The Chalice (74 page)

      
'I was listening,' Rankin said. 'Other side of the door.'
      
'What?'

      
'The aristocracy.' Rankin shook his head. 'Sometimes they can
be very naive. Quite often we have to save them from themselves.'

      
He was half a head taller than Powys, held himself very
straight. His face was without expression.

      
'Because we need them, you see. They're our backbone. You
might not think much of him and his kind, Mr Poe-is, but they've made this
country what it is. They deserve our protection.'

      
'Most people have to protect themselves,' Powys said nervously.

      
'I can't let you spread this around,' Rankin said, very matter-of-fact.
'You know that. I had my son break into your car, take it round the back of the
house for tonight. We've killed your dog, sorry about that. Sorry about all of this,
but I take my job seriously and that man in there and what he stands for is
worth ten of you and all the pathetic sods down in that town, with their
medallions and their dowsing sticks. You understand that, don't you, sir? All
I'm saying, this is nothing personal.'

      
Rankin held open the door.

      
'After you,' he said.

Blood of the Goddess

Powys went quietly.

      
Rankin held open the double-glazed door of the porch for him.
Not good form to soil your master's premises.
      
Powys noticed that it was cheap,
aluminium double-glazing. The economic way to cut heating bills.

      
He felt almost light-headed as he turned to Rankin and said,
'You don't really have to do this, do you' You don't have to kill me?'

      
Wanting to sound at least frightened but aware that it only
came out puzzled. Faintly incredulous that there could still be men like Rankin
who would murder without compunction if it was a matter of supporting the
system which supported them.

      
Wondering distantly, as if he was watching from above or on a
closed circuit TV, how exactly it would be done. One of those SAS blows that
drove your nose bones into your brain, perhaps. Or a slim knife to the heart. He
wondered if his body would end up drawn and quartered like Abbot Whiting's and
buried under what would become the Central Somerset (Bath-Taunton) Relief Road.

      
'It's the way things are,' Rankin said apologetically. Immediately
outside the door he put on his leather cap. 'Preserving what has to be preserved,
So much of it's gone, you see.'

      
'Yes.' Arnold was gone.
We've
killed your dog, sorry about that.

      
Well, that wouldn't be hard, a three legged dog, recovering
from shock. While Rankin was neatly closing the porch door, he thought about
Arnold, the night the vet had taken his leg off. Everything they'd been through
since, the long walks along Offa's Dyke after which he'd sometimes have to
carry Arnold home.

      
'Please,' he said, knowing this time that there were real tears
in his eyes. 'Can't you ... ?'

      
And seeing a definite naked contempt in Rankin's eyes in the
half second before he felt his face contort in blind fury as he sank his left
fist into the man's gut.

      
Distantly aware, as Rankin doubled up, of all his rediscovered
New Age credentials floating away into the ether. Surprised at the surge of maddened
strength, which hurled Rankin back into the porch, snarling,

      
'... fucking scumbag cunt …'
 
A face smashing again and again into the double-glazed door, which did
not break.

      
Aware with a sense of dismay that it was his voice and
Rankin's face. Fully aware that all this would have been entirely beyond him if
Rankin had not blithely mentioned having killed his dog.

'Hey, shit, come on ...'
Pulling on Powys's shoulder. 'Stop it. You don't wanner go to gaol for shit
like this.'

      
Powys's hands were covered in blood. He got back to his feet. Rankin
sat up on the top step and spat out blood. His eyes were moving, coldly
weighing up the situation, working out his best move.

      
Powys kicked him in the throat.
      
'Bugger me,' Sam Daniel said, as
Rankin went down gagging. 'I thought this was the Age of Aquarius. Just let's
get the hell out, eh?'

      
Powys remembered now. How he'd called up Woolly on the off
chance he was still around, needing someone to be at Meadwell if Verity got the
call from Wanda. And Woolly had turned up with Sam who'd offered to go with
Powys to Bowermead Hall. Slipped out of the car at the bottom of the drive to
find his own discreet way in, keep an eye out.

      
'He killed Arnold,' Powys said. Rankin didn't move, lay wheezing
quietly to himself.
      
'He what?'
      
'Where's the car?'

      
'It's down there, by those bushes,' Sam said. 'You left it
unlocked, remember? I let the handbrake off and rolled it a few yards to the
bushes, out of the light. To give me some cover, as we eco-guerrillas say.'

      
'Arnold?'

      
'He's lying on his rug. What did you think?'
      
'Why would this guy say he'd killed
him?'
      
'It's the kind of guy he is, Powys.
Or maybe he was going to. Or maybe somebody else ... Shit.'

      
Powys turned and saw a mirror image of Rankin at the foot of
the steps.
      
'Dad?'

      
'This is Wayne Rankin,' Sam said. 'He's training to be as big
a psycho as his old man.'

      
Wayne Rankin was looking at Powys's hands. 'What you done to
my dad?'

      
'Your dad,' Sam said, 'made a slight miscalculation about the
aggression quotient of New Age Man. Now just back off, son, it's two against
one and neither of us is in the best of moods.'

      
Rankin moaned.

      
'You can get him to hospital when we've gone, look.'
      
Sam walked slowly down the steps.
Wayne Rankin moved away, but he didn't take his eyes from Sam.

      
'You're a friend of Lady Loony, yeah?'

      
Sam stopped.

      
'We banged her last night,' Wayne said.
      
Sam froze.

      
Wayne kept on backing off. 'Gave her a good seeing to.'

      
'Don't react,' Powys said in a low voice. 'If his dad lied about
the dog ...'

      
'Come here, Wayne,' Sam said. 'Tell me all about it.'

      
'Three of us.' Wayne had vanished beyond the feeble house
lights. 'One after the other.'

      
Sam charged out. Powys grabbed his arm. 'Don't go out there.
He'll be waiting.'

      
Wayne Rankin's voice came out of the darkness.
      
'Squealed like a stuck pig, she
did.'

Woolly told himself he and
Meadwell deserved each other. Sitting in the dark here was probably as close as
you could get on this earth to authentic purgatory.
      
Sitting waiting for Pel Grainger.

      
He'd actually been at that lecture of Grainger's at the
Assembly Rooms. Been unimpressed. Superficial bullshit. Even if you could
welcome the night like you did daylight, how was that really going to expand
your life?'

      
The exercise, when Grainger had all the lights put out, that
felt good. On the surface, it was the harmless kind of meditation exercise Woolly'd
done a thousand times. But that night it produced a serious buzz.

      
But that was a weird night anyway. Woolly had had to leave
before the end after getting a message that somebody had been smashing windows
out on the street. Whatever you were doing that night, it was going to be
intense, off the wall. Something had been happening. Somebody doing something.
He should have seen it then.
      
Dark Chalice rising.

      
He wondered what he'd really do when they came for the well.

      
Simple, JM Powys had said. You just call the police. Report
intruders. Let them handle it. Nobody knows you're there; don't enlighten them
Don't even think of going out there after them.

      
But he might. The fuzz might not make it in time. And he
didn't have a lot to lose. He might well go out there. Needing to do something.

      
Dark Chalice rising. Corrupting everyone in its path.

      
Like Grainger. Grainger had been corrupted.

      
He could stop Grainger, if he was on his own. Pompous, fat
git. Woolly felt he really needed to stop somebody. He was feeling totally
useless. A whole pile of bad shit coming down and nothing that soon-to-be
former councillor Woolaston could do about it.

      
Right now, he didn't want to leave this kitchen. Wasn't that
wimpy? He didn't want to go anywhere in this spooky old house. Just to sit
right by the Aga, listen for a car, the sound of the gate opening, and then
maybe ...

      
Face it, any kind of action outside was better than being in
here. Little Verity had to be a really strong person to have survived this. A
really
good
person. Mother Teresa class.

      
Even on top of the Aga, he was still cold. Moonlight fluttered
in through the high window like the ribbons on a shroud.

      
This was an evil house. As black as the black bus.

      
He kept thinking about that bus. Was it his own private demon?
Was it a representation of everything he most feared: the fast-breeding traffic
monster which fed on the English countryside? Had that bus come out of his own head,
bred from his own paranoia?

      
Woolly projected himself back ... back into the car, coming
down along Magdalene Street, seeing the tree lights. He remembered thinking how
nice that was, what a really good vibe Christmas put into the town. Trying to
see those lights in his mind before they all went up in the air and he saw the
other lights, the wishy-washy yellow either side of a peeling grille.

      
Was there a driver? He peered harder down his dope-scarred
memory.

      
Focusing on the headlights, on that grille that was like a
lopsided, evil grin full of rusty teeth. Into the window. This really
old-fashioned window, with a divider strip of rusting chrome.

      
His hands groping up the side of the Aga in the dark, the warm
shiny metal, like he was climbing up on to the bonnet of the bus, peering in through
that window. If he could only see the driver's face, he'd know.

      
He could feel the engine throbbing now under his feet.
      
Could see the street. Hang on, this
was wrong, had to get down High Street from the top. Coming down from Chilkwell
Street, left into High Street, down towards the Post Office and the zebra
crossing, under the wash of amber streetlight, the big steering wheel vibrating
under his hands, that loose spring irritating his bum, gotta patch
that
seat,
glaring through the muck on
the windscreen.

      
Driving the bus. Driving the black bus.

'I never wanted children,'
Juanita said hoarsely.

      
She found she was talking to the purple-spotlit pot goddesses
in the window of the shop belonging to Domini Dorrell-Adams.

      
'It was always going to be, you know, a wonderful place to
bring kids into. Not just Glastonbury - the new world we were going to make. Everybody
loving one another. We didn't, of course. We still had our petty jealousies,
prejudices, infidelities. But the fact that we felt it was
possible
for everyone to love each other. That we could aspire to
it.'

      
The pot goddesses leered.

      
'And when it all started to go down the drain I didn't want to
bring kids into it any more. That was why Danny left really. He wanted offspring.
He wanted his own little Glastonbury family. But you can't be an ordinary guy
in Glastonbury, it's not allowed.'

      
One of the purple spot bulbs in the Goddess Shop window went
out, with a little
phut
she could
hear even through the glass.