Mean Spirit (25 page)

Maiden said, ‘The odd practical joke? Like setting up a medium to deliver a devastating, humiliating message from the dead son?’

It was dizzying looking down at four counties of lights. Like being on a cliff edge.

‘Hang on, let me get this right,’ Ron said. ‘Les Hole’s wondering if Gary bunged Miss Callard serious money in order to make it clear to Les, in public, that he’d better watch his step. On account of somebody knows all his little secrets and won’t hesitate to use them. Right? I think this poses an obvious question, Miss Callard.’

‘Well, of course I didn’t take any money from Seward. I don’t
know
Seward.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No, I bloody don’t. Nor have I read his stupid book.’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Ron said. ‘Just seems odd to me that he hasn’t sought you out, that’s all. You being in the same part of the world. And interests in common.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Maiden said. ‘What interests in common?’

‘You don’t know? It’s in his book.’

‘I haven’t read his book either. I know he likes to collect celebrities. Actors, sports personalities …’

‘And not all of them still alive, Bobby.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘I’m telling you. He visits bloody … he consults spiritualists.’

There was a silence. Maiden watched the lights of a silent airplane over the horizon.

‘Why?’ Seffi said.

‘Started when his mum got run over by a drunk. Took it very personally. Nobody takes something
away
from Gary. You don’t
take.
Not even if you’re God. I believe it was an auntie or somebody who got him to see a medium, try and calm him down. Seems to have had the opposite effect. Seen various mediums all his life since. Claims it was what got him through his stretch: daily workouts in the gym and regular spiritual counselling. Prison visits from some old lady passing on messages from his old mum, all that kind of cr—’ Ron coughed. ‘Excuse me.’

‘Which old lady?’ Seffi said sharply.

‘I can’t remember her name, you’ll have to get the book. See, it comes down to this: Gary’s got this enormous appetite for life and
the only thing really frightens him is the thought of losing it. Gary Seward vanishing into nothingness, the finely tuned body rotting in the grave. Nothing left but a Cheshire cat grin on some old photos.’

‘Midlife crisis?’ Maiden said.

‘
And
some. Gary needs to believe Gary’s going on.’

There was a period of silence.

Then Ron said, ‘So if it wasn’t Gary … who
did
tell you about the boy?’

Maiden saw Seffi slowly shaking her head, felt the steam rising. He said hurriedly, ‘For what it’s worth, Ron, I believe her. I believe she does this … thing.’

He could just about make out Ron’s faithless smile.

‘Forgive me, Bobby, but, from what I’ve been hearing, that’s what you would say. These days.’

Maiden made an effort to disregard it, concentrating on what he needed to know. ‘Sir Richard Barber. Where’s he come into this?’

‘No idea, mate. Never had cause to look into him. But I will now. This has been interesting. A bit weird, if you don’t mind me saying, but it’s given me a few things to think about.’

‘How gratifying,’ Seffi said bleakly.

XXVI

DURING THE TEN OR SO MINUTES IT TOOK TO DRIVE RON FOXWORTH
back to his car, Maiden quizzed him politely about the murder inquiry at Stroud. Making conversation, talking shop.

Learning that the dead man had been found by a farmer, near the village of Bisley. The body was tumbled into a ditch with about six inches of water in the bottom so that, at first, the farmer thought this was some drunk who’d drowned. Until he turned the bloke over and was sick.

‘So … confirmation,’ Seffi said when Ron was gone and they were sitting in the Jeep, in the layby above Stroud, with the engine running.

‘How far would that be from your place?’

‘Bisley? Three, four miles, I suppose.’

‘So how did he get
there
?’ Maiden demanded. ‘And what happened to his mate? There’s something missing. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It’s going to make some awful sense to Grayle,’ Seffi said. ‘Just when she thought she was in the clear. I’d almost be inclined not even to tell her.’

‘What, so she can read about it in the papers?’

At eight-thirty tomorrow they’d be out there in force, Ron had said. A roughly regimented march through the fields in search of a weapon.

‘Could be about six years, however, before they get around to
putting divers into the Wye at Ross,’ Maiden said morosely.

He saw that Seffi was bent over the steering wheel, her shoulders heaving. He thought she was sobbing then realized it was wild, unhealthy laughter.

‘Oh Christ!’ She raised herself up. ‘Bobby, there’s a gap on the wall.’

‘What?’

‘Back at the lodge. There’s a bloody gap on the wall… probably with the perfectly etiolated outline of an antique hedge hacker. Do you see what I mean?’

‘At the lodge?’

‘Mrs Dronfield, the cleaner, comes in on a Monday. I’ve never thought of her as a deductive genius, but she can certainly gossip for Gloucestershire …’ She looked across at him, those lush lips slack with dismay. ‘Police combing the fields for miles around, everybody talking about it, being careful to lock their doors … and here’s a perfect outline of the murder weapon set up for Mrs Dronfield. It’s not
terribly
funny, is it?’

Cindy was not a person who believed the press was there to be avoided. Had he complained when all those articles appeared commenting on what a refreshing change he had wrought upon the previously tedious Lottery programme? No, he had not.

In sickness and in health.

He sat upon the clifftop, meditated for ten minutes in the sea-haunted silence and then went into the caravan and switched on the mobile phone for the first time since recording his BBC radio interview.

It bleeped within twenty seconds.

‘At last. Is that Cindy?’

‘No, Kelvyn here. Who wants to speak to Cindy?’

‘Ho ho. Listen, mate, it’s Greg Cook at the
Mirror.’

The showbiz editor, or whatever title they gave them these days. At past midnight on a Sunday morning? What on earth was this?

‘Good heavens, boy, are you in the office?’

‘No, I’m at home, actually, Cindy. I know it’s late, but the reason I’m ringing … Are you listening, Cindy? Because I know it’s late and you’re probably knackered.’

‘Listening most intently, I am.’

‘Because I’m ringing to warn you.’

‘A tidal wave, is it, bound for the Pembrokeshire coastline?’

‘Er … ha ha. No, it’s a bit of information that’s come our way just quite recently … well, tonight, actually … that another publication, which shall be nameless, is planning, not to put too fine a point on it, Cindy, to shaft you.’

‘Hello!
magazine?’ Cindy said. ‘My, there’s worrying.’

‘We both know who we’re talking about here, mate. And, yeah, it
is
worrying.’

‘For me or for you?’

‘For both of us. You know the
Mirror’s
always been on your side. I mean, you do know that, don’t you?’

‘I would trust the
Mirror
like my own mother, Gregory,’ said Cindy, whose mother had abandoned him, newborn, on the steps of the Bethesda Chapel in Dowlais. ‘How do they propose to, ah, shaft me?’

‘That crash tonight, Cindy. Yeah?’

‘Poor man.’

‘Tragic. And the heart guy. And other incidents. Allegedly.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Also, stories going round about you. I wouldn’t repeat them, but somebody’s been looking into your past.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And offering certain material for sale. Came to us, first. Naturally, we refused point-blank. Showed him the door.’

‘Asking too much, was he?’

‘But he went straight to the opposition, and we understand a deal’s been made. You can expect to read about it next week. It’s almost certain to cause a storm. And inevitably put the world’s media on your back. Unfairly, in our belief.’

‘You …’ Cindy became aware that the hand holding the phone was shaking. ‘You’re having me on, I think, Gregory.’

‘Cindy, I wish that were the case.’

‘But I don’t … I don’t … I have no idea what this can be about.’

But he was rather afraid that he did. Some of it, anyway.

He began to breathe harder and covered the mouthpiece to conceal it. He was what he was; he had never attempted to cover it
up. He was renowned as an eccentric – this was accepted. He had no sexual secrets – well, not many. But yes, the ammunition was there, he had always been aware of that.

But people
liked
him. He was
popular.
On the stormy seas of controversy, was not popularity the greatest balast?

‘Cindy, I want to help you,’ Gregory Cook said. ‘No bullshit, all right? I personally contacted the editor – rang him at home, tonight, not two hours ago – and, as a result, I’m empowered to offer you … let’s call it sanctuary. We’ll move you to a luxury hotel, a secret destination. We’ll give you a sum of money, precise details of which I can discuss later. And we’ll let you tell your side of the story – in effect your life story – to an experienced writer, probably me, which we’ll publish exclusively and
simultaneously
– that’s the key point – thus negating the damage caused by our dockland friends. Are you with me?’

‘I may be just slightly ahead of you. You want me to co-operate in the manufacture of what I believe is called a “spoiler”.’

‘Yes,’ Gregory Cook said. ‘In a word. We can have you away from your little tin shack before those bastards are out of the pub. What do you say?’

‘Gregory, it’s …’ Cindy took a breath, thinking fast. ‘A magnificent gesture, it is, on your part.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I would like, however, a few minutes to peruse my BBC contract. To make absolutely sure it contains no clause precluding my acceptance of your generous proposal. I don’t think, for one minute, that there
is
such a clause, but I would like to be certain.’

‘No problem, Cindy. Bring the contract with you. We’ll get our lawyers to run through it.’

‘Please. It will take me ten minutes. Just give me your number and I shall call you back.’

‘Cindy, these fuckers could well be on their way. They’ll certainly be there by morning.’

‘Just a few minutes, Gregory. A few short minutes.’

A few short minutes it took him to unpack his cases and repack them with fresh things.

And gather his drum and his cloak of feathers.

And Kelvyn Kite in his pink case.

And load them all into the Honda, which he drove to his lock-up behind Dai Gruffydd’s lightless service station on the Haverfordwest road.

Why? Why this? Why this
now?

In the lock-up was nested his Morris Minor. Unthinkable, somehow, to flee in the Honda. Cindy hoped she would start for, if she did not, it would be the very worst of omens.

XXVII

THERE WAS EVEN A METAL BRACKET WHICH HAD SUPPORTED THE
hacker. And, yes, a pale patch on the wall which, even in the meagre glow of a single lamp, gave Bobby Maiden a clear guide to the size and shape of the implement.

‘What now? Get rid of the lot?’ Seffi Callard said. ‘Take out all the brackets, paint the wall?’

‘So that your Mrs …’

‘Dronfield.’

‘… is faced with the smell of fresh paint and—’

‘OK, forget it. No wonder people get caught. They must get
themselves
caught half the time.’

‘Tangled webs.’ Maiden thought it was incredibly unlikely that Mrs Dronfield would make connections, but … ‘Perhaps if we move the saw across so that, instead of hanging down, it …’ lifting the part-rusted blade ‘… fits horizontally, occupying the vacant bracket and covering the space, where …’

‘Very good,’ she said when he’d repositioned the other tools to close gaps. ‘You realize what you’ve done.’

‘Become a serious accessory. This gets out, end of career.’

‘The feeling I’m getting from you is that that might almost be a relief.’

‘Dunno. How would I make a living?’ He stood in the dim corner between the door to the kitchen and the bottom of the stairs,
forming a picture of how it happened. ‘What were your first feelings when you came down and found those guys?’

‘What do you
think
?’ He couldn’t make out her face, but he saw her shiver. ‘You any good at lighting fires, Bobby?’

‘Did you feel they were expecting you? Waiting for you? Knew you were around?’

‘It was Grayle they didn’t expect.’

Maiden bent over the hearth, picked up a poker and raked at the cinders. Found a pile of old newspapers and a box of firelighters. Wondered where she lived the rest of the time, what classy apartment she’d abandoned for this dim cave.

‘You plan to stay here tonight?’

‘Too late to go back. Do you want to ring Marcus and tell him?’

‘Did you tell anyone else about what happened at the party? Apart from Marcus and Grayle and me?’

‘Only Nancy. And as I was already wondering how far I could actually trust her, I told her no more than she’d learn from anyone who’d been there. The vase breaking, that kind of thing. Nothing about
him.’

‘Well,’ he said carefully.
‘He
could be a bit irrelevant. To someone else.’

‘Despite your liberal attitudes. Despite your death experiences …’ ice in her voice ‘… this is the one part of it, I suspect, you’d still rather wasn’t there.’

‘I try to understand,’ Maiden said.

She came across the room, stood over him as he knelt at the hearth. ‘Imagine you’re a woman. You’re in a lonely house and every time you pick up the phone to make a call there’s some sickening heavy breather on the line.’

Maiden built a pyramid of coal around a firelighter.

‘Or you’re in a two-roomed apartment,’ she said, ‘and there’s one room you know you can’t go into. A door you can’t open. What do you do?’