Mean Spirit

She sat up. ‘I don’t know who he is. He doesn’t talk.’ The sheen of sweat on her face was dense as tanning oil. ‘Sometimes I think he’s the devil. Satan. Sometimes I think I’ve brought down Satan.’

There was silence.

Outside the door they could hear Malcolm padding up and down the hallway.

‘I don’t understand,’ Marcus said eventually.

‘He was just there,’ Callard said. ‘It was there.’

Grayle and Marcus both stayed silent, Grayle thinking it was maybe only the tea-party approach and the Salvation Army hymns that prevented spiritualism from mutating into some kind of dark necromancy. It was there? Jesus.

‘I smelled it first. This happens sometimes.’

‘A scent of violets.’ Grayle remembering some old country-house ghost story.

‘No. It was rather acrid and oily and spiced with that … that smell one tends to associate with violent, male lust.’

Grayle said, ‘Huh?’

Marcus looked uncomfortable.

Grayle was thinking, Justin. Motor oil. The bitch is making this up.

She said, ‘Maybe, when you’re feeling resentful, you don’t get violets.’

Persephone Callard, not even looking at Grayle, said mildly, ‘The bitch is not making it up.’

Grayle froze. A log shifted inside the stove.

Outside the study door Malcolm howled once — sharply — and then Grayle heard the patter of his heavy paws, receding.

XVI

The word went up to headquarters and, around ten P.M., Bradbury himself arrived in Elham, brought in from home.

Bobby Maiden was kept waiting nearly an hour. Sitting alone in the CID room, drinking tea from the machine, while the Superintendent talked first to Steve Rea from Traffic and then to Barrett and then Beattie, God forbid.

Eventually, Beattie came back, expressionless. ‘Mr Bradbury’d like a word. Sir.’

No look of triumph, at least. The clock over the door said 23.54. In the passage, Maiden heard a drunk en route to the cells, screaming, ‘Tried to touch me up, that fucker. You see that? Bleeding police bum-bandits …’

The door to the DCI’s office was ajar. Maiden tapped.

‘Come in, Bobby.’

The man strongly fancied as the next ACC (crime) was draped tiredly behind the desk that was supposed, in a couple of weeks’ time, to be Maiden’s.

Generally loose kind of bloke, Bernard Bradbury. Big, clean, pink hands, but otherwise insubstantial, somehow, a blur materializing in bigger and bigger chairs. Maiden’s dad had known Bradbury when the boss had been a young PC up in Wilmslow, where Norman Plod was an old PC. Norman sneering when Bradbury got his stripes at twenty-six, Shiny-arsed clerk. He’ll go far, you watch.

‘Sit down, Bobby. With you in a second.’ Bradbury was reading statements, looking unimpressed. Maiden’s own statement would be somewhere in the pile.

He sat quietly. He was not quiet inside. Inside, he was like a burning building, everything collapsing inwards. Almost expecting Bernard Bradbury to be feeling it, pushing back his chair from the heat.

But Bradbury, this mild, schoolteacherish presence, was immune to heat. And straight, Maiden thought. This was the man who, two weeks ago, had strongly suggested Maiden apply for the proposed DCI’s job.

He shuffled his reports into shape, packed away his reading glasses, faced Maiden at last.

‘Thought you might like an unofficial chat at this stage, Bobby. Or shall we pull in a third party? Up to you.’

‘Expect I’d say the same things either way, sir.’

‘Would you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I see.’ Bradbury hit the reports with the heel of his hand. ‘So this is a pile of manure, is it, Bobby?’

‘I think I can smell it from here, sir,’ Maiden said.

‘Let’s not call him Vic,’ Bradbury said. ‘Let’s call him Clutton, shall we?’

‘He’s the victim, sir.’

‘Not necessarily, from where I’m sitting,’ Bradbury said.

He talked about Maiden’s car. ‘Not hedgehog blood,’ he said, echoing Beattie.

Maiden said nothing.

‘We’ve got another witness now, Bobby. Girl of twelve doing her homework in her bedroom. Heard the car hit the gate and rushed over to the window. This is the house next door but one to Clutton’s girlfriend’s house.’

‘This girl see the driver, sir?’

‘What if I said she did?’

Maiden shrugged.

‘Well, she didn’t. Not from that angle.’

‘Pity.’

‘Yes,’ Bradbury said. ‘All right, let’s go back over the sequence. According to your statement, you met Clutton in the Crown just before six. We also have statements from three, ah, respectable local businessmen who were occupying a nearby table. All of whom confirm that the discussion between you and Clutton was, at times … heated.’

‘Not from where I was sitting, sir.’

‘A solicitor. An estate agent. And a county councillor.’

‘Sorry, sir, I thought you said respectable.’

‘Let’s not get clever, Maiden. Right — Clutton was your long-time informant, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Or your friend, perhaps?’

‘There are levels of friendship.’

‘You’re agreeing that there was a more personal connection between you and Victor Clutton then?’

‘We had some history.’

Bradbury hissed softly through his teeth. ‘This is really not what I want to be hearing from you, Bobby. What were you and Clutton talking about?’

‘He’d asked to meet me. He had some information.’

‘About what?’

Maiden sighed.

‘Don’t piss me about, lad.’

‘My flat was broken into. I, er … didn’t report it.’

‘You didn’t report it?’

‘There was nothing stolen. And not much damage.’

‘You didn’t report it?’

‘It would have reopened a can of worms I wasn’t quite ready to reopen.’

Bradbury drew a long, long breath.

‘As you can imagine, I’m already under pressure to fling open the doors to the jackboots from CIB.’

‘Mmm.’

‘I don’t want those buggers clumping round the place if it can be avoided. You’re not helping me avoid it.’