Thicker Than Water

Steve disliked me cordially, that was obvious, and I didn’t blame him; but there was some additional weight of animus when he talked or thought about Matt: something that gave his aggression a whole lot more forward momentum. Maybe his mother had been frightened by a rabid priest while he was still in the womb: they say that leaves an impression.

Lastly, there was Richie’s paranoia about being seen in public, which I was evidently starting to share. What had he done that had caused him to drop off the map so precipitously? And did it have anything to do with either his missing sister or Kenny Seddon?

Finally, satisfied that nobody was dogging my shadow or shadowing my dog, I turned in at the gates.

I’d told Richie exactly where to meet me, and I’d described the spot with enough circumstantial detail so that not even a blind man could have missed it. There was a chestnut tree, for one thing: one of the dozen or so mature trees that were still permitted to stand within the cemetery grounds, even though their roots spread out a long way and put some of the ground off-limits for burials. And there was a headstone a couple of aisles away where a stone angel had been painted by some street artist who for once had some ideas in his head besides writing his own name: painted in gilt and silver and metallic blue, so that she now looked like some cybernetic robot seraph come down from Silicon Heaven, which of course - as even Kryten finally had to acknowledge - doesn’t really exist.

Richie was pacing backwards and forwards under the tree, sucking on a fag: it wasn’t the first, either, as the dog-ends at his feet testified. He looked up as he saw me coming, took the nearly dead dimp out of his mouth and flicked it into the long grass with evident ill humour.

I watched it smoulder. ‘You remember seeing the Smokey the Bear cartoon at school that time?’ I reminisced.

‘You’re late,’ Richie said with asperity.

I nodded. ‘Which gave you plenty of time to get into position so you could see me coming. Your ground rules, Richie. Now what the fuck is going on?’

He tapped me on the chest with a finger. ‘You tell me,’ he suggested. ‘I’m only here because you asked me to come.’"

"Unlike Steve, Richie had grown outwards as well as upwards. His voice might still be a choirboy’s, but his frame was a full-back’s, and he seemed to be on something of a short fuse.