Thicker Than Water

terminal, echoing THOOM.

I whistled and examined my fingernails through the final bit of tacked-on action, with its tacked-on voice- over, waiting until Vangelis faded up and the credits rolled. Irritably, Nicky unlocked the spool from the projector mouth and fast-forwarded it into the can. Down below us, the auditorium went from black-shot-with-silver to pure, midnight black.

‘It just means the other detective — Eddie Olmos — has been inside his place,’ Nicky said, shrugging in exasperation. ‘Why do you have to build a whole thing on top of that?’

‘Because it’s the turning point of the movie,’ I explained patiently. ‘It throws everything up into the air — Batty’s death speech, “It’s a pity she won’t live”, the whole works — and then makes it come down again in a new pattern.’

‘Yeah, well, Rutger Hauer says you’re full of shit,’ Nicky pointed out, fitting the lid onto the can and carefully detaching it from the projector’s housing.

‘Fine actor — not the sharpest tool in the box,’ I summarised.

‘It’s left ambiguous.’

‘In this version it’s left ambiguous. In the director’s cut, the sequence where Deckard dreams about the unicorn nails it down tight.’

Nicky put the film canister into the steel cabinet at one end of the projection booth, closed the doors and double-locked them with painstaking care. ‘I prefer Deckard to be human,’ he said, tugging on the handles to make sure the doors were secure. There was a slight tension, both in his voice and in the set of his shoulders.

I let it go at that point. Maybe it’s a nostalgia thing, because Nicky used to be human once too. That was before he had a heart attack in his late thirties and joined the ranks of the existentially challenged. Some people come back in the spirit — as ghosts — and have an uneventful afterlife hanging around the places they remember from back when they had a pulse. Others take the low road, invading and possessing and reshaping animal flesh (the default option, if only because animal spirits are weak enough not to make a fight of it most of the time) into something broadly resembling the body they used to have. That’s how werewolves are made, although the term most often used these days is the polite, non-judgemental loup-garou.

Nicky is a stubborn bastard, in death as he was in life. He took the third option, generally considered to combine the drawbacks of the other two — the isolation of the ghost and the flesh-management problems of the werewolf. He came back in the body, as a zombie.

For most people it’s a short-term option: bodies rot, and once they pass a certain point all the will-power in the world won’t make them move any more. Nicky was holding that crisis at bay with an idiosyncratic mixture of home embalming, faith healing and careful refrigeration. And to be honest he looks pretty good for a dead guy: the artificial tan he buys in by the bucketload disguises the waxy sheen of his pickled flesh, and his Mediterranean good looks still make women take a second look unless they’re close enough to catch that subtle whiff of formaldehyde. And he’s a zombie of substance these days, with an impressive property portfolio including the disused cinema where he lives, so who the hell am I to knock it? He’s ahead of the game, even if he’s playing posthumously.

‘So you bumped into this guy Gwillam,’ Nicky said, changing the subject as he pocketed the keys to the film cupboard. ‘The papal-backed motherfucker who tried to kill you over that Abbie Torrington business.’

‘Gwillam doesn’t have the blessing of the pope,’ I corrected him. ‘In fact his order — the Anathemata — were excommunicated by Benedict XVI in a job lot as soon as he sobered up from his launch party. They do their own thing now, and the Church tries to pretend they don’t exist.’

It was a half-truth, but it would do for now. The last time I’d met Gwillam, he’d hinted strongly that the excommunication was just a way of letting the Anathemata off the leash. They were kind of like the provisional wing of the Catholic Church now: a guerrilla army of religious fanatics with a scarily open-ended brief: save humankind from the dead and the undead, in God’s holy name. In the case of Abbie Torrington, that had included compounding the murder of a little girl by the extinguishing of her soul. Gwillam hadn’t been happy when — with Juliet’s help — I had managed to piss on that particular picnic.

Nicky didn’t seem happy either. ‘Don’t bury me alive in the fucking details, Castor,’ he said, making for the door. ‘It’s the same guy, right? The one who thinks people like me are the intro to Armageddon? Sees himself as God’s soldier in some fucking big holy war?’

‘Yeah,’ I admitted. ‘That’s him.’ I didn’t bother to point out that I’m the one who’s normally inclined to skip the details in favour of a simple-minded soundbite. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I leave the obsessive, anally retentive stuff to Nicky, because that’s where he really shines.

‘Great,’ Nicky grunted. ‘So you just say that straight out and then we know where we stand. You want me to turn over some stones? Find out what those foam-flecked holy rollers are doing down in Walworth?’

He was holding the door open for me. I took the hint and stepped out onto the landing. Nicky came out after me, locking the door behind him and setting the alarms and deadfalls. I waited until he was finished because it’s a task that takes all of his attention.

‘No,’ I said, when he looked up at me again. ‘That’s not what I want.’

He tried to hide his disappointment, but fine muscle control is an early casualty for a zombie and his poker face needed work. ‘How come?’ he demanded.

‘Because he plays dirty and he’s got men with guns,’ I said. ‘Also, men with teeth and claws and way too much body hair. He uses loup-garous, Nicky. Werewolves who’ve been given cast-iron absolution in advance for anything they do when they’re under the influence. Can you believe that? He’s passing round get-out-of-Hell-free cards. And he’s already got a grudge against me because I worked that switch on him with Abbie Torrington’s locket. The last thing I need to be doing is giving him more reasons to want me six feet under.’ Nicky opened his mouth to lodge an objection, but I kept on going. ‘Anyway, I don’t think Gwillam’s got anything to do with this. Kenny was attacked last night. I only got there as quickly as I did because I was helping the police with their inquiries. Whatever brought Gwillam sniffing around, I’m betting it’s something else.’

‘Or maybe the Anathemata set up the whole thing,’ Nicky suggested, ‘and Gwillam wrote your name on the car windscreen to frame you.’

‘I don’t think he’s that subtle,’ I said. ‘He’s more of an “If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out” kind of guy. Assuming he wanted me out of the picture, he’d just snap his fingers and I’d be landfill somewhere. Then he’d go square himself with the Almighty by means of a few Hail Marys and a nice stiff flogging, and it would all be good.’ Nicky was still looking at me expectantly. I shook my head. ‘Makes no difference,’ I said, as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘Believe me, Nicky, you don’t want to tangle with these boys. Or rather, I can see that you do, maybe because you’re thinking Gwillam will be a big, fascinating nut to crack. But he’ll see you and raise you, and you’re the one that’s going to end up looking like Humpty Dumpty.’

I was talking to myself as much as to Nicky, because the truth was that I really did want to know what the Anathemata were doing so close to my home turf. I just didn’t think I was in a good position to find out. I was still exposed on the Rafi front, and now I was a possible suspect in an attempted murder. If ever there was a time to keep my head way down below the parapet, this was it.

We headed down the stairs towards the main auditorium.

‘Humpty Dumpty was an egg,’ Nicky remarked.

‘Sorry?’

‘He wasn’t a nut, he was an egg. You mixed your metaphors.’

‘Point stands.’

‘Then what do you want from me, Castor?’

‘Mainly I just want you to run some searches on Kenny Seddon,’ I said. ‘How long he’s been at the Salisbury. Where he was before that. Anything he’s done that’s left a footprint, and any recent events on the estate that he might have been mixed up in.’

‘What kind of events?’

I thought about Jean Daniels and her litany of hints and euphemisms: something had happened, but I wasn’t even close to being able to define what kind of something it had been. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Anything at all. Cast your net as wide as you can.’

‘You could do that at your fucking local library,’ Nicky said acerbically. ‘You getting lazy, Castor?’

‘Well, there is one more thing.’

‘Go on.’

I took a sheet of paper from my pocket and showed it to him. On it I’d sketched the ellipsoid shape with the