Thicker Than Water

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"I walked into Weston Block, past Kenny’s door - it was still standing open, as I feared - and on to the door at the end where Jean Daniels and her family lived. I didn’t look behind me, but I knew I had an entourage. I decided not to chance my luck with another direct order, though. The spell could break at any moment. Or had it already broken? Was it the earlier drug-hazed bloodlust that was the enchantment? In any event, I kicked the door three times with my foot.

After a few moments there was the sound of someone fumbling with lock.

The gang scattered like cockroaches when you turn the light on, so when the door opened I was alone.

A stocky middle-aged man with an inelegant comb-over stared out at me, backlit by the hall light so that I couldn’t see his face.

‘What the fucking hell do you call this?’ he asked, sounding despite the words more mystified than heated. Then his gaze fell to what I carried. ‘Oh God! Oh bloody hell!’

He scooped Bic out of my arms and turned on his heel, stumble-running back into the flat.

‘Jeanie!’ he bellowed as he went, heedless of the late hour and the neighbours’ slumbers. ‘Jean!’

I followed more slowly, into an infinitesimal hallway the exact same size and shape as Kenny’s, - it smelled faintly of fried fish - and through into a living room that was completely dark apart from the light spilling in from the hall. The man - Tom Daniels, I had to assume - laid his son down very carefully on the sofa of a three-piece suite that was too big for the room.

Then the light clicked on behind us and we both turned to look at Mrs Daniels, who ignored us completely as she saw Bic laid out on the sofa.

In that first moment, maybe inevitably, the worst possible conclusion was the one that jumped out and ambushed her. She gave a wail like the first note of an ambulance siren, when it’s still climbing towards its ear-hurting peak, and I stepped aside hastily as she strode past us to the sofa. She went down on her knees and put her hands to Bic’s face, huge sobs shaking her thin frame the way a hurricane shakes scaffolding.

‘Billy—’ she moaned. ‘Oh my baby!’

Tom Daniels turned to me, his eyes wide with surmise and his fists clenched.

I stood my ground. My blood was still up from the fight outside and I had to struggle against an urge to raise my own fists in response. What was it with this place? ‘He’s not dead,’ I said, from between gritted teeth. But Jean had discovered this for herself by this time.