Mean Spirit

can be a real dense bastard sometimes. I was doing Saturday night patch-up jobs on Victor Clutton when you were still writing to Santa Claus, and I can tell you, this is no’ what the guy wid want. And don’t you go canonizing him. He’d only pawn his halo.’

Maiden smiled. Andy looked up as an ambulance came in — no flashing lights, so that was OK.

‘Mind, y’ought to tell Marcus Bacton Vic’s gone. If the auld thug hadnae been around that day at the castle, Marcus’s guts’d be spread over his own doorstep.’

‘I’ll ring him tomorrow.’

‘Why don’t you just go call on him. Stay awhile in his wee dairy, borrow some of his weirdy books and contemplate your immortal soul.’

‘What, like you contemplated yours?’ Maiden said. ‘Aw, ah’m gettin’ oot o’ this, Bobby. Ah’m awa tae the sticks tae be a healer. See, when it comes down to it, you’re still here and I’m still here because we’re half-afraid it’s where we’re meant to be.’

‘No’ a problem. I’ll jump when I’m ready, but I may have to push you out the hatch. Meanwhile, you go off on your own to some sodden shore you’ll just think about it the whole time. Go listen to Bacton rant. Consider the Big Mysteries. Take a stroll in the hills with wee Grayle Underhill.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘No, you won’t. You’ll think about bloody Riggs and bloody Beattie. I’ll tell y’another thing — you’, Andy pointed the fork, ‘need a woman. You cannae fret over Em till you’re too old tae get it up.’

‘Who brought that up?’

‘Go home, Bobby. You want a herbal sleeping pill?’

‘No thanks.’

When he’d gone, Andy went back to Accident and Emergency and smoked a cigarette, hanging out of the sluiceroom window.

Remembering the night, not so long ago, when Bobby Maiden lay on his back, the crash team backing off, despondent — three minutes gone, three and a half. Andy refusing to call off the defib, hands on the top of his head, his hair all stiff with blood. Feeling, inside her own head, the sun rising beyond St Mary’s, through the gap in the stones of the High Knoll burial chamber, the heat travelling down to her fingers.

A healing place.

Despite the best efforts of the Health Service bureaucrats, Elham General was a healing place, too — though this was sometimes harder to credit than the legend of the Holy Virgin’s appearance at High Knoll.

Andy dropped back into the room, looked down at the watch on her breast pocket: 2.25 a.m. She’d call Marcus when she came off shift, before Bobby could get around to it.

She dunked her ciggy in the sink, went to take a look at Mr Trilling on the ward.

XVII

‘So now we know,’ Grayle said.

Laying on the cynicism like mayonnaise because she really didn’t want Marcus to think she believed any of this stuff.

The study looked tired and bleary. The fire in the stove was down to a bed of ash. Marcus put on a small log from the depleted basket and hauled his chair closer.

‘Great story, though,’ Grayle said, not allowing herself to think about it. She yawned and lay full length on the sofa, kicking off her shoes.

Around half-past midnight Callard had elected to return to the dairy, maybe realizing that Marcus and Grayle would have a lot to discuss. Standing by the bulkhead light, Marcus had watched her cross the yard under the shadows of the ruins. He’d looked tired, weak, hopeless.

‘It’s late, Marcus, and you’re sick.’ Grayle pulled a cushion under her head. ‘Go get some sleep.’

‘Not tired. Or rather, I am, but…’

‘You want some cocoa?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want to know what you really think about this.’

‘Me? You’re asking the help?’

‘Don’t piss about, Underhill.’

‘Let’s talk about this tomorrow.’

‘I want to bloody talk about it now,’ Marcus thundered, snatching off his glasses, mopping his eyes and nose, thrusting the glasses back on.

‘You really don’t.’

‘You mean you don’t.’

‘OK.’ Grayle sighed. ‘Whatever.’ Swung her feet to the floor and sat up, hands clasping on her knees like in prayer. ‘Let’s lay this thing out.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Me?’

‘I want your opinion, dammit!’

Grayle shrugged. ‘OK. Well … essence of it is, after like fifteen years as this cool, fashionable, high-society psychic, Ms Persephone Callard can’t cut it any more on account of, whenever she tries to do a seance, only one spirit comes through and this is a bad spirit and it’s real close, closer than anything she ever experienced before and she’s like … soiled and full of fear, and the next day she’s debilitated, feels like shit. How’m I doing?’

‘Go on.’ Marcus opened the stove, put on a second log to produce flames.

‘What do you want me to add? All of this goes back to a particular night at the home of this former MP, Sir Barber, who’s paid out big money for no good reason.’

‘So you didn’t find it convincing.’

Grayle didn’t reply. Callard’s evocation of the scene had thrown her a full and clear picture of this Barber’s sumptuous drawing room on an extraordinary night. A movie, with sounds: voices and a music track.

And a smell. Callard describing how several people in the room had picked it up simultaneously — distaste on women’s faces. Then the drop in temperature, as though the heating had cut out, the same women reaching for jackets, cardigans, evening shawls.

Persephone had looked up and seen a man sitting there, at the back of the room, clear as Marcus was now, she said.

The man gazing impassively into her eyes.

And his eyes were cold and cloudy and almost white, and seemed to lead nowhere. And while Callard had been describing it, Grayle was seeing it and feeling it. Deeply, deeply chilled, a cold worm in the spine, but doing her damnedest not to let it show.

As she looked into the empty space suggested by the near-white eyes, she realized she was seeing into a space where the man had been. And then Callard had felt his freaking hands on her freaking face — moist, precise, surgical hands.

Her voice cool, precise and clinical as she described it, but Grayle knew that same worm was also deep into Seffi’s spine.

So. Why couldn’t she just have lost the trance-state, dropped out of it? A medium does not become possessed; the medium remains in control. The essence, the spirit, is dependent upon the medium for energy. Whereas this …

This was so close and clear and impressively defined that even Callard had been in thrall to it. Although she knew it was entirely negative, it had an incredible … a compelling physicality, and some sick, greedy part of her didn’t want to let it go.

Grayle shuddered now and tried to smother it by leaning forward and hugging Malcolm, who, now they were alone, had sidled into the room. ‘You didn’t like her, did you, honey? Freaked you out, right?’ Dogs almost invariably