Thicker Than Water

‘You should have been like your namesake, Father Thomas, and looked for a little more proof before you threw up your hands and started singing hosannas. You find a boy with wounds in his hands and you think he’s a saint in waiting, right?’

‘I won’t discuss—’

‘Don’t waste my fucking time. You already said the boy’s name, and his mother told me you were there. She just couldn’t bring herself to tell me why, but then she was seeing Bic’s wounds as part and parcel of the other sick shit that was going on in his life.

Gwillam was silent for a moment, but he found his voice again soon enough. ‘The appearance of the stigmata is a miracle,’ he said. ‘One that recurs down the centuries, as a sign of Christ’s manifested blessing.’

‘Either that or hysteria,’ I said. ‘Only this time - this time, Gwillam, it isn’t either of those things. It’s a demon.’

He stared at me in amazement, and then in undisguised scorn.

‘A demon?’ he echoed.

‘Yeah.’ I nodded. ‘A demon that loves wounds. That seems to live in wounds, somehow. Some poor kid who was into self-harm summoned it. I think he did it without even meaning to, just by being on its wavelength. It makes people cut themselves, or other people. It fills their dreams and their waking minds with the eagerness to see blood spilled. And it makes blood well up from healthy flesh, as though there were wounds there. That’s what Bic has got. A curse, not a blessing.

I took the thick wodge of Nicky’s printouts from my inside pocket and let them fall on the carpet in front of Gwillam. ‘Read it,’ I suggested, ‘and weep. And after that, go and fucking do something.’

I left him sitting there, visibly reassembling the armour of his righteousness. No way of telling whether he’d believe me or not, but if he did there were things he could do while I was away to stop the situation at the Salisbury from reaching a crisis point.

As we drove back into London, Juliet maintained a thoughtful silence. I did the same thing, for a while, but then I thought what the hell: we were already on rockier ground than we’d been at any time since she decided to live on Earth instead of killing me. What did I have to lose by pushing the boat out a little further?

‘Is this thing a friend of yours?’ I asked.