The Cold Calling

picture books you flipped through quickly with your thumb and the picture moved, only sometimes you flipped several pages at once and the image jerked. Rushing in tears through the rain. In the rain; the girl was part of the rain, like a rainbow, but only dowdy colours: the faded blue flowers on the dress, the dry, mousy brown of the plaited hair. And she was flinging out her arms to Grayle, blown towards her, light as the husk of a dead flower, her face in flux, forming and reforming, each time a little closer until Grayle could see her sagging, flaccid lips and her eyes, white and wet and dead.

‘Oh God,’ Grayle whispered. ‘Oh … God. ‘

XXVIII

Nobody said a word; that was the odd thing. No murmurings, no rustlings, no echoes from the rafters. The village was letting him have his say.

‘Nothing’s changed, has it?’ Marcus stormed. ‘Nothing’s bloody changed in nearly eighty years!’

Cindy sat and watched him explode like a series of firecrackers. Powerless to stop it, not sure he ought to try. Falconer watched too, a tiny smile plucking at a corner of his wide, professional mouth.

Leaning out of the pew, Marcus was, a wave of grey hair banging against his forehead, glasses misted, so he couldn’t, probably, even see the vicar. Who was just standing there, lips set into a typically ecclesiastical, turning- the-other-cheek pout. He knew what this was about; they all knew; they’d probably inherited the silence from their parents and grandparents.

‘Are you all bloody dumb?’ Marcus whirled on the congregation. ‘Is it really possible to sit on something for the best part of a frigging century? You really are a bunch of medieval bastards. She’d have had a better bloody deal growing up in the fucking East End!’

His voice bounced back at him off the stones. Nobody spoke, but Cindy saw compassion on the face of Amy Jenkins, an outsider who was clearly in the know. He’d persuade the truth out of her later.

‘I did say,’ the vicar said in the nearest he could manage to an undertone, ‘that you might be better advised burying her elsewhere.’

‘Oh yes, that’s a classic Anglican tactic,’ Marcus roared. ‘If in doubt, don’t get involved.’

The undertakers moved imperturbably into position around the coffin on its wooden bier.

‘You’re a very offensive man,’ observed the vicar. ‘I can tolerate only so much of this in the House of God.’

‘Before what? ‘ Marcus lunged out of the pew as if he was about to grab the vicar by the surplice and bang his head on the side of his oak pulpit.

‘Marcus …’ Cindy murmured.

‘You just stay out of this, Lewis …’

‘Come on. Let’s get some air. You’re upsetting Mrs Willis.’

‘And that,’ said Marcus, ‘is the sort of bloody thing you would say.’

As they followed the coffin and the vicar out of the church, Cindy could almost hear a communal sigh of relief and a closing of frayed curtains over the St Mary’s Silence.

She was soaked, hair matted to her face, and when Bobby Maiden found her she was stumbling around the castle walls like someone coming down from a bad acid trip or maybe a mugging. Maybe even a rape.

‘God damn it,’ she said, ‘can’t anybody around here answer a simple question?’

‘Sorry,’ Maiden said. ‘You’re about a mile and a half out of St Mary’s.’

‘Am I anywhere near, uh, Cefn-y-bedd? I say that right?’

‘That’s the University of the Earth place?’

‘Uh huh.’ She snatched off her baseball cap and shook her hair like a dog. It was blond and it came down in a wet heap.

‘I don’t know,’ Maiden said. ‘I’ve never been.’

‘Terrific.’

‘You’re on a course there?’

‘Visiting. I took a walk over …’ She shuddered and it turned into a shiver that looked like it wasn’t going to stop. ‘See, I must’ve come down the wrong way. I saw the rooftop, figured this must be Cefn-y-bedd. And then … is this some kind of castle?’

‘Some kind.’

‘Weird.’

‘You need a drink.’

‘I do,’ she said gratefully. ‘Jesus, do I need a drink.’

‘Well, that’s it, isn’t it? I’m finished. And I’m not sorry. Couldn’t give a flying fart.’

Mrs Willis had been buried in virtual silence, Marcus tossing in his clod of earth and turning away, avoiding eyes, almost running out of the churchyard. Cindy had caught up with him in the lane, under a dripping horse chestnut.

‘Like to buy a serious, parapsychological quarterly, Lewis? Christ, you can have the bastard. Change it to Shamanic Times. Have the fucking castle, too. I’ll get a council flat. They still have council flats or did Thatcher flog them all to slum landlords?’

‘This isn’t helping anyone, Marcus.’

‘Why should I want to help anyone? Mrs Willis helped people, and where did that get her? Perhaps you were right. Perhaps she was murdered. Perhaps the village murdered her with three-quarters of a century of indifference.’

‘Aren’t you coming back to the pub?’

‘What do you think?’

‘You’ve paid for the funeral tea. That gives you the right to watch them all eating it and feeling uncomfortable. I think they owe you an explanation.’

‘Then you don’t know the people of St Mary’s.’

‘And I think you owe me one.’

Marcus stopped. ‘What?’

‘Why did you keep it to yourself?’

‘What?’

‘About Annie Davies.’

‘I don’t know anything about Annie Davies.’

‘Did she tell you to keep it quiet?’

‘She didn’t tell me anything. We never discussed it. Piss off. Go and find your serial killer. I’m tired.’

‘OK. If you must know,’ Grayle said, ‘it’s not that kind of shivering.’

Maybe finding the guy easy to talk to because he looked kind of like she felt. Beat-up. Exhausted. That eyepatch. And with this air of apprehension — it was maybe an illusion, maybe she needed to feel there were other people around like this, after Roger and Adrian and the mad Cindy, who were all so sure of everything, but she felt the guy didn’t trust anybody any more.

He opened up the woodstove and tried to position a couple of logs. Not looking at her as she talked.

‘Like … things … things you see. Jesus, this doesn’t happen in my part of New York. We say it does. We love to think it does. We have a million psychics and people claiming they talk to the spirits, see the future, read stuff in the Tarot, purify your aura …’

Hearing her own voice going higher and higher, as if she’d taken a hit from a helium balloon.

‘Have another drop of Marcus’s whisky. I’ll make some tea in a minute. Go on, Miss …’

‘Underhill. G … Grayle.’ Feeling her shoulders shaking, like an apartment block about to collapse, under the sweatshirt he’d left out in the bathroom for her.

‘You weren’t attacked or anything, were you?’

‘I, uh …’ Grayle took a big swallow of whisky and coughed, tears and stuff smeared all over her face. ‘I just had to get outa there.’