Thicker Than Water

But I gave the detective credit where it was due: she wouldn’t stay in the dark for long if she seriously wanted to check up on me.

‘Castor,’ I said, making the hat trick. ‘Felix Castor.’

‘Good day to you, Mister Castor. I’ll tell Mister Seddon you were looking for him.’

The door closed in my face - all the way, this time. Tom’s needs had to be met, and clearly Mrs Daniels had no more time for small talk. I stood in the corridor for a few moments longer, trying to make sense of what she’d said. Clearly something ha wi somethd happened to Kenny recently.

Something bad, that had left a permanent shadow - or had seemed to. Something he could perhaps have prevented, because there were signs in advance that other people had been able to see.

It was probably unrelated to the attack on him, of course - and the odds were overwhelming that it had no bearing at all on why he’d written my name in his own blood as he sank into unconsciousness and possibly into death. But I had to start somewhere, and if I couldn’t cajole the truth out of the neighbours I knew someone I could buy it from at the market price.

I went back into the daylight at last, and it was welcome. There was something oppressive about the interior of the tower that made me grateful to see the sun again, even if it was beating down like a hammer on an anvil. A wounded-ox lowing of distant traffic met my ears, audible again because I’d been out of it for ten minutes. The miasma was becoming harder to sense for the opposite reason - because it was holding steady now, and my senses were starting to tune it out.

I might as well carry on north, I thought - maybe pick up the Tube at Elephant and Castle. I headed on along the walkway, past more bin bags and a bike that had been chained to a lamp post with a D-lock and then deprived of its wheels to deter theft. Unless the wheels had been stolen to deter cycling."

"I saw the same sigil again - the teardrop with its corona of radiating lines, this time executed in red paint - on the parapet wall.

Next to it, spray-painted on the grey cement of the walkway itself, were the words NOW IT BLEEDS. The words were also done in red, and they looked fresh and new in this faded place. I crossed to look at them, then squatted down and touched the curve of the final S. Very fresh: the paint was still wet.

From this vantage point, I noticed for the first time that the concrete slabs of the parapet wall had been set with narrow gaps in them every few feet.