Thicker Than Water

sisters rousted up in the fields of Varhedre and killed for sport.’ Juliet’s voice was eerily distant, as if thinking about the past had carried her back there in some way.

‘They’re very rare,’ she said, and then paused. ‘Now. Now they’re rare. It wasn’t always so.’

‘And what, you’re into conservation? They’re an endangered species?’

Juliet was silent for a while.

‘I tried my hand at exorcising this thing before I came away from the estate,’ she said at last, returning her gaze to the road ahead. ‘Without result. I’ve told you what I can, Castor. More than I should. Be grateful. Or at the very least, be quiet.’

We said no more to each other. When I pulled up in front of Susan’s house, Juliet got out without saying a word: I thought, but couldn’t be sure, that I saw her turning away from Susan’s door and heading off into the night, which embraced her as eagerly as ever.

By the time I got back to Pen’s, it was after midnight. I called Jean Daniels, which I should have done from the hospital: to explain why I hadn’t been in touch and to ask her how Bic was.

More or less the same, was the answer. He slept a lot, and when he was awake he drifted in and out of his right mind — talking in his own voice one moment and in a strange polyglot growl the next. He hadn’t tried to hurt anyone, but he was unmistakably still possessed.

‘And now you’re going away?’ Jean asked, dismayed.

‘For a day,’ I said. ‘Two days, tops. I’m looking for Anita Yeats. I think she might know something that could help both your son and my brother.’

‘Know something about what, Mister Castor?’ Jean demanded. She sounded plaintive, and it made my stomach churn to be letting her down like this.

‘Two separate somethings,’ I admitted. ‘About Kenny’s death, and about Mark’s hobby. She’s the only person I haven’t managed to talk to, and there’s one obvious place where she might have gone.’

‘Which is?’

‘Home. Liverpool. But I’ll come and see Bic as soon as I’m back. Unless you want to get someone else in, which I’ll understand. I swear to God, Jean, I’ll see this through if you still want me to. I just — have to do this other thing first.’

‘We can’t afford to get anyone else,’ Jean said, her tone bleak. ‘Come as soon as you can, Mister Castor.’

She hung up, and I finished packing, wondering how late the last train would go. They’d probably run through the night, I thought. But then I was overcome with weariness: my brain felt like it had been scraped clean with wire wool, and my chest was throbbing again. I had to sit down until the pain and weakness passed.

I woke late in the morning to find Pen putting a cup of coffee on the bedside table — next to a double chocolate muffin with a lit sparkler embedded in it.

‘Welcome home,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ I muttered, sitting up slowly. Christ on a crutch, I thought. Losing half a day wasn’t an auspicious start to the quest.

‘You slept in your clothes,’ Pen observed.

‘Didn’t mean to sleep at all,’ I muttered, taking a scalding sip of coffee.

I told her about Matt, and she filled the pauses with expletives. ‘Murder my arse!’ she said when I’d finished. ‘Your brother would do ten Hail Marys if he farted in a lift!’

‘True,’ I admitted.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘I’m going to find Anita Yeats,’ I said. ‘All I’ve got is random facts that don’t connect. I think she might be the one person who can join the dots for me. Can you lend me some cash, Pen?’

There was a square tin box in the kitchen that had once contained tea, or at least said it had. Now it contained ten-pound notes, stored up by Pen against a rainy day. She assessed the current storm at a hundred quid, counting the notes into my hand one at a time. Then, after a short tussle with her conscience, she forked over the rest. ‘Just bring me back what you don’t spend,’ she said.

She dropped me off at Turnpike Lane station, and from there it was a short hop down the Piccadilly Line to Kings Cross. Trains for Liverpool were three or four to the hour, according to the Virgin Trains website, so there was no need to book.

Can’t help? I thought.

Fucking try me, Matty.

16

In England it’s not biology that’s destiny, it’s geography. London rules the roost and runs the show not because there’s something aristocratic and splendid in the Cockney gene pool but because the Thames flood plain provided the geographical trifecta of rich, fertile soil, a navigable river and a billion acres of forest to make ships out of. Spread your sails and sell your surplus to the world, then come home and throw together the mother of parliaments on your days off. Before long you’re not only ahead of the game, you’re making the bloody rules.

Taking the Richard Branson Express from Kings Cross up to Liverpool, you go out through a whole string of towns that were never in with a chance of becoming the capital of England because they could never get over the accidents of birth: inland, becalmed, bucolic, they surrendered their produce and then their souls to the great maw of London: went straight from farming communities to dormitory suburbs without a protest or a qualm. Now they’re trying to bottle nostalgia and sell it to the tourist trade, but it seems like fewer and fewer people are buying. Stands the church clock at ten to three? Well, that’s bloody British workmanship for you.

Then again, maybe I was just feeling jaundiced because the pain in my ribs wouldn’t go away even though I was popping ibuprofen like Smarties. And because the guy sitting just down the carriage from me was a werewolf.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean he was making a big thing about it. He wasn’t hairy and slavering and going for my throat. In fact, he was just a young guy in an FCUK tee-shirt with a spiked haircut that was black at the roots and blond at the tips. He didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary, apart from the impressive upper- body musculature rising out of a dancer’s waist. But my death-sense spiked into jangling chords whenever he looked at me, which was often, and having to run for the train had left a faint film of sweat on his forehead, so he wasn’t a zombie. That meant he was either carrying a passenger of his own, like Rafi, or else he was a loup-garou. Odds favoured the latter.

He’d boarded the train at Bedford, along with a very striking young woman in salwar kameez who got out her laptop straight away and never once looked up from it, two gloomy, overweight guys in painters’ overalls, a half- dozen suit-and-tie grunts and a couple of amorous teenagers. He’d brought a four-pack of Tennent’s Extra by way of a picnic lunch, but once he realised he was sharing his space with an exorcist he forgot about the beer and fixed his state on me with feral fascination. I’ve never even got close to working out why this is, but the death-sense thing cuts both ways: we know when we’re in the presence of the risen, and they know when they’re looking at someone who can send them down again. Once Mister FCUK had reached that conclusion his gaze never left my face.

I’d have been very happy to pretend I’d seen nothing. He wasn’t hunting and neither was I. But something told me it wasn’t going to be that easy. The loup-garou held up one hand to me in what looked like a wave, all four fingers raised and spread. Then he popped a can of beer and drained it in a couple of swigs.

When it was empty he held up three fingers. Then he opened and polished off a second can, at a somewhat more relaxed pace. A countdown. First I’ll take my refreshment: then I’ll take you.

I pretended to take an interest in the scenery while the loup-garou worked on beer number three and I tried to make up my mind how to handle this unfortunate situation. I felt like shit: if anything, even stiffer and wearier than I had the night before. My dreams had been full of Kenny’s feeble, shrieking plea, and I’d drifted between sleep and waking with no clear sense of the boundaries.

Finally I got tired of calculating the odds.

I stood up, exaggerating my movements slightly like a mime artist doing ‘I’m going to take a little stroll now.’