Mean Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  ‘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.’

  ‘So, Gary’s flat and Gary’s girls? Where’d you get this, Ron?’

  ‘I’m a member of the Conservative Club. For the cheap beer. Always a comfort after the kind of day I’ve had.’

  ‘No developments, then.’

  ‘Oh yeah. Just the kind of development you need with my budget. Another one. Even nastier.’

  ‘No!’ Maiden wedged himself into the doorway, out of the wind.

  ‘Woman gets round to reporting her boyfriend missing after the other side of the bed’s been cold the best part of a week. Local bobby makes a routine visit to his place of work – he has a garage – finds somebody’s dropped a bloody car on the poor sod.’

  ‘Like from a crane?’

  Ron explained.

  ‘What are the Cotswolds coming to?’ Maiden said neutrally. ‘No leads?’

  ‘How many d’you want? For starters we’ve got about half a dozen blokes whose wives this lad reckoned he was stuffing, so the regular girlfriend’s also worth a glance. Oh, yeah, lots of angles and about two spare bodies in CID for the legwork. I was trying to link it into this other one seeing it wasn’t far away, but they won’t quite gel.’

  Maiden said, ‘You talk to the late Mr Crewe’s employer yet?’

  A chuckle.

  ‘I was waiting for that. Yes, I have indeed. In person. Lovely office in Worcester. Charming view of the Severn. Mr Martin Riggs on the door, gold lettering. And what a nice chap. Out comes the twelve-year-old malt. “What a tonic to see you, Ron, talk to an old-fashioned copper again.”’

  ‘He offer you a job when you retire?’

  ‘Blimey, son, that’s positively uncanny. Must be with poking the psychic.’

  ‘What else he have to say?’

  ‘Crewe? According to Mr Riggs, Forcefield is such a big organization nowadays that it’s appallingly difficult to keep tabs on all the staff. However, he’s done some checks and this does seem to be a regular lad, absolutely no reason to suspect, etcetera, etcetera.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘What difference does it make? Where are you at present, Bobby?’

  ‘Staying with friends, out past Hereford.’

  ‘You and the lady?’

  ‘Just me. She had some business.’ Maiden decided there wasn’t going to be a better time to pump Ron on the subject of Clarence Judge. ‘Leaving me with lots of free time to read Gary’s book. Oh … I take it you know about the new paperback – the reward for a name on Judge?’

  ‘You what?’

  He had Ron’s full attention. He took the phone into Marcus’s study, found the book, read out the relevant part of the Preface.<
br />
  ‘I may be wrong here, Ron, but do you think maybe he doesn’t trust you to investigate it properly?’

  ‘I don’t doubt that would be true, if it was my case, Bobby, but Clarence was found on a building site down near Abingdon. Where he was done, that’s another matter, but Abingdon was where they found him, so it’s Kiddlington’s migraine. Especially now. Well, the cheeky cunt.’

  ‘Still a big shortlist, is there?’

  ‘Extensive. Not counting the ones excluded on account of having fingers too arthritic to hold the gun steady.’

  ‘Is Seward really that upset?’

  ‘Think of Clarence as a not-over-bright brother Gary felt responsible for. Vicious as a cobra, but not over-endowed up top. You gave him a gun, knife, spanner … pointed him in the right direction, waited for the screams. And he never knew when it was over. The one time I nicked him, I sent six bobbies in with batons. When I got there, four of them were sitting on Clarence, the other two getting helped into an ambulance with half an ear in a paper bag and that much blood around they weren’t sure which of ’em’s it was. Never a domestic animal, Clarence Judge.’

  ‘What was it he went down for last?’

  ‘Rape and attempted murder – sadly, nothing to do with Seward. Clarence’s night off. Took the barmaid home, but she changed her mind. Naturally, the Met offered him a deal for Seward, but Clarence is too loyal.’

  ‘Matter of honour, for Seward, then, seeing the killer go down?’

  ‘Seward has no honour,’ Ron Foxworth said coldly. ‘Matter of pride. And talking of pride … let me say one thing, my son, and let me say it very clearly. If it were to turn out to be your delicate, artistic fingers on Seward’s collar, as distinct from my gnarled old digits, I just can’t tell you how upset I would be. Just can’t begin to tell you.’

  Marcus snatched up the phone. ‘Yes!’

  ‘Mr Bacton, it’s Nancy Rich. My secretary’s done some checks with the school, where there are still people who remember you. Having spoken to you herself she says you simply have to be the same person. I’m therefore inclined to accept that you have Seffi’s best interests at heart.’

  Marcus grunted. Could imagine how people at the bastard school had described him.

  ‘So perhaps I can ask you some questions,’ Rich said. ‘What was Seffi’s state of mind when you last saw her?’

  ‘Erratic,’ Marcus said. ‘Confused. She stayed here for a few days, now she’s missing. Listen, I do know the background. I just don’t know how much of it you know, but I understand you spoke to Persephone on the phone yesterday morning.’

  ‘Yes. But that was about a contractual arrangement. It’s not something I would normally discuss.’

  ‘Look,’ Marcus said. ‘I don’t know what other clients you have—’

  ‘Let’s just say that none of the others are in this particular line of work.’

  ‘Quite. And I don’t suppose any of them would find themselves in the position of being used by a man with an extensive criminal record to try and contact a violent psychotic who’s been in his grave for over a year.’

  A considerable hush.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Nancy Rich. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘No.’ Marcus eased himself on to the desk. ‘I’m entertaining my fucking self.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  Underhill came into the study then. And Maiden.

  Marcus was inspired.

  ‘Look, Rich, this is a police matter now. I have a detective with me. Would you like to speak to him? Name’s Maiden. Inspector. I can put you—’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Rich said, aghast.

  The sun struggled against heavy, muscular clouds, strings of vapour twisting like tendons. A meshwork of illusion and lies obscuring the light.

  Lies. Lying to himself. Sheltering behind the confusion of his identity, flailing in the dark and swirling soup of his motivations, his impulses, his ambivalent sexuality. This way, that way, insubstantial, capricious. His bangles rattled cheaply, his pearls were paste, his Oxfam shop woolly jumper a mass of plucks, his bra full of bubble-wrap.

  ‘I hate that Cindy now for what he’s caused. It’s like he’s sneering at ordinary people’s good luck.’

  Taunting voices carried on the wind.

  ‘I must say, I never liked him myself. People like that, they’ve always got a chip on their shoulder, haven’t they?’

  ‘Angel of fucking Death …’

  ‘… chosen as God’s tool to break the hold of the National Lottery on the public’s consciousness?’

  Cindy’s mouth stretched into a silent scream. What if this flip remark was on target? What if he had become a channel, a conduit? But not for God, not for good. He thought of Colin Seymour, who planned to introduce handicapped youngsters to the thrills of flying, rising above nature’s blackest jokes.

  Cindy laid his hands on the collapsed capstone, massaging its ancient heart, until the stone and his hands grew warm.

  Give me knowledge, give me inspiration, give me truth, give me direction, give me clarity of mind.

  He straightened his spine, breathed deeply into his abdomen for a hundred seconds. Then he closed his eyes and set up an earth rhythm on the drum until it began to sound in his solar plexus beneath the waistline of his blue skirt. The beat vibrating directly through his body, emerging in his spine. Ascending the spine

  (dummm)

  … to her head

  (dummm)

  … to his shoulders

  (dummm)

  … down her arms

  (dummm)

  … into his fingers

  (dummm)

  … and into the stone.

  ‘Old stone.’

  (dummm)

  ‘Strong stone.’

  (dum-dummm)

  ‘Strengthen me.’

  (dum-dummm)

  ‘Hold me hard.’

  (dum-dummm)

  ‘Against the dark.’

  (dummm)

  Marcus put down the phone.

  Maiden and Underhill were standing on either side of the unlit woodstove. Marcus shook his head.

  ‘Surprising how educated, law-abiding people are so reluctant to get involved with the police. Oh, she said, that would put her in a very difficult position. Client confidentiality, all that bollocks.’

  Underhill said, ‘They found Justin, Marcus. The cops finally found Justin. Bobby just talked to—’

  ‘Where’s Lewis?’

  ‘Up at the Knoll.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Marcus said. ‘How much do either of you know about this fellow Kurt Campbell?’

  XXXIX

  IN THE EARLY EVENING BOBBY MAIDEN BORROWED MARCUS’S TRUCK and drove down to the village, to Grayle’s cottage. He’d never been here before. The windchimes gave it away – two sets, hanging either side of a lantern over the old, studded door.

  The cottage was in the middle of the terrace which lined one side of the short street, with the church wall on the other. The tiny forecourt space was filled by the Mini. Maiden parked the truck in the rutted road.

  It was dark; the wind had died but the air was colder. There was a dim light in the squat-towered church. It was all very quiet, no kids around, no dogs barking. The lantern came on and by the time he reached the front door Grayle had it open.

  ‘Isn’t New York, is it?’ Maiden said.

  ‘Guy in the shop says the last time the council retarred the village street it was for Queen Victoria’s carriage.’

  She wore a dress tonight: woollen, red, long-sleeved. Maiden guessed that after today – Grayle in the baseball jersey, Cindy in the twinset – she was reclaiming her gender.

  He paused on the threshold. ‘You really feel you belong here?’

  Grayle frowned. ‘You know how much I hate small talk, Bobby. Why don’t you ask something heavy?’

  ‘You annoyed with me?’

  She didn’t smile. ‘I’m annoyed with everybody. Why I came home early. Put it down to time of
the month. Like, it isn’t, but it tends to satisfy guys, you tell them that.’

  ‘There many guys around here?’

  ‘Sure. Farm guys. Retired guys. Rich guys with weekend cottages and two kids. Who needs guys anyway? All guys are stupid. Come in.’

  He saw crystals on the windowsill, a brass Buddha in the small inglenook fireplace next to a bed of ash. Reflected in a long mirror opposite, he saw, to the left of the front door, a plaster statue of Anubis, dog-faced Egyptian god of the dead, wearing a jewelled poodle collar.

  Grayle said, ‘Cindy still up there with Marcus?’

  ‘Examining the psychic history of Overcross Castle. Driven men. It’s like they’re planning a siege. I needed to get away for a while.’

  ‘Maybe this is a good thing for Marcus, I don’t know. Anyhow, welcome to the bijou dwelling. Siddown, grab a crystal, strengthen your vibes. I have water boiled for herbal tea. Or you can have coffee.’

  ‘Herbal tea? Wonderful.’

  ‘New Age freaking cop. Oh boy.’

  Maiden didn’t sit down; he followed her into the kitchen, where bunches of dried hops hung from the ceiling beams.

  ‘Speaking as a cop, I don’t know whether it’s a good thing for Marcus or not. A psychic festival run by a TV hypnotist doesn’t worry me a lot. But if the spiritual input somehow involves Gary Seward …’

  ‘You feel that, in spite of two killings and all that horrific violence surrounding Clarence Judge, Cindy and Marcus are not taking him seriously enough.’

  ‘The whole nation doesn’t take him seriously enough any more. If you smile on TV, people think you’re their friend. As for Marcus and Cindy, is there an age after which you just don’t care any more?’

  ‘It’s my fault.’ Grayle poured boiling water into a small brown pot. ‘I wish I’d never remembered we’d had an invite to that thing.’

  How YOU can be part of

  The Overcross Experience…

  Grayle had found the leaflet in the boxfile she’d marked Probably junk, but who knows?

  The leaflet said the organizers of the Festival of the Spirit were offering the magazine a unique opportunity to meet its public face to face by taking a stand at the most prestigious event of its kind ever staged on British soil.