Thicker Than Water

It was such a transparent attempt to put me off balance that I felt a sudden wave of affection for him. It took me by surprise, reminding me of brotherly feuds long past, and the kind of dirty pool we always played against each other before he found God and lost the rest of us. Maybe for that reason, I came straight to the point instead of dancing around it looking for an unfair advantage.

‘What were you doing at the Salisbury, Matt?’ I demanded.

He turned to look at me. His blue-grey eyes, otherwise unknown in the Castor family, held my gaze unblinkingly.

‘I was just walking,’ he said, with immaculate calm. But I knew from way back how good he was at the straight-faced kidding.

I nodded. ‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Hell of a walk, from Cheam, but they’re your shoes. I saw someone else just walking there recently - Gwillam. That shitehawk from the Anathemata Curialis. You remember him?’

‘Of course I remember him,’ Matt said, with guarded emphasis.

‘When from?’

‘I’m sorry, Felix?’

‘When do you remember him from, exactly? When did you last see him, and what’s he got you doing on the Salisbury?’

‘Felix—’

‘Don’t get coy, Matty.

’ I pushed the chair around so that it faced him. ‘That was Gwillam’s man you hauled off me right now, and you called him by name. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? He’s a self-righteous lunatic fighting a one-man crusade against the undead. You’re just a priest who can’t say no. Somewhere you were bound to meet.’

Matt still refused to sit. ‘You’re wrong, Felix,’ he said.

‘Am I?’

‘Yes. It’s not a one-man crusade. The Anathemata probably has upwards of a thousand members - a couple of hundred in the UK alone. It’s not an official arm of the Church any more, but it’s still highly respected in many circles. And Thomas Gwillam is a hugely influential voice when it comes to . . .’ he faltered for the first time, but it was a short hesitation and a good recovery ‘. . . the more controversial aspects of the afterlife.’

‘Thomas,’ I mused. ‘Probably named after the popular saint.

’

‘Probably.’

‘Whose unique selling point was that he had those doubts, yeah? Amazingly, he wasn’t always a hundred per cent sure he was doing the right thing. I could really get behind a saint like that.’

Matt sighed - a long-drawn-out sound that was more indicative of exhaustion than of resignation. He did look tired, now that I looked at him properly: tired and a bit beaten down, as though something serious and distracting was weighing on him.