The Cold Calling

village. Couldn’t be more than five or six bedrooms in the house itself.

And just one car parked in front, a rebuilt VW beetle, pink. A squirrel scampered past, otherwise no sign of life.

Clouds were gathering, and it looked like more than a gesture. She should’ve come in the car, but walking a couple of miles gave you a handle on a place. Fall was setting in, the first dead leaves curling together on the brown gravel as she tried — because there were no other options — the huge, solid, iron-studded door.

Tugging a bell pull on a black chain, she stepped back in alarm when it responded with this deep, churchy tolling, way back into the house. And Grayle thought, in a kind of terror, Suppose the door opens and it’s Ersula. Ersula in a bathrobe, hair mussed and smelling of recent sex?

But there was no Ersula. No answer at all. And no use in ringing again, there was no way anyone in the house would have failed to hear.

Grayle was curious. Emboldened by the likelihood of there being no-one here at all, she wandered around the side of the house to peer over the stone wall. It was too high, around nine feet. But it had a door in it. A smaller replica of the front door, going to a Gothic point. There was a ring handle; she turned it.

Waited, holding her breath. Nobody came out with a shotgun or two snarling mastiffs on a chain. She pushed her head through the opening. ‘Hullo?’

Expecting a stately Elizabethan knot-garden or something of that order, but it was just a gravelled yard with two white Portakabins. This noise coming out of one. A slow, cavernous noise, like a giant flute deep underground.

She stood and listened a while. There was an artificial quality to it. She padded across the yard. The Portakabin windows had Venetian blinds. One was open; you could just about see inside. She saw two tall speakers, computer monitors, a tape deck with a green pilot light. Whole setup looked like a recording studio, maybe for making those ambient, New Age tapes — whales talking to one another kind of stuff.

‘Yes?’ From close behind her.

‘OhmyGod. ‘ Grayle spun.

Found herself facing one of those people you just knew weren’t going to be helpful. She was about Grayle’s own age, good-looking and so sure of it she could wear an old wax jacket and baggy cords, harness her abundant hair in a rubber band.

‘What are you doing here?’ Authoritative voice, very English, well bred; kind of voice that spurned Hugh Grant until the last reel.

‘I …’

‘No, don’t tell me,’ the woman said with a flick of a wrist. ‘You’re a bloody journalist, aren’t you?’

‘Well, uh, as it happens, yeah, but-’

‘God almighty. Don’t you people ever get the message? All visits by journalists, interviews, etcetera, etcetera, are absolutely strictly by appointment only. So I suggest you go back to your office and attempt to make one. I mean, would that be so terribly difficult for you?’

‘Listen, I don’t even know what authority you have to say that.’ No way was she going to identity herself, pour it all out to some superior being from the planet Arrogant. ‘I’d prefer to hear it from Professor Falconer.’

‘I speak for him.’

‘And you are?’

‘Magda. I run this place. Now look, I don’t have time for this. We have a course next week, a dozen people, we’re mega-busy, so please get back in your car-’

‘I never heard of you. I believe my editor spoke to someone called Ersula Underhill.’

Magda blinked. ‘That makes no sense. Ersula’s ancient history.’

The words pushed a cold skewer into Grayle, who was just imagining Ersula, in a white lab-coat, messing with tapes and stuff and taking no shit whatsoever from this woman.

‘Anyway,’ Magda said, ‘Ersula Underhill wasn’t authorized to arrange for journalists or anybody else to come here.’

‘You say she’s gone? Like, where?’ Grayle noticed that, in the Portakabin behind her, the giant flute had ceased. She watched Magda’s eyes.

‘Look.’ Magda had her hands aggressively on her hips. ‘What is this?’

‘Could I please speak with Professor Falconer?’

‘No. Go away.’

‘Well, actually …’ a man’s voice said, and Grayle, half expecting this, turned towards the door of the Portakabin.

He was lean and he wore leather cowboy boots, his greying hair pulled back into a ponytail. He had an easy smile. He carried two small cassette tapes. She remembered his face from the front of the videotape package Duncan Murphy had given her in Oxford.

Magda shrugged, expressionless, and walked away towards the house without giving Grayle another glance.

‘And which publication do you write for?’ Roger Falconer said lightly.

Grayle suddenly started feeling nervous as hell.

The atmosphere had settled around Cindy the second he was inside. Dark little hall, smell of damp. An acute tang of despair in the chaos its occupant called a study.

It enclosed Marcus Bacton like a fog. His hair was lank, the purplish bags under his eyes blown up by his glasses. He looked like a man in need of help, but it was never wise to suggest this to anyone. Always better to turn it the other way round.

‘Come for your help, I have, Mr Bacton.’

Marcus Bacton grunted. ‘Better sit down then.’ He tossed two telephone directories from the sofa and about a dozen pieces of paper flew out. ‘Fuck it,’ he said, but he seemed too weary to pick them up.

The dark-haired young man came into the study. He must be over twenty years younger than Bacton. Somehow, he looked even less healthy. His face was pale and blotched, his eyes clouded. This made no sense to Cindy; Phenomenologist editorials had been full of references to the wonderful healing ambience.

‘I have to say, Lewis,’ Marcus Bacton said, ‘I’m totally nonplussed. Are you actually telling me you’ve come all this way to talk about this bloody serial-killer nonsense?’

Cindy saw the younger man stiffen, his eyes still.

‘Er, this is my, er, nephew. Maid-’

‘Wilson,’ the young man said. ‘Bobby Wilson.’

‘How are you, Bobby? Yes, I’m afraid I have come to talk about this serial killer nonsense.’

Bobby leaned against a wall, his arms folded. ‘You see?’ Marcus Bacton said to him. Bobby didn’t look at him.

‘What does he mean?’ Cindy said.

Bobby sighed. ‘He had a letter from one of his readers who suffers from fairies in the greenhouse. That’s not you, is it?’

Cindy was furious but contained it. ‘No, lovely,’ he said. ‘That’s not me.’

He paused. Marcus scowled at Bobby.

‘I’m the one who wants to know who killed his housekeeper,’ Cindy said.

XXVI

Corn-haired, apple-cheeked Adrian pushed the play button and the big noise wafted out of wall-mounted speakers. This close, it didn’t sound so much like a flute as the sound you made when you blew down a seashell or maybe across the open top of a wine bottle.

‘Adrian and various students spent three weeks inside Neolithic underground chambers recording this stuff,’