The Cold Calling

ultimate sacrifice is to take, well … the life of a friend, I suppose.’

‘But when would it be worth losing a friend for?’

‘Oh, that’s just a modern attitude. Look at the Bible. God tested Abraham’s faith, his absolute conviction, by asking for the blood of his son. And off they went to a high place, a holy site, and they built an altar and Abraham took a knife …’

‘But that was just a test, surely. God never intended him to follow through.’

‘Depends how you look at it. Abraham was being shown that if he ever wanted true wisdom — to walk with the gods … I mean, people in several civilizations did sacrifice their children.’

‘Plus, this was the Old Testament God. Pre-Christ. We progressed from that stuff.’

‘But we didn’t progress, did we?’

‘In a lot of ways we did. Did Christ ask for blood sacrifices?’

‘Grayle, Christ was a blood sacrifice.’

This was all getting a little heavy for Grayle. After yesterday, she needed to lighten up. She’d hoped being with Adrian … good-looking guy, for heaven’s sake, rough-hewn, country-boy charm. Why’d he have to be so intense about all this? And who did that remind you of?

‘You talk about all this stuff with Ersula?’

‘Ersula understood. As an anthropologist. Oh yes, we’d talk for hours and hours.’

‘And Roger? Would she talk for hours with Roger?’

‘You’re asking me if she had an affair with Roger.’

‘You told me yesterday she left in a hurry.’

Well, you know … I mean …’

Adrian looked uncomfortable. Jesus, he was fine talking about ancient blood ritual and sacrificing your kids, but you changed the subject to, like, contemporary sexual relations, he got embarrassed.

‘… I suppose it’s possible.’

‘I know it’s possible, Adrian, but did it happen?’

Adrian swallowed, and Grayle began to see how it might have been: Adrian majorly turned on by Ersula, by her intensity, her passion for the past, the very stuff that put most guys off. But Ersula finds Adrian a little raw and gauche, especially up against Roger … smooth, eloquent, experienced … the kind of man who could intellectualize his way right into your pants.

Perhaps Falconer had it right; you needed to hunt, you needed the friction, the wind of the chase just to keep on living.

Maiden had come on foot. Cefn-y-bedd was less than a mile from Castle Farm, along the path towards the meadow, but instead of going up towards the Knoll you detoured down a half-overgrown footpath, over a stile and into the woods.

He felt a sharp edge of purpose. The fresh air sang with sensation. There was a light rain of crinkling leaves. Birds, probably undisturbed for months, flew for the exits. A squirrel sped across the path in front of him.

It was a curious state of mind. Not at all happy, but hyper-aware, so alive it ached. He was hunting Falconer, a man with a lot of questions to answer.

And yet, he kept looking behind him.

Leaves rustled in his wake. Twigs snapped. It was probably wildlife. Rabbits, birds. Not many people came this way; the wildlife would be spooked.

But he kept looking over his shoulder.

Quite a heavy crunch this time, and he spun round and thought he saw a face framed in foliage, and thought, in shock, Green Man, Green Man, Green Man.

The Green Man hunting him.

And then there was big noise everywhere and he didn’t know where to run as, with this huge, angry clattering, a helicopter, white and red, lifted up, apparently out of the centre of the wood, not fifty yards away, in a golden storm of October leaves.

Crows rose screaming. The helicopter hovered under the sheet of the sky, rotors churning. The helicopter was very hard-edged and real.

It meant that Roger Falconer was leaving.

Maiden breathed out slowly, in dismay. ‘Thank you. Thanks a bunch, Roger.’

The machine was directly above him now, and he instinctively bent and moved forward in a crouch, through the trees, and found he was on the edge of a clearing, with a big slab of flat, flesh-coloured concrete at its centre. He walked around the clearing, keeping close to the trees, watched the chopper banking, heading off south.

The crows calmed down. His spirits sagged. What would he have done anyway? Flashed his ID and hoped Falconer hadn’t heard the radio this morning?

It was all so flimsy, so fanciful. As the noise dwindled to a distant drone, he sat on a mossed and slimy fallen branch, head in his hands, the way he’d sat last night by the well at Collen Hall.

So convenient. So conveniently timed. Just hours after Cindy airs his wild theory about the mystical killer who needs to spill blood at holy places, the killer strikes again. Under Maiden’s nose.

A pigeon or something rattled in the bushes, like Cindy’s bangles on those bony wrists.

Cindy. This ageing transsexual (probably) actor, reduced to the end of the pier. Embittered by sneers, pining for applause, living half his life in a fantasy dimension where kites talk and shamans fly.

Grabbing his chance for a final blaze of public attention, Cindy invents a bizarre solution to the murder of his landlady’s daughter. Hampshire police kindly show him where the door is. He becomes obsessed. Any unsolved murder he finds in the papers, he works it into his theory. The police aren’t laughing any more; he’s become a nuisance. Finally, he’s reduced to trying to involve the failed magazine editor Marcus Bacton by convincing him there’s something unnatural about the death of his housekeeper. Only to find, conveniently staying with Marcus, another policeman. A sick, screwed-up policeman, ripe for conversion. But the policeman is sceptical. He needs to be shown the truth.

Maiden went cold. Was this it? Was this the truth? Had Cindy followed them in his old Morris Minor to Colleen Hall? Had Cindy given the performance of his life, casting himself in the role of the imaginary Ley Killer?

But he wouldn’t have had time, would he? Would Cindy have had time, after slashing Emma, to get back to St Mary’s to take the call from Maiden?

He’d been there all night. With Marcus.

No. You only assumed he had.

Maiden began to sweat with paranoia. He saw Cindy in his shamanic cloak of feathers, a giant bird of prey. In his hand a sacrificial knife. The theatrics, the melodrama. An actor manipulating reality.

A woman walked into the clearing from the other side.

Maiden dived back into the trees. She glanced his way just once. She was carrying a pickaxe. She hefted it, looked down at her feet. Swung the pick with both hands high above her head and brought it down.

So savagely that when the pick connected with the concrete all the breath came out of her in a sharp cry.

He watched her for several minutes. She was making a mess. Lumps of concrete spun across the helipad. Dust sprayed up at her flapping Barbour coat and into her dark, curly hair. She didn’t care. She pushed one point of the pick into a crack and swung back from the handle, straining.

‘Damn you …’

The pick prised out a slab about eighteen inches across and she fell backwards, the handle clipping her under the chin. She screamed and let go and rolled over into the rubble.

‘Shit!’

Maiden walked out across the concrete. ‘Can I help?’

The woman froze on the concrete, contracting like a caterpillar, a hand at her jaw, looking up at him. For just an instant, she looked as if she might be terrified. Then she coughed and grabbed hold of the pick and came up scowling.

‘No. You can’t help. Go away. This is private land.’ She had the kind of voice that went naturally with words like private and land.

‘Are you OK?’