The mound is flat-topped. A tumulus, surely! A holy place. A small area has been dug, where some fool has attempted to plant flowers.
The Green Man sits on the mound, in meditation, for some time, perhaps hours. He sleeps. The moon is in his eyes. In his dream, the moon becomes a Druid’s shining sickle. He awakes and, for a moment, it seems that the moon is finely rimmed with blood. When he comes to his feet and stretches, he is cold but braced. And certain in his mind. At last, the Earth calls to him.
He removes his clothes. He stands in his majesty atop the holy mound, lifts his arms to the shadow of the Sugar Loaf. He is not at all cold now. He feels the flow of energy through the land … he knows instinctively that this is a crossing point. The Earth calls again to him, and he lies down upon the area of attempted cultivation, and he penetrates Her.
‘Am I getting this right, Cindy? This guy fucks flowerbeds?’
‘And probably rubs damp soil into his skin.’ Cindy didn’t look at him. ‘And eats it, of course. He sees the Earth as his lover. He wants to be a part of Her and Her of him. In Her, in him. Think about it. But resist, at all times, any temptation to regard this man as ludicrous.’
‘Unlikely,’ Bobby Maiden said grimly.
And thought about it. Thought the unthinkable. About the smell and the taste of the grave. About the smell and the taste as he lay with Em. And his reaction to it. It made him want to put his shoulder against the car door and hurl himself into the road.
‘Calm yourself, Bobby.’
‘What are the chances,’ he said tautly, ‘of him being impotent with women?’
‘Considerable, I would say.’
‘And what Magda says about him being besotted with Ersula Underhill? Do you think he was perhaps more besotted with the idea of getting close to someone he knew he was ultimately going to kill?’
Cindy waited to pull onto the main road that would take them into the city of Hereford.
Maiden pushed in the cassette.
Returning by the fire escape — fully dressed, of course — he enters room seven. He sees it with new eyes. At one end of the room lies a roll of carpet. And the retractable knife used to cut it. In a cleaner’s cupboard in the bathroom, he has found a pair of ladies’ rubber gloves which he somehow manages to stretch over his hands. He dons the paint-splashed overalls, which also are a little tight, but not too much of a problem.
He waits in room seven, but not for long. He knows he must act before the earth-energy dissipates in this filthy secondhand atmosphere, this central-heating smog.
Rage takes him. A sort of internal thunderstorm. His fingers tense and tremble … not tremble, vibrate, his fingers vibrate.
He picks up the retractable carpet knife and pushes out its steel blade. Unfortunately, it protrudes less than an inch. Hardly a Druidic sickle! Impatient now, he gets down on his hands and knees and scrabbles around until he finds a screwdriver, and he takes the thing apart, empties the spare blades on the floor. He examines them. One is longer than the rest and has a curved end, a sort of hook thing. It is previously unused and when he tests it with his gloved thumb it slices cleanly through the rubber.
He rises. Very well, he will release both spirits. The Earth has decreed it. He will open the window immediately afterwards so that even if the blood cannot soak into Her, its essence will be carried into the night air.
He wrenches open the door of room seven, and, almost simultaneously, another door opens.
The lighting in the passage is dim, but if Bacton’s nephew had glanced to his left there would have been enough light for him to see the Green Man in his majesty. And all would have been ruined. But the Earth is with him tonight … the nephew, with a bundle of clothes under his arm, walks directly to the bathroom.
The Green Man steps back into room seven and waits to see what will happen.
In a short time, the nephew emerges, half dressed, and walks, with his head bowed, towards the stairs.
It is the sign.
The Green Man moves into the passage, flicks out the short, curved blade — like the moon … another sign! — and walks to the door of room five. Only then does it occur to him that these doors self-lock from the inside. Oh, he thinks, he should never have come here! His is an outdoor pursuit!
But even as he’s thinking these defeatist thoughts, he notices that the door is not fully closed. A garment has been inserted around the catch of the lock to prevent it engaging.
Presumably to facilitate her lover’s return, the woman has enclosed the lock in the cup of her brassiere. The Green M-
click.
‘I think that’s enough,’ Cindy said. ‘Take out the cassette, lock it in the glove compartment. It represents your freedom. Lock it away, don’t think of personal revenge. Think what … what a fine girl she was. Cry for her. And then put it behind you and clear your mind for what is to come. Do you hear me, Bobby?’
He couldn’t see Bobby’s face for his hands.
Cindy pulled alongside a phone box. ‘I’m going to phone Marcus. Put him in the picture.’
There was no reply at Castle Farm. Gone for a walk, perhaps, to think things out.
When he returned to the driving seat, Bobby looked composed again.
For now.
The circle was looking even more chewed up today, as if the stones had some degenerative disease.
Or maybe, once again, it was just the way she was feeling.
‘Limestone,’ the Reverend Charlie said. ‘This is what happens with limestone. They’ll still be here in another two thousand years, count on it.’
He didn’t look a lot like a reverend. He had on this really old fringed leather jacket and frayed, off-white jeans and sneakers with a hole in one toe, through which you could see he wasn’t wearing socks.
The sky had cleared now, late afternoon, or maybe this was a different climate zone or something. In the east, purplish clouds were forming like a mountain and the sun had a dull, dirty sheen.
‘Going to rain at some stage.’ Charlie had a mild, London accent. ‘Nothing surer. Always rains at my weddings.’
He grinned, showing teeth that were uneven, chipped and brownish.
A lot like the Rollright Stones, in fact.
Grayle had come out here, ahead of the party, because Charlie had to come get his stuff together. She’d gotten talking to him, told him about Ersula, and he seemed like a nice guy, and he’d offered her a ride over, in his van.
She’d explained to him what had happened. How the hire car had broken down and Adrian couldn’t fix it, but said he’d run back to the pub and call up the AA, and when he returned it was in a car with this couple who were headed for Chipping Norton. Made sense, Adrian said, if she went along with these people and he’d stay and wait for the AA, who sometimes took simply for ever, and he’d bring the car along to the Stones once it was fixed.
On the one hand, Grayle didn’t like to leave the hire car. On the other, she’d had enough, for one day, of Adrian and his lectures. And it was kind of him. So she’d unloaded her case and gone with the people in the car and Adrian had stayed with the Rover and his cricket bag.
In the hotel in Chipping Norton, not surprisingly, there was no sign of Matthew or Janny, and Grayle obviously didn’t know any other guests. Which was how she’d homed in on the individual with the dog collar.
