Mean Spirit

‘Hello.’ Seffi a touch guarded.

‘You’re the one I been reading about. The one who’s disappeared.’

‘Psychic Seffi,’ she said with distaste.

‘Better watch what I’m thinking then, hadn’t I?’ Ron said.

‘It doesn’t work like that, Mr Foxworth.’

‘Oh, really? A little limited, my knowledge of these things. Nuts and bolts rationalist, me, I’m afraid. Where we going then, Bobby? I don’t think I feel like a drink, and I’m sure our famous friend here doesn’t want to be seen in a pub with a battered old bugger like me. Can we just drive around? Cotswolds by night?’

Maiden had almost forgotten what a tricky bastard Ron could be. He started frisking for holes the story he and Seffi Callard had concocted in the harsh light of the discovery of a second body, with a hacked face and few doubts this time about the origin of the wounds.

‘So you and Miss Callard, Bobby …’

‘Friends,’ Maiden said.

‘Quite close friends.’ Seffi pulled out of the layby.

‘I see. Well …’

‘We met when Bobby was gathering background information in connection with the Green Man murders. I was able to explain a little about the psychology of people who believe they’re being influenced by elemental forces. Working together on something essentially frightening can be curiously … intimate, as I’m sure …’

Seffi let the sentence hang. Maiden sensed her smile.

How fluently she lies.

‘So when I was feeling rather threatened recently, I asked Bobby for advice.’

Telling Ron how, in this line of work, one received endless crank mail. Mostly from fundamentalist Christians warning that the fires of hell were already being stoked in readiness for one’s arrival. A very few implied that physical retribution might be exacted on the earthly plane.

Seffi sounding loony enough for Ron to take it all less than seriously, but looking alluring enough for him to see why Maiden had stuck around.

Below them, the lights of Stroud formed a glowing bowl.

She told the story of the party, but only as far as the Kieran Hole incident. When they were into the countryside again, Ron said, ‘Yeah, I can see how that would offend Les Hole. This was a message you had … on the, er …?’

‘A spirit message.’

‘Ri-ight.’ Ron nodding sceptically. ‘From the boy, Kieran, you say?’

‘He did hang himself, then,’ Maiden said.

‘Oh indeed, Bobby. No note, no clothes on. We had it down as a wanking job.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Seffi said.

‘Sexual hanging. Auto-erotic strangulation. “Come Dancing” on the end of a rope. Commonplace enough, but occasionally a bit difficult to prove medically, so coroners often tend to be merciful and put it down as suicide. It affected Coral very deeply, as you obviously realize. And Les, of course. So you’re saying Les blamed the, er, messenger.’

‘There was a letter’, Maiden said, ‘from the wife. Trying to set up another meeting with Seffi. But it was the phone calls …’ Lying now. ‘Late at night, nobody there. And this sense of being …’

‘Stalked,’ Seffi said. ‘Although I never got a good look at him.’

Ron leaned back against the side-window, getting a good look at her. ‘So all these stories about you packing it in …?’

‘This was just a part of it. I’ve been feeling generally vulnerable. No-one likes to be on the receiving end of scorn and hostility.’

‘It seemed to me we ought to go and see Mrs Hole,’ Maiden said. ‘She wasn’t there, but he was. He didn’t know I was a copper. He was aggressive. He seemed to think someone might have set him up and he wasn’t looking at Barber. He mentioned the name Gary.’

‘Oh, did he?’ Ron’s voice thickening with satisfaction.

‘That means something to you, Ron?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Should I? I got the feeling he was a little scared of Gary.’

‘Well, of course he is, Bobby, of course he is. Everybody’s a little bit scared of Gary.’

‘I feel I should know who we’re talking about here, but I don’t.’

‘Bloody right you should,’ Ron said. ‘Oh, yes.’

Cindy pulled into the Severn Bridge services and went in for a coffee. Sat in the restaurant, unrecognized in his blazer and slacks, gazing across the dark water to the Welsh side. His mobile phone, switched off, felt like a housebrick in the inside pocket of his blazer. So many people attempting to contact him in the past hour; he could always feel the weight of them.

Back at the car, he sighed and switched on the phone, sat back, closed his eyes and waited.

The first call came through within four minutes.

‘Oh, Cindy, hi, this is Simon Tremain at BBC Radio News in London. Really sorry to bother you at this hour, but I was told you always drove through the night after the show. I hope that’s right, and I haven’t disturbed you during-’

‘No problem, Simon, bach.’

‘Great. Well, look, it’s about this poor guy, Colin Seymour, who crashed his plane tonight. Obviously, we’ll be running clips from the Lottery Show on all the morning bulletins, and I’m putting a package together for “Five Live”.’

‘What is it you want then, lovely?’

‘Well, I was asked to see if you could go into our Haverfordwest unattended studio, but obviously you’re going to be a bit knackered, so maybe we could record a short interview on the phone?’

‘Fire away, boy.’

‘Right … can you hold, or should I get plugged in and whatnot and give you a call in a couple of minutes?’

‘I’ll hold.’ Knowing that if he cut the line there would be another call.

Presently, Simon Tremain said, ‘OK, I’m rolling. Cindy, if we can start with the obvious … this must have been a shock.’

‘A terrible, terrible shock. I was driving home when I heard the news, and I had to stop. You know, when you’re doing the show you feel you come to know the winners personally … and, though I never met Colin, it was clear that this was a man who would put his good fortune to good use. He wasn’t going to retire to the south of France, he wanted to continue working with these children and use the money to bring some excitement into their lives. An utter tragedy, it is.’

‘And I suppose the bitter irony of it is that when Colin and his young friend said they were going to “fly like a kite” you commented that if they did that they’d never find the runway. Which, unfortunately, seems to be roughly what happened.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ This is the bit they’ll use. ‘Well, you know, you make these flip comments without a thought for the brutal hand of fate, and when something like this happens your own words go echoing in your ears and you’d do anything, you would, to take them back. But I suppose if I really could rewind time, what I’d do would be to have Colin Seymour put off his flight until the next day.’

Afterwards, Simon said, ‘Sorry, I had to ask you that, but I suppose I won’t be the last. I mean, with that guy who had the heart attack and everything … bad week for Lottery winners.’

‘Indeed,’ Cindy said, resigned. He asked the reporter when exactly the accident had occurred and learned that it was actually before the Lottery Show. Less than an hour before.

Perhaps poor Colin had been in a hurry to catch himself on television.

The proximity of retirement could take them different ways. Some coppers nibbled away the final year as if they’d already been put out to grass, the crime reports on the desk separated by estate-agent particulars of