Mike Carey - Thicker Than Water

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.