narrow little way to God!’
The evangelicals carried on singing, led by two guys in clerical collars.
‘How long will they keep this up?’ Bobby wondered.
‘Oh hell, Bobby, they’ll be here all day and then I guess another bunch’ll take over. Less, of course, the security guys move into action, but that’s not too likely. Throwing out a Christian on his ass is not what you’d call good PR.’
‘Now there’s interesting,’ Cindy said.
‘Huh?’
‘See the person on the end with the handwritten placard?’
Small guy in a suit and tie, not singing, just standing there holding up his placard.
‘What’s it say? Oh.’
The sign said
THEY MURDEREDJOHN HODGE
‘The gamekeeper?’ Grayle said. ‘The shotgun accident?’
Cindy turned to Bobby.
‘Go and have a word, boy. You are the detective, go and detect. Grayle and I will mind the shop.’ He seemed suddenly alive with an excitement Grayle hadn’t seen in him in such a long time. ‘This is what we’ve been waiting for. The answers always lie in history. Get him out of here, Bobby. Don’t let anyone see you.’
XLIV
He had a long piece of sticking plaster diagonally across his forehead.
‘Oh, yes, they did that,’ he said diffidently in the snug, panelled bar of the Unicorn.
‘The security men?’
‘Well, you see, I landed on a piece of barbed wire. This was when they slung me off the site. I don’t suppose they meant it to happen, but they never came out to help me. I could’ve lost an eye, I suppose, for all they cared.’
‘Just let me get this right. This is the Forcefield men?’
‘Is that what they’re called? Anyway, I came back. I paid my entrance fee and I came back. And when these religious people arrived, I decided to attach myself to them. I explained that this was an example of the kind of evil that resulted from all this meddling. Had to say I was thinking of joining their church, but at least it meant I could make my protest without getting assaulted. Stand there a while and hope someone would come along who’d take a bit of notice. And now here you are, sir.’
He raised his glass to Maiden.
They’d thrown his placard face-down in the back of Marcus’s truck and then Maiden had driven him through the gates, the man’s face turned away from the Forcefield gateman, and four miles to the Unicorn, which was three pubs distant from Overcross and almost empty, thankfully.
‘I’ll go back again,’ he said. ‘Got to keep it up, sir. I promised.’
He was a slightly built man about Marcus’s age, gingery-white hair and a small, pointed face as inoffensive as a hedgehog’s. His name was Harry Douglas Oakley. John Hodge, gamekeeper to Barnaby Crole, was his great- grandfather.
‘You really are the police?’ He spoke quietly, the way informers spoke in pubs, the way Vic Clutton would speak, only a little more refined and with none of Vic’s irony. Mr Oakley had a small bicycle shop in West Malvern.
Maiden displayed his warrant card. ‘But, I’ll be honest, this is not my area. And I’m on leave, anyway.’
‘So, can I ask what your interest is, sir? Do you mind?’
Maiden hesitated. ‘This would be in confidence?’
‘Surely.’
‘I don’t know about John Hodge being murdered, but people have certainly been killed since and I’m looking for connections with some friends. We’re not sure what we’re after. I’m sorry to be so vague.’
‘If you’re sincere, that’s good enough for me, sir.’
Maiden said, ‘Would you mind not calling me “sir”? I have a bit of a problem with it. My name’s Bobby.’
‘Certainly, Bobby,’ said Harry Douglas Oakley.
By early afternoon many more vehicles had entered the site and the tents were taking on a new allure, signs going up proclaiming palmistry, crystal-healing, Tarot readings and a big caravan, where you could attach yourself to devices that altered your brainwaves. There were practitioners of Reiki and a
Cindy and Grayle finished laying out the stall. Even with the dramatic colour pictures of the Knoll and one oblique photo of Castle Farm, home of
Grayle had brought a small case containing the long black skirt and the high-necked Edwardian-style blouse she guessed she’d need to wear for the period seance. ‘I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling uneasy about tonight, Kurt Campbell coming on to me and all. And what happens if … when … Callard spots me?’
They were standing with Malcolm the dog in front of the tent, watching the build-up of cars and vans. Grayle was looking for a Jeep Grand Cherokee with a woman at the wheel. She’d already checked the cordoned off exclusive parking lot up by the castle. Was Callard coming here at all, or had Marcus got it all wrong?
‘She won’t give you away.’ Cindy lit a cigarette. ‘She wants an end to this. It’s been going on too long. Longer than she knows.’
‘What’s that mean? What are you saying?’ Puzzled by this new animation around Cindy. Everything he said seemed pointed and penetrating, like a needle teasing a splinter out of the skin.
‘I think’, he said, ‘that Bobby may be able to complete the picture when he returns. But ponder this, Grayle: the only purpose-built haunted house? What does that
‘Means they were ambitious. They were aiming to call down spirits at will. Scientifically.’
‘But how many ghosts is it reputed to have? You’d think a hundred, wouldn’t you? And yet … John Hodge, the gamekeeper. The sole apparition. Just poor John. Accidentally shot, here in the grounds, with his own gun. I wonder where, precisely.’
‘They probably put the damn toilets over the spot.’ Grayle glanced briefly over at the Portaloos. ‘You’re saying you think there’s a connection between the death of John Hodge and what’s happening now? Or is that shamanic intuition?’
‘If we think of Anthony Abblow as the Kurt Campbell of his day … a man whose interest in the paranormal had little of the mystical about it. A man who-. Something wrong, is it, Grayle?’
‘Sorry, I just saw …’ Grayle was staring at a big vehicle heading up the main drive towards the castle. ‘Cindy, you see that van? Wait till it comes out the other side of that clump of bushes … OK, you see the symbol on the side panel?’
‘A blue rose?’
‘Right. Well, this is probably nothing, but I would swear that is the same firm we saw taking stuff out of the flat we thought was Barber’s. In Cheltenham.’
‘You’re sure about this?’
‘I’m almost sure it’s the same company. It may not be the same van. I mean I wouldn’t recognize the licence plate or anything. Maybe this is the outfit everybody uses in these parts. Coincidence.’
‘You are saying this could be the van which departed carrying furniture and effects from the room in which Persephone Callard conducted a seance for Sir Richard Barber?’ Cindy’s eyes flared. ‘Grayle, in such a situation as this, there can be no such thing as coincidence.’ He clipped on Malcolm’s lead. ‘Come on.’
‘What about the stall?’
‘Would all these spiritually developed people help themselves to free copies of
