Mean Spirit

the bloodied bulb, she drew in a long, long breath.

And let it out: ‘Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw.’

‘OK,’ she said after a while. ‘The lines are open.’

Kurt Campbell propelled Cindy out of the room, through a black velvet curtain, beyond which a young man at a mixing desk was making scaled-down son et lumiere. Out through another doorway, and into a small stone hallway, where a spiral staircase began.

And where Kurt spun at Cindy, his mouth in a snarl, his forefinger rigid. ‘I don’t know how you got in here, you bastard, but if you think you can-’

‘Listen to me, Kurt.’

‘If you think-’

‘Of course, you could try to mesmerize me again,’ Cindy brazenly sought out Kurt’s eyes, ‘or you could engage me in conversation, and we could talk at length. We could talk of the National Lottery and the Sherwin family of Banbury and the celebrated fitting up of the unfortunate Billy Spindler.’

Kurt’s hand dropped to his side. ‘Get out.’

‘We could talk about the time you went whingeing to Gary about how the Welsh poof had done you out of a job then made a fool of you. Knowing how much Gary hates poofs, isn’t it? Deviants and cross-dressers. All Welshmen, too, probably on principle.’

‘You’re fucking mad.’

‘But what I would very much prefer to discuss is the location of the real seance. Where is it, Kurt? Where is Gary Seward?’

‘Get out of my house.’

‘As distinct from Mr Gary Seward’s house?’

‘This is my house.’ Kurt seized Cindy’s arms, beginning to shake him, thrusting him back against the stone wall.

‘And where … is Grayle … Underhill?’

‘I’ve never heard of a Grayle Und-’

‘Before you hurt me, Kurt, let me make it … clear to you … that it will not happen. Miss Callard will not … be — you must believe me — will not be able to do what you require. Do you … understand me? When she refused it was because she could not…’

Kurt stopped shaking him.

‘It may already be too late,’ Cindy said. ‘There was a shot, as you heard. From the cellars? Where are the cellars, Kurt? Don’t fool about, boy, we have to stop this abomination.’

‘There are no cellars. I don’t know what you’re talking about. And you’re pushing me too far.’

‘Oh Kurt, you’ve already gone too far, lovely. Further than you would have ever imagined before you entered dear Gary’s social circle and began letting him do all those favours for you. And then-’

Kurt slapped him hard across the face with his left hand and then punched him savagely in the left breast with his right. Cindy went down on his knees. He did not stop talking.

‘… those deaths. The poor pilot and the man who took on a blonde too big for him. Pure coincidence, of course. But what if there was a third, more appalling, more devastating? A beautiful, multiple death? Well … a piece of-’

Kurt slammed an elegant foot into Cindy’s face. Cindy collapsed.

‘… piece of cake for Gary and the boys from …’ he found his face against a cold stone flag, blood oozing from his mouth ‘… Forcefield.’ He coughed feebly, spat out a tooth. Heard footsteps, voices, people calling for him.

‘But who should it be?’ His words thickened by blood. ‘Who should it be, Kurt? Must move now … while the story’s hot … don’t delay, don’t miss the opportunity …’

‘Cindy? CINDY!’

Hands. Many hands.

Cindy back on his knees. A blur of faces. Could not focus, could not think quite where he was.

‘Who should it be?’ he murmured. ‘Who were those stupid people … with the fleet of BMWs? They deserve it, the crass … crass idiots.’

LIV

It wasn’t long before Maiden became aware that whatever Seffi Callard usually did, she wasn’t doing. Whatever customarily happened was not happening.

She would close her eyes, throw back her head, as though someone was pulling on the rope of her hair, draw in another slow breath. But when he looked at her again, the amber glow would be back in her eyes, wide open again, desperate.

Pleading. Saying, Someone has to stop this. Knowing that no-one could.

Maybe ten minutes passed. Gary Seward watched in silence from outside the handcuffed seance.

All he wanted was to see Clarence Judge again. In the end it was that simple: Gary Seward and Kurt Campbell wanted proof, for themselves, of a certain kind of life after death. Abblow’s kind. The transference of the human essence to a parallel, godless existence where Victorian values survived the grave, where a life of crime would not rebound on you, where the spirit of Clarence Judge remained unsinged by the fires of hell.

The thought of it made Maiden scared and depressed. It too much resembled the colourless, ill-formed memories of his own death experience. And he was going back there very soon; death as the end of everything would be an infinitely more appealing prospect.

His eyes met Seffi’s before she closed them again. He eased his hand over hers and their fingers enfolded, slippery with cold sweat and despair. When he closed his own eyes and tried to pray, what came to him was an image of the salmon-coloured dawn at High Knoll, layers of cloud interwoven with the distant Malvern Hills. Which was here. From the Knoll, this was where the dawn began. And none of them were going to see the next one, were they, not from anywhere?

He didn’t know Seward was behind him until the barrel of the shotgun came down and broke three of his fingers.

The whisper was close to his left ear. ‘Now, that ain’t how we arranges our hands, is it, cock?’

Kurt Campbell must have been well away before they came — Maurice and Lorna and Harry Oakley. Well away before Cindy was able to pull together his thoughts and was struggling to say, Find him … stop him. He’s the only one who can tell us where …

But it was far too late. This was Kurt’s house. A thousand places to go, including the dreadful cellars.

Lorna Crane was trying to clean up Cindy’s face with his own lavender-scented handkerchief. ‘I’m all right,’ he was telling her through bruised lips. ‘I’m all right, lovely.’

‘You want to bloody see yourself,’ said Maurice.

‘Maurice … listen to me, boy … you have to find the entrance to the cellars.’

Lorna muttering. ‘God, I think he’s lost a couple of teeth. Oh Christ, could his jaw be broken?’

‘Do you understand?’

Maurice said, ‘Because of that shot?’

‘Find the entrance, but do not, on any account, go in. Fetch me at once. It may be a flight of steps, it may be a trapdoor. The most obvious area is the kitchens, but it could be anywhere … at the side of a fireplace, beneath a carpet, in a cupboard under stairs to the first floor … Look everywhere.’

‘All of us?’

‘Everyone. Go in groups. Fours and fives. Don’t let anyone put you off.’

‘The dungeons,’ Mr Oakley said. ‘Crole and Abblow’s dungeons.’

‘Do you know where they might be?’ Cindy demanded, his whole face ablaze with pain.

Mr Oakley shook his head. ‘Only that it was where they murdered my great-grandad. They’ve killed someone else now, haven’t they?’

‘Just find the entrance. Tell me. I shall be in the great hall.’

‘I’ll stay with you,’ Lorna said.