Mean Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  Got all these hard friends.

  ‘There was one of those hydraulic jacks about two feet from the rear end of the car. I think someone jacked the car up and made him lie down underneath.’

  Grayle was white. ‘How could they make him?’

  ‘Gunpoint? There are situations where you’ll do anything you’re told.’

  Marcus said, ‘If they had the car jacked up and then let it down on him … it had no tyres, you say?’

  ‘Without the tyres, it was going all the way down on him.’

  ‘God almighty, Maiden.’

  ‘Maybe it started out as torture. Perhaps they wanted some information.’

  The Volkswagen lowered inch by inch, Justin screaming until he had no breath left, telling them everything he knew, gabbling it out, and they probably knew he’d told them everything, but they just went on lowering the car. Maybe quite interested in how it would go because they’d never done it like this before.

  ‘Who … who were they?’ Grayle’s relief at not being a killer was no longer apparent. ‘Jesus, this is even more awful …’

  Maiden shook his head. The air had felt thick with agony and suffocating terror. Of course, he realized he’d generated this atmosphere himself, standing there transfixed, smelling Justin’s last moments. Building up, in the polluted space, images so real that he’d felt like a voyeur, guilty that he was virtually seeing it happen and could do nothing to stop it.

  ‘You’d better tell me about him,’ he said to Grayle.

  * * *

  As the afternoon closed down, Grayle explained why she’d been in Gloucestershire on Wednesday. Glad that Callard was not in the room. Presumably, having made her kind offer to admit guilt falsely, she’d decided to contain what curiosity she had about Justin, keep a low profile while Bobby was around.

  ‘Hang on.’ Bobby looked up from fondling his old pal Malcolm. Blinked. ‘This is Persephone Callard, the psychic?’

  ‘No, Persephone Callard, the hairdresser.’

  ‘Right. Sorry.’

  ‘Old friend of Marcus’s.’

  ‘I never knew that.’

  ‘Marcus Bacton,’ Grayle said. ‘Confidant of the stars.’

  Without going into the Cheltenham stuff, Grayle and Marcus précised the background and Grayle told Bobby about the fraught final leg of her journey to Mysleton House. And what had happened that night.

  ‘Christ,’ Bobby said. ‘These guys. Do you have any—?’

  ‘I have no idea. If not Justin, I have no idea at all.’

  ‘They sound … professional.’

  ‘What I felt at the time. Kind of SAS-looking.’

  ‘Whoever killed Justin, that was also …’

  ‘Jesus, you think there might still be a connection?’

  ‘Can’t think there’d be too many outfits of that kind operating in one small area of the Cotswolds within the same day or so. Can you, Marcus?’

  ‘Well … I suppose the fact that Sharpe was also at Mysleton Lodge within hours of these bastards turning up …’

  Bobby said, ‘A bloke in the village told me Justin had hard friends. In Gloucester and Cheltenham.’

  ‘Cheltenham,’ Grayle echoed. Bobby looked at her. ‘Just keeps coming up, is all. Go on.’

  ‘Justin likes making money without actually working. Plus, as you said, maybe he’s worried about his clock running down. So he’s putting himself about, getting into excitingly bad company. Leaving cards in phone boxes with a view to ripping off stranded motorists and helping ladies in distress into the back of his van. And when he finds out Persephone Callard’s in the area … OK, I don’t suppose even Justin thinks he’s got much chance of scoring there, but …’

  ‘Unlike with cheap-looking Holy Grayle. Thanks, Bobby.’

  ‘Aw now, Grayle, I didn’t…’

  ‘Just kidding,’ Grayle said unsmiling. ‘OK, Justin figured he might’ve been able to make some money out of the information is what you’re saying, with everyone looking for Ms Callard. Me, I’d just go to the press, bargain for a swift ten grand. But unless reporting’s gotten even less responsible these days, those guys were not like any journalists I ever worked with, so I guess—’

  ‘You’re not Justin,’ Bobby said. ‘What Justin does is brag to his mates, and maybe one of them passes it on to someone he knows is interested, or somebody overhears Justin relating how he had sex with Persephone Callard.’

  ‘Someone in Cheltenham?’

  Bobby shrugged.

  ‘So Persephone was the target,’ Marcus said. ‘Who, then? Why?’

  ‘And why did they find it necessary to kill Justin afterwards? That’s just a theory.’ Bobby Maiden’s eyes trapped Grayle’s. ‘I think you’ve got to decide what you want to do about this. Whether you want to bring the police in.’

  ‘Rather thought we had,’ Marcus said.

  ‘In your back-door kind of way.’ Bobby was clearly still pissed off at the way Marcus ran him round the block, blind.

  ‘Be reasonable, Maiden …’ Marcus doing injured innocence with overtones of sick old man. ‘I couldn’t have told you all the background over the phone, now could I? Besides, I saw you as a friend, not …’

  ‘Anyway, how do you want to play it? You can’t have both of me.’

  Marcus humphed. ‘Can hardly make a decision on something like this without consulting Persephone.’

  ‘With Marcus,’ Grayle said, ‘Callard always gets to call the shots.’

  ‘What’s she like?’ Bobby messed with Malcolm’s ears. ‘I just think of Doris Stokes, but not as cosy. How sure are you that she didn’t know those blokes?’

  Grayle looked over at Marcus. ‘You can’t be sure of anything with Callard. Sometimes you think you’re getting to kind of like her, sometimes you even think you’re starting to understand her. Then she comes out with something so off the wall, and it’s like, hey, come on …’

  She tailed off, becoming aware of that dark, slim shape in the study doorway. A woman who’d been too long around ghosts.

  Callard glided into the room and put on the lamp. She was wearing the grey cardigan she’d had on when Grayle had first seen her in Mysleton Lodge. The one she didn’t over-button.

  Grayle was depressingly aware of Bobby catching his breath.

  XXII

  SATURDAY MORNING, GRAYLE WAS SO IRRITATED, SHE JUST HURLED herself into work.

  It should have been a really good morning. Another bright, overcast day, the first suggestion of a light green haze over the deep Border hedgerows. And, for the first time in over two weeks, they were working together in the editorial room – Marcus at the trestle table, catching up on most of a week’s papers, Grayle burrowing in back copies of the magazine. Doing what she figured she did best.

  And trying, God damn it, to avoid thinking about Bobby Maiden and Callard.

  An elderly correspondent called Hedges over in Norfolk had sent in an update on one of those hitchhiking spook stories: dead of night, guy in old-time clothing pops up in front of your car with a hand raised and when you stop he’s disappeared. Grayle thought she might use it to nose off a composite piece, collating a bunch of other hitchhiking ghost stories from the past ten years. It was an old scam, but it filled space, which was what they needed right now, with all the time lost.

  ‘Try autumn eighty-nine,’ Marcus mumbled, head in the Mirror.

  ‘OK.’ Grayle started prising apart fifteen-year-old Phenomenologists, which were all moulded together. ‘Marcus, you’re looking better, did I say that?’

  ‘I may not die,’ Marcus conceded. ‘Not imminently, anyway.’

  ‘Got it,’ Grayle said presently. ‘Hampshire. Old lady in a shawl. Excellent. Thank you, Marcus. Two more, and I can get a double-page spread out of this.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem honest somehow.’

  ‘It’s how magazines get filled, with no staff. How’s this for a headline? “Road Wraiths” … Marcus, are you listening?’

  ‘What?’


  ‘Like road-rage, only …’

  ‘Bloody hell, you seen this about Mars-Lewis and that smart-arsed hypnotist?’

  ‘Huh?’ Grayle came around to his side of the table, read over his shoulder about ‘Cindy’s Trance of the Seven Veils’.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Marcus said, ‘if you’re not obliged to have any personal contact with him, you can almost admire the creature’s nerve.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Grayle read the story through. ‘Wow. Hey, if this was Wednesday’s show, we oughta have it on tape. If you remembered to press the buttons.’

  ‘Of course I remembered. But you can watch it on your own.’

  ‘You gotta accept it, Marcus. Cindy’s on a roll.’

  ‘Hmmph.’

  ‘Uh …’ She hesitated. ‘You know, it did kind of occur to me that if anybody could help Callard … like where a church minister or a psychiatrist would totally fail to get a handle on the phenomenon, from either of their narrow perspectives …’

  ‘Don’t even contemplate it,’ Marcus said, mildly enough to suggest that he didn’t think she would do that to him, not in a million years. ‘Besides, if Maiden can help her unravel the origins of the whole disturbance, it’ll be a start.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Grayle said with no enthusiasm.

  Last night, she’d finally gotten to return home to her own bed, leaving the sofa to Bobby Maiden. Home to the cosy little cottage behind St Mary’s Church.

  Where she should have slept the sleep of the exhausted, drifting off to the sound of the night breeze in the windchimes, her amethyst crystal (cleansing and spiritual protection) under her pillow, her last conscious thought one of major relief that she was not overnighting in the slammer.

  Funny these days how, when one anxiety went into remission, something else always arose to fill the space.

  * * *

  Bobby had come on at first like a straight cop – had Callard received any threats, been aware of anyone watching her, ever felt she was being stalked?

  Callard shaking her head – this was a cop; what would he want to know about the ethereal, the other-worldly, the matters of spirit.

  So it was Grayle herself who had responded to Bobby’s question about Cheltenham – did Callard know anyone there?

  ‘Oh, I think so.’

  Callard giving her the hard stare that said, You want me to tell this to a policeman?

  ‘There are cops,’ Grayle replied, ‘and there are cops.’

  And there was Bobby. Whose past experiences had shifted his whole perspective way beyond the cop-norm. The last time Grayle had seen Bobby he’d been asking her how crystals worked.

  So when he was listening to Callard relating the seance stuff, about the cold atmosphere and the foul smell and the three-button grey suit and the long scar, it was without scorn, or veiled mockery. Grayle had noticed a little grey in Bobby’s dark hair. Poor baby; midlife crisis, intimations of mortality.

  When Callard’s story was over he’d said, ‘But they can’t harm you, can they?’

  ‘They can steal your energy,’ Callard said, sliding on to the desk chair. ‘They can keep you awake like a young baby keeps its mother awake. Because they require your energy.’

  ‘What are we talking about here?’ Bobby asked her. ‘I mean, when the physical body dies, it’s said that what Gurdjieff called the kesdjan body—’

  ‘The what?’ Callard’s eyes opening wide. Oh God, she just could not believe this was a cop.

  ‘He means astral,’ Marcus said.

  ‘That the astral body remains alive for a while,’ Bobby said. ‘Is that what we’re talking about? An astral body kept alive by some earthly obsession?’

  ‘Hey,’ Grayle said lightly. ‘Technical, or what?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’ Callard leaning closer to Bobby, the woolly sweater coming open a little more, showing off those flawless brown tits. God-damn. ‘I don’t think the astral body and the spirit are the same, although one may inhabit the other. Certainly I’ve never seen anything quite so clear as this before. So fully defined, such presence. If it wasn’t such a negative presence I’d want to know more. As it is, I just want it out of my life.’

  ‘So it’s getting its energy from you.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You dream about it?’

  ‘I’m not sure. When I’m asleep, I can’t…’ she smiled ‘… police my consciousness. I thought at first that, in some perverse way, I was inviting it. Now I think it only comes when I open myself formally. Other essences may come through when I’m not trying, but never this one. But if I go deliberately into trance it’s there. Immediately.’

  ‘Every time?’

  ‘I’d say so. Which is why I couldn’t work, even if I wanted to. This is something that’s become attached to me because of what I am. What I do.’

  ‘Like a computer virus,’ Bobby said.

  ‘Or a vampire?’ Grayle standing up and crossing to the window. It seemed to have stopped raining. ‘Like the undead? Something that either doesn’t know it’s dead or doesn’t want to be dead.’

  ‘Does anybody?’ Bobby said.

  Marcus said, ‘Maiden had a negative death experience.’

  ‘Really?’ Callard looking at him with awfully serious interest. ‘I’ve heard of that. But not all that often – most people, when they’re across, seem to wonder why the hell they spent so long trying to put it off.’

  Grayle moved away from the window. ‘Anyhow, Seffi and I are going over to Gloucestershire tomorrow to talk to this woman who was at the party. Whose husband fucked the son’s girl.’

  Bobby frowned. ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘What’s wise gotta do with it?’

  ‘Just that if you find the woman’s husband has a slice out of his face …’

  Grayle started to say something, fell silent.

  ‘Those blokes had an agenda,’ Bobby said. ‘They didn’t complete it. Right now, they don’t know where you are. Either of you. Unless they got Grayle’s name out of Justin before …’ He stiffened. ‘You didn’t give him your address, did you?’

  ‘Oh. Did I? No … wait … I didn’t. I gave him my name was all. For the bill. I didn’t even write anything down.’

  ‘Nothing in the car with your address on it?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Bobby, you think we could be in danger here?’

  ‘It’s unlikely, but we can’t rule it out.’

  At which point Callard had actually said, ‘Aren’t we pushing the bounds of credibility a little here?’ And Grayle had thought, didn’t it ever occur to you that this is the first time tonight we haven’t been doing that?

  She’d been drawn back to the window. The uneven castle walls looked like a grey army keeping vigil until dawn. Except the castle walls couldn’t even keep the damn rain out.

  ‘Look,’ Callard said, ‘I don’t want to put you in danger. I ought to leave.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Marcus was half out of his chair.

  ‘If we go over to Cheltenham tomorrow, that gets both of us out,’ Grayle said.

  Bobby shook his head.

  ‘Two defenceless women, huh?’ Grayle snapped.

  Then Callard was turning to Bobby, saying, ‘All right then, if you think there’s a risk, why don’t you go to Cheltenham with me?’

  ‘And I suppose, Underhill, that you’re glad to get rid of her for a day,’ Marcus said, getting it all ass over tit as usual.

  Grayle said tightly, ‘Might freshen up the place a little.’

  ‘All right,’ Marcus said. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Underhill?’

  ‘Forget it,’ Grayle said.

  XXIII

  WELL, THEY HADN’T BEEN EXPECTING THE HUSBAND, BUT IT HAD always been a possibility. It made it harder, but the rewards were potentially greater.

  He was a big man in his fifties. Wide chest straining his mauve polo shirt. Wide face.

  Unmarked, as it happened.

>   He was standing, arms hanging loose, under the veranda of the spacious, colonial-style bungalow in a scrappy, semi-rural village five miles outside Cheltenham. He was staring at Persephone Callard as if he just could not believe this.

  Seffi was summery today in a cream woollen jacket over a turquoise silk top and off-white jeans. The ensemble said, Whatever you’ve heard, I’m still a woman.

  ‘Ah, Mr Hole.’ She stood no more than a couple of feet from him and did not back away. ‘I really came to see your wife.’

  ‘Or maybe you come to see if I’ve still got a wife.’ Mr Hole had a rounded Gloucestershire accent. ‘You got some flaming nerve, lady.’

  The bungalow was in a choice spot at the top of a rise. There was a long gravel drive, about half an acre of lawn between the veranda and the road. Security gates seven feet tall at the bottom, but one had been hanging open.

  They’d parked the Grand Cherokee on a grass verge about a hundred yards away and sat there a while discussing how to handle this. How angry was the husband? Maiden had asked.

  Called me a black slag.

  Mr Hole’s face was smoothly shaven. But not, it would appear, with a hedging knife.

  ‘Like you haven’t caused enough trouble,’ he said.

  ‘It’s been troubling me, too,’ Seffi Callard said smoothly. ‘Look, sometimes these things just come out, yah? And are not invariably accurate. One can never entirely guarantee that what comes through is going to be the absolute truth.’

  ‘Oh, can’t one? Then why …?’ His cheeks reddening. ‘Well, we both know why in this case, don’t we, lady?’

  Anger there, genuine outrage.

  ‘Coral does two afternoons a week at a charity shop in Cheltenham,’ he said, ‘which is not a suitable place for you to talk to her. So you can talk to me or you can fuck off.’

  He wasn’t being friendly, he wasn’t ready to be talked round. But he was curious, Maiden thought. There were things he wanted to know.

  Inside, there were low sofas in bright spacey colours. Potted palms, yellow roller blinds, a Spanish-looking TV cabinet. The picture windows framed flat, scrubby farmland. Mr Hole nodded at one of the sofas but didn’t sit down himself. Maiden wondered where the money had come from.