Thicker Than Water

18

The Linacre Lane cemetery in Bootle was looking a lot less overgrown and graffitied than when I’d seen it last. There were fewer used condoms on the ground, too, so someone was clearly making a real effort; but I wasn’t here to admire the view.

The 61 bus put me off within sight of the gates, but I walked on by and did a circuit of the place first — both to see if I’d been followed and to think about what I’d already picked up while I’d been here.

Not the jackpot, obviously — that I could only get from Anita herself — but a few little nuggets of possibility. Kenny’s obsession with Anita meant that the two of them playing house together two hundred miles from home was a smaller camel to swallow: particularly since Kenny had done his level best to drive Anita away from the ’Pool in the first place. Mind you, I reflected, there wouldn’t have been a lot keeping her here: as a single mum in Walton with no man in tow, she would have taken a lot of cheap shots, a lot of innuendo and collateral contempt from the matriarchs of my mum’s generation. There would have been no shortage of places where she’d have set tongues wagging and heads shaking: and, little by little, that kind of shit wears you down.

And then there was Steve’s obvious hatred of Matt. It had shown in his face, both times he’d been mentioned. 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. He jerked his head to the side suddenly, a nervous gesture that flicked his long blond hair out of his eyes, and an avenue of memories opened up in my mind, so that I could see him doing the same thing a hundred times, in a hundred different places.

‘Where’s Anita?’ I asked him.

‘Why?’ Richie snapped back.

‘Because Matt’s in jail.’

This seemed to be news to Richie, and it gave him a moment’s pause. He blinked twice, staring at me. ‘What for?’ he demanded at last.

‘Murder. Kenny Seddon’s murder. Someone sliced him to ribbons in a parked car, and the police think it was Matt.’

Richie laughed, but it was from incredulity rather than amusement. ‘Kenny’s dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Kenny Seddon is dead?’

‘Still yes.’

‘And your brother did it?’

‘Well, that’s where me and the official version part company,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he did. He was in the car with Kenny — they’ve got his prints on everything up to and including the murder weapon. But he says he didn’t kill him, and I believe him.’

Richie shook his head in wonder. I waited for him to say something, but he took out his fags again and lit up first. ‘I don’t care who did it,’ he said, blowing smoke out of his nose. ‘I’m just glad the cunt is under the soil. That’s the best news I’ve had all year, Castor. Thanks. Thanks so much.’ His voice shook a little.

‘You’re welcome,’ I assured him. ‘But at the risk of repeating myself, where’s Anita? She was living with Kenny until a couple of years back. She might know who the real killer is.’

Richie held my gaze for a moment, his expression turning into a grimace of remembered pain. Then he looked away, up into the branches above.

‘Richie . . .’ I said.

‘I get it.’ He waved me silent. ‘You want Nita to get your brother out of the shit by fingering someone else.’

‘Well, ideally, yeah. And if she can’t do that, then maybe she could give me some leads. Something to go on.’

‘I could ask what he’s ever done for her,’ Richie said, still staring at the sky through the interlacings of the chestnut branches. ‘For any of us. But I won’t bother, because you already know the answer. Give it up, Castor.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Anita’s dead.’

The words hit my stomach like slingshot stones: or rather, not so much the words as the absolute conviction with which he said them. Here we were, then: at ground zero.

And it looked like I’d come all this way on a fool’s errand.

We sat with our backs against the stone, facing towards the cemetery gates because Richie still wasn’t sure that some unspecified enemy wasn’t going to try to sneak up on him while we talked. Consequently his gaze wasn’t on mine and I could watch him while he talked; look for any chink in that heavy armour of certainty.

‘She was living in Derby when he found her,’ he said, his beautiful voice elegaically lowered. From his tone, you knew that as far as he was concerned, that was where Anita’s death had begun. ‘He paid some private-detective bloke to chase her down, with some bullshit cover story about how they were separated but he wanted to give it another chance, and then he turned up on her doorstep one morning.’

He stared into the past, saw nothing there to give him any comfort. ‘She was in a bad way,’ he said, flatly. ‘She had a bit of a habit. Heroin, I mean. And sometimes . . . You know how it is. Some times are worse than other times. When Kenny showed up, she’d just been thrown out of a job and she didn’t have any money coming in. He practically said he’d keep her fucking supplied. Anything to get her to go back and live with him.

‘I told her. I frigging told her. You know yourself what he’s like. You know he can’t control himself. Even as a kid he was fucking dangerous, so what do you expect him to be like as a man? People like Kenny Seddon don’t change. He’ll hurt you, Nita. He’ll hurt you worse than . . . worse than you’ve ever been hurt in your life.’

It was as though he were having the argument with her now. As though she was standing there on the grass in front of us, visible only to him, talking only to him. The cigarette between his fingers burned down unnoticed, growing a longer and longer beard of ash.

‘She didn’t care,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘She knew I was right, but it didn’t make any difference. “I don’t deserve any better,” she said. “Look at me, Richie. Look at how I’m living. He’ll put a roof over our heads. He’ll be a father to Mark. Fuck knows, somebody’s got to be. I can’t go on like this.” And all the rest of it. Like it was a rational decision. Like what she was doing made sense. But it didn’t, Castor. And I’ll tell you why.

‘She knew. She went back knowing what he was going to do to her. In fact, that was why she went back. Because Kenny could be relied on to treat her the way she thought she deserved.’

The cigarette burned his fingers. He gave a convulsive start, let it drop and put the tip of his finger in his mouth, tears gathering in his eyes. I didn’t think it was because of the blister.

‘How can you be so sure, Richie?’ I asked gently. ‘What makes you think she’s dead?’

He shot me an impatient look, as if it was a stupid question that didn’t deserve an answer. ‘Because she moved a hundred times in ten years,’ he said, examining the damaged finger irritably, ‘and we never once lost touch. Now she disappears without a trace. No, Castor. It doesn’t work like that, not between us. If she was still alive, she’d have called me. She always called me. And she would have taken Mark with her when she left, like she did every other time.’

‘Unless she thought Kenny was doing a good job of being a dad,’ I suggested.

Richie swore caustically. ‘If that was meant to be funny,’ he said, ‘I’m not laughing. He was as good a dad as he was a human being, Castor. You can’t bring out what isn’t there in the first place. I saw him with Mark, and he never even tried to pretend he gave a fuck.’

‘There was another man,’ I said, changing tack. ‘A builder’s merchant or something, from what I heard. Did Kenny find out that she was seeing him? Do you think he was jealous?’

‘Roman,’ Richie said.

‘Roman what?’

‘That was his name. And yeah, maybe . . . that could have been what happened. I don’t know.’ He gave a weary, barely perceptible shrug. ‘It was a game they played,’ he said glumly. ‘Nita found guys to sleep with, and Kenny beat her up. They both knew the rules. But . . .’

‘But?’

‘But Roman wanted her to leave with him. Set up somewhere else. See, normally she picked guys who were cynical enough to just use her and then get out when things got complicated. But this time she made a mistake. Roman seemed to really care about her.’

‘What was he like?’ I asked. ‘Did you ever meet him?’

‘Only the once.’ Richie considered. ‘I was up there for the weekend and we slipped out for a curry behind Kenny’s back. He was . . . good-looking, I have to admit. Sort of Mediterranean looks. Open shirt, lots of bling, leather jacket with the sleeves rolled up. You know the sort of thing. He didn’t really push my buttons, but I could see where he’d push Nita’s.’

‘Did he have a piercing?’ I asked. ‘Over his right eye?’

Richie looked at me in mild surprise. ‘Yeah,’ he said after a moment or two. ‘He did. Why? Do you know him?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not to talk to, anyway. But I’m starting to feel like I didn’t know Anita very well, either. Richie, is there some connection between this and you living like a submarine? Who are you hiding from?’

I wasn’t expecting the reaction I got from that question. The corners of Richie’s mouth quirked up and he smiled: a smile that most reasonable people would have wanted to back away from.

‘From the Seddons,’ he said. ‘Because I hit the bastards back, where it hurt them. And I’m going to keep on hitting them back until there’s nothing left of them but fucking greasy stains. If your brother took Kenny out, then it was the best day’s work he ever did in his God-bothering life — and if it was someone else, then whoever he is, he’s got my blessing. I love him. I take him to my bosom. I would have done it myself if I had the bottle, but I don’t. I couldn’t kill someone. So I got Ronnie the best way I could.’

Somewhere in my overstretched cerebellum, the other shoe dropped.

‘You grassed Ronnie up?’

‘Oh yeah.’ Richie nodded emphatically. ‘Just had to get the timing right. He always did the Red Pepper on a Friday night, so I placed a call to the Greater Merseyside drug squad and told them exactly where and when to flash the bacon.’ He smiled even wider: he was evidently enjoying the memory. ‘And I’m going to get Steve, too,’ he said in a more meditative tone. ‘I’ve been following him for months and I finally struck gold. The stupid bastard is seeing prozzies down the Dock Road and I’m getting pictures of him doing it. When I’ve got a nice thick photo album’s worth, I’m going to send it in to his boss. Should fuck him over nicely, don’t you think?’

I nodded, because there was no way of disagreeing. ‘You blame them all, then?’ I said. ‘For — whatever happened to Anita?’

‘They hounded her from pillar to post,’ he said, grinding out the discarded dog-end with his heel as though it were a Seddon he’d inadvertently missed. ‘They wouldn’t let her rest. And then when they’d hounded her all the way back to that bastard down in Walworth, they walked away and let him kill her. Yes, Castor. I blame them all. I blame a lot of people. Don’t get me started.’

I was prepared to take that advice, but there was one more thing I needed to know. Well, two things, now that I thought about it.

‘Richie,’ I said. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but . . . it wasn’t you, was it? With the razor? You didn’t go down to the Smoke on a day return and — you know — do a bit more pruning?’

Richie gave a sardonic snort. ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘But I already told you, I’m no good at that stuff. I must be a throwback or something, mustn’t I? A Walton kid with no taste for aggro.’

He sounded like he meant it; and the accusation hadn’t got the smallest response beyond that weary, self-hating derision. ‘Okay,’ I said, feeling obscurely relieved. ‘Then answer me this and I’m out of your hair. Can you think of any reason why Kenny would have had a grudge against Matt? A big enough grudge that he’d frame him for murder? Because that was the last thing he did, as he was drowning in his own blood. And it seems like a strange . . .’

I tailed off into silence, because Richie was looking at me with enormous, astonished eyes.

‘Why Kenny would hate your brother?’ he echoed.

‘Yeah.’

‘Castor, who do you think you’re talking to? And what fucking tree did you just fall out of?’ Richie’s tone was pained and angry.

‘Okay,’ I said, cautiously. ‘I’m assuming those were rhetorical questions. You think there’s something obvious I’m missing, then? Something you know, and you think I should know, too?’

He stood up. ‘Here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t me in that car. I already told you that. But if it had been, and if I was someone else instead of me — a macho psycho killer kind of someone, in the real Walton style — then I wouldn’t have stopped at Kenny.’

He brushed the grass off his jacket, wincing as the movement chafed his blistered finger.

‘I’d have killed your brother, too,’ he said.

Then he seemed to recollect where he was; or perhaps he read the expression on my face. Either way, his gaze fell from my face to the name on the headstone we’d been leaning against, and he had the decency to look abashed.

‘Okay,’ he muttered. ‘Shitty thing to say. I’m sorry. It’s just — fucking priests, you know? Is there one of them out there who can—? Never mind. Forget it. There are degrees, aren’t there? Maybe he said a few Hail Marys and squared himself with God. But he’ll never square himself with me.’

He walked away before I could ask him what he meant by that. I was left staring at the gravestone, still feeling the ghost-echo of it against my back. Feeling as though her name had been burned on my skin, through the cool stone and through the fabric of my coat.

CATHERINE PAULINE CASTOR

BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER

Just those words, and the two dates: the two dates so very close together.

My phone, which I’d set to vibrate, squirmed like a rat in my pocket, startling me out of a grim reverie. I put it to my ear.

‘Hello?’

‘Castor.’ I couldn’t place the voice at first, but the slight muffling effect caused by a fat lip gave me the clue I needed.

‘Gwillam. How’s life?’

He didn’t bother to answer. ‘You were right,’ was all he said. ‘Get back here as soon as you can, because we need to talk.’

The mix of old tragedies and current irritations made me curt. ‘Do we? About what?’

‘About the Salisbury. Come and save these people, Castor, because they’re in Hell. And I’m not strong enough to get them out.’