Mean Spirit

XLI

Chatterton Mansions was an impressive mongrel. Georgian origins, maybe a little Regency, a lot of Victorian.

There was a furniture van parked outside on a yellow line, two blokes loading a heavy red fireside chair into the back.

The street was lit by unexpected mid-afternoon sun. All the buildings were three, four storeys, the stone not quite Cotswold but mellow, certainly. Quiet, too, although there was a roundabout and a busy shopping street not two hundred yards away.

Maiden followed Grayle up the steps of Chatterton Mansions. This was her idea; it had meant Marcus making another call to Nancy Rich for the address, which Marcus was not too pleased about, but Grayle thought it would be crazy coming to Cheltenham without taking a look at where this whole thing began.

Inside, the building was less grand than you might have imagined. A central staircase, but fairly narrow, and several big doors with quiet nameplates on them — a solicitor, an architect.

‘Upstairs, I guess, Bobby.’

He was looking around. ‘No doorman. Thought there might’ve been some security.’

‘Huh? Oh, I get it. This could get to be an obsession, Bobby.’

Mindful of what Ron Foxworth had said about other hands on Seward’s collar, Maiden had called Gloucester HQ — if they were invading Ron’s playground today it would be wise to tell him. Ron wasn’t around; Maiden left a message.

They were bypassing Gloucester in the truck when Ron had got back to him. Maiden had pulled into a petrol station.

‘You know, Bobby, forgive me … but it seems to me you’re being a mite too nosy for a man just trying to find out who’s been leaning on his girlfriend.’

‘It’s since you mentioned Seward. Hate him to have an interest in her.’

‘And do you think he has, Bobby?’

‘Can I roll another name past you? Kurt Campbell?’

‘Who?’

‘He’s a hypnotist. On the telly. He’s just bought a Victorian castle in the Malvern Hills. They’re holding a festival there this week. The Festival of the Spirit.’

‘And your interest is?’

‘Seffi’s appearing. My information is Seward’s likely to be in the audience.’

‘Well, given Gary’s interests and how fond he is of celebrities, I wouldn’t be inclined to rule that out.’

‘I wondered if you knew of any connection between Seward and Campbell, that’s all. Or if there’d be any kind of police presence at the festival.’

Ron had sounded suddenly amused. ‘Not my problem, son, even if it was on my patch. Festivals are Uniform’s headache. And generally wasteful of manpower and overtime, in my experience, for the handful of thieves and dealers you nick.’

‘It’s not a rock festival.’

‘Be full of weirdos, though, won’t it? That’s not to demean your new friends, Bobby. As a matter of fact, I did hear a mention of this event. In the context of them not actually requiring a police presence. Having arranged their own security.’ Ron chuckled. ‘Go on. Do your psychic intuition bit.’

‘It’s coming to me through a kind of mist, Ron. Word beginning with … F?’

‘Your powers blind me, son. Don’t suppose she’s got an older sister, has she, your psychic?’

‘You never did answer the question about Seward and Kurt Campbell,’ Maiden said.

Grayle had gotten Bobby to remind her about former Superintendent Riggs and his arrangement with the ‘entrepreneur’, Parker, Emma’s father, now also dead. She hadn’t thought corruption on this scale could happen in English towns, undetected, but if the detectives were taking a slice, who was there to do the detecting?

Bobby had told her that Vic Clutton, just before he died, had said Riggs blamed Bobby for making it too hot for him to stay in the police. Riggs was still real sore. Grayle figured Bobby was becoming just a little paranoid, seeing Forcefield, therefore Riggs, everywhere.

They went up the bronze-carpeted stairs of the mansion house. No-one tried to stop them.

Grayle said, only half-seriously, ‘Well, I sure hope we don’t run into any of Riggs’s guys. On account of they aren’t going to feel too well disposed toward the woman carved up one of their colleagues.’

Bobby glared at her to shut up, but there truly was no-one around, no-one at all. At the top of the stairs was a big, bright, Georgian window with a terrific view across rooftops, with church towers, pinnacles and such.

And more doors.

‘This is it,’ Bobby whispered, pointing to the left-hand door. ‘Apartment Six.’

It was weird, standing outside the wide, cream-painted, Georgian-style door out of which an uncharacteristically panicked Persephone Callard had rushed on a dark February night, the bronze velvet drapes drawn across the Georgian window, the wall lights on, the corners in shadow, footsteps behind her.

‘And it’s open,’ Bobby said.

It was true. The cream door was open a crack. Like, pulled to.

‘Sir’s back home?’

Or maybe had never left. Callard had told Bobby he was in France, but how true had that been?

There were big footsteps on the stairs behind them. Bobby spun around as two of the removal guys appeared, a young one and an older, foreman-type guy with a bald head and glasses. The young guy pushed open the door of Apartment Six, walked straight in.

‘Excuse me,’ Bobby said to the older guy. ‘Sir Richard isn’t moving out, is he?’

The guy stopped, looked at him. ‘I wouldn’t know, pal.’

The young removal guy had left the door open, and they could see a short hallway and then another door opened into what seemed like a big room, with dust covers visible.

‘So you’re just kind of taking his furniture out for a while,’ Bobby said.

‘No. We’re taking this furniture.’

‘Out of Sir Richard Barber’s flat.’

‘No, pal. Sir Richard Barber’s flat’s the next floor up. I know that for a fact, on account of we moved him in.’

‘So whose is this?’

The foreman stood with his hands on his hips. ‘With all respect, pal, what’s it to you?’

‘We’re supposed to see Sir Richard,’ Bobby said. ‘We were told to come here.’

‘Well you were told wrong, because Sir Richard …’

‘Next floor up, yeah. But I was definitely given this number. So who lives here?’

‘What you got here is a show apartment for Bright Horizon Developments, and if you don’t mind we’ve got half an hour to get this room cleared.’

‘You’re moving the stuff to another apartment?’

‘You want to know everything, don’t you, mate?’

‘Uh, Barber,’ Grayle said, ‘that is Richard, was getting us some information about this block. See, we were hoping to get an apartment here ourselves …’

The removal guy relaxed. The American accent seemed to make it all right.

‘I, uh … I’m having a baby,’ Grayle said.

‘Congratulations.’ The guy started looking for the bump.

‘In late summer … Uh, I just thought. Honey, if this is the show apartment, maybe that’s where Richard said he’d meet us. My husband, he’s a lawyer,’ patting Bobby on the arm. ‘He gets things wrong a lot. Could we …?’

The guy sighed. ‘Yeah, all right … just for a couple of minutes.’

‘Oh, you are so good,’ Grayle said.

And so they walked around all the rooms, Grayle clinging to Bobby’s arm and looking thrilled. The bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen were all fully equipped and furnished. The bedroom had a four-poster and a faint but unmistakable smell of marijuana. Grayle and Bobby exchanged glances.

The main room — the parlour, the drawing room — was almost cleared. Just a few small tables, two boxes full of ornaments and framed photos and bric-a-brac and a Cotswold village watercolour in a gilt frame. The two Georgian windows had the same view as from the top of the stairs.

‘This is wonderful.’ Grayle looked blissfully around, her gaze coming to rest on an empty alcove with a tasteful plaster moulding. ‘Oh, look, honey, wouldn’t that be just the perfect place for the big Chinese vase?’

‘Perfect, darling.’ Bobby gave the removal guy a these women kind of long-suffering smile.

‘Used to be one there last time we was here, I think,’ the removal guy said. ‘Maybe it got broke.’

‘It happens,’ Bobby agreed.

It happened so bloody quickly, you would not have believed it.

Marcus and Lewis had parked in Malvern Link, no more than five miles from Overcross Castle. It was a straggle of mainly modern shops hanging loosely from the famous priory town on its steep hillside. Marcus needed money from a cashpoint, also an Ordnance Survey map of the area. Never liked to go anywhere without a large-scale OS map.

He could have been away from Lewis’s car no more than seven minutes.

As he turned away from the cashpoint, squinting at his receipt, he heard a young chap say, ‘Oh yeah, sure it is … and that’s the Pope cleaning them windows.’

‘No, honest to God,’ another man said excitedly, ‘I’m not kidding. It bloody is …’

Marcus stuffed the notes into his wallet, pocketed it crossing the street. Couldn’t see any shop likely to sell maps. Never mind, he’d get one somewhere else.

Lewis’s charcoal-grey Honda Accord was parked on a corner of the shopping street and a side road leading to a housing estate. When Marcus returned, there was a small crowd around it, as though it had been in an accident.

Marcus groaned. God almighty, Lewis had been discovered. You tended to forget he had a famous face these days. There’d be bloody autographs and jokes about Kelvyn bloody Kite and this curse nonsense, and they wouldn’t get away from here for a good half-hour.

But as he drew closer, it became apparent that the situation was not quite like that. There was a woman shouting at Lewis through a gap in the driver’s side window. She was in her thirties, buxom, in a green leather coat. A teenage boy with her was grinning inanely.

But the expression on the woman’s face, Marcus saw, was one of explicit, self-righteous rage.

‘… ripped them up, my mother did! Ripped ’em up! Twenty quid’s worth! She says, “I’m not taking no chances.” Two weeks after her operation, this is, you swine. That’s what you’ve done — destroyed a simple pleasure for ordinary folk. Destroyed their only little dream. Twenty quid’s worth of tickets! That’s nothing to you, is it? That’s small change to the likes of you!’

‘What the bloody hell…?’ Marcus tried to squeeze between two pushchairs.

‘Yow won’t get him, mate,’ a man said. ‘He’ll not come out, he won’t. He’s locked the doors.’

Marcus looked at the man’s reddening face and, in an appalled moment, realized that this was not just one belligerent bitch, but the whole bunch of them. He could see tomorrow’s tabloid headlines: Lottery Rage. Virtually overnight Lewis had become — in other circumstances this would have been almost bloody funny — Britain’s most hated man.

The great British public.

‘Lewis!’ Marcus pushed through, wondering why the silly bastard didn’t wind up his window. Then he saw an elderly chap with his walking stick jammed in the gap. Over the heads of two jeering women, he glimpsed Lewis hunched down in his seat, the stick waggling back and forth over his ludicrous mauve hair, Malcolm barking furiously, bumping around on the back seat.

‘You should give this lady her twenty quid back,’ the old bastard shouted. ‘Least you can do. Go on, get your wallet out, you bloody cream poof!’

‘Now look-’ Marcus stopped. He’d heard a long, rending squeak. He turned to see the teenage boy’s fist juddering down the Honda’s flank.

Lurched at the kid. ‘You little sod!’

The kid stepped back and the penknife dropped into the road and Marcus flung out a foot and kicked it under the car.

‘You leave him alone!’ the harpy in the leather coat shrieked. ‘He’s off school with his asthma!’

‘Don’t you worry, madam,’ Marcus snarled, veteran of a hundred confrontations over the castle walls, ‘if he’s having trouble breathing, I shall be delighted to perform an emergency tracheotomy with his own bloody knife. Now get back, all of you. Are you insane?’

Noticing then, to his alarm, that his own breath seemed to be jammed in his chest. Legacy of the bloody flu.

‘Hello, his boyfriend’s turned up now.’ Some oaf from behind. Laughter. Marcus’s fists tightened, nails digging into his palms; he tried to turn, but he was wedged between the car and two youths in reversed baseball caps.

‘You want your money back, love? We’ll shake it out of him, shall we do that? Nathan?’

‘Just get out of my way, sonny,’ Marcus snarled. ‘I have to find a police-’

Hands seized him from behind. ‘That’s right, mate, don’t turn your back on the bugger,’ the old man crowed. ‘Bloody ole shirt-lifter, bloody arse-bandit.’ Marcus, flailing, was prodded and jostled as the Honda began to move. Four of the bastards bumping it up and down.

‘Shake him out of there, boys!’ The pensioner joyfully wagging his walking stick through the window of the bouncing car. Malcolm standing in the back with paws on the front seat, snapping at the stick until the old bastard jabbed it to the back of his throat and he squealed in rage and pain and fell back.

Marcus leapt. ‘I’ll break that fucking stick over your fucking-’

The sentence dying as he was pushed back against a streetlamp and the breath seemed to congeal in his chest. He sank down the lamp standard, down to his knees, as if a great force beyond gravity was pulling him into the pavement.

He thought, Broad bastard daylight on the edge of a respectable English spa town.

His glasses had gone. He heard them click and rattle on the pavement, the world a grey haze of hostility. He scrabbled around, encountering dust, a pebble … glass … yes. The first thing he saw as he fumbled the glasses back on was a bloody advertisement, outside a newsagent’s, for the National bastard Lottery, and he heard what he thought was Lewis yelling, ‘Marcus! Marcus!’ before his senses were savaged by the enormous pain which spread through his chest like a jagged lightning tree with many hard, bright branches and his vision closed down on the Lottery sign.

Maybe … it wheedled.

Just maybe …