Mean Spirit

spiritualism.

Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, I never gave you too much respect, you were never enough fun and I only prayed to you when I was in real deep shit, but please, please …

Her wrist, cuffed to the fat, hairy wrist of the big detective, Foxworth, was beginning to ache. Only way she could move it would be to pull his hand down onto her lap. Maybe not.

How long? How long were they gonna sit here, the four of them? Waiting for the toffee-nosed bitch. Just pray she never came. Pray she called the cops instead.

Bobby said casually, ‘So who did kill Justin Sharpe, Gary?’

Foxworth’s shoulder jerked, dragging the handcuffs, hurting Grayle.

‘Oh, that prat,’ Seward said. ‘Well, he deserved it, didn’t he? He was a pain in the arse. Little big man. Bloody nuisance.’

Bobby said, ‘He gave you Grayle’s name?’

‘Did he? Yeah, could be we had it from him.’

Grayle said hoarsely, ‘Why’d you have to kill him?’

Seward shook his head a little, in non-comprehension. ‘Darlin’, you’re talking like this was an innocent member of the public. He dabbled. He had his fingers in the pie, he lost his fingers. It happens.’

‘Where do you draw the line?’

‘I dunno.’ Seward looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe I ain’t as pragmatic and businesslike as I was. Comes from not needing to do it for a living no more. All them years you spend watching your back and the law and planning everything careful, like a military operation. And then you write a book, do telly, and the money just bleedin’ rolls in. It’s weird — you don’t have to do nothing to nobody for it. Get invited to invest in legit business. And suddenly you’re just bleedin’ loaded — you’re turning over twice, three times what you used to take off the suckers.’

Ron Foxworth sniffed in contempt. ‘Military operation my arse. All you ever were was a grown-up version of the kid that used to take other kids’ dinner money.’

‘Ronald-’

‘Drugs and protection, that was you, Seward. The dregs. The gutter. You never planned a clever job, not ever. You were just this mean, ruthless bastard who never cared who got hurt. That was the whole secret of your success, Gary, you never gave a flying fart who suffered along the way.’

‘Ronald,’ Seward smiled delicately, ‘I rather think, my old friend, that you are beginning to show off to the children. Which cannot be tolerated. I don’t think I’m gonna tell you again not to do that, know wha’ mean?’

Grayle said, to diffuse the horrifying tension, ‘If you’re making so much money, Mr Seward, why are you still-?’

Seward shifted in his chair and she caught the cold eyes in the gloom, and it was like coming face to face with a wolf in the undergrowth.

‘You’re a clever girl. I got to say I never really liked clever women. They ain’t never clever enough to know when to stop.’

Foxworth sighed. ‘I’ll explain this, if Gary doesn’t mind, Miss Underwood. It’s because he’s got everything he ever wanted and he doesn’t feel alive any more. He got addicted to the buzz. And the buzz in having everything you ever wanted … for a man like Gary, it starts to fade on day two.’

‘You mean like when the body’s replete you realize how starved the spirit is.’ Grayle frantically recalling a think-piece she once wrote for the Courier about why so many billionaires and movie stars and rock stars got obsessively into New Age studies.

‘But in that case’, Bobby said, turning this into some kind of crazy, surreal debate, ‘don’t you start to reject your material wealth and remember all the people you misused and try to repay them? Don’t you start trying to put something into the world to replace what you took out before you saw the light?’

‘Yeah. And that’s …’ Grayle sat forward. ‘Like, this one time I had a long discussion with Shirley McLaine, and she-’

‘And it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of Heaven,’ Seward said.

‘It’s a point of view,’ Grayle said.

And then cowered back in her chair as Seward rose, snarling, tiny jewels of spit popping out.

‘You airy-fairy, nampy-pamby twats! You’re just fucking hippies! You’re like them bleedin’ doped-up crazies we’re fleecing out there! Shirley Fucking McLaine? Listen … do you know why the Victorians got closer than anybody has since to proving life after death? ‘Cause they didn’t fart about wiv peace and love and this shit. The Victorians, the old spiritualists, Crole and Abblow and them … they was scientific. They didn’t make the mistake of thinking life after death had to do with bleedin’ religion. They did what had to be done. Know wha’ mean? Nah, you don’t, do you? None of you bleedin’ know!’

There was a pool of silence.

Then Bobby tossed in a rock.

‘I know what you mean. It’s like the way Crole and Abblow realized it was necessary to kill John Hodge.’

‘And what do you know about that, cock?’

‘I think they wanted him for a ghost,’ Bobby said into a sudden cavern of silence. ‘For the first purpose-built haunted house.’

Grayle said, ‘Huh?’ Then a pulse of pure understanding went through her like white fork-lightning.

‘Go on, Bobby,’ Seward said.

There was a tap on the door.

‘Come,’ Seward said.

Grayle turned her head to watch the door. When it opened and the blue-white light fell in, she realized how dark it had been with that one miserable bulb.

With the light came Persephone Callard. Behind her, Grayle saw the thin security guard.

Callard stood there in her dark dress. Her hair was in one long, dense, bellrope plait. She looked slowly round the cellar. From Seward to Grayle to Foxworth to Bobby Maiden, making no response to any of them, giving no hint that she knew them. Then she shook her head. She hadn’t seen the handcuffs, but she’d seen enough.

‘Oh no,’ she said, all quiet and succinct and upper class. ‘Oh no, I really don’t think so.’ She turned to the security guy. ‘Take me back. I want to talk to Kurt.’

Seward stood up. He looked suddenly out of condition, like an old-fashioned restaurant manager who ate too many of his own rich meals. Maybe he was aware of this: irritation twisted the fixed smile downwards. He walked into the middle of the room.

Held the squat shotgun at waist-level.

Grayle said, ‘Oh-’

The holes down the shotgun barrels were mineshafts into hell.

‘Shut the door, please,’ Seward said.

LII

‘Would you come with us, please, madam?’

‘Are you arresting me, officer?’ Cindy held a hand to his throat, affronted but dignified.

‘You could say that.’

‘I don’t think you can, mate,’ Lorna Crane said. ‘You got no powers to arrest anybody.’

The Forcefield officer quite clearly believed otherwise. He had the frame of a bodybuilder and the considerable acne of a fifth-former. He carried a rubberized torch nearly two feet long.

‘This woman has stolen money and jewellery from a number of stalls,’ he said with a certainty the actual police were rarely permitted to exercise.

‘Oh.’ Cindy began to feel resentful. ‘Jewellery and money? And do you have the