Mean Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Tempting?’ Grayle wondered, sitting down.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Which paper was that?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea. The offer was made through … well, a PR man you’ll have heard of. The deal was I wouldn’t find out who it was until I’d signed a secrecy agreement. They were obviously afraid I’d tell a rival tabloid I’d been approached and they’d do a story about what a shoddy outfit the first paper was. I say no to everything like that.’

  Diana. Out of pure curiosity, Grayle had combed Marcus’s Callard file for anything relating to her sessions with the Princess of Wales. No mention. Even after Diana’s death, Callard had revealed nothing.

  ‘But you accepted twenty-five grand from this MP, right?’

  ‘Ex-MP. That’s the point: I’m making. At least he wasn’t trying to conceal his identity.’

  ‘Who is this guy, Marcus?’

  ‘Richard Barber? Time-serving back-bencher. Low-profile. Rural constituency. Lost to the Lib-Dems, I think. Where exactly did this happen, Persephone?’

  ‘A party. Sort of. In Cheltenham. An expensive flat, newly refurbished, in one of those discreet blocks near the Rotunda. I was told Barber had sold his constituency house, bought something in France, plus this pied à terre in Cheltenham, because his daughter lives there, apparently.’

  Marcus sniffed. ‘More like dubious business dealings in the area. Never met an MP of any political persuasion who wasn’t a greedy little shit.’

  ‘Normally, Nancy, my agent, has instructions to bin invitations like this on sight. But the crazy money Barber was offering for a single sitting … plus the fact that this was the eminently respectable former honourable member for somewhere green and quiet. I mean, it was all terribly civilized – a suite booked for me at a hotel in the town centre, Barber sends his … driver to fetch me.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘A month? Five weeks?’

  Grayle said, ‘The guy lives most of the time in France, but he keeps a driver over here?’

  ‘The man certainly wore a chauffeur’s hat. He was very amiable, very chatty. He said his esteemed employer had a great and abiding interest in spiritualism and couldn’t wait to meet me. Which, in hindsight, seemed rather odd because the welcome I got from Barber was lukewarm, to say the least, and the event turned out to be some sort of extremely bland cocktail party – the kind someone like him might host on behalf of a charity. He didn’t appear to know the guests particularly well, he was quite distant – didn’t really know what I did. Just seemed to want to … get it over.’

  ‘After paying twenty-five grand?’ There were people in the States who’d toss this kind of money about; in England, unlikely, in Grayle’s view.

  ‘I suppose, by the time I began the sitting, I was feeling rather resentful. There was this dreadful cabaret atmosphere – people drinking rather a lot and some of the men were ogling me as though I was a stripper. So when I had a message through from a boy who’d killed himself, I made no real attempt to filter the information. To the … dismay … of a particular middle-aged couple.’

  ‘Message?’ Grayle was still finding it hard to get her head around this stuff being entirely routine for Callard.

  ‘It’s irrelevant really. The boy got in a state and killed himself more in anger after he found out his girlfriend was sleeping with his father.’

  Grayle was appalled. ‘The mother didn’t know about this and you told her?’

  Persephone Callard scowled. ‘I was in a bad mood.’

  ‘What if it was bullshit?’ Grayle threw up her arms. ‘Jesus, so much for if you receive a disturbing message you keep it under your ass!’

  ‘Look,’ Callard snarled, leaning forward, ‘I never claimed to be Mother Teresa. Don’t be so fucking holier than thou, Grayle. Go back and read some of your more lurid columns.’

  ‘Can we scratch each other’s eyes out later?’ Marcus levered himself up in his armchair. ‘What happened then?’

  Callard leaned back. ‘What happened was that the father walked out. Then a couple of the women took the mother upstairs or somewhere. And I was feeling rather sick and disgusted with myself and disgusted with Barber for setting it up. So I decided to leave, too. Told him he could keep his money.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He grovelled.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Kept saying, We want you to carry on. We want you to stay. Please don’t go. That sort of thing.’

  ‘We?’ Grayle said.

  ‘That’s what he said. I think he was frightened.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was a bit scared myself by then – had a feeling the father was going to be out there waiting for me. I don’t think he believed it was a message from his son; he thought I’d been given information about the suicide in advance. That he’d been set up. I really didn’t want to run into him in the dark while trying to attract a taxi. So I stayed. I did the sitting, proper. I had them play my music, my spooky Debussy, and I … said the words.’

  Grayle remembered. ‘The lines are open.’

  ‘Yes. It’s become fairly well known now, more of a catchphrase than an invocation. But it’s useful because it acts on the … audience. Shuts them up. I mean on both sides of the curtain.’

  ‘Shuts up the spirits?’

  ‘What usually happens then is that I’m aware of almost a throng. Like when you’re tuning a radio – fragments of voices, questions, pleas, and static. Only worse because it’s like half a dozen stations coming at you at once. At this point one can either request a guide or guidance or suggest that they form, I suppose, an orderly queue.’

  The lamplight showing up a sheen on her face that hadn’t been there before. She was being deliberately prosaic – all this about radio stations and orderly queues – maybe to keep from spooking herself. It wasn’t working. Grayle became watchful. We’re coming to something.

  ‘This time, the voices were far back.’ Callard moistened her lips with her tongue. ‘And about as comprehensible as a football crowd when you’re driving past the stadium. I couldn’t bring them up because of him …’

  Callard closed her eyes, and Grayle saw her fists tighten on her knees. Outside of her blouse now, the dark gold cross was in shadow.

  Marcus said, ‘You mean Barber?’

  She blinked. ‘Barber?’

  ‘You said because of him.’

  She sat up. ‘I don’t know who he is. He doesn’t talk.’ The sheen of sweat on her face was dense as tanning oil. ‘Sometimes I think he’s the devil. Satan. Sometimes I think I’ve brought down Satan.’

  There was silence.

  Outside the door they could hear Malcolm padding up and down the hallway.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Marcus said eventually.

  ‘He was just there,’ Callard said. ‘It was there.’

  Grayle and Marcus both stayed silent, Grayle thinking it was maybe only the tea-party approach and the Salvation Army hymns that prevented spiritualism from mutating into some kind of dark necromancy. It was there? Jesus.

  ‘I smelled it first. This happens sometimes.’

  ‘A scent of violets.’ Grayle remembering some old country-house ghost story.

  ‘No. It was rather acrid and oily and spiced with that … that smell one tends to associate with violent, male lust.’

  Grayle said, ‘Huh?’

  Marcus looked uncomfortable.

  Grayle was thinking, Justin. Motor oil. The bitch is making this up.

  She said, ‘Maybe, when you’re feeling resentful, you don’t get violets.’

  Persephone Callard, not even looking at Grayle, said mildly, ‘The bitch is not making it up.’

  Grayle froze. A log shifted inside the stove.

  Outside the study door Malcolm howled once – sharply – and then Grayle heard the patter of his heavy paws, receding.

  XVI

  THE WORD WENT UP TO HEADQU
ARTERS AND, AROUND TEN P.M., Bradbury himself arrived in Elham, brought in from home.

  Bobby Maiden was kept waiting nearly an hour. Sitting alone in the CID room, drinking tea from the machine, while the Superintendent talked first to Steve Rea from Traffic and then to Barrett and then Beattie, God forbid.

  Eventually, Beattie came back, expressionless. ‘Mr Bradbury’d like a word. Sir.’

  No look of triumph, at least. The clock over the door said 23.54. In the passage, Maiden heard a drunk en route to the cells, screaming, ‘Tried to touch me up, that fucker. You see that? Bleeding police bum-bandits …’

  The door to the DCI’s office was ajar. Maiden tapped.

  ‘Come in, Bobby.’

  The man strongly fancied as the next ACC (crime) was draped tiredly behind the desk that was supposed, in a couple of weeks’ time, to be Maiden’s.

  Generally loose kind of bloke, Bernard Bradbury. Big, clean, pink hands, but otherwise insubstantial, somehow, a blur materializing in bigger and bigger chairs. Maiden’s dad had known Bradbury when the boss had been a young PC up in Wilmslow, where Norman Plod was an old PC. Norman sneering when Bradbury got his stripes at twenty-six, Shiny-arsed clerk. He’ll go far, you watch.

  ‘Sit down, Bobby. With you in a second.’ Bradbury was reading statements, looking unimpressed. Maiden’s own statement would be somewhere in the pile.

  He sat quietly. He was not quiet inside. Inside, he was like a burning building, everything collapsing inwards. Almost expecting Bernard Bradbury to be feeling it, pushing back his chair from the heat.

  But Bradbury, this mild, schoolteacherish presence, was immune to heat. And straight, Maiden thought. This was the man who, two weeks ago, had strongly suggested Maiden apply for the proposed DCI’s job.

  He shuffled his reports into shape, packed away his reading glasses, faced Maiden at last.

  ‘Thought you might like an unofficial chat at this stage, Bobby. Or shall we pull in a third party? Up to you.’

  ‘Expect I’d say the same things either way, sir.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’ Bradbury hit the reports with the heel of his hand. ‘So this is a pile of manure, is it, Bobby?’

  ‘I think I can smell it from here, sir,’ Maiden said.

  ‘Let’s not call him Vic,’ Bradbury said. ‘Let’s call him Clutton, shall we?’

  ‘He’s the victim, sir.’

  ‘Not necessarily, from where I’m sitting,’ Bradbury said.

  He talked about Maiden’s car. ‘Not hedgehog blood,’ he said, echoing Beattie.

  Maiden said nothing.

  ‘We’ve got another witness now, Bobby. Girl of twelve doing her homework in her bedroom. Heard the car hit the gate and rushed over to the window. This is the house next door but one to Clutton’s girlfriend’s house.’

  ‘This girl see the driver, sir?’

  ‘What if I said she did?’

  Maiden shrugged.

  ‘Well, she didn’t. Not from that angle.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bradbury said. ‘All right, let’s go back over the sequence. According to your statement, you met Clutton in the Crown just before six. We also have statements from three, ah, respectable local businessmen who were occupying a nearby table. All of whom confirm that the discussion between you and Clutton was, at times … heated.’

  ‘Not from where I was sitting, sir.’

  ‘A solicitor. An estate agent. And a county councillor.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, I thought you said respectable.’

  ‘Let’s not get clever, Maiden. Right – Clutton was your long-time informant, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Or your friend, perhaps?’

  ‘There are levels of friendship.’

  ‘You’re agreeing that there was a more personal connection between you and Victor Clutton then?’

  ‘We had some history.’

  Bradbury hissed softly through his teeth. ‘This is really not what I want to be hearing from you, Bobby. What were you and Clutton talking about?’

  ‘He’d asked to meet me. He had some information.’

  ‘About what?’

  Maiden sighed.

  ‘Don’t piss me about, lad.’

  ‘My flat was broken into. I, er … didn’t report it.’

  ‘You didn’t report it?’

  ‘There was nothing stolen. And not much damage.’

  ‘You didn’t report it?’

  ‘It would have reopened a can of worms I wasn’t quite ready to reopen.’

  Bradbury drew a long, long breath.

  ‘As you can imagine, I’m already under pressure to fling open the doors to the jackboots from CIB.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I don’t want those buggers clumping round the place if it can be avoided. You’re not helping me avoid it.’

  ‘With respect, boss,’ Maiden said, ‘CIB should have been in here en masse two year ago.’

  ‘Don’t.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I can see your little bloody can of worms rolling towards me, Maiden. I would like you to pick it up very carefully and place it neatly back on the shelf behind you.’

  ‘You’re saying you don’t want to know what we were discussing in the Crown?’

  ‘I said place it on the shelf. I didn’t say throw it in the bin.’

  ‘Just that some things have a limited shelf-life,’ Maiden said.

  Bradbury began to hiss through his teeth again, tapping his knee as though he was trying to keep something off the boil.

  ‘All right,’ he said eventually, ‘off the record, I think we both know that quite a few people were very glad when that business appeared to have sorted itself out. An inquiry would’ve cost silly money with no appreciable change in the situation.’

  ‘Except that a senior officer of this division might have been doing serious time by now.’

  ‘And this force would be under the wrong spotlight again.’

  ‘But the bastard’s still—’

  ‘Maiden.’

  Maiden shut up.

  ‘I’m trying to help you, lad,’ Bradbury said.

  Come on, Mr Maiden, I’m trying to help you … No-one had seen Vic die. No-one had heard him scream, probably because he hadn’t screamed. The killer must have been parked, in Maiden’s car, out of sight but close enough to watch him and Clutton emerge and go their separate ways on foot.

  Maiden said quietly, ‘I really, really want the bastard who nicked my car and drove it over Vic Clutton. Whoever he is. Whoever he’s … linked to.’

  Bradbury hit the reports again. ‘Lad, there are some people, not ten yards from this office, who think we’ve already got him in the building. No. I mean you, you daft bastard! You say in your statement that you and Clutton came out of the Crown and there was your car … gone. Anybody else in the car park at the time to back this up? Apparently not. So, you’ve got only one witness to the apparent theft and he’s dead. Right. You could’ve gone back in the pub and used the phone there to report the car stolen. You didn’t. You could’ve called in here – not much of a detour, if my geography’s reliable. You didn’t. You went home. Mr Cool.’

  ‘Did they find any prints on the car?’

  ‘Apart from yours?’

  ‘Oh, come on, boss,’ Maiden said. ‘Whoever did this didn’t even attempt to make it look like a hit and run.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Bradbury leaned back. ‘Hit and run. You know a bit about hit and run, don’t you, Bobby?’

  ‘This and that,’ Maiden said tonelessly.

  ‘Never caught whoever ran you over, did we? Night you snuffed it.’

  Maiden said nothing.

  ‘You see, if we open up your famous can of worms, we also find the old rumour that your accident coincided with your ultimately fruitless investigation of the late Tony Parker …’

  ‘Only fruitless because he died, sir.’

  ‘… whose payrol
l, at that time, as is fairly well known, included one Victor Clutton.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Working, I believe, as a driver. And minder to Mr Parker’s daughter, Emma, who—’

  Maiden stood up. ‘That was nothing to do with this, and you bloody well—’

  ‘Sit down, Bobby. I’m merely pointing out what’s going to be said if we open the can of worms. Sit the fuck down.’

  Maiden sat.

  ‘Now,’ Bradbury said, ‘while nobody is suggesting you deliberately planned this man’s death, being stupid enough to knock him over with your own car, there has been the more likely suggestion that you and Clutton fell out in the pub and he walked out and you followed him in your motor, in a bit of a rage, and …’

  ‘Whose theory is that?’

  ‘… quickly abandoning the car and later reporting it stolen.’

  ‘In which case, how did I get back from that layby up the bypass in time to report the theft to Lisa Starling? No buses. Could have hitched a lift, I suppose, but that would’ve been a risk.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re very fit, Bobby.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘You still made it to the hospital on foot. Who told you about it, by the way?’

  ‘Mutual friend. A nurse. Why don’t you just caution me, boss?’

  ‘This is the unofficial chat, Bobby. You see, while I’m a man best noted for not costing the Service any money when it can be avoided, you, on the other hand, are that rarity – a copper who’s managed to progress through actual thief-catching talent. Which, admittedly, means fuck all these days – it’s people like me who are valued by our masters, Home Secretary downwards. However, in these very particular circumstances, it seemed clear to me that you should be the man to take charge of Elham CID and I still believe that, all right?’

  Maiden couldn’t form a reply; he was losing touch with Bradbury’s reality.

  ‘But if that can gets opened now, Inspector Maiden, there’s no way you’ll get that job. Your career goes on ice until it’s sorted. Which may be a while.’

  ‘I don’t really know what you mean.’

  ‘You bloody do, Bobby. Now …’ Bradbury slid the thin sheaf of statements into a cardboard file ‘… I understand you’re on leave. Two weeks. Beginning tomorrow morning.’