Thicker Than Water (42 page)

‘Father Gwillam changed his mind,’ she said, simply, stopping three steps below me. I noticed, impressed, that she wasn’t out of breath after her sprint up the stairs. A childhood infatuation with Ellen Ripley stirred in the depths of my hindbrain and reminded me of the space where once it had sat enthroned in my libido.

‘About what?’ I asked.

‘About the boy. He said if you let one of us come with you, to make sure nothing goes wrong, you can do it.’

‘I already told you—’ I began. But she lifted a school-marmish finger to shut me up.

‘Double blind. Whoever goes with you doesn’t get to know the address, and you do whatever you need to do to make sure they don’t get a clear look at the route.’ She looked at me expectantly. ‘We’re meeting you halfway, Castor. It’s up to you to figure it out now. One of us has to come, but it can be on your terms. Okay?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said, but it was only for form’s sake. I wasn’t going to get a better offer, and we didn’t have any other choices left. Rather than let her see how emphatically and irrevocably up a³rre fogainst the wall I felt, I turned and started walking again.

She fell in behind me, keeping a respectful three paces’ distance until we got to the eighth floor.

‘I don’t need an escort,’ I said over my shoulder.

‘No? Still get it for free, do you?’

It wasn’t the kind of comeback I expected from a woman who was big in the Church – even if we were talking about the Church’s black-ops division. Then again, Sue Book had been a verger when I’d first met her and now she was in a more than civil partnership with a demon. You never can tell with these mission dolls.

‘I’m celibate,’ I said shortly. ‘Only the pure in heart can seek the Holy Grail.’

Walking past Kenny’s door, which was now nailed shut and sporting police-incident tape, made my skin tingle as though I was showering in battery acid. I was nearly certain it wasn’t psychosomatic, although by now I had a vivid enough sense of the horrors that must have been enacted behind that door that I didn’t have to go reaching for supernatural explanations. Did the wound demon have a physical locus after all? Would an exorcism undertaken in Mark Blainey’s bedroom have a better chance of succeeding?

Another missed opportunity, I was willing to bet; like Bic. Although with Bic we still had one final chance to make good. If ‘good’ was the right word.

Jean Daniels answered to my knock, looking like a woman who was self-medicating in order to perform open-heart surgery on her own ventricles, and had been called away in the middle of the procedure. She stared at me with hollow eyes, seeming to take several seconds to register who I was.

‘Mister Castor,’ she mumbled. ‘You’re back. I called you a few times, and left messages, but you didn’t . . .’

‘I haven’t been home, Jean,’ I said, ‘so I wouldn’t have got them. I’m really sorry. Can we come in?’

She nodded brusquely, stepping aside to let me in: then she realised I wasn’t alone.

‘This is—’ I said, pointing towards the cat’s-cradle woman. ‘Well, actually, who the hell
are
you?’

‘Trudie Pax,’ she said, holding out her hand to Jean. ‘I’m with Father Gwillam.’

Jean took a step back, as though Trudie’s hand was contaminated in some way. ‘We’ve already told Father Gwillam that we’ve got nothing more to say to him,’ she said coldly.

‘And we’ve accepted that,’ Trudie said sweetly. ‘In any case, Mrs Daniels, we don’t believe any more that your son has been touched by God. The way things have gone over the past few days has proved us wrong. But Castor has thought of something that might improve William’s condition, and we’re here to help in any way we can.’

Tom had come from somewhere to stand behind his wife, so he was hearing this too. He looked almost as wrecked as Jean, and pugnacious with it, but Jean had locked onto the salient point in Trudie’s little recitation. Her face as she looked at me lit up with something like hope.

‘You can help him?’ she said.

‘Let me look at him,’ I said, by way of a non-answer.

Jean led us through, not to the living room where I’d been before but to a bedroom that led off the hall to the left. Walking through the doorway gave me a premonitory shudder, but it was because of the room itself: because the floor plan was the same as that of Kenny’s flat, and Bic’s room occupied the identical space in the layout to Mark’s.

Lost boys, sharing the same existential billet. But Bic, at least, was loved and looked for: and he wouldn’t fall off the edge of the world the way that Mark had done. Not if there was anything I could do to stop it.

He was lying on his bed, on top of the covers, in the Spiderman PJs again. A rumpled blanket lying beside him had presumably been laid over him at some previous point, but I could see why it hadn’t stayed there. He was twitching and shaking, his head and limbs moving constantly, and his wide-open eyes darted from side to side, scanning from one corner of the room to another as though he was trying to locate the source of some troubling sound.

He was muttering under his breath, and when I sat down at the foot of the bed I was close enough to hear some of the words.

‘Flowering like flowers like it’s there because I lost I lost I lost it until I nailed it down. Saves my life every hour, every day. Sewing. Sewing myself with a needle, stitching up the holes but you only see the scars and you don’t hear when all these mouths all these red mouths talk talk talk’

I felt his forehead, but as Jean had said the last time I’d been here there was no fever. Bic’s skin was cold to the touch.

‘Has he been back to the hospital?’ I asked.

Tom looked at Jean and Jean, after a moment’s pause and a hunted look at Trudie, shook her head. ‘What would they do at the hospital?’ she demanded. ‘Put him on drugs? Cut him open? The only thing that calms him down a bit is me holding his hand and talking to him. It . . . brings him back, for a few minutes at a time. We told the school he had gastric flu, so they wouldn’t send anyone round. I’m scared of them taking him. They might think he wasn’t right in the head. Might take him somewhere and not let him out again.’ She raised a warning finger in Trudie’s face. ‘You get anyone in here,’ she said, ‘and I’ll split you.’

Trudie ignored the finger, took the threat without flinching. ‘We all want what’s best for William,’ she said.

‘Billy,’ Jean muttered caustically, turning back to me. ‘His name is Billy. So what’s the plan, Mister Castor? What have you thought of?’

So it was time to bite the bullet: time to put up or shut up. And like the cowardly bastard that I am, I lied.

‘There’s another doctor,’ I said. ‘Only a little way from here. He’s kind of an expert in stuff like this, and he owes me a favour.’

Tom and Jean looked doubtful.

‘An expert?’ Tom repeated. ‘In . . . what Billy’s got? In this possession stuff?’

I nodded.

‘What’s his name?’ Jean demanded.

‘You won’t have heard of him,’ I assured her, but she continued to stare at me, half-hopeful and half-perturbed but with the balance definitely tilting.

‘Ditko,’ I said. ‘Doctor Rafael Ditko.’

When we reported back to Gwillam, he was still pretty sour about the whole deal.

‘You realise,’ he warned me, ‘that in trying to control this menace you run the very real risk of unleashing a greater one?’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘I know that. And if you can come up with an alternative plan that doesn’t involve Asmodeus, then say so. Otherwise, I’m going ahead.’

The priest gave me a hard, pained look. ‘This situation . . .’ he said, and then seemed to run out of words.

‘You were happy with the situation when Rafi was at the Stanger,’ I reminded him.

‘Yes. Because we were able to monitor him for ourselves. Now you have him somewhere else, and we’ve only got your word for it that the protections you have in place are adequate to hold Asmodeus in check.’

‘Yes.’

Gwillam bridled. ‘Yes what?’

‘Yes, you’ve only got my word for it. And that’s all you’re going to get. Now, are we doing this or not?’

He stared me down for another few seconds, then gave a curt nod and walked away.

But it was a while before we hit the road, even then. Getting myself and Trudie Pax to Imelda’s without letting the Anathemata woman see the route we took was fiddly in the extreme, and wasted the best part of an hour. I had to get Gwillam to commandeer a car, then I had to refuse it because while we were waiting for it to arrive I realised that it would be too easy for him to slip some kind of a locator into it. Hell, he didn’t even have to: these days a mobile phone would do, assuming Trudie was carrying one.

So I went with Plan B, which involved bringing Nicky into the mix. He’s a paranoiac’s paranoiac, and I’d already seen how deeply the idea of shafting Gwillam appealed to him. When I called him and asked him how we should handle this, he only pondered for a couple of minutes.

‘I’m sending a friend,’ he said. ‘Be ready. His name’s Cheadle, and he does good work. I mean, he’s scarily focused. He’ll need paying, though.’

‘How much?’ I asked, briefly thrown as I tried to imagine what ‘scarily focused’ would mean to a mind like Nicky’s. The money didn’t matter – Gwillam was going to have to foot the bill because I was a pocketful of small change away from being dead broke – but I wanted to know what to ask for.

‘A couple of ton, let’s say. And a contribution to the widows and orphans fund.’

‘The
what
?’

‘It’s a gratuity, Castor. You keep the man sweet, he doesn’t make any widows or orphans.’

I passed the word along the line, and Gwillam gave his sour, begrudging assent. ‘You already have my word,’ he told me coldly. ‘That ought to be enough for you, Castor. I’m a man of God, and a man of conscience.’

‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘And this would be what they call a leap of faith on my part, right? Much valued in religious circles, but elsewhere, poking the bear trap with a stick before you put your foot in it is generally preferred.’

Cheadle drove up ten minutes later in a red Bedford van with
DRAINS
AND
SEWAGE
emblazoned on the side in eye-hurting neon yellow. He didn’t park out on the street: he drove the van up the shallow steps onto the forecourt and slowed to a halt right in front of us, jumping rather than stepping down from the driver’s seat and sizing us up with bullet-grey eyes.

He was a small but very solid man with the kind of natural surliness that dries up small talk over a range of ten metres. He wore shapeless clothes that looked as though they might be made of moleskin, with a few moles still along for the ride. His hair was white, with a nicotine smear of light brown at the front. He carried a small rucksack in his hand by one strap, the other dangling broken.

‘Who’s Castor?’ he said, looking around.

I put up my hand like a schoolboy.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘You ride in the front. I’ve got the route worked out already, so you don’t have to say anything. Where’s the other one?’

‘That’s me,’ said Trudie Pax.

‘Then get your kit off,’ said Cheadle, dumping the rucksack down on the ground, ‘and put this lot on.’

Her eyes slightly wider than before, Trudie picked up the bag and examined the contents.

‘It’s new,’ Cheadle assured her. ‘I picked it up from the cash-and-carry on the way here. Extra large. If it’s too big, it doesn’t matter. You can just roll the sleeves and the legs up.’

‘I’ll need somewhere private to change,’ Trudie said.

‘No, you won’t,’ Cheadle demurred. ‘You’ll do it right here. You can keep your underwear on, and it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. But no pockets, no hoods, no buttons or zips. That’s the deal, love. Take it or leave it.’

Gwillam nodded and Trudie stripped. You can say what you like about religious fanatics, but they show a dedication to the cause that’s nothing short of admirable. Some of them have very shapely bottoms, too, I couldn’t help but notice.

The contents of the rucksack turned out to be a baggy sky-blue tracksuit with a Nike swoosh on the front that was fooling nobody. Sweatshop chic. Trudie put it on without complaint, and then reached for one of her boots.

‘No shoes, neither,’ said Cheadle. ‘It’s a warm night, love. You’re not going to catch cold. Now let’s have a look at you.’

From a side pocket of the rucksack he took a hand-held electronic reader – to my untrained eye, it looked identical to the ones that the security guys at airports use – and played it over Trudie from head to foot while she stood there with her arms folded, staring at the ground. Her face was carefully blank: if she was feeling humiliated and resentful because of all of this, she wasn’t showing it.

‘Okay, said Cheadle, ‘you’re clean. Let’s go.’

‘I need to bring the boy down,’ I told him. ‘Bic. Did Nicky explain about that part?’

Cheadle shrugged, already turning his back on me. ‘I didn’t ask him to. He told me there was three of you, and to bring something for the kid to lie on. All I needed to know. You do what you have to do, I’ll get our lady friend set up in the back. Come on, love.’

He led Trudie round to the back of the van and threw the doors open. I went upstairs and collected Bic from his parents.

‘You’ll keep him safe,’ Jean said as I hefted him in my arms – her tone halfway between a plea and a warning.

‘Scout’s honour,’ I said. ‘Trust me, Jean. I’m not letting anyone hurt him.’ Or at least, it would be over my dead body – and probably a couple of others.

Bic weighed next to nothing: I could probably have carried him one-handed. But my ribs were reminding me of the hard time they’d had of it lately, and I had to pause and get my breath back when I got to the bottom of the eight flights and came out onto the concrete apron. Cheadle was waiting in the van, Gwillam’s stooges standing in a cluster looking tough because there was fuck-all else they could do.

Cheadle opened the back d»enewasoor of the van for me. I stopped dead, staring inside. Trudie was cross-legged on the floor, her arms handcuffed behind her back. He’d put something over her head that looked very like a bondage rig: a helmet with a rubber face mask attached, the whole thing secured under her chin and around her neck with two thick straps. There were no eyeholes in the mask.