face convulsed in the lanternlight, swimming in sweat and tears.
Dead silence.
A moment of heightened reality. The reality, in fact, was almost searing. Marcus, holding the lantern now, was aware of all these delicate mosses and lichens and tiny plants stubbling the stone.
One of those crystal moments when you realized you were at the heart of a nightmare and you kicked a hole in the dream-membrane and woke up covered in sweat and trembling with relief and went downstairs and made coffee.
He heard himself say, ‘I hope your famous shamanic training included the basics of first aid. Because I think this poor bastard’s run out of air to breathe.’
‘All right!’ Lewis throwing off his stupid bloody feathery cloak, dragging himself up onto the capstone, extending a hand to pull Marcus after him. ‘Help me.’
‘Turn him over,’ Marcus snapped. ‘On his side.’
Both hands underneath Maiden’s back, heaving him over so that one arm was flung out over the edge of the capstone.
‘Marcus, no! Sit him up. That’s it.’
Marcus pulling Maiden’s body forward, taking the weight, and Lewis bunching a fist and striking Maiden sharply in the small of the back, again and again and Marcus was utterly furious.
‘You bloody bastard, Lewis. You knew something like this would happen, didn’t you?
‘I thought it might be … rather unpleasant, and … you might make me … stop it before it was over, and … Oh dear. Oh
Maiden’s body twitched violently, a spasm, and the dog let out a terrified yelp, eyes glowing at the foot of the burial chamber.
Something falling out of Maiden’s mouth. Pink and grey in the candlelight. Coming out in lumps.
‘Marcus, don’t … don’t touch it!’
Marcus froze. On the horizon, a thin, grey bar appeared, where the night was lifting like a roller blind.
Part Three
The nasty cruelties of slaying Cock Robin with an arrow, or of walling up poor Jenny Wren alive in a hole in a tree, were once celebrations of the passage of the year and offerings to the gods of nature, but when the magic necessity was finished with, the hunting of a few birds and their needless deaths were just ignorant savagery. Perhaps they released emotions from the unconscious minds of bigger children who took part in them; but in our world of repression and parallel outbursts of physical violence, the old rituals must assume a new meaning or we may drift into brainless cruelties on a bigger scale than the killing of wild birds. A return to pagan sacrifices, even of people, is not impossible.
XXXIV
First light, if you could call this off-white seepage light.
Andy prodded the car into the dull, redbrick street with the derelict furniture warehouse hanging over it like a half-expended curse. Doing the usual slow slalom between parked cars — some families had three or four beat-up wrecks; summer nights, the street would be full of hard-faced kids with spanners trying to make them go faster, sound louder.
Not much better at seven-forty-five on an autumn morning, even the kids at home.
Coming off nightshift, usually, you couldn’t park within a couple of hundred yards of your own house. Today, though, Andy slotted in between a dark Rover and a rusting camper van, as if the space had been reserved for her. The Rover looking suspiciously new: either a visiting doctor, or the police were getting so apathetic the kids were bringing stolen cars home now.
Jesus God, she’d be glad to get out of here for ever.
Her mind almost made up now, just needing one more sign — OK, this was stupid, but it was that kind of decision: intuition over logic.
The air was white and bland and smelled vaguely of gas as she carried her shopping bag to the front door of the middle terrace house. Shoved her key in the Yale, slammed the flat of her left hand against the door where the wood had swollen. Making herself regard the place, however temporarily, as home again, this was the hardest thing. A place where she couldn’t even make a safe phone call, until Bobby Maiden, or whatever passed for him these days, came back to collect his life.
Or lose it.
Aw, come
For once, the door fell open easily. Due, maybe, to the other hand above hers on the panel.
‘After you, Mrs Anderson.’
The big guy pushing her inside, shouldering the door shut behind him, flashing the credentials in her face.
‘Police, Mrs Anderson. Superintendent Riggs.’
Marcus faced himself in the bathroom mirror, tying today’s bow tie, the sea-green one. The considered formality of the exercise was supposed to give him a grip on the day. And, by Christ, this was a day that needed a grip.
He’d drunk four cups of strong tea and had a shower. Hadn’t helped much.
Cindy the bloody Shaman was still on the premises. Supposed to be sleeping on the sofa in the study, but Marcus had awoken to hear the sound of the TV from down there.
Marcus looked out at the castle walls in the white morning. How those ruins had excited him a few years back. Now, just a crumbling pile of medieval dereliction you were legally obliged to keep from crumbling further. Age and erosion. Enough of that in the bloody mirror.
He went downstairs. It was strangely quiet. No sign of the appalling Shaman, but the sofa had its cushions neatly arranged, as only a woman or a raging poof would leave it.
Malcolm ambled over. ‘All right,’ Marcus said. ‘Fair enough.’ He put on his jacket and they walked out across the old farmyard. ‘Come here, dog. Don’t shit in the bloody ruins.’
Wanting it all to look pretty for the estate agent’s camera.
The dog followed him over the stile onto the footpath through the meadow. Marcus kept his eyes on the grass a few yards in front of him. No longer wanted to look up at High … no, dammit …
‘You bloody idiot!’ he bawled out suddenly. ‘You bloody old fool!’
Couldn’t
Marcus remembered all that buzz back in the seventies about the psychic surgeons of the Philippines or somewhere, who’d produce handfuls of intestines without the customary incision. Bollocks. A conjuring trick. Lewis had pulled off something similar last night: wake you up, get you into a panic thinking Maiden’s dying, and then …
Conjuring trick.
