Thicker Than Water

At the Salisbury there were police cars and fire engines parked three-deep on the road and a crowd of uniformed constables hid the front steps like a flock of crows that had all descended at once on some particularly tasty bit of roadkill. Cheadle swore when he saw them. Carefully and slowly, giving a copper in the road a smile and a respectful nod, he wove his way through the thicket of paddy wagons and kept on going.

‘Let us out here,’ I said.

Cheadle scowled and shook his head. ‘We’re parking around the corner,’ he muttered.

He was right, of course: the combination of Trudie in her bondage rig and Bic in his pyjamas would be enough to make even the most laissez-faire of plods reach for his handcuffs.

We took the next left and pulled in to the kerb. Then I followed Cheadle around to the back of the van and - as soon as he’d unlocked the doors - untied Trudie for the last time that night.

‘I’m sorry you had to go through this,’ I said.

‘I didn’t have to go through it,’ she said, rubbing her wrists. ‘Not if you’d taken my word in the first place.’ Our eyes met for a moment, and there was something in hers that looked like reproach. ‘What is it you’ve got against us, Castor? Our intel on you says you were raised Catholic yourself. ’

‘It’s not Catholics I’ve got a problem with,’ I said. ‘It’s paramilitaries.’

‘You can drop the para.

‘Nothing is at stake.’ My voice sounded harsh even to me, but then it had been a long night. ‘Not in the way you mean it. Loup-garous, ghosts, zombies . . . Most of what I deal with as an exorcist is just human souls in different flavours. The demons are different, but they’re not an army. So you’re not at war. Unless every farmer who picks up a shotgun and stomps off towards the henhouse because he’s heard squawks and flutters in the middle of the night is at war.

Trudie looked past me, out through the open doors of the van towards the burning tower. The taste of smoke was in the air and it hurt a little to breathe. She didn’t need to speak to make her point. Somehow, I felt like I did."

"‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you the demons. Like I said, they’re different. But that’s the point, isn’t it? You people treat the dead - all the dead - as the enemy.