Thicker Than Water читать онлайн

‘Do you really know what’s happening,’ she demanded, ‘or are you just bluffing me to see what I let fall by accident?’ So I told her the truth, as I saw it, in three bald sentences. I managed to keep my voice steady, but my hand was trembling as though I was in the last stages of malaria.

‘Very well,’ Juliet said. ‘What now?’

‘Just tell me - is that it? Is that how it happened?’

‘Yes. I think so. In broad terms, it must be. Why are you calling me, Castor?’

‘Because you said you’d tried to exorcise this thing.

Was that just bullshit, Juliet, or do you really want to help?’

‘I don’t have time for bullshit,’ she reminded me with some asperity. ‘So please, stick to the point. I’m in the process of satisfying my lover - my other vocation. But this is a bad thing, and the forerunner of things a whole lot worse, so yes, I’ll help if I can.’

‘Just not with information.’

‘You know why I was silent, Castor. And I still have to decide whether I can trust your discretion. Tell me what you want from me.

’

‘When you’re sure that Susan is fully satisfied, go to the Uxbridge Road nick and pick up my brother. Gary Coldwood will hand him over to you. Or he may want to come along too. Either way you’ll have to get Matt in here, through Hell and high water and maybe the occasional Catholic werewolf.’

‘Here being—?’

‘The Salisbury. Flat 137, Weston Block.’

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

‘Juliet—’

A pause. ‘Yes, Castor?’

‘Nicky said you’re the youngest in your family.

‘She is of Baphomet the sister and the youngest of her line, yada yada.’

‘So?’

‘So who did you . . . ?’ I let the question linger, because I had no idea how to finish it.

‘It was a long time ago, Castor,’ Juliet said coldly. ‘I don’t remember.’ She hung up on me.

Nothing to do now but wait. And watch the show.

23

It took them close on two hours, but under the circumstances I think that was pretty impressive. Then again, the cross-London cop-demon-and-priest six-legged race is never going to become an Olympic event, so I don’t have anything to base a comparison on.

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"Now that I’d put my head back together again at least partially after the botched exorcism, I’d come to the realisation that I wasn’t completely helpless. Whistle in hand, I stood at the window and played - the first part of the exorcism ritual, the summoning: drawing the demon in towards me again and again, and then letting it off the hook at the last moment.