Thicker Than Water

Our working hours haven’t overlapped for the last three days. I’m starting to forget what she tastes like.’

‘Then it’s thanks but no thanks,’ I said, resisting the urge to ask for further details that I probably didn’t need to know. ‘I’m going back into town.’

‘To this council estate?’

I shook my head. ‘To Whitechapel. The Royal London.’

‘The hospital? Why?’

‘That’s where they took Kenny Seddon.’

‘Your enemy?’

I laughed at that. ‘Not my enemy, Jules. Not exactly. Nor my friend, ever, that I knew of.’

‘You said you fought over a woman—’

‘A girl.

‘—Who you both lusted after. Didn’t that make you enemies?’

‘I never lusted after Anita Yeats.’

Juliet looked me in the eyes for a long moment. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You did. At some point.’

There’s no point arguing with Juliet about something like that. ‘Well, I never did anything about it,’ I amended.

‘Leaving that aside,’ Nicky interjected, ‘isn’t this same shitbird Seddon in a coma or something?’

‘Yeah. He is.’

‘So, what - you want to leave some fucking flowers?’

‘No.

Juliet shook her head. ‘This is how you approach all your cases, Castor. You wander around the edges of them until things happen to you. That’s not a plan - it’s the absence of a plan.’

‘What would you suggest?’

‘In this instance, I’d go and find Gwillam and threaten to sink my teeth into his throat if he didn’t tell me what I wanted to know.

‘But I don’t think he knows what I want to know,’ I pointed out.

‘Then you’d have the pleasure of ripping his throat out. And incidentally - notwithstanding my earlier point about not asking me for any favours - if your path and his do cross again, I want to be there. He bound me the last time we met: bound me and humiliated me. It would be pleasant to balance the books.’

Job satisfaction. It’s a very important part of what we do.

‘So that would count as a small favour from me to you,’ I mused.

‘Hypothetically, I suppose. It hasn’t happened yet.’

‘But in the futures market it’s solid gold. Can I borrow on it?’

Juliet chastised me with narrowed eyes, but she didn’t say no."

"‘I’d be really grateful for a second opinion,’ I said. ‘Whatever it was that I was sensing down there on the Salisbury, it wasn’t your bog-standard haunting.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because it didn’t feel right.