Thicker Than Water

I don’t get this at all, but I’ve seen Juliet face off against everything from were-kin to God Almighty. I don’t think there’s anything out there that she’s afraid of.’

Nicky acknowledged the point with a nod. ‘Well, anything else she tells you, I want to know about it,’ he said.

‘Why?’

He looked at me as if that was the stupidest question he’d ever heard. ‘Because knowing things is my shtick,’ he said. ‘Remember?’

‘Okay, Nicky.’ I made my tone emollient because I was too tired and sore right then to want an argument.

‘What about Kenny Seddon? You turn anything up there?’

He shrugged with his eyebrows.

‘A little. I mean, I got what was there to be got, but there wasn’t much. And none of it is what you’d call illuminating.’

‘Go on.’

He pointed at the thick stack of pages. ‘It’s in your reading material,’ he said.

‘Give me the highlights.’

‘What highlights? He’s born, he lives, he maybe dies. Bit of a cliffhanger ending there, but that’s as good as it gets.’

I held his gaze, and after a few moments he took an in-breath so he could sigh theatrically.

‘Okay, whatever. Full name, Kenneth Christopher Seddon. Born, Walton, Liverpool, late 1960s. The exact date is in there somewhere. He gets to age fourteen without incident, then has his first run-in with the police - possession of stolen goods. Court appearance, rap on the knuckles, off he goes. That’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship - he turns up on the magistrates’ court dockets six more times before he hits eighteen. Couple of affrays, couple of B-and-Es, drunk driving, and one moderately juicy wounding with intent.

‘Then he cleans up his act. Puts away childish things and doesn’t put a foot wrong for about five years or so. Or so we assume. Certainly doesn’t leave any footprint on the world. I’ve got a few possible pings on the name from Glasgow and Oldham - credit checks of one sort or another, mostly - so maybe he was on his travels.’

‘Maybe,’ I allowed. I’d already left Liverpool myself by that time, and truth to tell I hadn’t gone back much since.

I’d n {h s>‘Mever seen Kenny on any of my brief trips home, but then, I hadn’t been looking for him. I had no idea whether he’d stuck around. A lot of my generation were shaken loose when the slums around the hospital were knocked down and new estates were built there. A lot more had already gone, deserting the sinking ship that Liverpool had looked like back in the Thatcher/Hatton era.