Thicker Than Water

Well, what the fuck? My conscience was clean, at least as far as attempted murders were concerned. Whatever this looked like, I knew what it wasn’t: it wasn’t The Tell-Tale Heart.

‘You still want to leave this hanging?’ Basquiat asked Coldwood.

Gary shook his head once, brusque and emphatic. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll need ty"">‘We’ll o take you in for questioning, Fix, and we’ll need a formal statement. I’m sorry.’ That one hit me before I was ready for it.

‘What about the other seventeen Castors?’ I asked, aghast.

‘They stopped being relevant when you told us you knew this bloke.’

‘So am I being charged?’

Coldwood opened his mouth, but Basquiat’s snarl cut across whatever he was going to say.

‘That would look great in court, wouldn’t it? Invite you down here to read the scene, then arrest you when you get here? No, Castor, you’re just assisting us with our inquiries.

She was looking at Gary rather than at me as she said all this, and it was clear that there was an unspoken question between them.

‘Under the circumstances, Detective Sergeant Basquiat,’ Coldwood said with clipped formality, ‘I think it advisable that you conduct the interview with Mister Castor. My personal and professional relationship with him probably precludes my being involved in interrogating him or taking a statement from him.

There was a momentary silence, then Basquiat nodded, seemingly satisfied.

‘But if you’re thinking of having a testicle roast,’ Gary added, ‘then think again.’

‘He’s as safe as if he was in God’s pocket,’ Basquiat promised blandly.

She jerked her head in a way that obviously conveyed a lot of information to her entourage of bluebottles. Two of them fell in on either side of me and led me away.

4

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Basquiat played by the rules, mostly. She was just kidding about God’s pocket, but I got to keep my testicles.

She seemed mostly concerned with getting me on record about my previous relationship with Kenny, and she only cut up rough when I tried to back-pedal from the lurid story I’d sketched out on the overpass.