Mean Spirit

by Rickman, Phil

  ‘Aye, and no-one’s ever going to prove otherwise now. I’d be happy, and I think my mother and her mother would rest in peace, if it was just accepted locally that they probably murdered him. That’s all we want.’

  ‘Crole and Abblow?’

  ‘They were doing experiments’, Harry said, ‘into what happened at the moment of death. I remember my grandmother talking to my aunt – in that hushed way they talked when there were children about – about Mr Crole and Mr Abblow coming to see their neighbour when he was dying. They wanted to be with him when he died, you see. Crole even offered to pay for the funeral, with an expensive memorial in the churchyard – oh, he was made of money was Crole. But they still wouldn’t let him go into the bedroom that last night because they knew he just wanted to watch what happened when the old man passed over. Watch the light go out of him.’

  ‘It was said they took animals.’

  ‘I believe it. Though that wouldn’t satisfy them for long.’

  ‘You think they experimented on John Hodge? Or did he see too much and they killed him to stop him talking?’

  ‘Oh, he’d already talked,’ Harry said. ‘Or his dreams had. These terrible nightmares he couldn’t properly remember. But he knew he was going to die, my mother said they were all convinced of that. By day he was very quiet and withdrawn. At night he’d scream. My grandmother remembered those screams and they disturbed her own nights all her life. That’s how bad it was.’

  ‘What were the actual circumstances of his death?’

  ‘They heard a shot and then Abblow was said to have found him in the woods with half his face blown away. They claimed he was unfit to move, so they made him as comfortable as they could on the grass, Crole laying down his fine jacket and Abblow tending him – Abblow was a doctor, you see.’

  ‘What year was this?’

  ‘Eighteen eighty-seven. This month. This day.’

  ‘This actual date?’

  For an instant Maiden was aware of himself being vibrantly aware of the moment – as though he was standing behind himself and Harry Douglas Oakley seated at a round, mahogany table in the small, dark-panelled bar.

  ‘Those evil beggars,’ Harry said. ‘Myself, I don’t think they were tending him so much as prolonging his agony. Dragging out his death so they could study him and make him tell them what was happening. Perhaps they’d got gadgets attached to him.’

  ‘Gadgets?’

  ‘I don’t know. Like Frankenstein. They always had gadgets in those days. Kept them in the dungeons, most likely.’

  ‘The castle has dungeons?’

  ‘Well, cellars with thick walls. Nobody been down there in years. All the years it was derelict, it was well fenced off and barb-wired, and no-one ever went there because it was always private land. Except for my poor old great-grandfather. Who never went away.’

  ‘You mean his ghost.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘That was seen quite often?’

  ‘At one time. So it’s said.’ Harry looked down into his beer, as though the face of John Hodge might materialize there. ‘Poachers and so on. But even the poachers got nervous. The last time … well, that would be a young couple, staying at the Crown for a night. Ramblers, with backpacks. Walked into the pub at sunset, all ashy-faced. Strangers wouldn’t know, you see. Ninety-seven, this would’ve been.’

  ‘What did they say they’d seen?’

  ‘They’d found one of the paths through the grounds and they were getting as close as they could to the castle and up strolls a man in a cap, with a shotgun under his arm – so clear and sharp they thought he was a real, living person. And they stopped and wished him good evening and hoped they weren’t trespassing … and he walks within a few feet of them and never took them on and just disappeared into the air. Been a few like that.’

  Maiden took a slow sip from his glass of cider. He was hearing Seffi Callard.

  … certainly, in my experience as a medium, I’ve never seen anything quite so clear as this before. So fully defined. Such a physical presence.

  ‘A few like that? Were they always so clear?’

  ‘There’s ghosts and ghosts, aren’t there, Bobby? Some you hear of, it’s just a wandering light, no shape, no features. People who’ve seen this one, they could identify my great-grandad from old photographs. And did!’

  ‘You’ve never seen it?’

  ‘And never wanted to, Bobby. Never wanted to. Besides, it’s better coming from others, isn’t it? Old John Hodge, he’s doing no more than I am today – drawing attention to a murder.’

  ‘Why did the place become derelict?’

  ‘Well, it didn’t happen overnight. Abblow left – went abroad, it was said. Crole never came out much after that, although you’d apparently see his wife sometimes, on her own. When he died she sold the castle, and then it went through the usual things – a school, a hotel. Before this syndicate put in an offer, it was owned by Arthur Slater, the farmer. His dad, he bought it with a hundred and fifty acres in the Seventies. They ploughed round the castle.’

  ‘Why do you say syndicate?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if it was or not. This young man, Campbell, he always makes out it’s his castle, but I do know Arthur slightly, and he reckons it was a Gloucestershire firm made the initial approach. Bright’s? Would that be it?’

  ‘How about Bright Horizon Developments?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Harry without much interest. ‘Bright Horizon Developments.’ He finished his beer. ‘You got what you wanted, Bobby? Only I wouldn’t mind getting back. They reckon there’s Midlands television coming to film the festival taking shape and I wouldn’t mind getting my sign in front of the camera. P’raps they’ll want to interview me. Do you think?’

  ‘It’s always possible.’

  ‘I’m not a nutter, you know,’ Harry said. ‘It’s funny – my grandmother used to say it was a big joke in the family that one day her father was going to be the ghost of Overcross. Because he loved that place so much you couldn’t get him away. Dawn till dusk and then half the night, building up that estate from nothing. Part of it, you see.’

  Vera, the cleaner from the kitchens, was a large woman with white hair tied up in a bun and kind of knowing eyes. You could tell, somehow, that nothing would get past her.

  Grayle and Cindy sure didn’t. They went in through the kitchen door, round back of the castle. It didn’t look much like a castle this side, the door and the woodwork modern and utility.

  ‘You’re back again, Miss Bacton.’

  ‘It’s bloody cold out there, Vera.’

  Wasn’t too warm in here. The kitchen was the size of a hospital ward and all white tiles. Vera said, ‘You’d like some tea, I s’pose.’

  ‘That would be splendid,’ said Cindy. ‘This is my assistant, Thornborough. And this is my poor bloody brother’s dog, Malcolm, who would appreciate a bowl of water and a chocolate digestive.’

  Had to hand it to Cindy; he was good, could switch personalities in the blink of an eye. Right now, no way would Grayle make the mistake of addressing him as Cindy.

  ‘We got about ten minutes’, Vera said, taking this huge kettle to one of four sinks, ‘before the caterers arrive to criticize everything.’

  ‘Big dinner?’

  ‘The Victorians stuffed themselves silly.’

  ‘Great,’ Grayle said miserably.

  ‘Vera,’ Cindy said, ‘those removal men …’

  ‘Removal men?’

  ‘Bloody big van. Must be around somewhere.’

  ‘I never seen no van this end.’

  ‘Just that I could really bloody use a van that size, if it’s coming back. Got a load of stuff for the bastard stall, held up at Cheltenham station. Thought they might have a spare corner, and if Campbell was already paying them …’

  ‘They’ve probably gone round the front. Or using one of the side doors.’

  ‘Possibly. Would you mind if …?’

  ‘You have a look around, i
f you want,’ Vera said.

  ‘Excellent. Stay with Vera, Malcolm.’ Cindy crossed to a central door, pushed through, beckoning Grayle.

  They were in a low passage with some narrow, cramped stairs. Servants’ stairs. A row of small bells on a bracket, for Barnaby Crole to summon the butler.

  ‘Quietly.’ Cindy mounted the wooden stairs. ‘We just want to know what they’re bringing and where they’re taking it and then we’re out of here.’

  ‘What do you think it’s gonna be?’

  ‘The furniture, of course. If I’m right, they want to recreate the room where Persephone Callard was introduced to the essence of Clarence Judge. They want her to do it again, see, under the same conditions. And this time she doesn’t walk out on them.’

  ‘They’d go to that kind of trouble? Transport the whole room? But that’s so crazy!’

  Cindy paused at the top of the stairs, looked over his shoulder. ‘Is it?’

  ‘Look …’ Grayle hung back. ‘I don’t understand this, Cindy.’

  Cindy stood above her in his tweed suit and his straw-blond wig now under a black beret.

  ‘That’s because, little Grayle, you are not a fanatic. This is about fanaticism. It’s also about ego. Egos big enough to want to survive death. The fanaticism and the egotism of Barnaby Crole and Anthony Abblow and Kurt Campbell and Gary Seward. Huge and cosmic, it is, and yet also so terribly small and sordid.’

  And he turned and continued to the top of the stairs.

  ‘What kind of freaking explanation is that?’ Grayle yelled.

  ‘Oh,’ Cindy said.

  He looked back down at Grayle. His eyes flashed: caution.

  Grayle went up slowly and joined him where the stairs came out in a square hallway with rough panelling, blotched with old mould.

  Kurt Campbell stood in a doorway watching her emerge.

  And Persephone Callard, sleek in black.

  XLV

  MAIDEN WATCHED HARRY DOUGLAS OAKLEY TRAMP OFF, WITH HIS contentious placard, to join his evangelical guardians on the edge of the festival car park.

  It was mid-afternoon. He hadn’t eaten since leaving Castle Farm. It had started to snow again, flakes fine as flour dusting the windscreen. A few days ago, when he’d driven into Gloucestershire with Seffi Callard, it had felt like early summer.

  He sat for a while in the cold truck, trying to form a steady picture from the confusion. It was like one of those magic-eye pictures, that short-lived fad some years back: find the Rembrandt inside the Jackson Pollock.

  In no time at all, thanks to Harry Oakley, he’d established the connection. Fact: the purchase of Overcross Castle was the fruit of a collaboration between Kurt Campbell and Gary Seward, whose interest in spiritualism had become an obsession. Seward’s other obsession was his need to find the killer of Clarence Judge – because Clarence was part of Gary’s history, his yardstick of hardness. And because it was not safe for whoever killed Clarence to be out there.

  Seward’s fervent, if irrational, belief that this knowledge could be attained through the employment of a good medium – the best medium – had led him to Persephone Callard, ex-girlfriend of Kurt Campbell. To conceal from her the involvement of either of them, they’d set up the Cheltenham seance, using Sir Richard Barber as a front.

  Question: if Campbell had been so close to Seffi, why hadn’t he just asked her to do the seance, the way he’d asked her to do the Festival of the Spirit? As a favour, presumably.

  What was the real relationship between those two?

  (i.e. has she betrayed us? Has she betrayed me?)

  Unanswerable. He tried not to think about Emma.

  So … OK … the Cheltenham seance had ended in disarray but what it produced was convincing enough for Seward to target Seffi Callard, to do anything to get her back. Resulting in two killings.

  And then there was the Riggs connection.

  Maiden pushed his face through his cold hands. It was like a mad, holistic dream, unbreakable strands of his experience twisted into a pulsing, fibrous knot. Perfectly logical to the likes of Cindy, who always looked for great and abstract patterns, the Pollock beyond the Rembrandt.

  He wished he could talk to Marcus Bacton, that unique blend of the impressionable and the incisive.

  The thought of Marcus made Maiden suddenly so absurdly anxious that he pulled out his mobile and rang Worcester Royal Infirmary. Even while he was being transferred to the ward, he heard a voice in his head asking if he was a relative, then saying, gently but firmly,

  I’m afraid Mr Bacton died this morning.

  His hand was shaking. The snow collected like icing sugar on the rubber wiper blades. He heard the staff nurse answer, heard his own voice identifying himself as Marcus Bacton’s nephew, heard the nurse say that Mr Bacton was making satisfactory progress. Heard Seffi Callard, as Em, purring, Come on, guv, help yourself to the sweet trolley.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Would you mind not calling me sir?’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was coming to pieces. ‘Oh God. Sorry.’ Get a grip. ‘Would you … tell Marcus everything’s OK. And we’ll be in to see him just as soon as we can.’

  ‘I said, would you like to speak to him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Because I think he’d like to speak to you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think …’

  ‘Hold on a moment, would you? We’ll get the phone to Mr Bacton’s bedside.’

  Damn. He didn’t need this now. He knew what he should be doing, what he should have done days ago … tell Ron Foxworth everything. You could go mad considering Cindy’s shamanic solutions, contemplating Marcus’s Big Mysteries, while people were getting killed.

  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.

  Very sensible. Delicate, artistic fingers weren’t equipped to feel collars. He’d call Gloucester police, ask to speak to Mr Foxworth. Report, to begin with, the Bright Horizon connection with Overcross and the festival. Take it from there.

  ‘Maiden?’

  ‘Marcus. How are—?’

  ‘I want you to do something for me.’

  ‘Well, if … you know … if I can …’ Maiden said weakly. Marcus didn’t sound weak. He didn’t sound any different after his heart attack, this big, sobering, life-shrinking experience.

  ‘Maiden, I’ve just had a schoolboy in a white coat at my bedside offering me drugs. I told him to go and sell them on the street like everyone else. Or, alternatively, shove them up his arse.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The kid seems to have called for back-up. So I’m doing the same. Get me the fuck out of here, Maiden. Tonight. All right?’

  Marcus cut the line.

  Kurt Campbell smiled.

  ‘Looking for me, Alice?’ The deep, smoky voice, the voice of a much older man. Like whole lifetimes older, Grayle thought.

  But Kurt was smiling out of a young hunk’s face. That well-washed tawny hair. And, down below, the tight tawny jeans.

  ‘Oh hi,’ Grayle said. ‘Listen – this is awful; I’m really … you know, I’m really not that kind of journalist – but we saw this door open and we just had to take a peek, I mean, this place … this place is so awesome. Like, real… like Mervyn Peake … like Gormenghast, you know? I’m a big … big Peake freak. You know? I …’

  ‘Alice …’ Kurt raised a hand to stop the flow. ‘You’re excused.’ Using the hand to introduce the woman at his side. ‘This is Persephone Callard, by the way.’

  Those amber eyes met Grayle’s. So she was doing it. Ms Persephone Callard in from the cold to climax a phoney Victorian seance full of dry ice and ectoplasm.

  ‘Oh …’ Grayle widening her eyes. ‘Hi!’ Lurching forward, hand out. ‘I’m Alice D. Thornborough, representing the New York Courier and The Vision magazine. Wow. Hey.
Persephone Callard. I can’t believe this. You’re looking so … good.’

  Stupid thing to say to someone you weren’t supposed to know, but maybe OK for a journalist who’d read all the stuff about Callard being washed up. And she was looking good. Looking, in the simplicity of black – the long skirt, the simple, scoop-necked top, no make-up, no jewellery – like the queen of this place.

  And she nodded, like a queen does, and she said nothing, like a queen does to journalists.

  However – a whole lot worse – Kurt was looking intently at Cindy, like there was something about this tall bottle blonde in the glasses and the country tweeds that he couldn’t quite identify. Oh, Jesus.

  ‘Kurt,’ Grayle said quickly, ‘this is Imelda Bacton, of The Vision magazine. She’s here to run the magazine’s stand in place of her brother, Marcus, who …’ flicking a swift glance at Callard, ‘… had a heart attack.’

  Seeing the quiver, quickly stilled.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ Callard said steadily. ‘I once met Mr Bacton. How is he?’ There was shock in her eyes, and Grayle intuited that she was thinking this must have happened the night she brought Clarence Judge into Castle Farm and then ran out on them, that it was her fault.

  Which was OK. It might just as easily have happened then.

  ‘Weakened but recovering,’ Imelda Bacton said powerfully. ‘Needs more than a cardiac blip to take that old bastard out.’

  At the sound of the voice, so abruptly different from Cindy’s syrupy south Wales, Kurt Campbell visibly relaxed.

  ‘I was showing Seffi to her room. The problem with this place is that it has about twenty-six bedrooms and, so far, less than half of them’ve been refurbished. It’s an ongoing operation, this house.’

  ‘Like the Forth Bridge, I imagine.’ Cindy gazed up at the ceiling from which paper hung in shreds. ‘You must’ve spent hundreds of thousands on this place already. What the hell possessed you to take it on, Mr Campbell?’

  ‘I like challenges,’ Kurt said. Grayle saw that he now had no interest at all in Imelda Bacton – too old to screw and probably a royal pain in the ass. ‘Look, Alice … I’d like a word with you. If you want to wait in the main hall – that’s just along this passage – I’ll be down in ten minutes. That’s next to the main door, so if Miss Backley wants to get back to her stand, that’s the quickest way.’