Thicker Than Water

The gaps afforded a view of the lower walkway beneath me and then the ground, where Bic’s friends - or maybe a different group of boys entirely - came briefly into view on their way to somewhere that probably wasn’t any better than here.

Someone on the lower walkway was watching them, or at least looking out in that direction. He was standing right up against the parapet, his back to me. He wore a raincoat of pure unblemished white that recalled Alec Guinness as Sidney Stratton, the Man in the Ice Cream Suit, and his sleek, possibly brilliantined black hair stood out all the more starkly against it.

There was something indefinably familiar about that black-white contrast, and about the man’s ramrod bearing; his refusal to lean against the parapet even though it was right there, at the perfect leaning distance and height. I had a presentiment that was nothing to do with my death-sense.

Another man walked into my severely restricted field of vision and joined him. This guy was big and rangy and looked subtly out of proportion: but then I was seeing him from an odd angle.

His face was almost completely flat, as though he’d made humorous Tom-and-Jerry-style contact with a frying pan. When he spoke, his mouth opened across its full width in a way that looked strained and awkward, the lips not moving at all. It was like a ventriloquist’s doll talking, the lower jaw bobbing straight up and down to convey by clumsy shorthand the full range of hontll ranguman articulation. His complexion was appalling, the skin piebald with blotches and roughly pitted.

The man on the lower walkway turned to face the newcomer as he approached, and a jolt of surprise went through me when I saw his face, even though I’d subliminally made the connection already. It was Father Gwillam, of the Anathemata Curialis.

Gwillam pointed up towards one of the higher walkways diagonally across from us. Flat-face spoke again, and Gwillam sketched something with his fingertip in the air in front of his face. It looked like brackets.

Flat-face left, at a fast trot. At the other end of the walkway he was joined by a woman - tall, somewhat heavy-set, with long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. She seemed to have bandages tied around her hands, like the ones that the boy Bic had had. They headed off together towards the south end of the estate.

Time for me to book, too. I knew enough about the good father to make that particular encounter a must to avoid. But I wasn’t quite quick enough.