Mean Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  Ron cleared his throat, didn’t look up. Maiden thought he’d never seen a man look so destroyed.

  ‘Surprised?’ Gary Seward slid into a wooden chair, crossed his legs, did his one-tone laugh. ‘Very surprised indeed, wasn’t you, Ronald? I mean, it don’t happen, do it? A senior officer, a distinguished detective? Should have heard the bluster, Bobby. You really done it this time, Seward. Big, powerful detective, this. Spent half his life trying to pull Gary Seward. Now I’ve pulled him. Exquisite. But it goes deeper, don’t it, Ron?’

  Foxworth looked up. His eyes were pale and bloodshot. He didn’t look at anybody, his focus point seemed to be in a haze about eighteen inches from his face. But, at some stage since he was lifted, Ron had learned about the consequences of failing to answer direct questions.

  ‘Gary thinks I was once uncivil to Clarence Judge.’

  ‘Masterly understatement, Ron. What happened was … there was a siege situation yeah? Late Seventies, Ron? Seventy-nine, eighty, around then. Clarence, I think he done a post office for pocket money or alimony, some minor cash-flow thing. Course, Ron looks at Clarence, sees Gary Seward, know wha’ mean? Obsessive. Goes in mob-handed, SAS-style. Absolute overreaction, utterly uncalled for. Poor Clarence thinks he’s for the jump, killed trying to escape, some’ing like that. Thinks he’s fighting for his life. Well you would, wouldn’t you?’

  Ron rallied. ‘He had a copper’s ear between his teeth. DS Earnshaw. Took four men to tear his bloody face away. Had half the ear in his mouth and if they hadn’t made him cough it up he’d have eaten it.’

  Seward ignored him. ‘So, back at the station, what does Ron do but invite three of DS Earnshaw’s colleagues to pay their respects to Clarence in his cell.’

  ‘He was smashing up his cell,’ Ron said to his chest. ‘He was also in danger of injuring himself. Judge had no pain threshold.’

  Seward half-turned, pointed the finger. ‘You, Ron, are a lying toerag. What are you?’

  Maiden closed his eyes. Don’t make him say it.

  ‘Nah,’ Seward said. ‘He knows what he is. He humiliated Clarence that day. He stood and watched while those pigs hurt my poor friend in all the places what didn’t show. But, worst of all, they hurt his pride, and that’s the severest thing you can do to a man like Clarence, and it cannot be tolerated long term. I says, leave it, Clarence, don’t do nothing. ‘Cause he never had no finesse, see, the poor love. You leave it, I says. But one day I will see to Ron for you, I promise. And Gary Seward keeps his promises, and this is that day and Clarence is going to be here to see it. Matthew …?’

  Ballantyne closed the oak door.

  Oh God, Maiden thought.

  ‘Let’s make ourselves comfortable.’ Seward bent down the side of his chair, came up nursing black metal. ‘We’re gonna get cosy. There will be no resistance, otherwise the inevitable gets brought forward, know wha’ mean?’

  Shotgun. Sawn-off. Maiden estimated that if Seward let that thing off in here he could kill one of them, maim the others with a single shot.

  ‘Stand up, Miss Underwood.’

  Seward ambled over, placed the twin barrels against Grayle’s temple. ‘Oh God.’ Her voice was like a startled bird taking flight from a branch. Maiden began to breathe hard.

  ‘You too, Ron, Bobby. Up. Now, what we do, we close our eyes and we keep the fuckers closed.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Grayle said.

  ‘Oh, you can, darlin’. Just consider the alternatives.’

  ‘Oh God. Oh God.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Maiden stared into the blackness, telling himself that if Seward was going to execute them he wouldn’t use a sawn-off shotgun.

  Would he?

  A fumbling behind him. For a moment his hands were free. His heart leapt, his body tensed, he wanted to lash out, go for it.

  ‘Stay still, cock!’ Seward, hard-voiced. ‘No resistance.’

  Maiden’s right hand hung by his side. His left was jerked up. Handcuffs snapped.

  ‘You can all open your eyes now,’ Seward said.

  Maiden opened his into a grotto-like gloom. The strip light was off, the cellar was now feebly lit by the hanging bulb. Seward was hunched on the hard chair, he and the shotgun fused into the same bulky shadow.

  ‘And you can leave us now, lads,’ he said to Ballantyne and his mate. ‘Go and find Kurt. Tell him I want that toffee-nosed bitch down here asap.’

  A tug on the left wrist told Maiden he was handcuffed to Ron Foxworth. He saw that Ron was handcuffed on the other side to Grayle.

  Foxworth glared angrily at Maiden. ‘You know why else I came down here, you tosser?’ Like them being bound at the wrist had unblocked him. ‘Because a lad called Scott Ferris was telling us how a bloke with copper’s ID was asking after Justin Sharpe. Described you to a T.’

  ‘You had me in the frame for Justin?’

  ‘I had you in the frame for a lying bastard. Had you in the frame for pissing up my leg.’

  ‘Ron, I tried to call you …’

  ‘Stop bleedin’ whingeing, Ron,’ Seward said. ‘I never took to you, you know that? You was always such a miserable git.’

  Maiden said, ‘Why the chain gang, Gary?’

  ‘It’s a circle, Bobby. Or it will be. Put your hands on the table, palms down, little fingers touching. It’s incomplete, but that’ll be rectified.’

  ‘It’s a seance,’ Grayle said softly. ‘He wants to hold a seance.’

  ‘Give the little girl a coconut,’ Seward said.

  Cindy stopped at the edge of the parapet and looked back at the golden light in the tall, Gothic windows, and didn’t know how he was going to get back into the house now. Little Grayle was in there alone. He had to find Bobby.

  He hurried down into the festival site, lit up below him like a fairground, strings of coloured bulbs between the bare trees. The punters were thinning out, drifting away. Soon the stalls would close, the stallholders returning to their hotels and guesthouses in Great Malvern, some to their camper-vans on a site near the road.

  There was an arc of applause from the main marquee, where a writer on alien abduction was concluding her lecture. Or was it the demonstration of pendulum dowsing?

  While, inside Overcross Castle … two spiritualist gatherings: the mock seance in the banqueting hall, some actor-magician performing the stunts of Daniel Dunglas-Home, as he would tomorrow and the rest of the week for paying audiences. And, somewhere in the heart of the house, the secret ceremony over which Persephone Callard was being pressed to preside – to preserve foolish Kurt from the wrath of the vicious Seward. Poor Kurt, who lived in such fear of this man. Awakening one morning with the horrific realization that he was in partnership with a still-active dangerous criminal.

  Crap. Kurt was a liar. He was very deeply into this. He needed Persephone Callard here as much as Seward did but, because she would have knowledge of at least one murder, he would be obliged to build up Seward as the dangerously unbalanced instigator.

  As he hurried through the lights, Cindy became aware of a few people staring at him, pointing. His blond wig was gone, his glasses were gone. And even New Age followers watched television.

  By the time he reached The Vision stall, it was more than just a few people. He remembered the jokes with Vera about a tabloid reward.

  ‘It’ll all end in tears, you mark my words!’ a man yelled, and there was laughter. Images battered Cindy: the car siege in Malvern Link, the jeering, the taunts, the anger, Marcus slumped under a lamp post.

  ‘Please! Leave me alone!’ he yelled helplessly. Bobby, Bobby, where are you?

  Flinging himself into the tent, where he stood gasping, appalled at his loss of control. But he couldn’t cope with this now. Let them all tear each other to pieces in the race to the phone, to be the first to finger the fugitive Cindy Mars-Lewis and claim their blood money.

  ‘Well, well,’ a woman said dryly. ‘I thought it was, all along.’

  ‘What are you doing here
?’

  It was the woman from the next tent, the etheric masseuse, Lorna something.

  ‘Lorna Crane.’ She was standing, hands on trim hips, under the photos of High Knoll, spotlit now. ‘And what I am doing here, Mr Cindy Mars-Lewis, is helping you out. I’ve sold a hundred and three copies of The Vision, between clients. Also seven subscriptions. And taken the addresses of two women who would like to correspond privately with Marcus Bacton. One left a photo of herself. Taken fifteen years ago, if I’m any judge. Money’s in a cashbox under my treatment couch, it’s all quite safe.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Cindy said, bemused. ‘It’s very good of you. We must … pay you.’

  ‘Nah,’ Lorna said. She shouted at the small crowd gathering outside. ‘Piss off, eh? He’ll be out later.’ She grinned. ‘Must be amazing, having fans, being adored.’

  ‘I fear you misunderstand. They want to tear me apart. The bogeyman, I am now. Baron Samedi. Kali the Destroyer.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ Lorna took from the sleeve of her multihued jumper a sizeable spliff and a book of matches. She got the spliff going, inhaled joyously, offered it to Cindy, who declined. ‘Don’t need this stuff, I suppose, when you’re a shaman. That all true, Cindy? The Celtic shaman bit?’

  ‘I never have denied an interest,’ Cindy said cautiously. ‘Excuse me just a moment.’ He pushed into the tiny rear compartment, where Grayle had left the small case containing her dress for the seance. Flipped open the case. The clothing was still there, neatly folded. Cindy went cold.

  ‘She hasn’t been back. She hasn’t been back.’

  Lorna stood and eyed him blearily through the smoke.

  ‘That guy, the photographer, he came back.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I dunno. Two, three hours ago. I haven’t got a watch. Maybe longer. Yeah, it was light. He come in and had a cuppa, then some guy was shouting for him and he pissed off.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen him since? What about the girl?’

  ‘Nah. Nobody else. I tell you, though, his aura looked like shit.’

  ‘Bobby?’

  ‘I told him to go and sleep it off and not talk to anybody.’

  ‘Lorna, have you any idea where he—?’

  Cindy froze over the case. A man had entered the tent behind Lorna.

  Blue-black uniform, with silver epaulettes. Cap with black, shiny peak.

  He said, ‘In here, Gavin. We got her.’

  Suddenly it was real eerie.

  The bulb was low wattage, you could look hard at it, see its filament, how spidery and frail it was. Like in the early days of electricity, when technology was a small glow in a big fog. When spiritualism was born.

  And Seward, all light and shadow in his evening suit, looked out of that era, too. She was recalling him now from the TV talkshow in the States. Dave! How are ya mate? ‘Ere … brought yer some’ing … Get these dahn yer … jellied eels. You’ll never go back to pizza again, mate.

  Leaning back in his chair now, the shotgun on his knee. He couldn’t let that thing off in here; the honoured guests would hear it booming like an earth tremor under their feet.

  Sure. And think it was just another sound-effect, courtesy of Mr Daniel Dunglas-Home and the first age of spiritualism.

  Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, I never gave you too much respect, you were never enough fun and I only prayed to you when I was in real deep shit, but please, please …

  Her wrist, cuffed to the fat, hairy wrist of the big detective, Foxworth, was beginning to ache. Only way she could move it would be to pull his hand down onto her lap. Maybe not.

  How long? How long were they gonna sit here, the four of them? Waiting for the toffee-nosed bitch. Just pray she never came. Pray she called the cops instead.

  Bobby said casually, ‘So who did kill Justin Sharpe, Gary?’

  Foxworth’s shoulder jerked, dragging the handcuffs, hurting Grayle.

  ‘Oh, that prat,’ Seward said. ‘Well, he deserved it, didn’t he? He was a pain in the arse. Little big man. Bloody nuisance.’

  Bobby said, ‘He gave you Grayle’s name?’

  ‘Did he? Yeah, could be we had it from him.’

  Grayle said hoarsely, ‘Why’d you have to kill him?’

  Seward shook his head a little, in non-comprehension. ‘Darlin’, you’re talking like this was an innocent member of the public. He dabbled. He had his fingers in the pie, he lost his fingers. It happens.’

  ‘Where do you draw the line?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Seward looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe I ain’t as pragmatic and businesslike as I was. Comes from not needing to do it for a living no more. All them years you spend watching your back and the law and planning everything careful, like a military operation. And then you write a book, do telly, and the money just bleedin’ rolls in. It’s weird – you don’t have to do nothing to nobody for it. Get invited to invest in legit business. And suddenly you’re just bleedin’ loaded – you’re turning over twice, three times what you used to take off the suckers.’

  Ron Foxworth sniffed in contempt. ‘Military operation my arse. All you ever were was a grown-up version of the kid that used to take other kids’ dinner money.’

  ‘Ronald—’

  ‘Drugs and protection, that was you, Seward. The dregs. The gutter. You never planned a clever job, not ever. You were just this mean, ruthless bastard who never cared who got hurt. That was the whole secret of your success, Gary, you never gave a flying fart who suffered along the way.’

  ‘Ronald,’ Seward smiled delicately, ‘I rather think, my old friend, that you are beginning to show off to the children. Which cannot be tolerated. I don’t think I’m gonna tell you again not to do that, know wha’ mean?’

  Grayle said, to diffuse the horrifying tension, ‘If you’re making so much money, Mr Seward, why are you still—?’

  Seward shifted in his chair and she caught the cold eyes in the gloom, and it was like coming face to face with a wolf in the undergrowth.

  ‘You’re a clever girl. I got to say I never really liked clever women. They ain’t never clever enough to know when to stop.’

  Foxworth sighed. ‘I’ll explain this, if Gary doesn’t mind, Miss Underwood. It’s because he’s got everything he ever wanted and he doesn’t feel alive any more. He got addicted to the buzz. And the buzz in having everything you ever wanted … for a man like Gary, it starts to fade on day two.’

  ‘You mean like when the body’s replete you realize how starved the spirit is.’ Grayle frantically recalling a think-piece she once wrote for the Courier about why so many billionaires and movie stars and rock stars got obsessively into New Age studies.

  ‘But in that case’, Bobby said, turning this into some kind of crazy, surreal debate, ‘don’t you start to reject your material wealth and remember all the people you misused and try to repay them? Don’t you start trying to put something into the world to replace what you took out before you saw the light?’

  ‘Yeah. And that’s …’ Grayle sat forward. ‘Like, this one time I had a long discussion with Shirley McLaine, and she—’

  ‘And it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of Heaven,’ Seward said.

  ‘It’s a point of view,’ Grayle said.

  And then cowered back in her chair as Seward rose, snarling, tiny jewels of spit popping out.

  ‘You airy-fairy, nampy-pamby twats! You’re just fucking hippies! You’re like them bleedin’ doped-up crazies we’re fleecing out there! Shirley Fucking McLaine? Listen … do you know why the Victorians got closer than anybody has since to proving life after death? ‘Cause they didn’t fart about wiv peace and love and this shit. The Victorians, the old spiritualists, Crole and Abblow and them … they was scientific. They didn’t make the mistake of thinking life after death had to do with bleedin’ religion. They did what had to be done. Know wha’ mean? Nah, you don’t, do you? None of you bleedin’ know!’

  There was a pool of silence
.

  Then Bobby tossed in a rock.

  ‘I know what you mean. It’s like the way Crole and Abblow realized it was necessary to kill John Hodge.’

  ‘And what do you know about that, cock?’

  ‘I think they wanted him for a ghost,’ Bobby said into a sudden cavern of silence. ‘For the first purpose-built haunted house.’

  Grayle said, ‘Huh?’ Then a pulse of pure understanding went through her like white fork-lightning.

  ‘Go on, Bobby,’ Seward said.

  There was a tap on the door.

  ‘Come,’ Seward said.

  Grayle turned her head to watch the door. When it opened and the blue-white light fell in, she realized how dark it had been with that one miserable bulb.

  With the light came Persephone Callard. Behind her, Grayle saw the thin security guard.

  Callard stood there in her dark dress. Her hair was in one long, dense, bellrope plait. She looked slowly round the cellar. From Seward to Grayle to Foxworth to Bobby Maiden, making no response to any of them, giving no hint that she knew them. Then she shook her head. She hadn’t seen the handcuffs, but she’d seen enough.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, all quiet and succinct and upper class. ‘Oh no, I really don’t think so.’ She turned to the security guy. ‘Take me back. I want to talk to Kurt.’

  Seward stood up. He looked suddenly out of condition, like an old-fashioned restaurant manager who ate too many of his own rich meals. Maybe he was aware of this: irritation twisted the fixed smile downwards. He walked into the middle of the room.

  Held the squat shotgun at waist-level.

  Grayle said, ‘Oh—’

  The holes down the shotgun barrels were mineshafts into hell.

  ‘Shut the door, please,’ Seward said.

  LII

  ‘WOULD YOU COME WITH US, PLEASE, MADAM?’

  ‘Are you arresting me, officer?’ Cindy held a hand to his throat, affronted but dignified.