Thicker Than Water

‘And why is that, Castor?’

‘Because he’s more use to me as an ally right now than as a corpse,’ I said bluntly.

‘And if he refuses to be an ally?’

‘Then we’ll have to see.’"

"Church Street turned out to be a very narrow road in the middle of a bewildering one-way system at the further end of St Albans High Street. I left Pen’s car illegally parked in front of some gates that led God knew where, and we looked for the Rosewell Ecumenical Trust. It was a modest-looking building that seemed to have been made by knocking two old workmen’s cottages into one structure.

The sober, black-painted door looked fairly solid, but came equipped with both a bell and a knocker. I applied myself to both.

While we waited for an answer, Juliet examined the wards that were nailed to the doorposts and the stay-not painted on the wall. They were intended to deter the dead, and the undead, from entering this place.

‘Anything likely to slow you down?’ I asked.

She shook her head brusquely.

‘Not for a moment. They make my skin itch a little, but they won’t keep me out.’

There was a sound from inside of bolts being drawn. A very unecumenical face stared out at us: pug-ugly and brimming with surly suspicion, topped with black hair in a military-length razor cut.

‘Yes?’ it said.

‘We’re here to see Father Gwillam,’ I said, giving him a beaming smile.

He tried to shut the door in our faces, so Juliet slammed it back into his. Then she pushed him up against the wall of the narrow vestibule and I walked on in past him.

He rallied, driving a punch into Juliet’s kidneys that actually made her frown slightly. She gripped his throat, slapped him across the face hard enough to make his head snap round a full ninety degrees, and then pitched him out into the street where he fetched up in a heap against a parked car. Its sidelights started to flash and it wailed on a rising pitch as its alarm went off.

Juliet closed the door on the intrusive sound.

I looked around me. The ground-floor layout of the place was what an estate agent would have described as deceptively spacious: we were in a hall with a tiled floor, from which three doors opened off. The decor was High Victorian, which in the Catholic Church almost passes for contemporary. The inadequate light came from uplighters high up on the walls and from a heavy and unlovely wrought-iron chandelier suspended from three evenly spaced chains.