The Cold Calling

‘Hullo,’ Marcus said. ‘What’s this?’

A chain of lights coming up the rise. UFOs maybe, Grayle thought. Something for The Phenomenologist. She’d been thinking a lot about The Phenomenologist, what a piece of crap it was, although it didn’t have to be a piece of crap. With a little more cash behind it, a redesign. Some real journalism.

Stupid, a pipe dream. She didn’t belong here.

‘Quite a few of the buggers,’ Marcus noted.

Andy said, ‘Probably the entire hospital trust come to drag me back.’

They came up the path taken, Cindy understood, by Annie Davies herself on a morning when the castle ruins hung damply in the mist around the yard, Annie sliding through the scabbed and knobbly remains towards the pinkening light. Not this time of year, of course, there would have been no chill then; it would be another hot day.

There were not a great many, fewer than there’d been at the funeral. By the light of the torches, Cindy recognized several of those who had been in the pub when Amy Jenkins had broken the village’s silence. Cindy spotted the old man in the flat cap, the fat woman with the hat and the old woman with the funny eye. And Amy herself, of course. Who would have rounded them up, badgered, cajoled, blackmailed, offered to wipe slates clean …

Cindy met her at the edge of the Knoll.

‘Amy,’ he said. ‘If I were a real man, I should ask you to marry me.’

Bobby Maiden spotted a familiar shabby figure looking slightly uncomfortable amongst all these yokels.

‘The lady in the pub said I’d find you here, no other police around,’ Vic Clutton said. ‘We need to talk, Mr Maiden.’

‘Always happy to talk with you, Vic. Saved my life, as I recall.’

‘Yeah,’ Vic said, like this had only just occurred to him. ‘I did, didn’t I? You heard about me saving anyone else’s life at all?’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me. But no.’

‘Really no?’

‘Really no.’

‘Or any other … incidents?’

‘Don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘So there’s no question of any of these … incidents … raising their ugly heads, sorter thing, in the future.’

‘Wouldn’t be because of me. Because I haven’t heard of them.’

‘Right … right. Erm … that time you suggested Riggs had Dean strung up …’

‘Mmm,’ Maiden said. ‘I don’t see us standing that one up either, I’m afraid. But there are other … issues … on which Riggs might be put away. And Beattie. And one or two others. Once you take away a few bricks … in a jerry-built place like Elham … you know what I mean?’

‘Got you. All right. I’ll be in touch.’ Vic nodded and turned away. ‘Be seeing you, Mr Maiden.’

‘Don’t go,’ Maiden said. ‘Stay for our little rustic ritual. Illegal drinks afterwards at the Tup. All nice, decent people. Oh … except for Marcus Bacton. The murderer.’

With the capstone only inches above her, the supporting stones on all sides and all the gaps between them blocked by the legs of the thirty-plus people standing in a circle around the monument, it was dark as hell in here. Ersula was right.

The claustrophobia can be intense. You start to scream inside. All you want is out of there. But, like I said, you have to stop your conscious mind getting a hold of you. What you are dealing with here is the unconscious and that must be left to find its own route to what you would probably call enlightenment.

Scary fun, huh, Ersula?

However, even without her coat, she found it curiously warm. She laid her head on her folded arms. Cindy was leading some kind of chant out there and it was kind of soporific. Maybe she fell asleep. Maybe she dreamed; maybe she didn’t.

When she awoke (or didn’t) her left hand was like on fire. And when she inched forward, it was suddenly so bright on her face that she had to shut her eyes.

In a long, long moment of amber radiance, Grayle’s body was suffused with a startling warmth.

Now, OK, this was crazy. By all the laws of prehistoric science this should not be happening, because this was 1 November and the chamber was supposed to be oriented to the midsummer sunrise.

The warmth settled around her like a fleece, but very lightly. And then she felt it inside her, in the lowest part of her gut like good brandy. She kept her eyes tight shut and lay very still. This was no hardship. In the closeness of the burial chamber on High Knoll, she felt she never wanted to move again, that she’d be quite happy to die here, in this long, ecstatic moment, at the age of … goddamn it, nearly thirty, and what had she done that was in any way worthwhile?

When she opened her eyes, she found herself at the very end of the tunnel, and what had seemed like a slit … well, because of the positioning of the stones and the people’s legs, it was now wide enough to be almost a doorway. She guessed that what had happened was that the capstone, having collapsed, had collapsed some more and the sun was coming in through some other slit.

Whatever.

The sun was a glorious deep red, made all the more intense by the frosty air, the starkness of the trees. You’d swear it was coming down.

Like just for her.

And Annie Davies.

‘Bullshit,’ Grayle whispered. Uncertainly.

Feeling, somehow, that she was not alone in here.