The Cold Calling

The letter was received by Crucible nearly a year ago.’

‘Could have been the other way round, then. Falconer saw the letter. It fitted the angle he was after, so he developed the idea for his programme. Academics are terrible magpies, isn’t that right, Marcus?’

‘Vultures.’

‘It wasn’t printed, Bobby.’

‘Maybe somebody else printed it.’

‘Possibly,’ Cindy conceded.

‘The other alternative,’ Marcus said, expressionless, ‘is that Falconer wrote the letter himself. Why he’d do that, I don’t know. Maybe he was fishing for reaction.’

‘Well.’ Maiden stood up. ‘Why don’t we go and ask him?’

‘Yes. Get you out of the house, wouldn’t it, lovely?’

‘Why not?’ Marcus was on his feet. ‘Personally, I wouldn’t miss this for-’

‘I don’t think so,’ Cindy said. ‘I’d hate you to get over-emotional.’

‘Listen, Lewis, the bastard has some explaining to do. If there’s any basis to your crackpot theory, at the very least he’s going to have an idea of the kind of person stupid enough to be influenced by his ideas about the bloodlust of Neolithic man. Right?’

‘But at best,’ Maiden said, ‘all it does is link the letter-writer to the programme. The rest is conjecture. You’re both, in your separate ways, too close to this. I’ll go.’

‘Under what pretext, Maiden? As a copper? Or as the most wanted man in Britain, possibly unstable?’

‘I’ll have thought of something by the time I get there.’

‘You be very careful, Bobby …’ Cindy’s eyes were hooded, watchful. ‘In some ways, you are closer to this than either of us.’

XXXIX

She could picture the wounds all too clearly, and it didn’t make her feel sick, just angry as hell. She was supposed to sleep now? Go on up to bed, get in six hours, awake refreshed for the Saturday slaughterhouse shift?

Oh, aye, the perfect sedative: two people you’d got fond of, and the police were saying one had killed the other and they needed to put him away for his own good, and the hunt was on, nationwide.

Marcus had said no, absolutely not, no way was Bobby Maiden a murderer, which, naturally, he would. Clearly wanting to get her off the line. Which suggested Bobby was with him or he knew where Bobby was. And she ought to go down there, not least because the whole scenario had started to unroll under her own hands in A and E that day at 2.37 a.m. But even getting to the phone box had felt as public as the first bloody moonwalk.

Andy kept looking out of the window for strange cars in the street, but it wouldn’t be that obvious.

Sat down, with a fresh pot of tea. Closed her eyes, and there was Emma Curtis, a nice girl, a great girl, face up on some mortuary slab. She set down the cup and saucer, stood up and paced. If it wasn’t Bobby, then who?

If the bastard’s saying that, it’s a put-up job, Marcus said.

To put Bobby in the frame? Somebody killed her to hang it on Bobby, protect themselves? Some big, megalomaniac copper had it done? Did such things really happen? Jesus God, it made your head swell just to think about it. Made you want to drive down to Police HQ and accuse Riggs, very loudly, very publicly, of being bent as a coathanger. Pull the lid off the can of worms and hope the worms had wriggled all over town by the time they took you away. Get it in the Elham Messenger.

Sure. Two paragraphs, bottom of page nine. NURSE CHARGED WITH PUBLIC ORDER OFFENCES.

Jesus God, there had to be something she could do.

There was only one V. Clutton in the Elham phone book. There was no answer. After a few minutes, Andy decided to go and see Tony Parker.

They came out of Tewkesbury, in Gloucestershire, headed for the Cotswolds, the countryside looking milder, more ordered. Around twelve-thirty, Adrian suggested they grab some lunch.

‘Can we afford to stop for lunch? Will we make it in time?’

‘Loads of time,’ Adrian said. ‘Oh, but then, you wouldn’t know, would you?’

‘Huh?’

‘Matthew rang last night. They’ve decided to put off the ceremony until late afternoon, early evening. The Rollrights are open to the public, so they realized they were going to have quite a few unwanted guests — tourists, people like that. It is Saturday, after all. Anyway, Matt thought it would be a better atmosphere if they waited till dusk. Candles and lanterns and all that. Frightfully romantic.’

‘Right.’ Grayle was dubious. It was a dull day, but not too cold; an evening wedding would be, well … atmospheric. In a sinister kind of way. ‘You think that is a romantic setting? The Rollright Stones?’

‘You don’t?’

‘Well … maybe it just wasn’t a nice day when I went there. Seemed kind of a forbidding place. Which was odd, I guess, when you think how close it is to the road and all. It seemed, I dunno, kind of mean. The way the stones are like curly and notched and knobbly.’

She snatched a glance at Adrian to gauge his reaction. Saw a look of concern on his young-officer’s face. He said, ‘You really didn’t care for it?’

‘Maybe it was just an emotional reaction,’ Grayle said. ‘Probably the way I was feeling that day. I’d hoped to get some hard information about where Ersula could be, and I didn’t. Call it personal negativity. Nothing scientific.’

‘Because, you see, Grayle, this is a holy place. It’s not supposed to be … cosy. Any more than a great cathedral is. It’s an integral part of a huge, sacred pattern. Nobody, not even Roger, denies that any more. It’s another level. Another Britain. Which we’re only just finding our way around again.’

‘Right.’ Maybe it’s because Britain is so small, Grayle thought. If they want to discover anything new about it, it has to be on some invisible level.

‘And what we don’t understand, we naturally fear — people are just as primitive in that way as they ever were, they’re just more shielded from the dark. It’s a fear we’re jolly well going to have to conquer, those of us who want to evolve. All kinds of fears, all kind of blocks … we’re going to have to break through them. If we’re going to get in tune with the earth again. Before it’s too late.’

‘Aw, gee.’ Grayle pulled the gear lever to low, for a steep downward slope. How to put this … how to tell him she’d heard all this before. ‘See, you guys, you come on like, We got to tune in to holy places, we got to recover our lost knowledge, our forgotten ancient wisdom … Jesus, I used to talk like this all the time.’

‘And that’s the problem, isn’t it?’ Adrian put his big, warm hand over hers on the lever. ‘It’s all talk. It’s just a coffee table thing. So few people do anything. Imagine if the druids had simply … you know … theorized. Gosh, for them it was real life … life and death. So if the Rollrights feel sort of brooding, that’s why.’

‘Uh, why?’ Grayle felt herself blushing, tugged her hand back to the wheel.

‘Because it’s been a working site. It isn’t all manicured and prettified like some monuments. Some of the New Age people would be absolutely horrified if they actually knew what it was like in the ancient days. They all think it was some sort of Golden Age and perhaps it was, but it was a cruel age too. Or rather people today might think of it as cruel, but it was necessary.’

‘You mean sacrifices.’

As they drove into the Cotswolds, the countryside was lightening up, the stone becoming golden against a white sky like the fluffy lining in a jewel box.

‘People try to close their eyes to it, Grayle. They say, Oh, even in the degenerate period when the priests practised human sacrifice, they only sacrificed criminals who deserved it. Well, what kind of a sacrifice is that? That’s not sacrifice, it’s execution. Surely, it’s only a real sacrifice if you give up the life of someone you don’t hate, who hasn’t done you any personal harm. And perhaps the