Cindy nodded. Whatever it was, it was OK now.
‘Where’s Persephone?’ Marcus demanded.
Bobby looked up. ‘I thought she came out with you.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She was ahead of you. She ran out of the room. When it happened, she ran out, hands over her ears.’
‘Then she’s out here, someplace.’
‘Persephone?’ Marcus stumbled out into the yard.
Stopping and listening and getting no reply. Only the wind against the castle walls. Marcus strode to the dairy. Hammered with a fist on the door.
‘Persephone! Are you in there?’ He turned to them, blood oozing down his forehead. ‘What if she’s in there with … with …?’
He couldn’t say it. But Grayle knew she wouldn’t have laughed at him this time if he had. She breathed in hard to cancel the memory of the feral, male smell.
‘Stand back,’ Marcus said.
‘Aw, Marcus-’
Marcus hurled himself sideways at the door. Bounced off, moaning, holding his shoulder.
‘Bloody hell, Marcus.’ Bobby putting himself between Marcus and the door. Malcolm started barking, figuring this was a fight.
‘She’s in there … don’t you see, Maiden? She’s locked herself in. She’s trying to deal with it herself. Bloody Lewis screwed it up, and she-’
‘All right.’ Bobby pulled hair out of his eyes; he was sweating, anxious. ‘Before we kick it in, you’ve got another key to this place, haven’t you?’
‘Lost it. Months ago. Persephone’s got the only key.
Bobby moved to help him up. Grayle pushed past them both, putting on the light. Marcus was shaking Bobby off, ramming his glasses into position.
‘Oh,’ Grayle said.
On account of there was no-one else in the dairy.
She saw the bed was half made, the duvet turned back. A lone silk blouse hung limply on a hanger on the closet door.
But there was no sign of Callard’s bags. Grayle went quickly into the other rooms. She opened the closet: empty. No personal stuff in the kitchen, in the bathroom just a tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush on the shelf over the basin.
This
‘What’s going on?’ Marcus demanded. ‘What’s happened here. Underhill?’
‘Looks like she checked out.’
‘I don’t understand …’
‘Hold on. Let’s …’
Bobby Maiden had run out into the night, Grayle trailing behind him across the yard, towards the entrance. When they got there, they found the wooden farm gate unlatched, the wind smacking it against the post.
Grayle looked back, rain in her face. She guessed the Cherokee was also gone. They hadn’t heard the motor start up. Probably on account of the wind.
Part Five
From Bang to Wrongs: A Bad Boy’s Book,
by GARY SEWARD Preface to the paperback edition
CLARENCE JUDGE — A TRIBUTE
As you may have read in the papers, since this book first come out, my dear old mate Clarence has been taken from us … taken from behind, in cold blood.
This has gutted me, I don’t mind admitting, like no other incident in my rich and varied life.
Doing it like that is not only the coward’s way, it’s the only way they’d have got Clarence. Right to the end — and he was nearly fifty-eight years old — this was a geezer people didn’t ever mess with if they could avoid it. You knew where you were with Clarence and if you was on the opposite side, Gawd help you.
However, he was a decent man.
Now I know a lot of moralistic gits out there will be going, What?!!! But I stand by what I just said. There’s no denying this business is full of evil double-dealers what would stab you in the back and lift your wallet in a single move. But Clarence was a man of honour, a staunch ally and a faithful friend. Even his enemies, Clarence done right by them — if you was going to be ‘visited’ by Clarence, he would look you in the eyes in the street and tell you to your face, and that was that, because Clarence believed in being fair and upfront at all times. At least one piece of scum, possessed of this advance information, took the opportunity to top himself first, and you can’t say fairer than that.
Sadly, Clarence Judge never had much luck the whole of his life. He was too honest. If the filth accused him of a crime, he would put his hands up straight away — usually to damage a couple of them first, but that was Clarence, an angry man sometimes.
As a result, he spent more than half his adult life in prison.
‘A stupid man, too, then,’ some smirking young talkshow host in a shiny suit remarks to me late one night on BBC 2. I felt like redecorating the set with his face in memory of Clarence, and I would have too if my fellow guests Kurt Campbell and Barry Manilow had not been sat between us in nice clean suits.
Was all the war heroes, the VCs, what went over the top on their own with a rifle, was they stupid men?
Because this is what Clarence was … a brave foot soldier who would lay down his life for his comrades. He never mugged old ladies for their pension money, nor did he give heroin to eleven-year-old schoolkids. The people what Clarence hurt — and yes, all right, he did hurt them, he hurt them grievously, usually — was the scum: the grasses, the snouts, or the cowards what drove off in the getaway car the minute they seen the filth and left their mates to face the music. Like me, Clarence knew what could and could not be tolerated and he stuck by his principles.
But, in the end, it seems, one of the scum got at him, in the cowardly way they operate. So far the police have failed to apprehend the guilty party. I do not know how hard they have tried, but as they are unlikely to offer much of a reward for apprehending the murderer of a ‘notorious criminal’, I shall do so myself. If any reader of this book has information fingering Clarence’s killer and would like to write to me, care of my publisher, I personally will pay them the sum of between ten and twenty thousand clean ones, according to the strength of the information. Naturally, as a law-abiding citizen these days, I shall immediately hand over anything of value to the police.
XXXV
Cindy ate a small breakfast in the otherwise empty, wood-walled bar, the place as quiet as the morning of a funeral.
The wind had not died with the dawn. Cindy had awoken into cold light and the rocking of the inn sign, with its grim, grey, curly-horned ram.
Amy collected his dishes. She wore one of her little black dresses, very Juliette Greco. Quite sexy, he thought
