The Cold Calling

You look lost, Bobby …

How good she’d looked in the back of the old Sierra, in the twilight, aglow in her orange sweatsuit, looking so happy to see him. Love-at-first-sight situation. Love at second meeting.

Love.

Life gets complicated, don’t it?

He sat down again. ‘Tell me everything about this bugger.’

And Cindy brought him the letter.

The letter was word-processed in Old English type.

‘Came this morning,’ Cindy said.

‘Stick to the truth, Lewis. Post hasn’t even arrived yet.’

‘It was faxed, Marcus.’

‘I haven’t got a bloody fax!’

‘No, but I have. I brought it in from the car while you were getting what sleep you could manage. And then I telephoned my friend Gareth, from Crucible magazine, and prised him from his bed.’

‘Crucible magazine? What the hell is that?’

‘It’s a pagan periodical with a circulation no doubt approximating to The Phenomenologist’s.’

Marcus scowled. ‘I’m going to make some more tea.’

‘But less credibility among elderly ladies,’ Cindy called after him. ‘Read the letter, Bobby. You’ll notice it begins, somewhat unusually for Crucible, with a polite “Dear Sir.” The more usual term of address being, one imagines, something more on the lines of “Hey, listen, man.”’Dear Sir,As a sporadic reader of your publication and other pagan periodicals, I must object to the assumption that those of us who believe ourselves to be more attuned to the living pulse of the earth must automatically be opposed to country sport.By ‘country sport’, I mean, of course, blood sport. While I deplore the use of the appendage ‘sport’, I can understand why it is applied. By equating the ritual shedding of blood with such pursuits as football and tennis, it gains a certain social respectability in these anaemic times.An essential element in the physical and spiritual equilibrium of a planet or country is the regular free-flowing of blood, in the open air.As your readers ought to know, blood is the original creative and materializing medium. It is the physical substance best capable of interpenetrating the planes. It has been used (and sometimes misused) by magicians throughout history to assist in the manifestation of spirits and daemons.It is also vital for the sustenance of the spirit of the earth. When a fox is killed, after the cumulative energy of the chase, it is a holy moment. The violent spurting of the blood equates with the climactic instant of orgasm. Both the energy and the blood itself are absorbed by the earth and converted to fuel both the planet and the human race.There are, of course, places upon the surface of the earth where the shedding of blood is most effective. And, for this logical reason, rites of sacrifice were practised by the oldest cultures of the earth. The insistence by many modern pagans that blood sacrifice is unnecessary and ‘barbaric’ is unbelievably stupid and damaging to all that your readers purport to hold dear.Green is the opposite colour to red, and therefore it follows that these two colours represent the essential friction without which we shall all weaken and perish.As long as it continues to embrace vegetarianism and oppose the killing of animals in the wild, the so-called ‘green’ movement, and the so-called ‘pagans’ who support it, is a dangerous sham.Yours faithfully,The Real Green Man.

‘No signature, no address,’ Cindy said. ‘Gareth’s excuse for not publishing it.’

‘A nutter,’ Maiden said.

‘Oh no, Bobby. Sadly, not a nutter at all. A valid argument, it is, in theory. But hardly, as he implies, one that the blood-sport fraternities would use in defence of their rural pursuits.’

‘OK,’ Maiden said. ‘Let’s get this right. When you first told us about this, you said that some woman argued that when William II was topped in the New Forest, his blood …’

‘Dripped all the way along the road from the sacrificial site in the New Forest to Salisbury Cathedral. According to Margaret Murray, the ultimate fertilizer for the earth because William was, as she put it, the Divine Victim. The god-king.’

‘Human blood being more effective, in this guy’s view …’

‘In the view of every primitive tradition in the world, Bobby.’

‘… than animal blood. So he’s taken to hunting people.’

‘Because he believes the Earth needs it.’

‘Especially with all the threats to traditional blood sports, right?’

‘I think you may have grasped the essential point.’

‘He’s mad,’ Maiden said.

‘No … as I keep saying, he is not. This man is not a conventional psychopath. He even prefers his victims to be people who, according to his philosophy, might well deserve to die. He is a man with a cause. He believes utterly in what he is doing. And he has some rather influential support.’

‘What?’

‘I’d like to show you a videotape on the television. Little Grayle Underhill gave it to me, bless her. We’ll wait for Marcus to return. Be especially receptive to this, he will.’

But when Marcus came in from the kitchen he looked in no mood for TV. He was carrying a radio. He looked no less exhausted than Cindy and a lot more agitated.

‘Maiden, they’re giving your name out.’

‘Who are?’

‘The police. On the radio. Christ, they’re as good as saying you murdered that woman. Say if anyone spots you they shouldn’t approach you. They’re saying you’re bloody well unstable.’

‘They’re not wrong, are they?’ Maiden sighed. Maybe the whole thing was a set-up. He tried to feel angry, but there was no tension in him, only a dark sorrow.

‘Bobby …’ Cindy put down his glass. ‘How long, do you think, before they find out where you are?’

‘Well, they probably suspect I’m still in the area. I don’t know. They’ll lean on Andy, maybe. Hard. So … Best thing is if I just walk into Abergavenny police station and-’

‘No! Sit down. Do you really want to go to prison?’

‘It’d give me a bit of time to think,’ Maiden said heavily. ‘Pending the trial. Pending the appeal.’

‘While this man goes on killing?’

Maiden sighed. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe.’

‘We need you, Bobby. Look at us, Marcus and me … old men. An end-of-the-pier embarrassment and the editor of an excuse for a magazine dying slowly and ignominiously. Pathetic, we are.’

‘Bastard,’ Marcus muttered.

XXXVIII

‘I, uh, I have a confession,’ Grayle said.

They were through Hereford, headed for the Malvern Hills. Adrian Fraser-Hale had his long legs stretched out, the passenger seat pushed back as far as it would go. He beamed.

‘You’re going to tell me you’re not really a journalist, your name isn’t Turner and in fact you’re Ersula Underhill’s sister. Am I right?’

Grayle damn near hurled the car into the hedge.

‘Hey, calm down, old girl.’ Adrian folded his hands behind his head. ‘Roger found out. He was bound to, you know.’

‘Oh Jesus.’ Grayle slowed down. ‘He talked to, uh, Marcus Bacton, right?’

‘You’re joking. Roger absolutely can’t stand Marcus Bacton. No, when you’d gone yesterday, he put in a call to the New York Courier. Roger is terribly paranoid. He thinks other academics are trying to steal his ideas or hijack his TV programme. The more powerful people seem, the more insecure they are. So anyone who shows up at Cefn-y-bedd, he wants to know who exactly they are and what connections they might have.’