The Cold Calling

‘Would I do that to you? Or me, come to that. No, this was with Mr and Mrs Parker, actually. I was eighteen. We’d been to my cousin’s wedding in Swansea, stopped overnight on the way back to London. I remember they had this gorgeous Italian waiter.’

‘Both of them had him?’

‘I’ll rephrase that. An attractive Italian waiter was employed here at the time. None of us had him. Pa said he was probably a poof. Anybody good-looking, Pa always says that. And that’s definitely the last time he gets mentioned tonight, if that’s all right with you, Bobby?’

‘Whatever you want.’

‘You know what I want.’

With a lovely smile, Em stepped out into the courtyard.

‘I won’t have it,’ Marcus shouted. ‘I’m not fucking having it. I don’t want your loony speculation. I don’t want conjecture. Do you understand me, Lewis?’

‘And do you want her spirit to rest, or to walk in torment?’

‘Look …’ Unease was crawling all over Grayle. ‘We’re getting carried away. I don’t need this … this Gothic stuff. Not tonight.’ Edging along the wall towards the door. ‘Would it be OK if I just left it here? If you could like tell me the way back to the inn, I’ll walk-’

Cindy said, ‘You’ve come all this way, my love. You mustn’t be frightened now. For your sister’s sake.’

‘My sister? What are you saying?’

‘I … Perhaps your sister can help us throw some light on a … complex situation.’

‘Complex? Jesus.’

‘I’m sorry, Grayle.’

‘You’re sorry? ‘

‘I want to help you-’

‘Then talk to me, for Chrissakes. Don’t I rate some answers? Like, who are you? Apart, that is, from some weird drag queen who says he has shamanic powers? Last night I asked you what you were doing here, and you were like disinclined to tell me, and now-’

‘Drag queen?’ Marcus roared. ‘Fucking drag queen? ‘

‘Shamanic tradition,’ Cindy said weakly.

‘This bitch is a man? ‘

‘You didn’t know? I thought you knew each other.’

Marcus sank back into the sofa, reached for the Scotch.

Cindy said to Grayle, ‘I told you half of it. I told you there were two sides to that place … High Knoll and Black Knoll.’

Marcus poured an inch of whisky. ‘You mean you’ve got bloody balls under there?’

We discussed how the image of the rotting man in your sister’s dream might have been the place-memory of some Druidic human sacrifice …’

Marcus sat up. ‘What’s this?’

‘Show him the letter,’ Cindy said. ‘Take his mind off having a deviant in his house.’

Carved oak panelling, deep-set window sills. On the wall beside the slanting wooden stairs, lanterns of black wrought iron held electric candles expensive enough to fool you at first. Very romantic. And four stars. You wouldn’t find many of those in Wales, Em said over dinner.

She was in a plain white frock, a gold locket around her neck, minimal make-up, no perfume. Blond wig gone, dark hair down. She shimmered. Took away his breath and most of his appetite.

This was better. This was close to real life.

Fiddling with a cooling Spanish omelette, he realized he knew almost nothing about her. What happened to her marriage? Did she have children? A job? A criminal record? To what extent was she still dependent on the person they weren’t mentioning … and on that person’s business ventures?

Em frowned for a moment.

‘Not at all. Not since I got out of university. Not since I found out what he was into. Before that, even. I mean, actually, that wasn’t too long ago. It really never occurs to you that your kind, generous, loving parent might be a … businessman.’

‘No,’ Maiden said. ‘I suppose it wouldn’t. If, like Tony, you’ve been lucky and never had to go away for long holidays.’

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘over the years I’ve been …’ Holding out her right hand, counting off on the fingers. ‘… an estate agent … a receptionist in a hotel in Devon — even posher than this one … a bit-part actor with walk-ons in Inspector Morse and a couple of soaps I absolutely refuse to name …’

‘Which is where the lovely Suzanne came from?’

‘Something like that. Then I was an English language teacher in the Dordogne … a partner in a small publishing house which we conveniently flogged to a big publishing house. Oh, and …’ She grinned. ‘… and a prostitute in Bayswater.’

‘And I have to guess which of those isn’t true, right?’ Maiden said. ‘Estate agent. You couldn’t have sunk that low.’

‘Oh, Bobby, you’re feeling better, aren’t you?’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m feeling all right, guv’nor. I’m feeling optimistic. Have some wine.’

‘I don’t need it.’

Because he was already high. Riggs was in another hemisphere. Cindy and the ley-line serial-killer fantasy, and the American girl who saw a ghost, that was in a parallel universe.

Above their table was another of those electric candle-lanterns with a glow-worm tip which flickered. Glancing at the tiny, pulsing filament, he caught an image of a blue-white streetlamp fizzling out and blinking on again.

Another woman. There’d been another woman in Old Church Street that night, under a faulty streetlamp. He couldn’t remember anything about her except that she hadn’t been Suzanne.

‘Bobby?’

‘Sorry.’ He smiled uncertainly. ‘Something came back to me.’

‘In connection with what?’

‘That night, before you came round the corner in Clutton’s car …’

She sighed.

‘Did you see a woman across the road, under a street-lamp?’

‘Only you, Bobby. Strolling casually up the street. If there’d been a tin can you’d have been kicking it and whistling. What were you thinking about?’

‘You.’

‘Balls.’

‘Are we sending for the sweet trolley?’

‘I don’t think I want the sweet trolley,’ Em said. ‘Do you?’

Marcus placed Ersula’s letter beside him on the sofa. ‘Look, she came to see me. Came here, to the house. With a briefcase, a personal organizer, a pocket tape recorder …’

‘That’s her.’ Grayle felt tearful. On top of it all she felt tearful. Get a hold.

Marcus said, ‘I found her, to be honest, rather pushy. As though she had a right to whatever information I could give her. You began to feel like a sucked lemon after a while, though you had to admire her persistence.’

Grayle said, ‘Did you try to discourage her from sleeping at High Knoll?’

‘No. Why should I? If it could bring out the healer in a naive thirteen-year-old girl, it couldn’t be the evil, heathen place of local superstition and ecclesiastical prejudice, could it? And it … She was clearly doing it for her own research, nothing to do with Falconer’s crowd-pulling schemes.’

‘Did you see her again after she spent a night there?’

‘No. I did ask her to let me know what happened, but … Well, she was looking for a scientific explanation of Annie’s vision. Electromagnetism in the stone, low-level radiation … anything which might have stimulated the brain