Mean Spirit

L

The renovation of Overcross Castle was like a half-finished portrait, Cindy thought, the central features blocked in and coloured, the rest little more than a scribble. On the first-floor landing, the paint faded off with the lighting, into greyness, shadows and dust-cloth ghosts.

Vera indicated to Cindy the alcove concealing Room Three, then pointed up at her stiff Victorian waitress’s cap and down towards the kitchens to signify she would be needed soon to serve dinner to the visiting nobs. From below, Cindy could hear the sounds of polite laughter, clinking glasses.

When Vera was gone, he moved quietly into the alcove — quietly because the door was ajar and there were voices from within.

A problem. He needed to see Persephone Callard alone.

But, in the end, he didn’t.

Standing in the shadow of the alcove, becoming still as a monolith, his breathing as light as a bird’s, he heard,

‘… even have to stay the night. I’ll have a car waiting. We’ll get you out of here before midnight, I swear.’

Kurt Campbell. In a state.

‘… can’t believe it,’ Miss Callard saying. ‘Can’t believe you or anybody could be so utterly, insanely …’

‘Look … yes … all right … call me nai-’

‘Naive? It’s not the word, is it, Kurt?’

‘Greedy. Power-hungry. Hey, call me what you fucking like, I’m at the stage I don’t really care. All I’m saying … if you finish this you’ll never hear from me again, you’ll never hear from Seward and you’ll never … be troubled by …’

‘Him?’

‘You can unload it. Now you know what it’s about, you can unload it just like …’

‘Oh, it’s so easy, Kurt, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll help you.’

‘Think I’ve rather had enough of your help. I just … the utter fucking duplicity …’

Kurt collecting himself into his voice, the mesmerist’s velvet purr.

‘Seffi, you can’t possibly imagine how quickly this happens. You meet on live, late-night telly, you’re both high on it, he says why don’t we go on to a club … and then another club and you’re with all these cool, dangerous people, and you’re pissed and you’re telling him your life story and your ambitions, and you think …’

‘What a great guy. Yah, I’ve been there, Kurt. I was there when I was seventeen.’

‘Yeah, well, when I was seventeen I was a sad kid at tech college doing a correspondence course on hypnotism at night and working bloody hard at it, so call it delayed adolescence, but … he was just taking me over!’

‘You’re a bloody hypnotist and he’s taking you over?’

‘Things just happening, Seffi, like by magic. Obstacles getting moved, difficult people no longer difficult. Contracts, money, meetings, parties — and that’s how you get drawn in, it’s like drugs. And then one day you realize some of the things he’s been doing for you are monumentally illegal — people getting bought, threatened, beaten up and …’

‘And what?’

‘And worse.’

An indrawing of breath by Miss Callard.

‘And it’s when you realize innocent people are getting … damaged to boost your career and get you into his pocket or to satisfy his warped sense of natural justice. Look, there’s a story in his book — he’s been very clever, he’s changed the names and the circumstances so it can’t be traced back, but it’s essentially true — and it’s about a man he’s called Billy Spindler, a grass, who they fitted up for rape by actually having a woman raped. By Clarence Judge himself, I suspect. And he’s done worse than that. People … OK, people’ve died, innocent people, but that’s never how he sees it. If somebody gets hurt they usually deserve it because they’re not as innocent as they look, or they’re stupid … or they’re just there to serve a higher purpose, which is Gary’s purpose. He’s a psychopath, Seffi, remorse is an abstract concept to Gary. You’ve just got to help get him off my back before another innocent …’

Cindy thought, Billy Spindler? The name was set in ice, what it represented.

‘Kurt, if we do it, as planned, in a large public room, in front of the Mayor of bloody Malvern and Lord Ledbury and whoever, I’ll go with that. Squalid, back-room stuff, you can forget.’

‘You don’t know this guy, Seffi.’

‘I know you, and I know you’re full of shit.’

Billy Spindler, Cindy thought. The expendability of innocent but stupid people.

‘He’s lost it. It’s gone well beyond obsession. We have all kinds of rules now, set up because of signs and omens. Like it has to be tonight because this is the day when Crole and Abblow did what they did. And it has to be in exactly the same place. And there have to be the right number of people and there has to be … please, Seffi. You have to trust me.’

Behind Cindy there was a sudden fusilade of clipped, impatient footsteps. He took a breath, prepared to escape into the spectral netherland of dust sheets and abandoned paint cans.

Too late. He emerged from the alcove facing the woman identified to him as Francine Burnell-Brown, Kurt Campbell’s PA and graceful toehold in society. Looking furious; she’d been left on her own to entertain minor aristocracy, tedious dignitaries and the local press, while the famous Kurt bargained and wheedled and lied through his white, white smile.

‘Who the hell …?’

‘Sssh.’ Cindy brought a finger to his lips, assumed Imelda’s tone. ‘It’s a delicate moment. Give them a few minutes.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Two minutes, my dear.’ Cindy took Francine by the shoulders and pushed her firmly into the passage and then walked calmly down the stairs, through the entrance hall and out into the night.

What Maiden obviously hadn’t shared with Grayle was the implication of the Forcefield men operating quite openly, their faces now on show under the old fluorescent strip light in the passageway.

This was the death sentence.

His stomach hurt when he walked. Also when he breathed. He saw the concern in Grayle’s eyes and was moved almost to tears. He’d discovered that he cried easily since his death. Not very policemanlike. Would disgust Norman Plod.

They stopped outside a fat oak door. ‘Hands, please,’ the Forcefield man smiled thinly, ‘boss.’

‘Oh, bugger.’ Maiden recognized slim, narrow-eyed, felt-pen moustached DC Ballantyne, stationed briefly at Elham about four years ago. Ballantyne handcuffed him, hands behind. They weren’t police issue cuffs, more like sex shop, but they worked.

‘It’s Matthew, isn’t it?’ Maiden said.

‘It’s sir to you, you fucker,’ said Ballantyne.

‘What’s the pay like,’ Maiden said, ‘sir?’

Ballantyne looked into his eyes. ‘Ever had your legs kicked from under you when you’re cuffed? Scary.’

Grayle was watching, concern for Maiden giving way to blank fear for them both, as she was cuffed, too. By the bearded guy who’d worked Maiden over behind the Portaloos. The cuffs looked like medieval manacles above Grayle’s small hands.

‘Actually, this particular assignment’, Ballantyne lowered his voice, ‘is a farce. But the money …’ he winked ‘… the money’s great.’

The oak door opened and a man slipped out, closing it behind him. He wore an evening suit: white jacket, with one of those Sixties-style bow ties that fitted under the collar making an inverted V. It was almost an anticlimax to discover who he was.

Older than the pictures; they always were. More wizened, corruption lodged in every line that the camera lenses had blurred. Bags under the eyes, but the eyes were shrewd and bright and merry and cold as a mortuary.

‘Bobby Maiden!’ Both hands gripping Maiden’s shoulders. ‘Heard a lot about you, cock.’

‘From my old boss, that would be?’

‘You signed out a short while back, yeah? How long was it? Three minutes?’

‘Four.’

‘Fucking amazing.’ The eyes never blinked. ‘Where you get to, Bobby?’

‘Wherever it was, Gary, I was glad to get back.’

‘You must be an immature soul, my son. But no matter … you was there … you was over the fence. It’s the experience what counts, know wha’ mean?’ He turned away from Maiden. ‘And Grayle … Underwood.’

‘Hill,’ Grayle said. ‘Underhill. I believe we, uh … met.’

‘Nice of you to remember the occasion, Grayle. You also remember what I said to you that night?’

‘I guess.’

‘Don’t guess, darlin’,’ he said breezily. ‘Tell me.’

‘You are dead,’ Grayle said tonelessly.

‘Good girl.’ Gary Seward put out a hand, held Grayle’s chin gently between thumb and forefinger. She didn’t move her head, but Maiden saw her swallow. ‘Heat of the moment, sweetheart.’ Seward let go of Grayle’s chin. ‘Heat of the moment.’

Maiden saw former DC Ballantyne smirking in delight at this dear old underworld character from a lost era, as if this was cabaret. He wondered if Ballantyne knew what Seward had done to his colleague, Jeffrey Crewe. He wondered what Seward had told Riggs about the incident.

‘But having said that, Grayle, it’s incredible how things what comes out in the heat of the moment do turn out to be quite prophetic. I believe in all that stuff.’ Seward swivelled, spreading his hands. ‘I mean, let’s be frank about this, a short time from now, the two of you will have died three times between you.’

The fluorescent tube in the ceiling zizzed and popped along with the famous monotone laugh.

‘I mean, you know, how else is it supposed to end? What else can I do, the position you put me in? It’s your own fault, innit?’

Grayle looked at him, frozen-faced, her skin blue-white under the strip light, her hair tangled on her shoulders. Maiden wondered desperately how he could get her out of this. Being nice to Seward didn’t seem an option.

‘I mean this is an omen, yeah? The two of you here: a young lady what was recently told she was dead and a geezer who was dead.’

‘Mmm,’ Maiden said, ‘that is really uncanny.’

‘What can I tell you? You’re gonna die. You are gonna die. We all die. Your time has been brought forward, that’s all. How I always look at it. Bringing forward the inevitable. That’s all it is.’

‘I never thought of that before,’ Maiden said tonelessly. ‘That’s amazingly profound.’

Gary Seward tucked a fast fist into Maiden’s undefended stomach.

‘That the spot, Bobby?’

Maiden retched, folded in agony.

‘You scumball!’ Grayle screamed. ‘You knew he was hurt!’

‘But I digress,’ Maiden heard Seward say, across the pain. ‘What I was about to say is, by the time you check out I hope we’ll all know more about the actual business of death and what follows. The reality. You ever meet Clarence Judge, Bobby?’ Seward bent to him. ‘Eh?’

Maiden shook his head.

‘We can fix that.’ He turned and pushed open the oak door, stepped back. ‘Go through, would you, please?’

Ballantyne and his colleague blocked the passage in each direction. Ballantyne signalled Maiden into the room.

Where Maiden saw what he expected to see. A richly carpeted area with a red sofa and five chairs around a table. A little bit of Cheltenham.

What he didn’t expect to see, in one of the chairs, was Ron Foxworth.