Mean Spirit

Mysteries, while people were getting killed.

If it were to turn out to be your delicate, artistic fingers on Seward’s collar, as distinct from my gnarled old digits, I just can’t tell you how upset I would be.

Very sensible. Delicate, artistic fingers weren’t equipped to feel collars. He’d call Gloucester police, ask to speak to Mr Foxworth. Report, to begin with, the Bright Horizon connection with Overcross and the festival. Take it from there.

‘Maiden?’

‘Marcus. How are-?’

‘I want you to do something for me.’

‘Well, if … you know … if I can …’ Maiden said weakly. Marcus didn’t sound weak. He didn’t sound any different after his heart attack, this big, sobering, life-shrinking experience.

‘Maiden, I’ve just had a schoolboy in a white coat at my bedside offering me drugs. I told him to go and sell them on the street like everyone else. Or, alternatively, shove them up his arse.’

‘I see.’

‘The kid seems to have called for back-up. So I’m doing the same. Get me the fuck out of here, Maiden. Tonight. All right?’

Marcus cut the line.

Kurt Campbell smiled.

‘Looking for me, Alice?’ The deep, smoky voice, the voice of a much older man. Like whole lifetimes older, Grayle thought.

But Kurt was smiling out of a young hunk’s face. That well-washed tawny hair. And, down below, the tight tawny jeans.

‘Oh hi,’ Grayle said. ‘Listen — this is awful; I’m really … you know, I’m really not that kind of journalist — but we saw this door open and we just had to take a peek, I mean, this place … this place is so awesome. Like, real… like Mervyn Peake … like Gormenghast, you know? I’m a big … big Peake freak. You know? I …’

‘Alice …’ Kurt raised a hand to stop the flow. ‘You’re excused.’ Using the hand to introduce the woman at his side. ‘This is Persephone Callard, by the way.’

Those amber eyes met Grayle’s. So she was doing it. Ms Persephone Callard in from the cold to climax a phoney Victorian seance full of dry ice and ectoplasm.

‘Oh …’ Grayle widening her eyes. ‘Hi!’ Lurching forward, hand out. ‘I’m Alice D. Thornborough, representing the New York Courier and The Vision magazine. Wow. Hey. Persephone Callard. I can’t believe this. You’re looking so … good.’

Stupid thing to say to someone you weren’t supposed to know, but maybe OK for a journalist who’d read all the stuff about Callard being washed up. And she was looking good. Looking, in the simplicity of black — the long skirt, the simple, scoop-necked top, no make-up, no jewellery — like the queen of this place.

And she nodded, like a queen does, and she said nothing, like a queen does to journalists.

However — a whole lot worse — Kurt was looking intently at Cindy, like there was something about this tall bottle blonde in the glasses and the country tweeds that he couldn’t quite identify. Oh, Jesus.

‘Kurt,’ Grayle said quickly, ‘this is Imelda Bacton, of The Vision magazine. She’s here to run the magazine’s stand in place of her brother, Marcus, who …’ flicking a swift glance at Callard, ‘… had a heart attack.’

Seeing the quiver, quickly stilled.

‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ Callard said steadily. ‘I once met Mr Bacton. How is he?’ There was shock in her eyes, and Grayle intuited that she was thinking this must have happened the night she brought Clarence Judge into Castle Farm and then ran out on them, that it was her fault.

Which was OK. It might just as easily have happened then.

‘Weakened but recovering,’ Imelda Bacton said powerfully. ‘Needs more than a cardiac blip to take that old bastard out.’

At the sound of the voice, so abruptly different from Cindy’s syrupy south Wales, Kurt Campbell visibly relaxed.

‘I was showing Seffi to her room. The problem with this place is that it has about twenty-six bedrooms and, so far, less than half of them’ve been refurbished. It’s an ongoing operation, this house.’

‘Like the Forth Bridge, I imagine.’ Cindy gazed up at the ceiling from which paper hung in shreds. ‘You must’ve spent hundreds of thousands on this place already. What the hell possessed you to take it on, Mr Campbell?’

‘I like challenges,’ Kurt said. Grayle saw that he now had no interest at all in Imelda Bacton — too old to screw and probably a royal pain in the ass. ‘Look, Alice … I’d like a word with you. If you want to wait in the main hall — that’s just along this passage — I’ll be down in ten minutes. That’s next to the main door, so if Miss Backley wants to get back to her stand, that’s the quickest way.’

‘Well,’ Cindy murmured as Campbell followed Callard through a Gothic-shaped doorway with no door, ‘that’s me in my place, isn’t it? We have two options, little Grayle. One, I stay with you and Kurt gets suddenly called away again. Two, I disappear.’

‘Has to be two, I guess. We’re lucky he didn’t spot who you really are.’

‘I was careful to keep looking away from him. A hypnotist always recognizes your eyes. Grayle, the more I think about this, a third option might be wiser — we both disappear.’

‘No, I’m gonna wait for him. See this through.’

They walked to the end of the passage and when they came out at the other end the architecture appeared to have shed about six centuries. They were in the main entrance hall and you could see this was where most of the money had gone so far. It was the full baronial: a stone staircase, high stone walls with coats of arms and crossed pikes and deerheads on shields and a gigantic wrought-iron chandelier with flickering electric candles.

Not quite tacky, not quite tasteful. More filmset than authentic haunted house. There were five or six people waiting around. Two wore suits, carried briefcases. One was leaning against a wall by the stairs, talking down a cellphone. Overhead, a black heating outlet pumped out warm air.

There was a big reception desk with wrought-iron legs, three phones on top. Next to a woman with glasses on a chain sat one of the Forcefield guys, looking half-cop, half-paramilitary and wholly bored. A noticeboard leaning up against the desk advertised festival events including an illustrated lecture on Friday evening by the authors of The Golgotha Manuscript: the Truth about the Crucifixion and a session by Ronan Blaine, the revered hands-on healer from Ireland.

‘This is the real thing, isn’t it?’ Grayle said despondently. ‘It isn’t a front for anything. It’s gonna build up year by year, become an institution and make piles of money. Turning Kurt into some kind of New Age Bill Gates.’

The original Victorian Gothic castle door, twelve feet high, hung open. A smoked-glass conservatory had been built on the front, and there were people sitting at tables with computers, selling tickets to events like the Golgotha guys. New Age big business. Exploitation of the seekers after truth.

Grayle suddenly felt angry.

‘We’re wasting our time. If Campbell has anything to hide, he’s got a million places here to hide it. And Callard’s looking all cool and distant and fully in control.’

‘I wonder how.’

‘Hypnotherapy?’

‘Grayle …?’

‘Anyhow, not our problem. I don’t even know what we’re doing here any more, now Marcus isn’t part of it. In fact, unless Bobby has anything meaningful to tell us, I say we close up the stupid stall, go over to Worcester, try to cheer Marcus up and tomorrow we don’t come back. Marcus is our problem now.’

‘Hmmm.’

Cindy was standing looking up the stone stairs. A window on the landing was long and churchy, with stained glass depicting two knights in armour. The guy leaning up against the wall by the stairs put away his cellphone and walked off smiling, and Grayle half-recognized him from someplace. He was in baggy jeans and a grey polo shirt with a short row of black battlements and Overcross Castle printed on the pocket.

‘The notorious Gary Seward, as I live and breathe,’ Cindy said mildly.