Mean Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  ‘What?’

  ‘Back at the lodge. There’s a bloody gap on the wall… probably with the perfectly etiolated outline of an antique hedge hacker. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘At the lodge?’

  ‘Mrs Dronfield, the cleaner, comes in on a Monday. I’ve never thought of her as a deductive genius, but she can certainly gossip for Gloucestershire …’ She looked across at him, those lush lips slack with dismay. ‘Police combing the fields for miles around, everybody talking about it, being careful to lock their doors … and here’s a perfect outline of the murder weapon set up for Mrs Dronfield. It’s not terribly funny, is it?’

  Cindy was not a person who believed the press was there to be avoided. Had he complained when all those articles appeared commenting on what a refreshing change he had wrought upon the previously tedious Lottery programme? No, he had not.

  In sickness and in health.

  He sat upon the clifftop, meditated for ten minutes in the sea-haunted silence and then went into the caravan and switched on the mobile phone for the first time since recording his BBC radio interview.

  It bleeped within twenty seconds.

  ‘At last. Is that Cindy?’

  ‘No, Kelvyn here. Who wants to speak to Cindy?’

  ‘Ho ho. Listen, mate, it’s Greg Cook at the Mirror.’

  The showbiz editor, or whatever title they gave them these days. At past midnight on a Sunday morning? What on earth was this?

  ‘Good heavens, boy, are you in the office?’

  ‘No, I’m at home, actually, Cindy. I know it’s late, but the reason I’m ringing … Are you listening, Cindy? Because I know it’s late and you’re probably knackered.’

  ‘Listening most intently, I am.’

  ‘Because I’m ringing to warn you.’

  ‘A tidal wave, is it, bound for the Pembrokeshire coastline?’

  ‘Er … ha ha. No, it’s a bit of information that’s come our way just quite recently … well, tonight, actually … that another publication, which shall be nameless, is planning, not to put too fine a point on it, Cindy, to shaft you.’

  ‘Hello! magazine?’ Cindy said. ‘My, there’s worrying.’

  ‘We both know who we’re talking about here, mate. And, yeah, it is worrying.’

  ‘For me or for you?’

  ‘For both of us. You know the Mirror’s always been on your side. I mean, you do know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I would trust the Mirror like my own mother, Gregory,’ said Cindy, whose mother had abandoned him, newborn, on the steps of the Bethesda Chapel in Dowlais. ‘How do they propose to, ah, shaft me?’

  ‘That crash tonight, Cindy. Yeah?’

  ‘Poor man.’

  ‘Tragic. And the heart guy. And other incidents. Allegedly.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Also, stories going round about you. I wouldn’t repeat them, but somebody’s been looking into your past.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And offering certain material for sale. Came to us, first. Naturally, we refused point-blank. Showed him the door.’

  ‘Asking too much, was he?’

  ‘But he went straight to the opposition, and we understand a deal’s been made. You can expect to read about it next week. It’s almost certain to cause a storm. And inevitably put the world’s media on your back. Unfairly, in our belief.’

  ‘You …’ Cindy became aware that the hand holding the phone was shaking. ‘You’re having me on, I think, Gregory.’

  ‘Cindy, I wish that were the case.’

  ‘But I don’t … I don’t … I have no idea what this can be about.’

  But he was rather afraid that he did. Some of it, anyway.

  He began to breathe harder and covered the mouthpiece to conceal it. He was what he was; he had never attempted to cover it up. He was renowned as an eccentric – this was accepted. He had no sexual secrets – well, not many. But yes, the ammunition was there, he had always been aware of that.

  But people liked him. He was popular. On the stormy seas of controversy, was not popularity the greatest balast?

  ‘Cindy, I want to help you,’ Gregory Cook said. ‘No bullshit, all right? I personally contacted the editor – rang him at home, tonight, not two hours ago – and, as a result, I’m empowered to offer you … let’s call it sanctuary. We’ll move you to a luxury hotel, a secret destination. We’ll give you a sum of money, precise details of which I can discuss later. And we’ll let you tell your side of the story – in effect your life story – to an experienced writer, probably me, which we’ll publish exclusively and simultaneously – that’s the key point – thus negating the damage caused by our dockland friends. Are you with me?’

  ‘I may be just slightly ahead of you. You want me to co-operate in the manufacture of what I believe is called a “spoiler”.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gregory Cook said. ‘In a word. We can have you away from your little tin shack before those bastards are out of the pub. What do you say?’

  ‘Gregory, it’s …’ Cindy took a breath, thinking fast. ‘A magnificent gesture, it is, on your part.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I would like, however, a few minutes to peruse my BBC contract. To make absolutely sure it contains no clause precluding my acceptance of your generous proposal. I don’t think, for one minute, that there is such a clause, but I would like to be certain.’

  ‘No problem, Cindy. Bring the contract with you. We’ll get our lawyers to run through it.’

  ‘Please. It will take me ten minutes. Just give me your number and I shall call you back.’

  ‘Cindy, these fuckers could well be on their way. They’ll certainly be there by morning.’

  ‘Just a few minutes, Gregory. A few short minutes.’

  A few short minutes it took him to unpack his cases and repack them with fresh things.

  And gather his drum and his cloak of feathers.

  And Kelvyn Kite in his pink case.

  And load them all into the Honda, which he drove to his lock-up behind Dai Gruffydd’s lightless service station on the Haverfordwest road.

  Why? Why this? Why this now?

  In the lock-up was nested his Morris Minor. Unthinkable, somehow, to flee in the Honda. Cindy hoped she would start for, if she did not, it would be the very worst of omens.

  XXVII

  THERE WAS EVEN A METAL BRACKET WHICH HAD SUPPORTED THE hacker. And, yes, a pale patch on the wall which, even in the meagre glow of a single lamp, gave Bobby Maiden a clear guide to the size and shape of the implement.

  ‘What now? Get rid of the lot?’ Seffi Callard said. ‘Take out all the brackets, paint the wall?’

  ‘So that your Mrs …’

  ‘Dronfield.’

  ‘… is faced with the smell of fresh paint and—’

  ‘OK, forget it. No wonder people get caught. They must get themselves caught half the time.’

  ‘Tangled webs.’ Maiden thought it was incredibly unlikely that Mrs Dronfield would make connections, but … ‘Perhaps if we move the saw across so that, instead of hanging down, it …’ lifting the part-rusted blade ‘… fits horizontally, occupying the vacant bracket and covering the space, where …’

  ‘Very good,’ she said when he’d repositioned the other tools to close gaps. ‘You realize what you’ve done.’

  ‘Become a serious accessory. This gets out, end of career.’

  ‘The feeling I’m getting from you is that that might almost be a relief.’

  ‘Dunno. How would I make a living?’ He stood in the dim corner between the door to the kitchen and the bottom of the stairs, forming a picture of how it happened. ‘What were your first feelings when you came down and found those guys?’

  ‘What do you think?’ He couldn’t make out her face, but he saw her shiver. ‘You any good at lighting fires, Bobby?’

  ‘Did you feel they were expecting you? Waiting for you? Knew you were around?’

  ‘It was Grayle they d
idn’t expect.’

  Maiden bent over the hearth, picked up a poker and raked at the cinders. Found a pile of old newspapers and a box of firelighters. Wondered where she lived the rest of the time, what classy apartment she’d abandoned for this dim cave.

  ‘You plan to stay here tonight?’

  ‘Too late to go back. Do you want to ring Marcus and tell him?’

  ‘Did you tell anyone else about what happened at the party? Apart from Marcus and Grayle and me?’

  ‘Only Nancy. And as I was already wondering how far I could actually trust her, I told her no more than she’d learn from anyone who’d been there. The vase breaking, that kind of thing. Nothing about him.’

  ‘Well,’ he said carefully. ‘He could be a bit irrelevant. To someone else.’

  ‘Despite your liberal attitudes. Despite your death experiences …’ ice in her voice ‘… this is the one part of it, I suspect, you’d still rather wasn’t there.’

  ‘I try to understand,’ Maiden said.

  She came across the room, stood over him as he knelt at the hearth. ‘Imagine you’re a woman. You’re in a lonely house and every time you pick up the phone to make a call there’s some sickening heavy breather on the line.’

  Maiden built a pyramid of coal around a firelighter.

  ‘Or you’re in a two-roomed apartment,’ she said, ‘and there’s one room you know you can’t go into. A door you can’t open. What do you do?’

  ‘Perhaps you move out of the apartment.’

  ‘And how would I make a living?’ He looked up at her. She didn’t smile. ‘Is that really all you think this is?’

  * * *

  The cramped, flagged forecourt of the cottage behind St Mary’s Church was big enough for a Mini and virtually nothing made since. There was a feeling of security about this. Anyhow, Grayle had always felt safe here.

  Even though it was only a few miles from where Ersula had died.

  This hadn’t mattered, somehow, the way it would have if she was living in some modern condo and her sister had been killed in the next block. All to do with the age of the settlement, how many violent deaths it must have absorbed … while the old stone homes huddled snugly together and the church bells still rang out over the rich, pink soil.

  Grayle drew the curtains. Checked the door – one lock and a small bolt; in New York she’d had four locks and a big chain and a peephole.

  She was OK here, on her own. She’d lived alone, most of the time, in New York. Where was the difference?

  Although it was late, she put a match to a wood fire in the living room. Like a campfire in the woods, to keep the bears at bay. The flames lit the inglenook, shadows leaping and shooting up the stones. Living light was caught by the crystals hanging from the big beam, was glinting in the seraphic eyes of the brass Buddha in the hearth.

  Bobby and Callard hadn’t returned to Castle Farm.

  Which was like … none of her business. Right?

  Because she was OK. Grayle sat still and glum. She was fine.

  Very tired, Cindy parked the Honda in the little cindered courtyard behind the Ram’s Head and immediately switched off the lights.

  The Honda, yes.

  The Morris Minor, his totem car, his shamanic chariot, having failed to start. Of course it had. All that time in storage. What did he expect? It meant nothing.

  Cindy crept around the side of the pub. He had no wish to disturb Amy. If she had retired for the night, well … resigned, he was, if necessary, to sleeping in the car. It would not be the first time.

  The merest glow from the interior. A security lamp, perhaps, for even St Mary’s was no longer too remote to be immune from the predatory attentions of itinerant thieves. Cindy peered through the bevelled glass into the churchlike glimmerings within the public bar.

  A searing pain almost paralyzed his spine.

  ‘Freeze.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Cindy croaked.

  ‘Turn around … ve-ry slowly.’

  ‘Amy, my love,’ Cindy wheezed, ‘if you wanted me to turn round quickly, we would require the services of an osteopath.’

  ‘Cindy! Oh my God!’ Amy dropped the yard-brush.

  Amy Jenkins: little and dark and warm and crinkly, a refugee from the next valley to Cindy’s own in the broken heart of Glamorgan. Divorced these many years from the man known only as That Bastard. Now queen of the Tup.

  ‘You only just caught me, see,’ she said, as if this wasn’t past midnight and she might have gone to the shops. ‘Just having a last look round, I was. Weekend night, you get them in from all over the place – Hereford, Abergavenny. Strangers, and some thinking they can see an opportunity. Always like a last look around, I do, on a Saturday night. And there you was, like a burglar. Well … I can’t get over it – Cindy Mars-Lewis, and so famous now. Wait till I tell—’

  ‘Nobody,’ Cindy said firmly. ‘Tell nobody.’

  ‘Oh. Like that, is it?’ Amy was leading him to the oak settle in the woody dimness of the deserted bar then putting more lights on, giving him the once-over. ‘Looking tired, you are, Cindy. Not quite your old self.’

  ‘I’m fine, lovely. Fine as I could be.’

  ‘That poor man. The Lottery winner. Did you hear?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Money,’ Amy said. ‘Money makes people careless. Feel invulnerable they do, in the first flush of it.’

  ‘Yes. That is a profound observation, Amy.’

  ‘The usual room, is it?’

  ‘That would be wonderful. I’m not yet sure how many nights. Two, three …’

  ‘You stay as long as you like, Cindy. And if you don’t want me to tell nobody, nobody gets told.’

  ‘Little Amy,’ Cindy said wistfully. ‘Marry you, I would, if I was normal.’

  * * *

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that laugh,’ Persephone Callard said.

  They were drinking whisky by the coal fire. Side by side on the hard Victorian sofa.

  ‘Ron isn’t best known for his impressions,’ Maiden said.

  ‘It was just the general tone. On one level. Quite a strong laugh, but one that wasn’t reacting to anything funny, do you know what I mean? It was there. I heard it at Barber’s party.’

  ‘But you don’t remember Seward. You weren’t introduced?’

  ‘Wasn’t introduced to anybody. Quite odd, now I think about it.’

  ‘Having a celebrated villain at your party,’ Maiden said, ‘wouldn’t that be a bit dangerous for a politician?’

  ‘Ex-politician. Ex-villain, for that matter.’

  ‘Probably no such items. Like you can’t be an ex-alcoholic. Just because Seward’s doing after-dinner talks and guesting on quiz shows …’

  ‘You ever encountered him, Bobby?’

  Maiden shook his head. ‘He’d have been doing his seven years when I was in London. Listen, say he engineered himself an invitation from Barber because of his interest in spiritualism. He was there because you were going to be there. Why no introduction? Seward loves celebrity. Unless—’

  ‘There was something else. Now I think about it…’ Seffi hunched up on the Victorian sofa, tapping a knee with stiffened fingers. ‘I’m remembering him from another context. Damn.’

  ‘Unless it was his party,’ Maiden said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Unless Sir Richard Barber was figureheading Seward’s party. Say Barber knows Seward, or Seward has something on him. Seward wants you – but if you’d been invited to conduct a sitting at a soirée hosted by Gary Seward the East End villain, would you have done it? Even for twenty-five K?’

  ‘No chance.’

  ‘There you go, then.’

  ‘Yes. It makes sense. It would explain why Barber didn’t appear to know anybody particularly. The fact that they didn’t seem to be his kind of people.’

  ‘Could they have been Seward’s kind of people? We know Les Hole was, for a start.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Gary Seward�
��s party,’ Maiden said. ‘The place full of iffy entrepreneurs and general villains. All those people with bad secrets. All those bodies buried. And you were the floorshow. Why?’

  There was silence. She sat very still, her face sheened in the firelight, heavy hair down one side of her face like a hawser.

  Remembering the commitment he’d made, telling Ron Foxworth, I believe she does this … thing. Which had been said mainly to support her against Ron’s impending sneers, and not necessarily because he …

  If you believed she did this thing, that she truly had access to the dead, the implications were vast. Thinking about it now, just the two of them here, it was as though the walls of the room had dissolved and the night was in.

  ‘Persephone,’ he said. ‘She was the woman who married the king of the Underworld, right?’

  ‘And spent half her life among the dead,’ she said.

  Whenever Maiden thought of the dead, he thought of Em.

  Seffi looked at him, firelight flickering in her eyes.

  ‘And if that’s what you were about to ask, it is my real name. My mother chose it.’

  ‘She was psychic too?’

  ‘I don’t know. I ask my father, he just smiles. Yes, of course she was. I know she was.’

  ‘So, have you ever …?’

  ‘Had contact? Not for a long time. I think she’s moved on, beyond my reach. I think she was there in the few years after she died, when I was a child. Guarding the portal. From adolescence, I guess I was on my own. Which was when it became disruptive.’

  He said, ‘Are you still afraid to die? Knowing what you … know?’

  Her faint smile twisted. ‘Oh, come on, Bobby, what do I know? What do I really know? It’s all too big in there, a huge, endless factory. I’m just standing there, looking at all this strange machinery.’

  He had a scary image of unmanned conveyor belts, chemical reprocessing.

  ‘And most of the ones who come out to me, they don’t know either. They’re the ones who don’t realize they’re over. Or they have unfinished business here and because of that – this really petty crap – they can’t see … the fullness of it. Sometimes I can help them deal with that, clear the blockage. But I don’t know … I couldn’t tell you what happens to them afterwards. Perhaps they evaporate into pure energy. Go for recycling. Perhaps – God help us – perhaps they don’t exist at all outside my head. I … I was never one of your evangelical mediums. Never tell anyone it’s going to be all springtime and church bells. I don’t know.’ She paused. ‘And neither do you, apparently. No glorious lights when you died, Bobby.’