bounce right back again. The Anathemata were on the same side, building bulwarks of faith against the rising tide of the dead.
But I didn’t like that company much. And I didn’t see the dead — or the undead, for that matter — as the enemy.
‘Matty,’ I tried again. ‘Toss me a bone, will you? I’m not walking away from this because I can’t afford to. You heard what Coldwood said: I’m in the frame here, and the woman in charge of the investigation hates my guts. So I really need to know what the hell it was that Kenny was trying to tell me. If I’m wrong — if what’s going on down on that estate has got nothing to do with him and nothing to do with me — then tell me what it’s all about and I’ll leave it at that. Swear to God, I’ll mind my own business. If you don’t trust my honest face, trust me to be a selfish bastard.’
Matt was silent for long enough that I believed he was really giving that proposition some serious thought. But when he spoke it was only to repeat himself.
‘I’m sorry you’ve become involved in this. You need to get out of it again and stay out. Whatever happens — I don’t believe you’ll be incriminated.’
‘I’ve already been incriminated,’ I yelled, grabbing his lapels and giving them an exasperated shake. ‘Haven’t you been listening?’ It was the first time I’d touched him, and he brought up his arms to break the contact, smacking me away forcefully. In Matt that looked like a scary lack of control: he’s so used to turning the other cheek he can do the whole Linda Blair thing and rotate his neck three-sixty. It startled me, and made me take a step back, not sure for a moment if he was going to follow it up and turn this into a real fight.
He didn’t. He just stood there with his hands raised in a guard stance, like an ecclesiastical Bruce Lee. The effect was a little spoiled, though, by how badly he was shaking.
‘You saw what happened tonight,’ he blurted out. ‘And what almost happened. I mean it, Felix. Keep your distance from it. Don’t even ask any more questions. Whatever it looks like — it’s not yours. Not your kind of thing. Nothing — nothing at all to do with you.’
He was having to force the words out by this time. His face was pale and there was an audible catch to his breathing.
‘So you won’t trust me?’ I said, more quietly.
‘Oh, I trust you, Fix,’ Matt said tremulously. ‘I know exactly what I can expect from you. I’ve known ever since the first time I took your confession.’
I didn’t see that one coming, and it silenced me as effectively as a punch in the gut. Before I could answer, Matt pushed violently past me, barging me out of his way, and ran from the room. By the time I got out onto the landing he was onto the second flight of stairs, taking them at a run.
I followed more slowly, not trying to catch him. It seemed like we’d reached a conversational impasse.
The door slammed below me, and as I came down into the hall Pen came up from the Stygian depths and met me at ground level. She looked at the door, then back at me.
‘Well, that was loud,’ she said.
I shook my head, too uneasy about what had just happened to bother to hide it. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I took it as far away from you as I could. I’m sorry you got landed with Coldwood too. Did he ask you about Rafi?’
Pen nodded. ‘I just said what you told me to say. I haven’t visited Rafi in more than a month, and I don’t know where he is.’
‘Good. There’s nothing to prove you had any part in it. He can’t get from me to you.’
She didn’t seem to want to pursue that topic any further. ‘So did you sort it all out with Matt?’
‘No.’
‘Didn’t think so. Come on down and talk me through it.’
I normally keep Pen at arm’s length from my professional life, but on the few occasions when we’ve got down to cases, as it were, she’s turned out to have some pretty shrewd insights. I looked at my watch. Too little left of the night now to make an issue of it anyway, and I was at that stage where you’re too close to what you’re looking at to see it at all. Not to mention the fact that Pen had probably weaselled a lot of the story out of Coldwood already. Brandy is a potent lever in her hands, and with the home-team advantage she’s pretty hard to beat.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Okay.’
Over lethally potent coffee from her stove-top Moka pot, Pen listened to the whole story in inscrutable silence.
‘What did he mean?’ she asked, when I got to the confession part. ‘You don’t go for all that stuff, do you, Fix?’
I gave a scoffing laugh. ‘Too many sins,’ I said. ‘Can you imagine the queue that would build up behind me?’
‘Then why did Matt say that to you?’
I didn’t answer for a moment. The memory came over me so strongly, I felt like I was there again. That last spring before I left home. The party we threw for Matt at the Railway Club on Breeze Lane, the day after his ordination.
Pen waited, knowing me too well to push: and after a while, speaking softly because this too felt like a confession, I told her the story.
The party was Dad’s idea: to celebrate Matt’s achievement and to rub everyone’s nose in the fact that he had a priest for a son. The Castors would be first in the queue for Heaven from now on: we had our very own inside man.
I wasn’t exactly in the party spirit: I prowled around the edges of the good time that was being had, feeling the same old resentments coming to a boil in my mind. Matt had walked out on us back when ‘us’ was still the barely viable huddle of him, me and Dad: now Matt had come back the hero. I didn’t see anything much to celebrate here.
So I swiped a bottle of whisky — a potent liquor I’d only just discovered — and a glass, found a tiny room at the back of the club where they stacked empty beer barrels, and commenced an experiment that Albert Hofmann would have approved of.
Matt appeared in the doorway maybe an hour later. He’d noticed my absence from the party and had come looking for me.
‘You okay, Felix?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine,’ I answered, raising the whisky bottle to support the contention. ‘Doing good here, Matt.’
‘Then do you want to come and join the rest of us? Auntie Lily wants to talk to you about the ghost in her outside loo.’
‘Auntie Lily can whistle for it.’
Matt came forward into the room. He was wearing the scrimshaw cross that Mum had just given him: carved with bas-relief thorns to the point where it looked like a bramble thicket, and with the legend INRI inscribed on a scroll at its centre, it was an object both beautiful and grotesque. He took the whisky bottle from my hand. ‘I think you’ve probably had enough,’ he said gently.
I took it back and poured myself another large one. ‘Probably right there,’ I allowed.
‘Fix–’ Matt hardly ever used my nickname, so this was a sign of some preternatural unbending. ‘I know you could have done with having me around, the past few years. I just — felt that this was something I really needed to do. Something I was
‘You are?’ I asked. ‘That’s cool, Matt. You’re a prince.’ He looked pained at the sarcasm, which encouraged me to go on. But I was drunk as a bastard by this time, and it took me a while to think of anything good. I was about to ask him what sort of penance he thought was suitable for sodding off for five years and leaving us all up the Swanee, but the word itself — penance — set off a chain of associations that led to a better idea.
‘Take my confession, Father Castor,’ I said.
Surprise and consternation crossed Matt’s face, but only for a moment. He shook his head. ‘If you’re serious about that, Fix, go to St Mary’s and talk to Father Stone. You don’t want absolution from me. I want it from you, but that’s beside the point.’
‘I
