Mean Spirit

sadly. Too late now for him to appreciate such qualities. The course was set; whichever way he turned would leave him leaning suicidally over the abyss.

‘How can they say those things?’ Amy said. ‘They don’t know you. That brother, he’ve got no brains. Just hit out, they do, without a thought.’

Cindy was silent.

‘You mustn’t let them get away with this.’

Cindy smiled with a sorrow which, in the gloom of the bar, Amy would be unlikely to discern.

‘Not as if they’ve sacked you, Cindy, is it? The BBC would not be so daft! You’re a big star!’

‘A big star. Yes.’

The Sun lay folded by his plate. He poured himself a coffee, picked up the paper.

‘Don’t…’ Amy said anxiously. ‘Don’t torture yourself.’

‘A little late for that, my love.’

Cindy spread out the Sun.

THE CURSE OFKELVYN KITE

The enormous front-page headline displayed like an official public warning.

Cindy briefly closed his eyes, opening them to the sub-head:

Brother blasts Cindy as horrorblaze kills Lotto family

This angle came from Brendan Sherwin’s brother, Greg, who did not, Cindy judged with unusual bitterness from the photograph, look like a man who might qualify for Mensa.

Greg, 34, said: ‘My sister in law was very upset when Cindy made that bird come out with all those comments about the new Barrett home and the BMWs.‘Brendan and Sharon were both demoralized. It had got that they were scared to come out of their new house because of the remarks people made.‘One day last week, two little kids were standing at the edge of Brendan’s drive flapping their arms like birds’ wings and shouting, “It’ll all end in tears!”’Greg added, ‘I hate that Cindy now for what he’s caused. It’s like he’s sneering at ordinary people’s good luck.‘He tries to blame it all on Kelvyn Kite, but everybody knows it’s what he really thinks.‘Cindy is sick. If you ask me, he should quit now.’

Oh, how cleverly it had been done. Perhaps some hungry freelance journalist had initially put the words into Greg’s mouth: ‘So how do you feel about Cindy now, Greg? I expect you hate him.’

‘Er, yeah.’

And the use of the beautifully ambivalent line, I hate Cindy for what he’s caused. Causing people to deride Lottery jackpot winners or, in fact, causing their deaths?

Nobody was suggesting such a nonsense, of course. Nothing so direct.

The piece continued across pages four and five. Page four referred to the plane crash and the heart attack. The National Lottery death toll. The paper had spoken to a consultant psychiatrist, whose portentous comments began, If people are constantly warned to mistrust good fortune achieved without any effort on their part and told that such luck will inevitably bring repercussions, then …

Page five was all about Cindy.

Oh God.

He could not read it.

He should leave quietly. What use was he here, having failed Marcus and Grayle, failed Persephone Callard and — what was worse — damaged her equilibrium, driven her away in fear and despair? No, he was not the world’s most popular man this morning. Not at Castle Farm in the parish of St Mary’s. Nor, by the looks of the morning papers, anywhere in this impressionable country.

Sydney Mars-Lewis, I am arresting you for complicity in the deaths of Gerry Purviss, Colin Seymour, Brendan Sherwin, Sharon Sherwin …

But let’s not get carried away.

Leave that to the Sun.

Around eight-thirty in the morning, Bobby Maiden had the lights on in the editorial room, formerly a treatment room, now a mess. With no window, you needed all the lights all the time.

He and Grayle had pulled out the jagged glass from the frame, boarded up the space as best they could with chipboard panels from the stable — Marcus shouting instructions, cursing a good deal to cover up how unnerved he was, while Maiden was thinking, She’ll come back. She just wants to drive around for a while, clear her head.

Only she hadn’t come back. She’d grabbed most of her stuff in a hurry and taken off, just as she’d apparently done from Barber’s party.

Fled from it.

Obviously likes to go out with a bang, Grayle had said laconically before she went home around midnight, leaving Maiden to bed down on the sofa. Marcus had offered him the dairy, but he couldn’t bring himself to sleep there. He’d lain awake for a long time, Malcolm sleeping on his feet. Maiden listening for the sound of an engine in the wind.

All right, she was unpredictable, famously unpredictable, and she owed him nothing, perhaps not even an explanation. But this wasn’t right. He had to find her. How could he not try to find her?

Marcus came in, still in his dressing gown.

‘She hasn’t…?’

‘No.’ Maiden picked up a shard of glass they’d missed last night.

‘No phone call?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s not like her, Maiden. People don’t change that much, whatever Underhill might say. She wouldn’t leave the way she did, leaving us in the bloody wreckage, if she hadn’t got a good reason.’

‘Other than wondering what else she might do to the place if she stuck around?’

‘Did you feel anything, Maiden? Did you feel a build up of energy?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t know what a build up of energy felt like. Not the kind of energy you mean.’

‘Last night,’ Marcus said, ‘before we let the damnable Lewis take over, she and I had — I mean, you couldn’t call it a heart to heart exactly, but she did go on about the trouble she was claiming she’d caused. All this about coming between Underhill and me. Which was nonsense. She said she’d made a mistake coming here.’

‘She said that to me. She also said she couldn’t stay because she had an appointment to keep.’

‘You ask her what it was?’

‘Should have, but I didn’t.’

‘Don’t suppose she’d have told you. Went on to me about going to a bloody ashram, something of that nature. Bullshit, probably. This has been a total disaster. She was in a state of torment and we probably made it worse. She couldn’t stand it any more. Buggered off.’

‘She was going anyway. She was already packed.’

Marcus waved a dismissive hand, went off to get dressed.

Maiden prowled the room, picking up more glass. He wondered if maybe they hadn’t all made the window explode — all sitting there nursing their private fears and longings.

Under the computer table, which he and Grayle had pulled back into the centre of the room, he found a writing pad. He froze.

Cindy searched for his phone for a while before remembering that he’d hurled it, in his agony, over the castle wall.

At nine, from the payphone in the hallway of the Tup, he rang Jo’s direct line at the BBC. No answer. No point in calling her at home; she’d be on her way to the office. Cindy returned to the bar and his table, bare now. Except