Mean Spirit (29 page)

‘He told me how seriously interested his employer was in the spirit world. Suspicious in retrospect because Barber obviously couldn’t care less.’

‘Is it possible Seward knew that something … extraordinary … was likely to happen to you that night, at that party? Did you get that feeling when he was driving you there?’

‘I wasn’t particularly …’ Her phone went off in her bag, like a small police warbler. ‘Yah.’ Brusquely.

The female voice in the phone was animated, insistent.

Seffi said, ‘Nancy, look, I’m going to have to call you back … No. No, I don’t. Yes, I will. But when
I’m
ready … I’ll call you back.’

She tossed the phone back into her bag, biting her lip then forcing a smile.

‘My agent. In a state of some anxiety. Wondering if she’s ever going to make any money out of me again.’

‘She know about the … trouble you’ve been having? The nature of it?’

‘She seems to know too much,’ Seffi said, ‘but that’s not your problem.’

Before they left the pub, she went to the lavatory. She was gone more than fifteen minutes and didn’t explain. Maiden guessed she’d been on the phone in there. Very evidently, now, there was something she didn’t want him to know about. He was feeling uneasy as they took the road towards Ross-on-Wye and the border.

After a while, she said, ‘I won’t stay. At the farm. I’ll just pick up my stuff. Perhaps you could explain to Marcus.’

‘Oh.’ He watched her biting her upper lip as she drove, hugging the wheel.

‘It was a mistake, anyway, Bobby. I’ve brought him nothing but hassle.’

‘Marcus likes hassle.’

‘When he’s well. But he’s not well. I’d never have written to him
if I’d known that. I just wanted someone to tell it all to, who wouldn’t be judgemental.’

The Jeep rolled into a sandstone village with a Norman church. He saw how she’d tightened up, pulled back into herself. Like last night was something which had happened in a different time-frame.

Which bothered him. He’d felt so close to her. She was right: what had passed between them was as intimate as sex. Not casual sex, either.

‘What’s changed, Seffi?’

‘Nothing’s changed.’

‘You sure? You go to Marcus for advice after twenty years, because he’s the only person you feel you can trust. And then you just walk out. You know, it’s going to make him feel like a useless old bugger.’

She slowed as the road narrowed. She cleared her throat. ‘I’ve got to be somewhere, OK? Tomorrow, probably.’

‘You could stay tonight, then?’

‘No.’

‘Only there are things we need to discuss. All of us. Like the fact that there’s someone out there who wants you.’

A truck loaded with gravel came grinding and clanking past, making even the Jeep shiver.

‘That’s no-one’s problem but mine,’ Seffi said.

XXXI

‘
BECAUSE YOU’D’VE SAID NO!’ GRAYLE BACKED TOWARDS THE DOOR
of the study. ‘Am I crazy?’

‘Yes!’ Marcus roared. ‘Also irresponsible and treacherous! How the fuck
dare
you go behind my back, you devious bitch?’

‘Like you had better ideas? The hell you did! All you could say was how you’d failed her, and stomping around in the hair shirt, scourging yourself.’

‘You called me …’ Marcus was stabbing a stubby finger across the desk ‘… a self-righteous old phoney.’

‘But a self-righteous old phoney with
good contacts.
We aren’t either of us psychics, but you’re the guy who knows people who
are.
The best people.’

‘Mars-Lewis.’ The name came out at last, like Jello from a mould, floated there, quivering, between them.

‘It was always gonna need someone who works on Callard’s level,’ Grayle said. ‘Spirit level. Whatever.’

Marcus said grimly, ‘Where is he?’

‘Out back. In his car. He won’t come in till you say it’s OK.’

‘Excellent. That solves everything then. He can bloody well sleep out there.’

‘Marcus!’

‘What do you want
me
to do? This is your project, Underhill.’

‘Go out there and talk to him. It’s gonna take you to convince her this is a person she can trust.’

‘How can I convince
her
to trust him, when—?’

‘You trust what he
does.
Come on, Marcus! OK, he offends you as a person, that’s neither here nor there.’

‘And … and neither is
she
… in case you hadn’t noticed! We don’t know where she is or when she’s coming back. According to your theory she could be in some hotel bedroom with bloody Maiden and a do-not-disturb sign on the bloody door.’

‘You just…’ With some difficulty, Grayle controlled herself. She held open the study door. ‘… go talk to him. Tell him what we need. You can do this.’

But when they got outside, Grayle came to a sudden halt.

‘Uh oh.’

Two vehicles nose to nose in the yard: Cindy’s Honda and the Grand Cherokee.

‘You
knew,’
Marcus snarled.

‘Marcus, so help me, I had no idea! How could I know they were on their way? What am I, psychic?’

Callard stepped down from the Jeep, Bobby Maiden climbing out the other side. Cindy didn’t move from behind the wheel.

Marcus turned to Grayle, the volcano in him only smoking. ‘You’d better get that mutation out of here for at least two hours.’

‘You’re gonna talk to her, right?’

‘You
devious
bitch.’

Up beyond the castle, where the pink fields lay quiescent under the glowering Black Mountains, the small late sun poked out of quilted cloud, like a kid’s torch under the bedclothes. And Cindy unpacked his case.

Grayle said, ‘No birdsuit?’

Cindy had this cloak thing with feathers all over it that you’d think would make him look real silly, but actually it was kind of dramatic if you saw him against the light. And somehow, when he was wearing that cloak of feathers, Cindy was always against the light.

‘Today, I think not.’ He brought out the drum, the goatskin bodhran with the maze-like patterns representing various journeys of the soul. He was wearing slacks and a tweed jacket. The kindly uncle who took you hiking.

‘You figure on taking Callard up to the Knoll?’

‘No, little Grayle, but I shall take myself for a while. Originally planned to go up to Carn Ingli, I had, to recharge the inner batteries, but circumstances dictated otherwise.’

He looked up towards the hills, shading his eyes.

‘Of course, the problem with the Knoll, as an energy centre, is that it is oriented to the sunrise and at eventide is itself a touch depleted. However, if I can still my own personal fears, it will be a start.’

‘I never think of you as having fears.’ Her own worst fear had been assuaged a good deal by what Bobby Maiden had told her quickly, before she’d followed Cindy into the fields. But not totally. The guy was still dead.

‘It’s nothing,’ Cindy said. ‘Trivial. Strange, it is … I had never imagined that piffling career problems would ever weigh on my mind. I suppose it’s the thought of getting old, in poverty. Losing friends.’

Grayle was shocked. She’d never heard Cindy talk like this or seen him looking so down. Never even thought of him as old. Was he sick or something? Had he found out about some encroaching disability?

‘We’re your friends. Even Marcus.’

Cindy smiled sadly.

‘And your career’s soaring.’

‘Like a kite,’ said Cindy. ‘Like a light aircraft.’

Grayle frowned. ‘This have anything to do with that Lottery guy who crashed his plane?’

He didn’t react. Grayle watched a layer of deep grey cloud forming over the mountains like smoke from a grassfire.

‘Cindy … uh … how exactly do you plan to handle this, can I ask that? Is it gonna be some kind of exorcism?’

‘If you mean the gentle detachment and sympathetic redirection of an energy form, then … perhaps. We shall have to see what’s there, isn’t it?’

‘Will you have to treat her? Rather than … it? I mean, if this is a purely psychological blockage, how will you approach that?’

Cindy spread his hands.

‘The medium speaks of spirits, the psychiatrist of syndromes.’

That was an answer?

*       *       *

So Cindy went off to the Knoll, minus birdsuit, and Grayle carried his shaman’s case back to the farmhouse. She found Bobby Maiden hanging around the yard. He was in a curious state. Restless, looking a touch bewildered. He said Marcus had taken Callard into the study.

Bobby was unshaven. Which inevitably got Grayle thinking about why he was unshaven. And, again, about where he and Callard had spent the night.

They walked in the ruins. Bobby told her about the Cheltenham guy who screwed his dead son’s girlfriend, how he’d figured someone called Gary had set up Callard to reveal his secret at the seance. Bobby said he believed Callard when she denied this, but it had brought this person Gary into the picture. Later identified by this cop friend of Bobby’s as a well-known former big-time criminal, now on the talkshow circuit.

Grayle said, ‘Gary Stewart?’

‘Seward. Was a regular London villain. Wages snatches, stuff like that. Then protection. Then drugs, then protecting major drug dealers against other major drug dealers. And then he got rich and then he got nicked. Did seven years. Came out, let somebody ghost his memoirs and got richer. Last year he had his own quiz show on one of the cable channels. It was called “The Loot”.’

‘You know, I think I heard of this guy. Would he have toured his book in the States, couple years ago? Letterman? Jay Leno? One of those shows. I guess nobody took him too seriously – joke English hood, charming grin, quaint London accent.’

‘That’s how America sees our villains? A joke?’

‘Oh,
yeah.
English crooks are like Robin Hood. Quaint. Steal the country-house jewels. They get outsmarted in the end, but only by Hercule Poirot, on account of all English cops are either idiot toffs who ride to hounds or dumb, potato-faced guys with big boots. Sorry and all, Bobby, but we need our stereotypes. How, uh, how did you get along with Callard?’

‘She’s … interesting.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Impressive.’

So you made like rabbits the whole night, huh?

‘She told you stuff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Told me stuff about …’ Bobby looked uncomfortable. ‘About Emma.’

Oh, Jesus, his major point of vulnerability.

‘Stuff she couldn’t’ve known?’

‘Unless you or Marcus told her.’

Grayle sighed. ‘No. We just told her you were a cop who was not as other cops. Like more of a fruitcake.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I kind of think she could’ve told me stuff too. About Ersula. Only I declined. I guess you didn’t … decline.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I didn’t decline.’

Goddamn New Age cop. They stood at the base of the headless tower. The wind seemed to be rising.

‘Bobby, did I do wrong, calling Cindy?’

‘He got me through a very bad night once.’

‘I know. That doesn’t answer the question.’

‘He makes connections we wouldn’t even think of. No, I’m really glad you called him. It was inspired.’

‘Let’s not go overboard, Bobby.’

‘She says she’s going to leave tonight.’

‘She does? To go where?’

He shook his head. ‘She’s not saying. There are things she isn’t going to tell us. And once she drives away from here …’

‘You’re a tad scared, right?’

‘Bit. These guys are not Robin Hood, and they’d spread Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells all over the ceiling.’ Bobby smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to …’

The wind began to rattle in the tower.

‘The
Lottery
person?’ Persephone laughed – a brittle, jittery laugh – at the utter absurdity of it. ‘This person, this shamanic therapist of yours is … that Lottery person?’

Marcus felt his face go red.

‘I watched it once,’ she said. ‘As a kind of social exercise, I suppose. It was … bizarre.’

‘One word for it.’

‘He’s transsexual or something, isn’t he? Flaunts that ghastly … bird thing.’

‘Kelvyn Kite,’ Marcus said through his teeth.

Persephone was sitting on the sofa in the study, dressed rather demurely, wearing no make-up, reminding him of how she’d looked in school uniform. Even plaited her hair; it hung down one side of her like a cathedral bell-rope.

‘I think’, Marcus shuffled, ‘that we should forget the whole thing. It was a mistake. If you have to go, you have to go.’

Persephone cupped her chin in her palms. ‘Tell me about him.’

‘No, it’s stupid. I’m just being a … self-righteous old phoney.’

‘
Tell
me.’

Sydney Mars-Lewis. Madman. The red kite. The aboriginal mentors, in North Wales.

‘Tradition goes back to Merlin.
Allegedly.
In that, if Merlin actually existed, he was probably as twisted and deranged as Lewis.’

Marcus explained, as best he could, the role that Lewis had accepted for himself: the misfit, the outcast who had grown up reviled, scorned, shunned. The walking duality of the man – male and female, sanity and madness, reality and fantasy. A foot in two worlds. At least two.

Watching her eyes appear to darken and knowing she was remembering her schooldays and the taunts of her peers.
Witch doctor. Ju-ju woman.

He told her that Lewis had been an actor, an end-of-the-pier entertainer, a long-time occasional contributor to
The Phenomenologist …
and, as it happened, the first to suspect that a number of apparently unconnected murders in the British countryside bore the hallmarks of a single perpetrator: the Green Man.

‘Despite his high-camp demeanour and that irritating Welsh whine, he does seem to possess what I can only describe as a dowser’s sensitivity to … well… to the nearness of evil, I suppose. To be quite frank, Persephone, basically I can’t stand to spend too much time with the ludicrous bastard. Pains the hell out of me to admit he has abilities that will always be beyond me, but there it is.’

‘The Lottery man.’ She thought about it, with a watery smile. ‘Must be my day for light entertainers.’ She stood up, sudden rain
flecking the window behind her. ‘Sure. What the hell? Let’s do it. Thank you, Marcus.’