The Cold Calling

‘Cindy, this was random, in its way. He just wanted a hunt saboteur. Someone he believed the Earth would be better off without. He thought it might be difficult, so it’d be better starting off with someone he expected not to like. It could have been any one of them.’

‘And it wasn’t difficult at all, in the end, was it, lovely? Wasn’t it easy? he says, Wasn’t it easy? ‘

Maiden walked to the door. He could see Magda Ring with her back to the perimeter wall, gazing nowhere.

What I find disturbing is the way he starts off saying “I” and then he switches off the recorder. We don’t know how long he’s sitting there. Could be a few seconds, could be an hour. Longer. But when he switches back on, he’s become “he”. He’s created this character. The Green Man.’

‘He hasn’t created him. He exists. He’s an ancient archetype, almost a god. Our friend Adrian is taking on his magic, his charisma.’

‘His voice changes. He’s immediately stronger, more fluent. He tells the story without hesitation.’

With an absolute belief in himself and his mission. A refuge, too. He can slip into the persona of the Green Man whenever … whenever it’s called for. This man is unbelievably dangerous. Do we know where he is now, Bobby? Could he, I mean, come back any time …?’

‘Not imminently. Gone, apparently, to a wedding.’

Cindy froze.

XLIII

Magda Ring was up against the wall, Cindy practically shaking her.

‘Where is he? How long ago did he leave? Whose wedding is it? Come on, girl!’

Bobby Maiden pulled him away. ‘Cindy, this guy performs quietly. He isn’t going to do it at a bloody wedding.’

‘You don’t understand.’ Cindy whirled on him. ‘Little Grayle. Grayle Underhill was going to a wedding. You might believe in coincidences, Bobby, but in my world they don’t exist. Where’s the wedding, my love?’

‘What’s happened to his accent?’ Magda, looking scared by now, began to slide away from Cindy along the wall. ‘Why’s he gone Welsh? You two … you aren’t police at all, are you?’

‘I am,’ Maiden said. ‘I promise you. I’ll show you-’

‘I don’t want to see your damned card again, I want to know what the hell’s going on.’

‘All right … look …’ Maiden held up one hand. ‘This guy’s a friend … contact … of Marcus Bacton’s. He’s suspected for some time that several murders in various parts of the country were down to one man, and the police didn’t want to listen. I’ve been listening. End of story.’

‘Where’s the wedding, my love?’ Cindy said insistently. ‘Which nice old pre-Reformation-church-on-an- alignment are we talking about?’

‘It’s not a church. It’s some sort of New Age nuptial thing. It’s at the Rollright Stones, in Oxfordshire.’

‘Oh, my Christ.’

‘Janny Oates, Matthew Lyall. They’re the couple. I don’t know where they live. They’ll be on our books, if you can wait. They did a course here, which is where Adrian-’

‘How long ago did he leave?’

‘Couple of hours … three hours … I don’t know. He didn’t take his Land Rover. Rushed in this morning, grabbed some things, said he had a lift.’

We can’t wait.’ Cindy rocked, tearing at his face with his fingers. ‘Bobby, we’re going. We’re going now.’

‘What about the rest of the tapes?’

‘Listen to them in the car.’ Cindy began to run across the courtyard, pulling car keys from his blazer pocket, shouting back over his shoulder. ‘She’s given him a lift. Bobby, she’s got this psychopath in her car!’

‘You’re not leaving me here!’ Magda clutched at Maiden’s jacket. ‘Not with that bloody open grave.’

‘Do you have a car?’

She nodded frantically, all sophistication abandoned.

‘Anywhere you can go?’

‘People in Hay … my new house …’

‘Do it. Don’t speak to anyone about this. Especially the police. No … Listen … give me a phone number. If you don’t hear from us by, say, seven tonight, call the police yourself. Tell them everything. Tell them where to find Ersula’s grave. Tell them … tell them DI Maiden, Bobby Maiden-’

The Morris Minor was clattering towards them, its passenger door flapping open.

Magda grabbed his wrist. ‘Pen.’

He found a chewed-off Bic in his pocket; she scribbled a phone number on the back of his hand.

‘She said her sister was in a, I think she said, dislocated state. When she met some people at the Rollright Stones. They’re nice, she said. The people, not the stones. I remember that.’

Cindy swung the car between the trees into the drive, almost scraping a Land Rover parked under a willow tree’s browning umbrella.

‘You need to know about the Rollrights, Bobby? I shall-’

A memory had kicked Maiden in the head at the sight of the Land Rover. He was in another passenger seat, a woman in a blond wig driving.

‘Cindy, stop … let me out. Half a minute.’

The Land Rover’s doors were unlocked. Maiden jumped in, rummaged around. Ordnance Survey maps, a thick paperback guide to stone circles of the British Isles, much thumbed. A hand lamp, pair of wellingtons and … He found the recorder wrapped in sacking underneath the driver’s seat, a cassette inside it, half wound. He slipped the cassette out, took it back to the Morris.

‘Ah …’ Cindy pulling sluggishly away before the passenger door was shut. ‘Rather hoping, I was, that you wouldn’t find that one.’

‘How do you know what’s on it?’

‘I think that he wouldn’t be able to rest — would not be free of the Green Man — until it was done. Out of his system. The other one he recorded in the rain, before he left the scene, presumably.’

‘Sure,’ Maiden said quietly. ‘It’s also occurred to me why he may have done this. How it came about. Why he killed Em.’

‘Perhaps you won’t need to hear it then.’

‘Put it on.’ Maiden said.

When the Green Man started speaking, it was deliberate, unhurried, a voice full of an awful, calm, precise, relentless certainty.

… the energy at Black Knoll is having a most interesting effect on the woman. She is clearly reluctant to enter the precincts of the burial chamber. She stands there, her unruly blond hair pushed down by a cap and by the rain, and then all at once she cries out.

‘Oh come on, you’re fucking crazy! ‘

She begins to sob … standing on the Knoll, soaking wet and sobbing … before at last going to sit on one of the flat stones in the short avenue approaching the chamber itself.

The stones amplify her thoughts…

… so that the Green Man, lying snugly, invisibly, betwen two gorse bushes, knows at once that she is crying out for release.

It’s really quite astonishing. She has walked the line precisely, from the clearing, from stile to stile, the old sacrificial path. She has walked through the darkening rain, this woman who has crossed an ocean to present herself to the Earth.

And to the Green Man, Her servant, Her lover.