Mean Spirit

Having been Stormed in the fifteenth century by the Welsh pretender, Owain Glyndwr, and later plundered for stone by generations of local builders, the castle’s surviving tower was probably only half its original height.

But still the best place from which to observe invaders.

Yes, yes, this was a little early in the year for invasion. Nearly a month before Easter and the first carloads of cretins. Can I buy a guidebook? Where are the toilets? Do you sell ice-cream?

Read the bloody signs! Marcus would roar. Piss off!

Continuing problem when your house was inside the remains of a medieval castle. It seemed entirely beyond the comprehension of the average bloody tourist that not all historic masonry was there to trample over, picnic on, have sex under or turn into a bastard adventure playground.

… and if that child jumps twenty feet to his death, under the impression that all castles are bloody bouncy castles, I don’t want to hear you whining to me, madam!

But all this was weeks away. At six-fifteen on a brisk March morning the highest part of the castle was a place where a sick, congested man could go to breathe.

After — at best — a fitful night’s sleep, Marcus had woken at five, his nasal tubes like concrete and his temper in rags. He’d gone stumping across the farmyard to the sawn-off tower, stumbling up the remaining spiralled stone steps to emerge into the grey-pink dawn sky and the high, fresh air.

Recipe for surviving influenza: start with fresh air, progress to single malt … if you could get it.

In his ancient naval officer’s duffel coat, he and Malcolm were slumped over a stone slab smoothed by the centuries, waiting for the red sun to flare over the Malvern Hills and suspecting it wasn’t going to happen …

… when the car appeared.

Marcus sat up. It was unusual for any vehicles, even Land-Rovers and tractors, to use the narrow, mountain road this early in the day, especially this early in the year. Marcus recalled, with an unpleasant tingle, the time he’d been occupying this very spot, with only a damaged pitchfork to use against two armed, homicidal thugs who’d arrived in a featureless white van.

This vehicle was dark, possibly green, and as big as the van had been. Seemed to be one of those posh Jeeps beloved of obnoxious city dwellers with weekend cottages. Marcus didn’t know anyone in this area who owned one. When the Jeep slowed at the final bend, he tensed. Couldn’t possibly be coming here.

But it bloody well could … curving into the damned entrance and out of his line of sight. Marcus moved to the edge of the tower, leaned over, heard someone get out and open the gate, then watched the big green vehicle cross the yard twenty-five feet below.

Malcolm quivered, and Marcus clamped a hand over the dog’s muzzle as the car stopped and the person who had opened the gate came into view.

Marcus sprang up.

‘Underhill! What the bloody hell-?’

And, oh Lord, who was that with her?

Several times on the journey, the horrific green-pepper moment had sprung up at her and she’d shaken her head and said despairingly, ‘We have to call the cops.’

‘No way.’ Persephone Callard steering the Grand Cherokee with one hand low on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road and maybe some other place that Grayle couldn’t even imagine. ‘Out of the question.’

‘But what if he-?’

‘So?’

‘Well, OK, you can say that. You didn’t do anything. You were just a victim and you stayed a victim the whole time. Me …’

Callard had packed a case and then they’d cleared up the lodge and hung dust covers so it looked like no-one had been living there. Callard had an apartment in London but could not go back, she said, because of the media.

But it wasn’t just the media now, was it? The media were the goddamn least of it.

Grayle had thought at once of the dairy at Castle Farm, where visitors stayed, where — fate, destiny? — Persephone Callard could become reacquainted with the only person in my entire fucking life who ever pitied me. And where Grayle might just find out what all this was really about before the cops took her away.

How could she hang it on Marcus, a sick man?

On the other hand, it was Marcus got her into this.

‘Grayle, for Christ’s sake, what else could you have done?’ Callard had demanded, as they came down from Gloucester towards the M50, with the first amber lines of morning in the southern sky. ‘What else could you have done sufficiently drastic to get us out of there?’

‘Maybe I could’ve explained that to the cops …?’

‘You do not deserve’, Callard said firmly, ‘to spend hours in some smelly police interview room for that …’

‘The interview room I could take. If it ended there.’

‘Yes, well I’m afraid one can’t necessarily trust the police any more. Or, indeed, believe in British justice.’

The famous Seffi Callard driving coolly on, her hands unshaking on the wheel. Her upper lip was swollen where one of them had hit her and then squeezed her face before applying the masking tape. But she seemed already separated from the terror. She actually looked less gaunt than last night, less hollowed. Driving efficiently, with purpose. Maybe she also had that sense of fate and destiny, was thinking that Marcus Bacton would know what to do, make things all right.

‘I just want to believe the two halves of that guy’s face are still joined together, is all,’ Grayle had said miserably.

She stepped down from the big, plushy, air-conditioned Jeep.

The air was hard and made everything real again. Her legs felt like saplings.

She watched Marcus and Persephone Callard approaching each other slowly across the yard, which was still half-shadowed from the night.

Marcus’s eyes were wet. Just the flu, Grayle hoped.

‘She was right.’ Callard had stopped a few feet from Marcus. ‘You’re not well, are you?’

Like they hadn’t seen each other for … maybe several weeks.

Callard had on this long, baggy, cream jumper with a leather belt and a heavy cowl neck. Kind of medieval and suited to the location, except she was part of Marcus’s history, not the castle’s. Grayle pictured her as she’d been not five hours ago, all taped up like a sado-masochist’s Christmas present.

At the thought, she started to shake again, breathed out hard and leaned over the hood of the Jeep. So deeply relieved to be back that she wanted to kiss the castle stones.

Marcus stood there in his overlong duffel coat, blinking behind his glasses.

Marcus astonished. Marcus Bacton lost for words.

Jesus Christ.

The dog, Malcolm, growled.

‘Look …’ Marcus backed away. ‘I … don’t come too close, Persephone. I’ve got this … virus. Germs everywhere.’

‘I don’t catch things from other people.’ Seffi Callard smiling her crooked, damaged, loose-lipped smile across the yard at Marcus. ‘Never have.’

Damn germs wouldn’t have the nerve, Grayle thought. She was a little freaked at Marcus — the guy was behaving like this was some kind of royal visit. Anybody else, he’d be asking what the fuck they were playing at turning up unannounced at goddamned cock-crow.

‘Marcus,’ Grayle said, ‘just, like … quit gawking and make us some coffee, huh? We … we’re in some kind of shit.’