you know what you’re up to. As though you’ve got some kind of a game plan. This time - it’s like you’re flailing around waiting for someone to tell you what to do. Or waiting for Ruth to put the collar on you.’

It was close enough to the truth to sting a little, but I shrugged it off because I got the distinct impression that Gary was trying to tell me something.

‘It’s more complicated than it looks,’ was all I said.

‘Oh, I’m sure.’ Gary nodded sourly. ‘And if I came out and asked you, as a friend, if you knew who’d killed Kenny Seddon, what would you say?’

‘I’d say, Gary - as a professional exorcist and former police informer - that I don’t have a fucking clue.’

He searched my face. ‘Honestly?’

I nodded. ‘Honestly. Why, you think Basquiat’s right? You think I’m in some kind of conspiracy?’

‘If she thought you were in a conspiracy,’ he pointed out dourly, ‘you’d be nicked already and sitting in a remand cell in Jackson Road.’

‘In hospital pyjamas.’

‘Until they could fit you for prison ones. She didn’t arrest you because she’s got a warrant out on someone else. We matched one of those sets of fingerprints.’

Relief left me momentarily speechless, the conclusions I’d been building to falling down like a card house inside my head. ‘Who?’ I demanded, after a long pause for thought.