Mean Spirit

believe it was an auntie or somebody who got him to see a medium, try and calm him down. Seems to have had the opposite effect. Seen various mediums all his life since. Claims it was what got him through his stretch: daily workouts in the gym and regular spiritual counselling. Prison visits from some old lady passing on messages from his old mum, all that kind of cr-’ Ron coughed. ‘Excuse me.’

‘Which old lady?’ Seffi said sharply.

‘I can’t remember her name, you’ll have to get the book. See, it comes down to this: Gary’s got this enormous appetite for life and the only thing really frightens him is the thought of losing it. Gary Seward vanishing into nothingness, the finely tuned body rotting in the grave. Nothing left but a Cheshire cat grin on some old photos.’

‘Midlife crisis?’ Maiden said.

‘And some. Gary needs to believe Gary’s going on.’

There was a period of silence.

Then Ron said, ‘So if it wasn’t Gary … who did tell you about the boy?’

Maiden saw Seffi slowly shaking her head, felt the steam rising. He said hurriedly, ‘For what it’s worth, Ron, I believe her. I believe she does this … thing.’

He could just about make out Ron’s faithless smile.

‘Forgive me, Bobby, but, from what I’ve been hearing, that’s what you would say. These days.’

Maiden made an effort to disregard it, concentrating on what he needed to know. ‘Sir Richard Barber. Where’s he come into this?’

‘No idea, mate. Never had cause to look into him. But I will now. This has been interesting. A bit weird, if you don’t mind me saying, but it’s given me a few things to think about.’

‘How gratifying,’ Seffi said bleakly.

XXVI

During the ten or so minutes it took to drive Ron Foxworth back to his car, Maiden quizzed him politely about the murder inquiry at Stroud. Making conversation, talking shop.

Learning that the dead man had been found by a farmer, near the village of Bisley. The body was tumbled into a ditch with about six inches of water in the bottom so that, at first, the farmer thought this was some drunk who’d drowned. Until he turned the bloke over and was sick.

‘So … confirmation,’ Seffi said when Ron was gone and they were sitting in the Jeep, in the layby above Stroud, with the engine running.

‘How far would that be from your place?’

‘Bisley? Three, four miles, I suppose.’

‘So how did he get there?’ Maiden demanded. ‘And what happened to his mate? There’s something missing. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It’s going to make some awful sense to Grayle,’ Seffi said. ‘Just when she thought she was in the clear. I’d almost be inclined not even to tell her.’

‘What, so she can read about it in the papers?’

At eight-thirty tomorrow they’d be out there in force, Ron had said. A roughly regimented march through the fields in search of a weapon.

‘Could be about six years, however, before they get around to putting divers into the Wye at Ross,’ Maiden said morosely.

He saw that Seffi was bent over the steering wheel, her shoulders heaving. He thought she was sobbing then realized it was wild, unhealthy laughter.

‘Oh Christ!’ She raised herself up. ‘Bobby, there’s a gap on the wall.’

‘What?’

‘Back at the lodge. There’s a bloody gap on the wall… probably with the perfectly etiolated outline of an antique hedge hacker. Do you see what I mean?’

‘At the lodge?’

‘Mrs Dronfield, the cleaner, comes in on a Monday. I’ve never thought of her as a deductive genius, but she can certainly gossip for Gloucestershire …’ She looked across at him, those lush lips slack with dismay. ‘Police combing the fields for miles around, everybody talking about it, being careful to lock their doors … and here’s a perfect outline of the murder weapon set up for Mrs Dronfield. It’s not terribly funny, is it?’

Cindy was not a person who believed the press was there to be avoided. Had he complained when all those articles appeared commenting on what a refreshing change he had wrought upon the previously tedious Lottery programme? No, he had not.

In sickness and in health.

He sat upon the clifftop, meditated for ten minutes in the sea-haunted silence and then went into the caravan and switched on the mobile phone for the first time since recording his BBC radio interview.

It bleeped within twenty seconds.

‘At last. Is that Cindy?’

‘No, Kelvyn here. Who wants to speak to Cindy?’

‘Ho ho. Listen, mate, it’s Greg Cook at the Mirror.’

The showbiz editor, or whatever title they gave them these days. At past midnight on a Sunday morning? What on earth was this?

‘Good heavens, boy, are you in the office?’

‘No, I’m at home, actually, Cindy. I know it’s late, but the reason I’m ringing … Are you listening, Cindy? Because I know it’s late and you’re probably knackered.’

‘Listening most intently, I am.’

‘Because I’m ringing to warn you.’

‘A tidal wave, is it, bound for the Pembrokeshire coastline?’

‘Er … ha ha. No, it’s a bit of information that’s come our way just quite recently … well, tonight, actually … that another publication, which shall be nameless, is planning, not to put too fine a point on it, Cindy, to shaft you.’

‘Hello! magazine?’ Cindy said. ‘My, there’s worrying.’

‘We both know who we’re talking about here, mate. And, yeah, it is worrying.’

‘For me or for you?’

‘For both of us. You know the Mirror’s always been on your side. I mean, you do know that, don’t you?’

‘I would trust the Mirror like my own mother, Gregory,’ said Cindy, whose mother had abandoned him, newborn, on the steps of the Bethesda Chapel in Dowlais. ‘How do they propose to, ah, shaft me?’

‘That crash tonight, Cindy. Yeah?’

‘Poor man.’

‘Tragic. And the heart guy. And other incidents. Allegedly.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Also, stories going round about you. I wouldn’t repeat them, but somebody’s been looking into your past.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And offering certain material for sale. Came to us, first. Naturally, we refused point-blank. Showed him the door.’

‘Asking too much, was he?’

‘But he went straight to the opposition, and we understand a deal’s been made. You can expect to read about it next week. It’s almost certain to cause a storm. And inevitably put the world’s media on your back. Unfairly, in our belief.’