Mike Carey - Thicker Than Water

‘The ground . . .’ She hesitated, as if she really didn’t know how to say this. ‘He said it was warm. Like skin. But not soft like skin: it was all ridged and rough and shiny. He said it was like lava after a volcano. When it’s cooled, he said, you get miles and miles of this stuff like the surface of the moon.’ She smiled faintly. ‘He’d just done volcanoes at school.

‘And then he’d start to hear this voice, in the darkness. And he was sure it was Mark’s voice, even though he said it didn’t sound anything like. But there it was, this voice droning on and on. Not really talking to Billy, so he said. Just talking.’

‘About what?’

She gave me a slightly haunted look. ‘What do you think? About hurting yourself. Cutting yourself open. About the way it feels when you cut into yourself and let the pain out. About how wounds are roses and blood is wine.’

One of those leaden silences fell between us: the kind where everyone is expecting someone else to be the next to speak, and it gets more awkward the longer you leave it.

‘Did the news articles mention that Mark was a self-harmer? ’ I asked.

‘Some of them,’ said Tom. ‘But he could have got most of it from the poem, couldn’t he? It’s all there. We just tried talking him out of it at first, because he’s bright and he’s a good lad, like Jeanie said. We thought it would be a nine days’ wonder, like most things are when you’re that age. We took the tapes and all the bits of paper away and locked them in a cupboard. And we kicked him out when he got back after school to play in the adventure playground or over in the park. We thought he just needed his mind taking off it.’

‘And that,’ said Jean, with heavy finality, ‘was when the bleeding started. Just a drop, at first, but how can you have blood, Mister Castor, if you haven’t cut yourself? And the more we wiped it away, the more it came. We took him in to see the GP, and then a dermatologist, but they don’t have a clue. They were talking about our Billy being a haemophiliac, as though that explains it. But his blood clots normally if you test it, so it isn’t that.’

‘And that bloody priest . . .’ Tom interposed, but then he seemed to think better of that line of discussion and left the words hanging.

‘The priest?’ I echoed. ‘Is that the man you mentioned before? The man in the white raincoat?’ Tom didn’t answer, but the look he threw at Jean was of the he-already-knows variety. ‘Was his name Gwillam?’ I asked.

After a strained pause, Jean nodded. ‘That’s him.’

‘What did he want? Was it something to do with Billy?’

Another look passed between them.

‘It was my fault,’ Tom muttered, ‘for mentioning it to Father Merrick at Bethesda’s. I should have kept my mouth–’

‘I don’t think it’s something I feel comfortable talking about, Mister Castor,’ Jean broke in, her tone as tense and taut as if Gwillam had put an indecent proposal to her. ‘I’m sorry.’

That left me somewhat high and dry. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Look, it’s not my place to ask. And I’m grateful for what you’ve told me already.’ I stood up. ‘See what the hospital says about Billy,’ I said. ‘Hopefully he’ll just wake up tomorrow not remembering any of this. But I’d get him out of this place, if you’ve got anywhere else to send him. He needs to be in a different atmosphere for a while.’

‘There’s my sister’s,’ Tom said doubtfully. ‘In Croydon.’

The thought of sending anyone to Croydon for their health was as surreal as anything else in this conversation. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That sort of thing. Just for a couple of weeks. You’ve got the school holidays coming up. Pack him off out of this.’

But Jean was shaking her head. ‘He stays here,’ she said, ‘with me. Or we all go together. If my boy is going through something bad, then I’m the one who looks after him. Thank you for your time, Mister Castor.’

There was no misinterpreting her tone. The consultation was over.

‘I think it’s this place more than anything else that’s making him sick,’ I said, persisting with my diagnosis in the teeth of her new-found determination. ‘It’s your choice, obviously. And I know it’s complicated. It always is. But look, if anything should come up that you want to talk to me about . . .’ I gave them my card, with the solemnity of someone who hasn’t been doing that kind of thing for very long. The card is a recent innovation, obtained from a printer who offered to do me a job lot of a hundred for free by way of an introductory offer. If he’d known the size of my client base he would have cut that back to ten.

Jean turned the card in her hand, and Tom looked over her shoulder at it, his expression changing to a slightly pained frown.

‘Spiritual services,’ Jean read aloud. ‘That’s what you get from an exorcist, is it? What does it mean, exactly?’

‘It means a lot of different things,’ I said. ‘I set up wards against the dead, advise people how to make their houses safe, that sort of thing. I persuade ghosts to go away if they’re making a nuisance of themselves, or else I find out what it is they want. I can tell you if someone you haven’t seen for a while is alive or dead, and if they’re dead I can invite them over to talk to you. I do kids’ parties too, sometimes. Don’t ask for references on that, though, because I haven’t had any satisfied customers yet. The number on the back is my landlady’s: if I don’t pick up on the office number, you can leave a message for me there.’

Jean gave the card to Tom to look after, and he slipped it into a back pocket. I stood up, feeling like I’d overstayed my welcome.

‘Thank you, Mister Castor,’ Jean said, giving me a slightly awkward handshake. Tom didn’t put out his hand, and I didn’t feel inclined to offer mine.

‘Seriously,’ I said to Jean. ‘If you need me, call. I’m only an hour away.’

She nodded.

‘He’ll be fine when he wakes up,’ Tom said, with brusque conviction.

But Bic was still sleeping — or unconscious — when I left, and the ambulance still hadn’t arrived.

I noticed as I walked past that Kenny’s door was now closed. That was good, as far as it went, but I wondered who was going around behind me, covering my tracks. I also wondered what business Gwillam could have with the Daniels family — and why it didn’t bear repeating.

I was lost in thought as I walked down the stairs. But as I came level with the third-floor walkway, a movement at the corner of my eye made me turn my head. It had come from outside, from the walkway itself, which meant I was seeing it through the grimed glass of the swing-doors. What had made it noticeable was that there was a light out there — one of the few functioning street lamps — and whoever had moved had momentarily occulted it from my perspective: light-darkness-light, a Morse-code flash.

I stopped and stared. There was a figure standing on the walkway, her back against the street light. Not a bad position to take up if you were watching Weston Block, because to anyone looking back you’d just be a backlit silhouette. But I knew the silhouette: I’d seen it only a day before, and the ponytail was a dead give-away. It was the woman I’d seen with Gwillam.

I took an involuntary step forward. Despite the stern tone I’d taken with Nicky, I was itching to find out what Gwillam was up to down here. Maybe the ponytailed woman would be willing to give me a few hints if I did my Rudy-Basquiat-consulting-detective routine again. You never know until you try.

But as I headed for the doors she saw me too. Her gaze had been fixed on the higher levels of the building: now it flicked down and caught the movement nearer to hand, and she was gone out of the circle of light before I even had the door open.