Mean Spirit (35 page)

Grayle wondered what might have happened at this point if the window
hadn’t
exploded. ‘This gets us nowhere,’ she said hastily. ‘What actually happened to Judge?’

‘From what I can remember,’ Bobby said, ‘his body was found in a rubbish skip somewhere. He’d been shot in the back of the head. It was assumed it was a gangland killing. Only one shot, close range. Looked professional. No-one was ever caught.’

‘When was this?’

‘Over a year ago.’ He opened the paperback. ‘I assume this edition’s only just out. In the front here, Seward’s written a ridiculous kind of eulogy to the old thug, also offering a large reward for information leading to his killer. He says he’ll hand any new information over to the police immediately. I think that’s where we’re supposed to laugh.’

‘What exactly was Clarence to Seward?’

‘Minder, enforcer. Basically, what he did to that bloke in the prison
for free was what he did professionally to people on the outside.’

‘Oh boy,’ Grayle said sombrely. ‘If we believe Callard, both of them were present at this Sir Barber’s party in Cheltenham. One of them alive, one—’

‘Quite.’ Marcus gave a short cough. ‘Er … no matter how bizarre it seems, we probably have to consider this is what we’re looking at. The planned reuniting of the ex-criminal, Seward, and this … this Clarence Judge … across the, ah … the, ah …’

‘I think the word you’re groping for, Marcus, is, uh, grave. Question: was this Seward intent on using Callard to reach his dead pal, Clarence? Was that what this whole Cheltenham charade was about?’

‘We know he is obsessed with spiritualism,’ Bobby said. ‘We know he has used mediums to try and contact his mother because it’s in the book. And we know he was shattered and angry – almost
affronted
– by Judge’s murder.’

‘And we
know’,
Grayle felt suddenly very excited, ‘that he was real determined to find out who the killer was, because he was offering …
how
much, Bobby?’

‘Up to twenty grand.’

‘Strange, huh? That’s close to what Callard was paid to put on a seance.’

‘Right,’ Bobby said, ‘we also have reason to think that it was Seward, not Barber, who was putting up the cash that night. That Barber was a front, presumably because Seward suspected Seffi would refuse to do it if she knew she was being employed by someone like him.’

‘Right! Hey, this is cool. Seward, who believes firmly in this stuff, is investing twenty grand in Callard being able to put him in contact with Clarence so that – this is
it,
guys –
so he can find out from Clarence who it was shot him!’

‘Good God,’ Marcus said.

‘It adds up,’ Bobby admitted. ‘Seward’s making no secret of being determined to find out who killed his friend, but the underlying truth there might be that Judge and Seward have the same enemies, and Seward’s watching his own back. He’s thinking: they got Clarence, am I going to be next? Yeah. I can accept, given his beliefs, that he would set this up.’

‘I can see this whole thing,’ Grayle said. ‘Seward stays in the background until Callard says, “I’m getting a guy coming through with like weird eyes and a funny scar. He’s got a message for Gary. Do we have a
Gary
in the house?” And up steps Seward with some heavy questions. Who did it, Clarence? Who blew you away? Just gimme a name.’

‘However, the man presumably doesn’t realize’, Marcus said, ‘that the most useful piece of information ever gleaned from a denizen of the bastard spirit world is that the brown socks mislaid by Uncle Tom in 1946 may be found behind the fucking hot-water tank.’

‘Ah.’ Grayle lifted a finger. ‘I think he does know that. I think that’s why he wanted Persephone Callard.’

‘Only the best,’ Bobby said.

‘Plus … what about this? … all the people at that party, with the possible exception of Sir Barber, had one thing in common. They were all people who knew Clarence Judge! It was like
Clarence’s
party! How could he – Jesus, this is eerie – how could he not turn up for his own party?’

‘Underhill, I would hate to think you’re getting carried away …’

‘It’s a hypothesis, Marcus, but I think it’s a good one. Callard kept saying how like a fish out of water Barber seemed among these people. He didn’t know them, he was a little nervy in their company.’

‘I figured that too,’ Bobby said. ‘These were mostly, if not all of them, decidedly iffy people.’

‘It’s still a bloody gamble, Maiden.’

‘So? Seward’s a gambler. He loves risk. Also, he put himself very close to Seffi earlier on, when he posed as Barber’s chauffeur so he could pick her up at the hotel. So he could get close to her. Would he see that as establishing a link – with someone who wouldn’t normally handle pond life like Gary Seward?’

Grayle stood up. ‘There’s clearly a whole lot we don’t know, but we have a working theory. So let’s follow it through. Callard gives out real indications that she’s in contact with Clarence. But then it all goes wrong because Callard’s this loose-cannon kind of medium. The breaking of the vase, all this chaos … and then she runs out on them.’

‘Taking Mr … Judge with her?’ Cindy said delicately.

‘Right! And then’, Grayle grabbed his hand with a jangling of bangles, ‘she goes off into the night … with this dead guy … attached to her. And she can’t get rid of it.’

‘Why, though?’ Marcus said. ‘Why can’t she get rid of it? She’s an extremely experienced medium, she’s done all this before.’

‘Yeah, well, I can’t explain that. Except maybe there’s something different here. Something she
hasn’t
done before. Or, of course … she may know more than she told us.’

‘The point about all this’, Bobby Maiden said, ‘is that most of it remains valid even if you don’t believe in ghosts. All you need to accept is that Seward himself is a complete believer. Also a gambler, chancer, ruthless bastard …’

‘Because of what comes next, right?’ Grayle said.

XXXVIII

WHAT CAME NEXT WAS THE MYSLETON LODGE INCIDENT
.

And the dead guy, Crewe. And Justin.

Bobby hypothesized that Seward wasn’t about to give up on Callard, even though she’d put herself out of the picture.

Grayle took up from here.

‘Seward’s getting real antsy. He’s thinking: Shit, does this woman now know what
I
oughta know? After all, he’s paid this broad twenty grand, he’s
entitled
to that information. What’s he do next, Bobby, how’s he go about this?’

‘He puts out feelers. Among his own people, to begin with, and maybe some of his showbiz friends. His network. On the fringes of which, maybe, are Justin Sharpe’s “hard friends” in Cheltenham. So when Justin happens to find out that Seffi’s at the lodge at Mysleton …’

‘It gets back to Seward in like no time at all, and Seward, he’s through with elaborate scams, arranging smart parties. It’s down to basics. He sends these guys out to fetch her. Bring her in.’

‘That could be it. We know that one of them was an employee of a security firm doing a bit of moonlighting, like they often do.’

Marcus looked appalled. ‘The man was having Persephone kidnapped, to make her attempt to re-engage with … Is that even possible, Lewis? That she could be
forced
to do it? Go into trance, under duress?’

Cindy considered. ‘Perhaps we should be asking ourselves not
what is possible, but what such a man as this might consider possible.’

‘And when it all goes pear-shaped and one man winds up dead,’ Bobby said, ‘Justin’s hard friends go back to make sure he doesn’t implicate them. Maybe one of them is even the other Mysleton guy. The one who felt obliged to put Crewe out of his misery.’

Grayle thought of something. Wished that maybe she hadn’t. Felt queasy.

‘If they made Justin talk, there’s, uh, one thing he could’ve told them. Which is my name.’

‘Oh,’ Bobby said.

‘I told him my name. I didn’t write it down or anything, I didn’t spell it out, but…’

‘This is madness!’ Marcus howled. ‘It’s got completely out of hand.’

‘Yes,’ Cindy said, ‘perhaps it has.’

‘What if the bastards turn up here?’

‘Just a name?’ Bobby said. ‘No address?’

‘No. No address.’

‘She’d be hard to track down from just a name, Marcus, even if Justin remembered it correctly. All the same …’

Marcus pushed his chair back. ‘We should take it to the police.’ He glanced at Bobby, coughed. ‘I mean …’

‘You mean the real police,’ Bobby said.

Grayle thought about having to make that full statement, tell the cops about the hacker at the bottom of the River Wye, take them to the spot where they tossed it in, stand by while the divers went down. Oh God.

‘They gonna believe us, Bobby?’

‘Do
we
believe us?’

Marcus came to his feet, paced the flagged floor. ‘We’ve been here before, I think. What the holy fuck are we going to do, Maiden?’

‘If this is Seward,’ Bobby said, ‘it would be naïve to assume that he’s going to stop now. He’s still going to want Seffi.’

‘We need to find her first, right?’ Grayle now had that jumpy sensation around her middle.

‘Well, at least I know a senior copper who’s prepared to believe anything of Gary Seward. If we can spend an hour or two trying to harden all of this up a bit, I could take it across to Gloucester and
dump it in his lap. That would be the sensible solution.’

‘I guess.’ Any residual excitement seeped out of Grayle, leaving only the queasy feeling. If they were right, at bottom this was just a sordid tale of underworld obsession, revenge, cover up. Which, as Marcus said, had gotten way out of hand.

And yet was still glowing darkly under the halo of Big Mystery: the imploded window, the drawing – where did you get by taking stuff like this to the cops? You got disbelieved. Derided. Suspected. Accused. Referred for psychiatric reports, like all those creeps who said,
I heard a voice telling me to do it.

‘All right.’ Marcus cleared his throat. ‘I think we all probably agree that before doing anything hasty we should spend some time attempting to locate Persephone ourselves. She needs to know about this possible Judge connection.’

‘Assuming she doesn’t already,’ Grayle said. ‘And that’s one of the reasons she hightailed it into the night without so much as an offer to pay for the glass.’

‘Yes, all right, Underhill. So how do we go about finding her?’

‘We could call in a medium,’ Grayle said.

‘Or we could simply call her agent,’ Maiden said. ‘She was talking to her yesterday from this pub we called at on the way over here. Whatever it was about, she didn’t want me to know. She took the phone into the loo. Afterwards she started saying there’d be no point in coming to St Mary’s, and that she had to be somewhere tomorrow – that’s today.’

‘She didn’t want us to know where she was going,’ Grayle said. ‘Why?’

‘Do we have the number of the agency?’

Grayle smiled. ‘I guess Marcus does.’

Marcus called from his study. He was quivering with the kind of adrenalin charge he’d thought he’d never experience again. ‘Want to speak to Nancy Rich,’ he told some lofty bitch.

‘Ms Rich is in a meeting. Perhaps you could call back later.’

‘Just get her,’ Marcus rasped.

‘I don’t know whether you heard what I—’

‘Well get her
out
of the bloody meeting!’ Marcus roared. ‘This is
crucially important.’

‘And you are?’

‘Marcus Bacton, my name. Tell her—’

‘Does she know you?’

‘Tell her it’s about Persephone Callard.’

‘Are you a journalist?’

‘What I am’, said Marcus, ‘is a man with very little time to fart about, so you can tell Rich that if she doesn’t want to lose her principal meal ticket, she’d better get off her complacent arse and drag herself to the fucking phone. Am I making myself clear?’

‘Explicitly,’ the woman said coldly. ‘Hold the line, please.’

Marcus waited. The agency’s phone played Mozart to suggest you were connected to people of taste and intelligence. Marcus drummed his fingers on the desk. Outside, the wind was still battering the castle walls.

Nancy Rich came on the line.

‘You have one minute, Mr Baxter.’

‘Bacton.
Look, I’m calling because I believe you’re still in fairly regular contact with Persephone Callard.’

‘I’m her agent.’

‘It’s imperative I speak to her. Without delay.’

‘Mr Bacton, have you any idea how many callers say precisely that?’

‘And half of them are dead, no doubt. Madam, I don’t care how many bloody crank calls you get, this is not one of them.’

‘Had to play the Winterstone card, in the end,’ he told them. ‘That’s the school. Which, inexplicably, is still in existence. Says she’ll call me back. Wants to check me out, I suppose. I think she’s still afraid I’m a bloody journalist.’

‘You are a bloody journalist,’ Grayle said.

‘Hmm. Yes. One forgets.’

Grayle smiled. The only good thing about this weird, uncomfortable situation was that Marcus had been galvanized.

The rest of the morning they drank coffee, nibbled toast, tossed around wild theories. Cindy tried, in vain, to call his producer. Grayle stashed all the dailies out of sight because of the way he kept going back to stare in distress at those big headlines. In the end Cindy said he’d walk up to the Knoll, give himself a retune.

Around two, a call came through.

Bobby’s mobile.

Foxworth. Maiden took the phone outside.

‘Information for you, Bobby. Show you what a helpful fellow I am.’

‘I always knew that, Ron,’ Maiden said warily.

‘Sir Richard Barber, Bobby. Still interested?’

‘Sure.’

‘Barber and Seward. It’s a yes. Barber retired at the last election, yeah? Afterwards, gets divorced from his missus. Papers are thinking, hello, what’s been going on there? But it’s too late now, he’s nobody special any more, so they never tried too hard to find out what he’d been up to in his nice new flat. Which, as it turns out, he’d been renting from Seward for quite a while before he bought it. Only for girls, mind, nothing sordid – Gary hates perverts. Just nice, clean, grown-up girlies.’