Mean Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  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.’

  ‘If, when you meet him, you don’t like the look of the bastard …’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll love the look of him. But’, she took his hand, ‘whatever happens, I shall have to leave tomorrow.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Oh …’ For a second, she looked nakedly unsure. ‘There’s an appointment to keep. And then perhaps I’ll go abroad for a while. I need to think about things. Perhaps do something different, find some other way of using whatever abilities I possess before it’s too late.’

  Too late?

  ‘Persephone, if people are looking for you …’

  ‘Then I’ll go somewhere they’ll never find me. India or somewhere. Join a bloody ashram. I’ll send you a postcard. Don’t want to lose touch again. I’ll write … an article or something, for your magazine. Something you could print. That’d make Grayle feel a little better about me, do you think?’

  ‘I think’, he said, ‘that that would somehow be desperately unsatisfactory. I mean you going off on your own. Into hiding, as it were.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Persephone shrugged awkwardly and twisted away. ‘I’ve behaved like a clinging child. I’ve imposed on you inexcusably. I’ve put a strain on your working relationship with Grayle …’

  ‘No,’ Marcus said. ‘Not at all. No …’

  Suddenly, she seemed so much smaller and even more vulnerable than she had as a teenager. Marcus was afraid for her and all she represented.

  He doubted Mars-Lewis would be able to help her.

  The sky was starting to darken when Grayle and Bobby Maiden watched Cindy return. He looked like a member of a mature persons’ hiking club back from the hills for his hot broth and his bed in some hostel. He seemed a little brighter.

  The new wind carried a spattering of rain. They stood in the shelter of the curtain wall. Cindy looked up at the sky and nodded, then turned to them.

  ‘Bobby,’ he said. ‘Good to see you again, boy.’

  ‘How are you, Cindy?’

  ‘I’m good. Good, yes.’

  Grayle frowned. ‘What’s the schedule, Cindy?’

  Cindy patted her arm. ‘Begin soon after dark, we will, I think. As the first … occurrence was at night. We need to appear to be dancing to his tune.’

  ‘His tune?’

  Grayle recoiled at the way the wind was rolling at the castle wall. Although it was not a particularly cold wind and even blew a gruff promise of spring.

  The dog Malcolm ambled towards them from the back of the farmhouse, pausing to sniff in all the usual places where the grass grew in clumps through fractured flagstones.

  ‘Keeps his distance from Callard,’ Grayle said. ‘Even Marcus commented on it.’

  ‘You’re saying this is a sign of what she carries, little Grayle?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  She looked up at him, his face tilted towards the last of the light, the sawn-off tower rearing over him.

  ‘Right, then.’ Cindy patted Malcolm. ‘Let’s go in. Lead the way, my boy.’

  XXXII

  ‘MS CALLARD.’

  Cindy met her at last just after seven, when she emerged from Marcus’s study into the ill-lit, stone-walled passageway. He took her hand, bowed formally over it.

  He wore his tweed jacket and slacks with crisp creases. His hair was conservatively brushed and carried only a hint of its usual mauve. Bobby Maiden thought he looked like the manager of a slightly faded hotel, approaching retirement. Not really a celebrity, the clothes said. Not quite a loony. But they were just as much of a costume as those spangly frocks.

  ‘Mr Lewis,’ Seffi Callard said.

  The two hands parting civilly.

  Seffi, joined now by Marcus, was calm and seemed distant – as though something had been agreed, Maiden thought, but it would be no more than going through the motions.

  Seffi didn’t look at Maiden. He watched, with Grayle, from the doorway of the kitchen across the passage. He thought of Em, but she was far away now.

  He looked at Grayle in her jeans and a lime and lemon baseball sweater too big for her – a defiant statement; none of this solemn Victorian formality for her. She looked very pretty, her blonde hair bunched like bananas. But also forlorn, Maiden thought. He didn’t think he�
�d ever met anyone with less to hide, less to feel bad about.

  But his gaze, inevitably, was drawn back to Seffi Callard, evoking a longing as strange and raw as the one he sometimes felt for lonely-places – long beaches, estuaries, ante-rooms to infinity.

  ‘I’m getting the feeling you’d rather keep this formal.’ Cindy’s accent, like his hair, was smoothed down. He and Seffi looking at one another almost like opponents. Not fighters, but maybe international chess champions: same game, different language, different names for the pieces.

  ‘It’s your show, Mr Lewis,’ Seffi said.

  Cindy shook his head gently. ‘No, lovely, your show it is, tonight. You are walking the tightrope. Think of me as a safety net. Or, rather, don’t think of me at all.’ He smiled and ushered her into what had been Mrs Willis’s healing room.

  They might have been going in for dinner.

  The first time Maiden had been in here, Mrs Willis was recently dead and although he’d never met her there’d been a poignancy about her stripped-down daybed and the rickety shelves still loaded with jars and old Marmite pots full of herbs and potions. Now the shelves were sagging under stacks of back copies of The Vision.

  The size of the place, its height, surprised him. Perhaps a partition wall had been taken down since he was last here. It was clear now that the room had once been a small barn or a cowshed attached to the farmhouse. Rafters were exposed where a short hayloft had been; there was a long window which had probably been a doorway, and you could see the ruins out there and hear the wind whining like a trapped banshee in the derelict castle’s sawn-off tower.

  A computer, unplugged, had been pushed against a wall on its table. In the centre of the room was a circle of six wooden chairs, some brought in from the study and the kitchen. On a small, round table in the middle of the circle, an earthenware bowl held a stubby candle.

  Maiden said, ‘Six chairs, Cindy?’

  ‘Are there really?’

  ‘There are five of us.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Cindy said. ‘A little corny, do you think?’

  One time, while she was with the Courier, Grayle had been given special permission to cover a seance given by the exclusive New York medium, Morgan Schuster.