Thicker Than Water — читать онлайн бесплатно полностью

Maybe I’d really hit the wall this time, because I couldn’t complete the exorcism and we were way past the point where nailing up a few wards over people’s doorways was going to have any effect.

But it goes against the grain to give up just because you’re outnumbered, outgunned, painted into a corner and running a quarter of a tank past empty. I forced my numbed, sluggish brain to connect one thought to another, and I came up with three ideas which - together - made a kind of sense.

Matty. Juliet. Gary Coldwood.

Coldwood first. I fished my cellphone out of my pocket, tried vainly to remember his number before I finally found it in the calls-received list.

It’s a wonderful and awe-inspiring facet of modern technology that you can call out from the heart of Armageddon to share the experience and chat with like-minded friends.

Nothing the first time around: the phone rang for the best part of a minute before kicking me through to the voicemail service. No time to piss around with that: something told me it might be a while before Gary had a chance to catch up with his messages.

I tried again. Hung up again. A third time . . .

‘Hello?’ Coldwood’s voice, with a babel of other voices, movements, sirens behind him. They were the same sirens I was hearing, away out there in the red night, but slightly out of phase because radio and sound waves don’t march in lockstep.

‘Hello, Gary.’

‘Castor? Bloody hell, where are you? Basquiat said you—’

‘Weston Block, flat 137,’ I said.

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‘Jesus fucking wept! You’re still in there!’

‘And you’re somewhere out on the edge, yeah? New Kent Road?’

‘Other side. Henshaw Street. Listen, if you want a rescue, you can forget it. We can’t get close. The riot boys have taken over, and their OCO doesn’t play well with others. They’re making a right pig’s breakfast of it, but there isn’t a bastard thing we can do. He’s got us running escorts for the paramedics and evacuating people out of the north end.’

‘I don’t want a rescue, Gary. I want Matt. I need you to bring him here.’

Silence at the other end of the line, apart from the sirens and shouted commands.

‘Did you hear me, Gary?’

‘No. I’m not sure I did. I thought you said you wanted me to bring your brother in to you.’

‘Yeah. That’s right.’

The next sound I heard was an incredulous laugh. ‘Did you fall on your head at some point, Fix? I told you, I can’t get in. And your brother’s on remand for fucking murder.’

‘Which he didn’t do. But that’s beside the point. He’s the only person alive who can stop this.’

‘Why?’ Coldwood’s voice was strained. ‘Explain the logic. No, on second thoughts don’t bother because this is not fucking happening.’"

"He hung up on me. I dialled again. There was nothing else to do except keep hitting at the one point and hope that something gave way. If it didn’t, I was going to sit here until the demon crept past my defences: and then I was probably going to do pretty much what everyone else was doing.

‘Fix, piss off out of it,’ Gary yelled down the phone.

‘I’d love to, Gary. Sincerely. But if I do, a lot more people are going to die tonight - including a lot of your people, unless you pull back and let every man, woman and child who lives on the Salisbury cut themselves to ribbons. I mean it. Get Matt and we can do something.’

There was another silence, but I took it to be a positive sign. I was still hearing the background noises, so he hadn’t hung up.

‘Give me a reason,’ Coldwood said. But I didn’t feel I could do that. Not yet.

‘I’m giving you all I can,’ I said. ‘Matt’s the key to this. What does it cost you to get him out of his cell and bring him in here? You can handcuff yourself to him if you’re worried. Or you can sit back and watch while half of South London goes to hell.’

‘It’s not half of South London. It’s one estate. A thousand people.’

‘For now,’ I agreed. ‘For now that’s all it is.’

‘Fuck!’ Gary exploded. ‘Even if I wanted to get him in there, how would I do it?’

‘You want an escort, you call an escort service,’ I told him.

‘Is that meant to be clever?’

‘Juliet.’

Gary laughed again, even less convincingly than before. ‘Juliet. Right. Because what this situation needs is another demon.’

‘Juliet will meet you at the station,’ I said. ‘She’ll bring Matt here. You can come too, if you want to.’

‘And then what? You wave your magic wand?’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘This probably isn’t going to do a blind bit of good. But it’s a racing certainty that nothing else will. You want to end this, Gary, you get my fucking brother up here. We’ll talk about sin, because priests are experts at that stuff, and he’ll lead us in a few prayers. And maybe we’ll all still be alive when the sun comes up. Or alternatively, make sure you’ve got enough body bags.