Mean Spirit

XXXVI

The plump woman in the eight-till-late store in St Mary’s stared hard at Cindy. She was thinking, Was it? Could it be? Surely not?

Cindy was in his blazer and slacks. Perhaps he should also be wearing dark glasses and a false beard. Come to buy another paper. A Times or a Telegraph or a Guardian. Wanting to know how the broadsheets had treated the story of the Sherwins’ fatal fire. Trying to tell himself tabloid hysteria was not necessarily the end of the world.

Even though the new producer, John Harvey, had said it had been decided that Wednesday’s show should be compered by Carl Adams, the stand-up who occasionally stood in for Cindy. A breathing space, Harvey had claimed. They’d be in touch soon. And after all, Cindy’s contract had another three months to run, did it not?

Oh, three whole months! And the very fact that Harvey knew how long the contract had to run … what did that tell you?

Cindy had tried to contact Jo at her home, but there was no answer. She must be somewhere inside the warren of the BBC. Trying to call him, no doubt. But he was unreachable now, a man with no mobile — unthinkable in London, might as well be dead.

There was just one Telegraph left. The shop woman, unsmiling, eyed Cindy as he bent to lift the paper from the rack.

From the front page of the Sun, at the top of the rack, his own face leered at him, all lipstick and long black lashes. Next to it, the pop-eyed profile of Kelvyn Kite. The photograph had been printed hard and contrasty, making Cindy look demented and the bird positively demonic.

Cindy scratched his ear, put on a querulous cockney voice. ‘Looks like that geezer’s gorn too far this time, dunnit, love?’

The woman looked relieved. Not him at all, then. Just an early holidaymaker on a Saga tour, or someone here to visit his grandchildren.

‘Well, I must say, I never liked him myself,’ she said. ‘People like that, they’ve always got a chip on their shoulder, haven’t they?’

‘Size of half a brick,’ Cindy agreed. ‘Bleedin’ perverts.’

He paid for his paper. In the doorway, he turned back.

‘Oughter get treatment for it, I reckon. Compulsory. They says this whatchacallit, electric shock, sometimes works. Attach a couple of wires to their privates, that’d teach ’em to wear ladies’ frocks. Few hundred volts up the goolies, madam. Yes, indeed. Good mornin’.’

Shattered, he was, however. Everywhere he’d been, in the past months, people had smiled, made jokes, tossed Kelvyn’s catch-phrases at him. It’ll all end in tears, they’d chorus as he sat in some cafe with a cup of tea and a Bakewell tart.

Cindy Mars-Lewis: lovable, irreverent, saucy in his backless cocktail dress. An institution. Who could even remember the Lottery Show without him?

He crossed the street back to the pub, feeling hunted, glancing at cottage windows for furtively twitching curtains, turning his head the other way when a car came past.

If this was the attitude in St Mary’s, what would it be like in more populous places? In London, he’d have to start taking taxis door to door to avoid the vengeful public, and thus endure the cabbies’ crunching wit.

And back home, back home on his lovely piece of the Pembrokeshire coast, it would be a return to: What have I told you about going near that creepy old man?

Tears sprang into Cindy’s eyes.

Grayle said, ‘This is so crazy. The British press has no sense of responsibility.’

Papers all over the table in the editorial room.

‘Underhill,’ Marcus produced this infuriatingly knowing smile, ‘it’s practically a British tradition. Back to Tutankhamun, Macbeth. The British love a curse.’

‘Three times. Inside a week, Underhill.’

‘For Chrissakes, it happened just a coupla times. That’s a curse?’

‘Aw, this is bullshit. What do the others say?’

She pulled the Independent off the pile. There was a page one story about the fire, noting it was the third tragedy to befall a jackpot winner in a few days, but no mention of Kelvyn Kite.

Walking into the shop this morning, thinking about last night, wondering if Callard had returned, she’d come face to face with Cindy and the kite, in triplicate across the daily paper rack. His face was big on the front of the Sun, the Mirror and the Star but just a single-column shot on page one of the Daily Mail, where the big picture was the burned-out house with one surviving BMW in the drive. The Mail still had the line about the brother claiming Cindy had punctured the family’s joy, it just wasn’t making such a big deal about it. But then the Mail didn’t have the stuff the Sun had about Cindy’s mystical pursuits.

‘Where’s Maiden?’ Marcus asked.

‘I think he went to look up something in a book,’ Grayle said cautiously.

‘Like what?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Maiden behaved particularly strangely last night, I thought.’

‘We all did, Marcus.’

She hadn’t told him about the drawing of the face. Kind of hoping Bobby Maiden would come back wearing a bashful smile because the guy he’d been thinking of looked nothing like this, had a completely different kind of scar. Delayed shock, Bobby. We all jump to crazy conclusions in stressful times.

‘You see, the point is’, Marcus said smugly, ‘Lewis the Lottery Man was a tabloid creation. Tinsel thin. Essentially inconsequential. And those who the tabloids create, they reserve the right to destroy. Of course they know all this curse stuff is complete balls — that’s why they’re not actually saying it.’

‘I know what they’re not actually saying, Marcus. I used to be a tabloid journalist.’

‘American tabloids are rather tame in comparison with ours.’

‘Jesus, most American porn is tame compared with your tabloids. What nobody seems to realize is this is a career they’re wrecking. Guy struggles along for years, bit-part acting, summer season, finally gets his break when he’s looking at a cold and lonely old age-’

‘That’s show business,’ Marcus said heartlessly. ‘All the same, one can’t help wondering who gave them the crucial background information. Obviously no use asking who particularly has it in for Lewis, when the entire entertainment industry’s riddled through with jealousy and back-stabbing. The answer is: every bastard who isn’t making as much money.’

‘Including you.’ Grayle dragged the phone over. ‘I’m gonna call the pub. Get him to come over here right now. Time like this, a guy needs friends. Even friends like you.’

Marcus snorted.

‘’Sides, we need to talk about last night.’

‘Nothing to talk about. Lewis blew it. It was beyond him. He hadn’t the faintest idea what he was doing. And when Persephone realized it, she just got out. A little too late, unfortunately.’

‘Marcus, that is just so simplistic.’

Marcus hit the table with the heel of his hand. ‘Well, I’m feeling fucking simplistic.’ He came to his feet, walked to the wall, began to pick at a piece of crumbling plaster near the door. ‘I just hope she’s all right.’

‘Jesus, Marcus …’ Grayle stood up, too. ‘What’s it gonna take? What is it gonna take to actually make you feel sore at Callard? The woman stays in your house, eats your food, borrows your friends, turns me into a murder suspect, then drives off without a damn word, leaving a pile of glass, and it’s still like poor Persephone. Jesus Chr-. Oh. Hi, Bobby.’

He wasn’t wearing a bashful smile. Or any particular expression at all. He carried a paperback. He put it on the table. There was a vaguely familiar face on the front of the book, guy with a raffish smile but cold eyes. Not, Grayle was supremely glad to note, the guy in the drawing that the wind blew away.

She glanced up at Bobby.

‘Page one hundred and ninety,’ he said.

Grayle picked up the book. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Flicked over the pages. Around the middle of the book was a stack of photo-pages all together. Pictures of newspaper headlines, reproductions of news pictures — guy in handcuffs being led to a police van, bunch of guys in bow ties getting showered with champagne around a dinner table.

‘Over the page,’ Bobby said.

Grayle turned the page to find a police mugshot.

Underneath, the caption said,

Believe it or not, this is the only photo I could get of Clarence. He always hated having his picture taken.

‘Holy shit,’ Grayle said.