Thicker Than Water

What’s the fascination with the Salisbury Estate, Castor? Why do you keep going back there, if it’s not to get paid or cover your tracks or coach someone down there through their story?’

‘I was checking the place out,’ I persisted doggedly, ‘because Kenny’s message—’

‘And you called in some back-up of your own, didn’t you? I almost forgot that part. But you were smart there, at least. Kept it in the family.’

‘In the family?’ I echoed, missing her point for a moment. Then I realised what she was talking about and felt sour anger flare in my stomach like a progress report from a perforated ulcer.

‘Yeah, right. Of course. I teamed up with my brother, who’s a fucking priest, and we carved Kenny up because he stole our football back when I was ten. Basquiat, Matt wasn’t even with me when I went to the S‹I wr, alisbury. He was there by himself, under orders from another priest named Thomas Gwillam. If you want to know more, look him up in the Yellow Pages under rabid religious conspiracies. ’

‘The two of you were seen at the Salisbury together.’

‘Because we were both there for the same reason, I suppose. I mean, because of what happened to Kenny. But we didn’t arrive together and we didn’t . . .’ I faltered for a second, lost my thread, because I was listening to my own words and I could see, very abruptly, how little sense they made. Everything was tied together. It had to be. But maybe I was wrong in putting Kenny at the centre of it.

When I first saw Gwillam on the walkway at the Salisbury, it was before any word of Kenny’s death could possibly have got out to him. And the first thing he’d done, as far as I could make out, was to knock on the Danielses’ door.

Incised wounds. Puncture wounds. Bic didn’t have either kind. And I suddenly realised that that might be the point.

Basquiat was still looking at me expectantly. ‘Didn’t what?’ she prompted.

‘Didn’t anything,’ I muttered.

‘We ran into each other, we talked, and then we went our separate ways.’

‘You ran into each other.’ Basquiat didn’t even need to inject any sarcasm this time: the words just hung there, limp and ailing in the unsympathetic air.

‘I didn’t call Matt to the Salisbury,’ I said."

"‘So he was there for reasons of his own.’

‘Obviously.’

‘Before Kenny Seddon was attacked, or after?’

‘Like I said, ask Gwillam.