Mean Spirit

by Phil Rickman

  ‘And who knows who he’d have accidentally taken with him.’

  ‘He wouldn’t grass nobody, you know that. Nah, this was a sweet way to go. And if we coulda told him he was coming back, we would’ve.’

  ‘The flat,’ Bobby said. ‘The one you later passed off as Barber’s. Why did you kill Clarence there?’

  ‘Well, we had all them flats, didn’t we? Used for this and that. How it happened, Clarence’s chest was bad when he come out, wiv all them years of bad snout. So he wants to give up the weed. I says, “’Ere, I know just the geezer.” We takes him up the flat, sits him down all comfy, then Kurt puts him under. A jewel of a subject. Like that!’ Seward snapped his fingers.

  ‘A faithful servant,’ Bobby said. ‘Foot soldier.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Grayle was blown away by the bizarre glint of tears in Seward’s hard eyes. No remorse – just nostalgia, sentiment, warm affection. If there was anything left down there in her shrunken gut she could’ve thrown up all over again.

  ‘And you played him the tape,’ Bobby said. ‘“The lines are open.” Seffi’s voice. And you told him that when he heard it, he would come back. And then …’

  ‘One shot. Pffft! Clean as a whistle. I cried afterwards, it was so swift and clean. Moving, know wha’ mean?’

  ‘And then you packaged him up and loaded him in a van and drove him down to the Thames Valley, left him in a skip.’

  ‘He’d’ve understood. A memorial service wouldn’t’ve been appropriate, would it, seeing none of us reckoned much to the All bleedin’ mighty? But we had a few beers down Clarence’s old boozer in Saxton Gate, and that was very nice.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘A very pleasant night.’

  He stood up. He went and stood with his back to the oak door.

  ‘You never saw him, did you? You never saw a bleedin’ thing, you bitch. You was pissing right up my leg.’

  ‘You can believe what you want,’ Grayle said.

  ‘And that black slapper, she conned me too.’

  ‘They don’t realize all the trouble you went to,’ Bobby said. ‘I don’t know how you tolerate it.’

  Seward hefted the sawn-off, turned on Bobby.

  ‘I warned you.’

  ‘So you did, Gary,’ Bobby said wearily. He put his head back, closed his eyes. ‘So you did.’

  Grayle thought, I would rather go first than see or hear this.

  ‘Open your eyes, cock. I want you to see. I want you staring down the little black tunnels.’

  ‘Piss off, Gary. Ron was right. You’re just a toerag in a fantasy world.’

  ‘What if I’m doing it now, Bobby? What if I’m aiming for just over your belt, so you die wiv your guts in your hands? What if I’m coming in close? What if I’m giving you the countdown. Three. Two …’

  ‘Look!’ Grayle screamed. ‘Can’t you see him? Can’t you see Clarence? He’s staring right at you, Gary! And you know the reason you can’t see him?’

  Seward breathed out roughly. ‘You know I’m tired of you and your games. How about, if I turn around, and if I don’t see Clarence, I do you? How you feel about that?’

  ‘The … the reason you don’t see him … is you’d just be looking at yourself. You and Kurt. What you made. That’s not Clarence, it never was. All you’d see is what you made.’

  ‘I turn round and if I don’t see him, I blow you through the wall. Is that a deal, darlin’?’

  Grayle said steadily, ‘That’s perfectly fine.’

  Seward began slowly to turn.

  Bobby threw himself at Seward, dragging the corpse and Grayle and Seffi Callard, pulled the whole damn table over but Seward moved easily away and stood with his back to the door and his shotgun at his hip, fully turned and cold and relaxed. In the dimness Grayle saw the fire from both barrels.

  LV

  THE SPIRITUALISTS SAID THAT WHEN YOU DIED, FRIENDS AND RELAtives who’d gone before would be waiting for you, to welcome you, show you the way to wherever it was – the endless garden with bird-song and angelsong, fountains of sound.

  Bobby Maiden arose from blood and looked up into whiteness and psychotic eyes.

  It was not inappropriate that he should be met by the amiable cross-bred bull terrier called Malcolm. It was not unlikely that Malcolm had gone before, shot by one of the Forcefield men.

  Moments passed.

  The strip light zizzed and flickered.

  He could not feel his hands.

  He saw a face on the flagstones.

  Spirit-voices chattered all around him. The room shimmered blue-white, in all its horror, like the deep-freeze in a meat-packing plant.

  ‘Bobby?’ A small voice.

  ‘Grayle. Are you—?’

  ‘Yeah. You?’

  ‘Sure.’

  At some point he became aware that the face on the flagstones was Gary Seward’s. Maiden raised himself and peered over it.

  In the back of Gary’s skull was a bullet hole. The most beautiful bullet hole he’d ever seen. He kept looking at it and looking away and looking back. He wanted to frame the memory of it.

  Malcolm sniffed at Gary’s head and then turned away.

  ‘Vera?’ Grayle’s voice again.

  The figure in the doorway was big and still and black and white, except for …

  ‘Vera!’ Grayle shouted. ‘Vera, hold on …!’

  The woman looked once over the room and then turned away. She was all in black and white, except for the yellow rubber gloves. A black pistol, a revolver, pointing down from one of them.

  Bobby Maiden said, in disbelief, ‘Connie …?’

  As the woman quietly went out, Grayle said, ‘Oh, Jesus, no …’

  Cindy stumbled into the kitchen. It stretched away before him like an old-fashioned hospital ward.

  He saw Vera before she saw him.

  She was at the bottom end, near the fridges. She was tearing off her Victorian waitress’s costume. When Cindy came in, she snatched up something wrapped in brown paper. Instinctively, Cindy didn’t ask her if she’d heard the shot. He asked her how he might get into the cellars.

  ‘Those outbuildings at the back?’ Vera’s voice had toughened, was like whipcord. ‘The middle one, the stable. Third stall. Where the manger’s been moved.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He turned, saw Maurice enter the kitchen.

  ‘From what I gather,’ Vera said, ‘they needed to be able to get in and out from the grounds. That was those …’

  ‘Crole and Abblow.’

  ‘Yeah, them. Needed access separate from the house. You go down a bit careful, Cindy, but there won’t be a problem. Don’t worry about them security men, they’re staying well out of it. Nobody to tell them otherwise. They ain’t stupid.’

  Cindy nodded. Beckoned Maurice.

  ‘You never saw me,’ Vera said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Him neither.’

  ‘Him neither. Count on it.’

  * * *

  Persephone Callard, liquid-eyed, was slowly shaking her head.

  ‘Silly. Really, really silly, Bobby.’

  The liquid in her eyes was blood. Her upper face was all blood, to beyond the hairline.

  She laughed. ‘I suppose that’s my … TV career fucked.’

  ‘Just don’t move, Seffi,’ Grayle said. ‘Don’t move a goddamn inch.’

  Maiden and Seffi were still joined at the wrist. Maiden tried to reach for her hand. His fingers refused to respond.

  Seffi smiled. ‘He done for me, guv.’ Em’s voice, ironical.

  No. Please, no. Please not again.

  Grayle hauled on the horror behind her to try and reach Seffi. ‘I guess he fired when Vera shot him. Most of it went high. The table protected us, maybe. I guess Seffi must’ve …’

  ‘I want to say …’ Seffi spoke softly but firmly, her lip quivering just a little ‘… I want to explain why he … it … didn’t come. Perhaps the one time it would’ve helped, there’s the irony.’

  ‘It did co
me,’ Grayle said.

  Maiden stared at her. ‘I thought—’

  ‘You thought I was faking. Well, some of it. Some of it was faked. Like, it didn’t talk. It was a dead thing. I guess that’s what you get, with hypnosis. Aw … Just forget it. I feel stupid now. I don’t know what I saw.’

  ‘Very good,’ Seffi said. ‘And there’ll be a vacancy now, too.’

  No!

  ‘Listen, I want to tell you where I went, after the window …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Maiden said. ‘Just …’

  ‘I took the Jeep and I parked it about… half a mile away. Then I tried to sleep for an hour or two. In the car. And then I walked up to that place … with the burial chamber.’

  ‘High Knoll,’ Grayle whispered.

  ‘Yah. I took the cross from around my neck and I laid it on the stone, and I sat there and I waited for the dawn. Wasn’t much of one, but I felt… I felt some strange things. I mean, it was … good. And I was able to … you know, pray and things like that, and I… I told … whoever … that I didn’t want to see anything like … again.’

  ‘Honey,’ Grayle said, ‘you must’ve been freezing.’

  ‘Froze my ass.’ Seffi smiled. ‘Actually I didn’t feel cold at all. I feel … I suppose I feel rather colder now.’ She reached out. ‘Just a bit. Hold my hand, Bobby?’

  He tried. He couldn’t.

  Her hand lay still as stone between them.

  ‘Thank you,’ Seffi said. ‘That feels so much better.’

  Epilogue: Lines Closed

  THE HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATOR AT ELHAM GENERAL HAS TRIED TO reason with her. Talked about staff shortages, about her pension.

  Sister Andy Anderson told him to go boil his head.

  Before she can think better of it, she drives home to the red-brick street by the derelict furniture warehouse, does the usual slalom between the old cars, about three per household, and rushes in to pack a case, leaving the front door open behind her.

  When she comes down from the bedroom, there’s this woman sitting bold as bloody brass on her sofa, under Bobby Maiden’s gouache of the ruins at Castle Farm.

  ‘Whit the fock …?’ Andy’s accent is always made denser by shock.

  The woman sits quite calmly, bag on knee. She’s wearing a shapeless old fake-fur jacket. ‘Message from Bobby, Sister Anderson. He says if you can make it to Castle Farm your healing skills would be most appreciated.’

  Andy relaxes. ‘Already on ma way, hen. I must be psychic.’

  Earlier, from the hospital, Andy left a furious message on the answering machine at The Vision.

  This followed the call she had in the middle of the night from Marcus Bacton, in another hospital. Bastards have abandoned me, Anderson. I’m giving them precisely one hour and then I’m pulling this bastard monitor out of the bastard wall and calling for a bastard taxi.

  Andy suspected the Health Service had done all it would ever be permitted to do for Marcus Bacton.

  She remembered what she’d said to Bobby Maiden when he told her she’d never leave Elham. It’ll happen. One day soon, I’ll be just a memory here. A grating Glaswegian growl in the night. A stale smell of high-tar smoke in the lavvy.

  Happened sooner than she’d figured. Looked like only alternative medicine was going to get Marcus Bacton back on his feet.

  ‘Don’t I know you?’ she inquires of the woman. ‘Like from years ago? Were you no’ once brought in from Feeny Park with …?’

  ‘That’s right. Consuela. Connie.’

  ‘Aye. So you would be Vic Clutton’s …’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, love.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Wis down tae Riggs,’ Andy says. ‘You do know that?’ What the hell, she’s away from here today; doesn’t matter what she says now. ‘And one day, they’re gonnae—’

  ‘Riggs is dead,’ Connie tells her.

  ‘Nae kidding,’ Andy says slowly.

  ‘He was shot. In a lavatory. At a big house in the Malverns.’

  ‘Where’d you learn that?’

  ‘In tomorrow’s papers,’ Connie says.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What I reckon, somebody with a real grudge must’ve been tracking his movements for several days. Must’ve known somebody inside Forcefield Security. Learned he was due to attend this reception. And … you know … planned ahead.’

  ‘That’s bloody devious,’ Andy says.

  ‘Anyway, I just happened to be passing that way last night, and I run into Bobby, and I said I was coming back this morning, and he said would I tell you the score. He said you was … all right. But I knew that anyway. From Victor.’

  ‘I’m honoured, hen.’ From Consuela, Andy learns what she already knows about Marcus Bacton. Also that Bobby is going to need his hand bandaging regularly while he thinks – very hard this time – about leaving the police. And that Cindy Mars-Lewis is considering minor corrective cosmetic surgery.

  ‘Wee Grayle?’

  ‘The American girl’s all right, the dog’s all right. The police are looking for Kurt Campbell, the hypnotist. Oh. Yeah. Persephone Callard – you’ve heard of her? The psychic?’

  ‘Aye, I have.’

  Connie says without emotion, ‘She won’t be seeing any more spirits. She was in a shooting incident.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She was blinded,’ Connie says.

  ‘Jesus God.’

  ‘Madman with a shotgun.’

  ‘Have they got him?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘I see. Is all this gonnae mean a lot of explaining for Bobby?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, sister.’ Connie stands up. Her small handbag seems surprisingly heavy.

  ‘Or for you?’ Andy lifts an eyebrow.

  ‘Well, Bobby …’ Connie hesitates. ‘Bobby thinks I’d be better off never having left town these past few days. Though, obviously I couldn’t’ve spent them at home.’

  ‘On account of it was too upsetting for you. Keep looking out the front window, seeing where it happened to Vic. I can understand that. It’s probably why you’d’ve been better off staying with me.’

  ‘That’s what Bobby thought.’

  Andy nods. Thinks about it.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘it’s been nice having you, hen.’

  LOTTO BLAZE

  WAS CINDY

  STITCH-UP!

  MIRROR EXCLUSIVE

  by Gregory Cook

  The Lotto inferno which wiped out a whole family may have been started in a bid to destroy top TV host Cindy Mars-Lewis.

  The amazing allegation came last night from Cindy’s former producer after police revealed that the fire in Banbury, Oxfordshire was arson.

  Jo Shepherd, 28, said, ‘I know it sounds incredible, but we’ve all known for some time that certain people had it in for Cindy.

  ‘When two jackpot winners died in close succession, it’s my belief that somebody saw their chance …

  ‘I think the Sherwin family were the tragic victims of a secret vendetta that’s gone way out of control.’

  The BBC were thought to have fired Cindy after he was accused of jinxing jackpot winners with a series of cruel jibes.

  BBC chiefs refused to support Jo Shepherd’s theory last night. But a spokesman said, ‘We do agree that this curse story has got completely out of hand, and we would very much like to talk to Mr Mars-Lewis.’

  Cindy, however, was still in hiding last night…

  Thanks – for crucial technical assistance – to Richard Morris (hypnosis), Ken Ratcliffe and Mike Kreciala (ballistics).

  And thanks especially – for the core plot and a brilliant edit – to my wife, Deborah.

 

 

 
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