The Cold Calling

Roger Falconer said. ‘Different times of day, different weather conditions. Quite impressive, isn’t it?’

‘What does it mean?’ Grayle wondered.

‘Quite significant, actually.’ Falconer wore a frayed denim shirt. Nestling in his greying chest hair was what looked like a flint arrowhead on a leather thong. His smile wanted to eat you up. ‘It supports the theory that what we know as burial chambers served other purposes, perhaps initiatory. Yes?’

‘Mmm.’ Grayle nodded. Coming on like a journalist, as this now seemed acceptable. ‘The Native Americans had something similar, right? The Hopi?’

‘Exactly. Not so apparent now as it probably was when they were built, but the suggestion is that these subterranean cells were constructed as much for auditory as visual effect. To provide a sensory experience for the person inside.’

‘To condition their consciousness,’ Adrian said, his voice brisk with enthusiasm and private schooling. ‘To make them accessible to Higher Influences.’

‘Yes, well,’ said Falconer. ‘For Adrian, I’m afraid, it’s only the beginning.’

‘Oh gosh, yes.’ Adrian stopped the machine and exchanged cassettes. ‘If you listen to this, you’ll hear … hold on, I’ll wind back about ten seconds … now listen very carefully.’

Adrian pushed the button and stood aside from the machine, like a stage magician, looking, at the same time, too rough-hewn and honest for that line of work.

‘OK?’

‘Sure.’ Grayle was feeling more relaxed and quite interested. After the cool, edgy reception from Magda, the whole atmosphere had changed, Roger and Adrian both up-front, friendly, charming.

‘There,’ Adrian said. ‘Did you hear it?’

‘Huh?’ The Portakabin was divided into white-partitioned sections. It looked cool and modern, charts on the walls.

‘OK, I’ll run it again. In fact I’ll turn it up a little, if your ears can stand it. You have to realize, of course, that all this is hugely amplified anyway, although we’ve managed to filter out much of the hiss.’

The hoarse, hollow whistling came rushing out of both the speakers like a gathering storm.

‘Now,’ Adrian said. ‘There it goes. Hear it? Sort of like atcha-ka, atcha-ka. ‘

‘Probably a bird,’ said Falconer.

‘Roger, it was at night. ‘

‘Hedgehog, then.’

Adrian didn’t look deflated. His face glowed with excitement.

‘What do you think it is?’ Grayle asked him.

‘Well, I think … I believe … we’re listening to a chant. Possibly the remains of a chant. Of course, it’s obviously deteriorated over thousands of years.’

Falconer smiled indulgently at Adrian and shook his head.

‘Hold on,’ Grayle said. ‘You’re saying this is … like a prehistoric voice?’

‘Stone records sound,’ Adrian said. ‘It’s infused with magnetism. Stone records voices and images too, and one day I’m going to prove it.’

Roger laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘If only you could, old chap. Be enormously illuminating, because we really have no idea what kind of language these Neolithic people employed. You see, Grayle, that’s what the University of the Earth’s really all about. While I’m not convinced, not by a very long way, that there’s anything to this EVP …’

‘Electronic Voice Phenomena,’ Adrian explained.

‘… we’re giving Adrian a chance to experiment under scientific conditions. And we’re letting interested members of the public share in that experience, which makes for a rather exciting, memorable holiday for them and helps fund our continuing research. Science should never be rarefied or elitist.’

Grayle nodded, wondering if Ersula would agree.

‘We do make a bit of a show of the arguments between us,’ Adrian admitted. ‘It all adds to the fun. I mean, you know, don’t put that in your article. Which paper was it? Sorry. In one ear, out the other.’

‘Story of his life,’ said Roger.

‘The New York Courier,’ Grayle said, hoping to God they wouldn’t check. Cautiously, she’d called herself Grayle Turner. Feeling she just might learn more if she didn’t come out as Ersula’s sister until it was absolutely necessary. ‘It’s, uh, it’s a tabloid.’

‘Don’t be ashamed of that.’ Roger laughed. ‘We had an enormously successful season after the People featured us.’

‘Kept asking me how many women had dreams about being seduced by hairy cavemen.’ Adrian produced that peculiar English laugh you could only call a chortle.

‘We have people sleeping at ancient sites under supervision,’ Roger said. ‘And recording their dreams. Adrian’s convinced that the very nature of the dreams are conditioned by magnetic and radioactive forces and who knows what else.’

‘And you’re not?’

‘I’m interested. But convinced only by evidence.’

‘We’re giving you evidence all the time.’ Adrian sounding almost exasperated. ‘We’re bombarding you with evidence.’

‘My place,’ Roger said firmly, ‘is on the fence. Until, perhaps, we have something really big to announce.’

Bobby Maiden was startled and on his guard. What was this?

The woman called Cindy — a woman Marcus had apparently never seen before — was sitting in the study, jingling her bangles and expounding some crazy theory linking together a series of apparently unconnected killings spread over half of southern Britain.

‘Some of them, see,’ this Cindy said, ‘make perfect sense. Or at least they respond to this person’s warped logic. A hunt saboteur? Yes. Because he-or she, though I think not — supports blood sports. A motorcyclist who churns up and pollutes an ancient track? Yes. A warning to the despoilers.’

‘God preserve us.’ Marcus raised his eyes, in disgust, to the yellowed ceiling.

‘But the others … well, it’s as if the victim was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The boy in the doorway, the birdwatcher … you’ve seen that one in the papers? The man who was battered to death near Avebury?’

Cindy had brought out a file of notes and maps and press cuttings. Maiden imagined her arriving at some police station with this stuff, the task of getting rid of her being delegated down and down to the most junior DC. The DC wondering if there might possibly be something in this that would make his name and his boss saying, Look, son, you’ll get used to people like this … be pleasant, give her a cup of tea and get her the hell out of here.

‘I haven’t been in person to the birdwatcher site,’ Cindy said. ‘But I’d be very surprised if it wasn’t just like the others.’

‘In what way?’ Maiden was sitting at the other end of the sofa, trying not to show any professional interest. Marcus was polishing his glasses, always a danger sign.

‘On a ley,’ Cindy said. ‘All the murders have been on leys. You do know what I mean, I suppose?’

‘Remind me?’

‘My,’ said Cindy. ‘You can’t have spent much time with your uncle. Leys are straight lines — sometimes visible as ancient tracks, but mostly not — which have been found to connect prehistoric sites and some more modern buildings, like churches, which were built upon them. They appear to mark channels of spiritual energy.’

Marcus rammed on his glasses. ‘And more recently it’s been suggested that the original tracks were reserved by our remote ancestors, expressly for the passage of the spirits. So you’re trying to tell us you actually-’

‘Indeed.’ Cindy picked up two cuttings which had fallen to the floor and also a KitKat wrapper. Like she was just itching to tidy this place up.

‘You actually believe …’ Marcus tipped his chair back against the wall, Cindy’s eyes going at once to the dirty scuffmark. ‘… that someone is killing people … on leys? Deliberately?’

‘Obvious to me, it was, from the moment I arrived at the spot where Maria Capaldi died, in the manner of