Mean Spirit (53 page)

And many people. New Agers mingling with the councillors and tourism officials and the local aristocracy – these individuals bemused or offended and pursued by a harrassed, perspiring Francine. No sign of Kurt, but there wouldn’t be. No visible Forcefield uniforms. Occasionally, one of the dignitaries would glance at Cindy, half-recognizing him, but no-one asked about his swollen and bloodied face, his crooked bosom.

Then Maurice Gooch was there, quivering with agitation. ‘Cindy, there’s …’

‘The cellar?’ Cindy snapped. ‘Did you find a way in?’

‘No, but…’

‘There has got to be an entrance!’

‘We’ve been everywhere, man,’ Maurice protested. ‘We’ve been into every room, including two locked ones. We’ve ripped up carpets, we’ve moved dressers, we’ve levered up flagstones. Either there’s no way in, or there’s no cellar. Only, there is, according to my pendulum. It’s got five rooms.’

‘Did you ask Vera in the kitchen?’

‘We’ve asked every bugger, Cindy. I’m sorry. But, listen …’

‘They can’t have blocked them off,’ said Mr Oakley.

‘A gun went off down there,’ Cindy reminded him. ‘We shall have to call the police. No option now.’

‘And how are the police going to find their way in?’ demanded Maurice. ‘Take up t’bloody floor? But, aye, you’d better get ’em in, because of the body.’

Cindy stiffened.

‘In the lavvy.’

‘Where?’

‘The toilet, just along there, through yon place wi’ t’tables. A man. Just lying there by the urinals, wi’ his … Like, he must’ve been having a piss when he were …’

‘Shot,’ said Mr Oakley. ‘Shot in the head. Killed instantly, I reckon.’

‘Not Kurt.’

‘No.’ Maurice shook his head. ‘Older.’

Cindy thought drably of Bobby Maiden.

‘Show me.’

‘
St Kurt,
’ Bobby said. ‘Remember? All that stuff in Marcus’s cuttings about Campbell giving his services free to help dying people, terminal patients?’

‘Oh, Jesus, he was messing with their minds.’ Grayle found she was staring at the blood-drenched, headless remains of Superintendent Ron Foxworth and it was just another sad, stinking piece of meat, a reminder of why she was vegetarian. What she was hearing about, this was still-active, insidious evil.

‘Kurt was planting stuff on them before they died, wasn’t he? Posthypnotic suggestion.
When I call you, wherever you are, you’ll come back to me.
’ Bobby turned to Seward. ‘Did it work, Gary?’

‘Nah.’ Seward leaned back in his chair, the shotgun on his knee. ‘None of the sods came back. Kurt figured it was all the morphine and stuff they was getting intravenously at the end. Plus the time lapse. It was often three, four weeks between the hypnosis and when they snuffed it.’

These bastards, Grayle thought. These unbelievable bastards.

‘Crole and Abblow tried the same thing,’ Bobby said. ‘It was noticeable at the time how concerned they always were for the welfare of the local dying. Hovering around deathbeds. Unhealthy. Well, obviously, it didn’t work for them either, and people were getting suspicious. Abblow presumably decided what they needed was someone fit and well who had no idea his card was marked.’

Grayle said, ‘John Hodge.’

‘And he come back,’ said Seward. ‘He did. Loads of people seen the bleeder.’ He looked at Bobby. Grayle saw that he’d never looked
at Foxworth’s body; it didn’t disgust him, it didn’t offend him. Like guys around slaughterhalls their whole working lives would fail to register an extra carcass. ‘Where’d you get this stuff, Bobby?’

‘Bloke called Harry. Hodge was his great-grandad.’

‘Yeah, we seen him with his posters. We invited him in for a drink. He wouldn’t come.’

Smarter than us, Grayle thought wretchedly.

‘He told you what they did with Hodge, Bobby?’

‘Seems obvious what they did. Must’ve been obvious to Kurt Campbell from the beginning.’

‘Not
quite
the beginning. Stories about this place, they been going round for years on the psychic circuits Kurt’s plugged into. It was when we sent a surveyor round and he found these cellars, and a tin box with Crole’s notes, written in his own writing. Exciting, Bobby.’

‘I wonder what the phrase was. The one that was intended to bring Hodge back. Like “The lines are open.”’

‘Gotta be more than a phrase,’ Seward said. ‘We don’t know how they did it, but it must’ve been easier with Abblow being a medium. What
we
done, we played Clarence a tape of Callard’s voice saying it.’ He gave Seffi a sly glance. ‘Kurt recorded it when you was together. So it had to be you, sweetheart, no substitutes.’

‘This was just before you killed him?’ Bobby said. ‘Or did you have someone else do that?’

‘Nah. I done him, like she said. Only fair. Only decent, poor old love.’

‘What I thought,’ Bobby said. ‘How it seemed to me was that he must’ve been a bit of an embarrassment to you, Gary. Useful in the old days, long as it wasn’t anything too complicated. But you were probably glad when he was put away for the rape. Times were changing. Old-style hardmen like Clarence – the ones you couldn’t take to a party – were getting to be of limited value.’

‘Hadn’t got the GCSEs, Bobby.’

‘And, like I say, by the time he came out, you’d done your book, and you were a public figure. The chat shows. The Rotary Club dinners. No way Clarence was going to fit into that circuit – not very smart, no sense of humour, no particular personality at all. A charmless bastard, on the whole.’

‘You’ll pay for that in a minute, Bobby. But, yeah.’

‘All Clarence is good at is harming people, and suddenly he’s back on the streets and nobody to turn to for work but his old gaffer. Must’ve been a bit trying for you, Gary.’

‘Nah. It was him hated it more than me. Fish out of water. Cops watching every move he makes. Memos about him computered to every nick in the land. He was too innocent for this hi-tech world, Bobby. Would’ve been back inside in no time at all.’

‘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 RELA
tives 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 come,’ 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.’