Mean Spirit

‘It’s bloody cold out there, Vera.’

Wasn’t too warm in here. The kitchen was the size of a hospital ward and all white tiles. Vera said, ‘You’d like some tea, I s’pose.’

‘That would be splendid,’ said Cindy. ‘This is my assistant, Thornborough. And this is my poor bloody brother’s dog, Malcolm, who would appreciate a bowl of water and a chocolate digestive.’

Had to hand it to Cindy; he was good, could switch personalities in the blink of an eye. Right now, no way would Grayle make the mistake of addressing him as Cindy.

‘We got about ten minutes’, Vera said, taking this huge kettle to one of four sinks, ‘before the caterers arrive to criticize everything.’

‘Big dinner?’

‘The Victorians stuffed themselves silly.’

‘Great,’ Grayle said miserably.

‘Vera,’ Cindy said, ‘those removal men …’

‘Removal men?’

‘Bloody big van. Must be around somewhere.’

‘I never seen no van this end.’

‘Just that I could really bloody use a van that size, if it’s coming back. Got a load of stuff for the bastard stall, held up at Cheltenham station. Thought they might have a spare corner, and if Campbell was already paying them …’

‘They’ve probably gone round the front. Or using one of the side doors.’

‘Possibly. Would you mind if …?’

‘You have a look around, if you want,’ Vera said.

‘Excellent. Stay with Vera, Malcolm.’ Cindy crossed to a central door, pushed through, beckoning Grayle.

They were in a low passage with some narrow, cramped stairs. Servants’ stairs. A row of small bells on a bracket, for Barnaby Crole to summon the butler.

‘Quietly.’ Cindy mounted the wooden stairs. ‘We just want to know what they’re bringing and where they’re taking it and then we’re out of here.’

‘What do you think it’s gonna be?’

‘The furniture, of course. If I’m right, they want to recreate the room where Persephone Callard was introduced to the essence of Clarence Judge. They want her to do it again, see, under the same conditions. And this time she doesn’t walk out on them.’

‘They’d go to that kind of trouble? Transport the whole room? But that’s so crazy!’

Cindy paused at the top of the stairs, looked over his shoulder. ‘Is it?’

‘Look …’ Grayle hung back. ‘I don’t understand this, Cindy.’

Cindy stood above her in his tweed suit and his straw-blond wig now under a black beret.

‘That’s because, little Grayle, you are not a fanatic. This is about fanaticism. It’s also about ego. Egos big enough to want to survive death. The fanaticism and the egotism of Barnaby Crole and Anthony Abblow and Kurt Campbell and Gary Seward. Huge and cosmic, it is, and yet also so terribly small and sordid.’

And he turned and continued to the top of the stairs.

‘What kind of freaking explanation is that?’ Grayle yelled.

‘Oh,’ Cindy said.

He looked back down at Grayle. His eyes flashed: caution.

Grayle went up slowly and joined him where the stairs came out in a square hallway with rough panelling, blotched with old mould.

Kurt Campbell stood in a doorway watching her emerge.

And Persephone Callard, sleek in black.

XLV

Maiden watched Harry Douglas Oakley tramp off, with his contentious placard, to join his evangelical guardians on the edge of the festival car park.

It was mid-afternoon. He hadn’t eaten since leaving Castle Farm. It had started to snow again, flakes fine as flour dusting the windscreen. A few days ago, when he’d driven into Gloucestershire with Seffi Callard, it had felt like early summer.

He sat for a while in the cold truck, trying to form a steady picture from the confusion. It was like one of those magic-eye pictures, that short-lived fad some years back: find the Rembrandt inside the Jackson Pollock.

In no time at all, thanks to Harry Oakley, he’d established the connection. Fact: the purchase of Overcross Castle was the fruit of a collaboration between Kurt Campbell and Gary Seward, whose interest in spiritualism had become an obsession. Seward’s other obsession was his need to find the killer of Clarence Judge — because Clarence was part of Gary’s history, his yardstick of hardness. And because it was not safe for whoever killed Clarence to be out there.

Seward’s fervent, if irrational, belief that this knowledge could be attained through the employment of a good medium — the best medium — had led him to Persephone Callard, ex-girlfriend of Kurt Campbell. To conceal from her the involvement of either of them, they’d set up the Cheltenham seance, using Sir Richard Barber as a front.

Question: if Campbell had been so close to Seffi, why hadn’t he just asked her to do the seance, the way he’d asked her to do the Festival of the Spirit? As a favour, presumably.

What was the real relationship between those two?

(i.e. has she betrayed us? Has she betrayed me?)

Unanswerable. He tried not to think about Emma.

So … OK … the Cheltenham seance had ended in disarray but what it produced was convincing enough for Seward to target Seffi Callard, to do anything to get her back. Resulting in two killings.

And then there was the Riggs connection.

Maiden pushed his face through his cold hands. It was like a mad, holistic dream, unbreakable strands of his experience twisted into a pulsing, fibrous knot. Perfectly logical to the likes of Cindy, who always looked for great and abstract patterns, the Pollock beyond the Rembrandt.

He wished he could talk to Marcus Bacton, that unique blend of the impressionable and the incisive.

The thought of Marcus made Maiden suddenly so absurdly anxious that he pulled out his mobile and rang Worcester Royal Infirmary. Even while he was being transferred to the ward, he heard a voice in his head asking if he was a relative, then saying, gently but firmly,

I’m afraid Mr Bacton died this morning.

His hand was shaking. The snow collected like icing sugar on the rubber wiper blades. He heard the staff nurse answer, heard his own voice identifying himself as Marcus Bacton’s nephew, heard the nurse say that Mr Bacton was making satisfactory progress. Heard Seffi Callard, as Em, purring, Come on, guv, help yourself to the sweet trolley.

‘I’m sorry, sir, did you hear what I said?’

‘Would you mind not calling me sir?’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He was coming to pieces. ‘Oh God. Sorry.’ Get a grip. ‘Would you … tell Marcus everything’s OK. And we’ll be in to see him just as soon as we can.’

‘I said, would you like to speak to him?’

‘What?’

‘Because I think he’d like to speak to you.’

‘Well, I don’t think …’

‘Hold on a moment, would you? We’ll get the phone to Mr Bacton’s bedside.’

Damn. He didn’t need this now. He knew what he should be doing, what he should have done days ago … tell Ron Foxworth everything. You could go mad considering Cindy’s shamanic solutions, contemplating Marcus’s Big