The Cold Calling

VI

Marcus couldn’t face going back to the Castle, breaking the news to Mrs Willis, so he walked. Walking the rage out of his system, each step grinding Falconer’s smug face into the tarmac, all the way to Ewyas Harold, damn near six miles.

Mrs Willis wouldn’t be worried when he didn’t turn up for breakfast. Used to his ways. Perhaps she’d go back to bed. Hope so.

On the way back, fatigue dragged Marcus into a field and he sat down under a tree, wiping the rain and sweat from his nose and his glasses, watching the clouds leak.

Malcolm wandered around, picking up the ghost trails of rabbits and foxes and badgers. Marcus leaned his head against the tree trunk. Nobody would understand what it would mean to him, not being able to walk to the Knoll, along that very obvious ley line from the Castle, to watch the sun rise over the distant Malverns. Feeling there a sense of home that he’d never experienced before, throughout his career as an English teacher in four different schools, Hartlepool to Truro. All through his marriage.

Not that there’d been anything wrong with that. Only wished there’d been more of it. But Celia had died not three years after Sally, following a bloody hysterectomy, and nobody would convince Marcus that one death hadn’t led directly to the other. It should not have been fucking incurable.

Bloody doctors.

And bloody priests. And bloody politicians and professional academics. And bloody lawyers and judges and television pundits and all would-be shapers and organizers of other people’s bloody lives.

And teachers? Yes, all right, bloody teachers too. When they’d offered early retirement, he’d snatched the money and run with it. Run away. Ending up, faintly bewildered, in Herefordshire, where he was born. Thinking there was still, in theory, time to do something, to push back the boundaries of life.

And yet depressingly aware that his life had actually shrunk.

After no more than a month, this melancholic and aimless existence in a rented cottage had been interrupted by news of the sudden death of the latest proprietor of The Phenomenologist. Putting the venerable periodical once more on the market.

Seemed like a sign. God knows, he needed one.

Been a contributor to The Phenomenologist for years. Smudgy, ill-printed rag, following him around the country, arriving four times a year, familiar hand-addressed buff envelope, like pornography. Editorial pages entirely self-generating, with unpaid correspondents submitting garbled accounts of mystical and paranormal events in their particular towns and villages. Appallingly written, most of them; but after thirty years as an English teacher, he’d sort that out.

Envisaging a new Phenomenologist. Better layout. Certain literary style. On sale in newsagents and bookshops.

Only after he’d bought the century-old title for a suspiciously reasonable four thousand seven hundred quid had Marcus discovered that contributors and subscribers were, broadly speaking, the same people. If you rejected or even rewrote some piece of crap, its author would immediately cancel his or her subscription.

Bloody nightmare. Only way to keep it going was to print every blasted thing and never ask questions. Very little of it bore serious scrutiny. You would never, for instance, have imagined so many elderly English spinsters manifesting stigmata.

And the circulation dropped as they died off.

But struggling with the magazine had, for a time, given him a purpose. Also a solid excuse to indulge his long-suppressed passion for the Unexplained. If he heard of a poltergeist-infested house or the sighting of baffling lights in the sky, he could wander along and investigate, presenting his credentials. No-one had ever heard of The Phenomenologist, of course, but it did sound rather impressive and few people would shut their doors in your face.

Marcus Bacton: crusader for the curious, defender of the irrational.

And Annie Davies had been his Bernadette, his Joan of Arc, Marcus realizing, from his own researches, that the circumstances of Annie’s vision were remarkably similar to those of several famous sightings of the Virgin, notably at Fatima in Portugal in 1917 and Medjugorje in Yugoslavia, as recently as the 1980s.

He also subscribed to the theory that many so-called burial chambers, oriented as they were to the midsummer or midwinter sunrise, were not only Neolithic calendars but initiation chambers for the priests and shamans. They’d spend the night in meditation inside the chamber … and then dawn’s first rays would enter like molten gold through a slit in the carefully positioned portal-stones. Out of the darkness, into the light. A supremely transcendent experience.

A time for visions. A time for miracles.

Should’ve been Saint Annie.

It was an obsession. And when the decrepit Castle Farm, the old home of Annie Davies, arrived on the market, it seemed like another sign. To buy it, Marcus Bacton had cleaned out his bank account and sold his car. At least it had a little cottage attached, which he could let out for holidays, enabling him to afford a series of cleaners, who had found him so exasperating that none lasted more than six months. Until, just over two years ago, the one who became a live-in housekeeper: the extraordinary Mrs Willis.

All a bit hand-to-mouth. But he’d always known that one day he’d raise the money to buy the Knoll, and he’d have a display case behind glass so that visitors would be able to read the story of Annie Davies and the vision which the Church denied.

Fucking Falconer.

Marcus smacked a fist into the ground and badly grazed a knuckle on a protruding tree root. His eyes watered. He bound the hand with his handkerchief, called Malcolm and trudged back to the Castle through the thickening rain.

The grey-pink ruins were draped around the farmhouse, which was built on the edge of the original motte. Half of a tower stood next to the house, like a smashed grain silo.

Most of the castles in the area were reduced to this. No great kudos to owning one, unless you were an outrageous self-publicist like Falconer. The Listed Buildings people were always on your back … and the tourists, idiots who simply couldn’t believe that there could be medieval castle ruins not open to the public.

So when Marcus saw, from a distance, the vehicle parked in the shadow of the outer curtain wall, his hackles rose faster than Malcolm’s. He was in no mood to explain to some cretinous family that no, there wasn’t a bloody ice cream stand.

However, the vehicle under the wall turned out to be a Land Rover, which suggested a local person. Possibly a patient. The Castle was remote enough from the village for most of Mrs Willis’s patients to come by car.

Or it could be the doctor. Well, God knows, he had no time for these bloody state-registered drug-dealers, especially after their fumbling failure to save Celia. But the local fellow was less offensive than most and, after all, you didn’t have to go along with what they prescribed.

Perhaps Mrs Willis had seen the sense of it. Healer, heal thyself wasn’t always the best philosophy.

Stepping into the hall, he heard voices from the Healing Room. Must be a patient; Mrs Willis wouldn’t embarrass the doctor by having him examine her amidst her pots and jars of natural potions. Dammit, she wasn’t fit to see patients. But what could you do? What could you do with Mrs Willis?

Marcus tramped into the kitchen, dumped the kettle on the Rayburn. She’d laid out his mail in a neat pile on the old pine table. He hooked out a wooden chair with his foot. Phone bill and two letters from Phenomenologist correspondents. He recognized the cramped handwriting of Miss Pinder, the crazed spiritualist from Chiswick. The other was a foolscap envelope, postmarked Pembrokeshire. Sure he knew the writing, but he couldn’t quite place it. He sighed and slit the envelope with a butter knife.Dear Mr Bacton,Well, it’s been some months since you’ve heard from me, but I’ve been away. I trust you are staying out of trouble with the Ancient Monuments people over the state of your castle. Perhaps I shall see it one day. Now, I know you are a busy man, so I shall contain my Celtic urge to gabble on, and come straight to the point. There is a pressing matter with which I hope you may be able to assist me. We have a murderer in our midst.

What the bloody hell …?Now, there’s melodramatic, isn’t it?But before you dismiss it, in that delightfully brusque way of yours, as delusion, please peruse the enclosed cutting.

Oh God. Marcus closed and opened his eyes. Cindy the bloody Shaman.

Reached for a mug with his left hand, holding the shelf in place with his right.

Insane theatrical biddy who lived in a caravan in Pembrokeshire.

Only the word delusion kept him reading. Falconer had used deluded in connection with the blessed Annie Davies. Hate to think that anyone — even Cindy the bloody Shaman — might have cause to consider Marcus Bacton as small-minded as Falconer.… and so, naturally, I was most distressed by young Maria’s death and would have been only too relieved if the police had identified some local yob as the perpetrator of the crime. Yet it was clear to me from the first that it was not going to be so easy. I could not stop thinking about the death of William Rufus, as explained so well by Dr Margaret Murray in her wonderful book, which I am sure you have on your shelves…

Of course. Classic work. Murray had identified William as the Divine Victim. A king dying for his country. The ultimate human sacrifice. But only Cindy the Shaman could equate the historic slaying with the murder of a hunt saboteur some eight hundred years later.… here, I felt, was a killer with a strong sense of earth-ritual, and the only proof I required — for myself — was evidence that this person had struck again. I began to monitor the newspapers, searching for any death that could be strongly linked to its location … crimes committed in places of ancient significance. Wherever I travelled, I scoured the local papers for details that the national press would not have the space to include. I came across the attached report in the west Wales edition of the Western Mail.

Marcus unfolded the cutting.

BIKE BOY MAIMED IN HORROR TRAPA 14-year-old boy was in hospital with horrific facial injuries last night, after riding his motorcycle into a brutal, barbed-wire ‘man trap’ on a lonely mid-Wales hilltop.A police investigation is under way to find out who stretched a double strand of the wire between a fence post and a tree across a track regularly used by motorcycle scramblers. Schoolboy scrambler Gareth Wigley rode round a blind bend and directly into the wire. Surgeons are fighting to save his left eye.A Dyfed-Powys Policespokesman said, ‘He is very lucky to have survived. This was a calculated attempt to maim or even kill.’Some local people have protested that the ancient track, in the Elan Valley, near Rhayader, is being destroyed by weekend scramblers, and the injured boy’s father, farmer Bryn Wigley, 48, said, ‘Some of these so-called conservationists are completely insane.’The track, said to have been used by medieval monks walking between the abbeys of Cymhir and Strata Florida …

The last lines were highlighted with what looked suspiciously like yellow greasepaint.

Between the text and a photograph of the angry father holding a strand of barbed wire, the Western Mail had provided a little map, showing the exact location of the trap, on the edge of an oak wood. A line had been drawn across it in black eyebrow pencil, and Cindy had scrawled, Get out your OS maps, Mr Bacton. All right, nobody dead this time, but if it had been a grown man on that bike, the wire would have had his head off, no question.

The tin kettle shrieked on the stove, just about echoing what was going on in Marcus’s head. Was he really supposed to print this creepy woman’s fantasies? The Miss Pinders would think The Phenomenologist had metamorphosed into the bloody News of the World.

With the noise of the kettle, he almost missed the discreet creak of the Healing Room door across the passage. Dived to the door just in time to spot the young chap with tousled, tawny hair — moving pretty damn silently for someone with such a hefty physique — trying to creep out unseen.

‘Bloody hell. ‘ Marcus was out of his chair, the school-master in him exploding to the surface. ‘You! Boy! ‘

The outgoing patient stopped.

‘Come here,’ Marcus demanded.

The face came round the kitchen door looking stupidly embarrassed.

‘Ah. Mr Bacton. It’s you.’

‘Who the fuck you think it is? This is where I live.’

‘Ah. Yes. Course it is. Sorry.’

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing in my house? Sent you to spy, has he?’

‘Well, actually …’ Adrian Fraser-Hale, Falconer’s resident boy scout, shuffled about in the kitchen doorway. ‘I came to consult Mrs Willis. I have this sort of skin problem, and the lady in the pub said-’

‘Skin problem? Fucking thick skin problem, if you ask me!’

‘No, it’s a sort of psoriasis.’ The boy turned sideways and pulled his collar down, revealing an area of pink and white blotches. ‘From the ear to the top of the neck. Itches frightfully.’

‘God save us.’ Marcus raised his eyes to the worm-ridden oak beams. The rash was probably the remains of adolescence. Young Fraser-Hale had the body of a man and the air of a sixth-former — the sort who was a natural captain of the first fifteen but lacked the dignity to make head boy.

‘Actually, Roger doesn’t know I’m here. I don’t suppose he’d be awfully pleased. I mean, I’ve been to the doctor and a couple of chemists, and they all go on about allergies and elimination tests which could take, you know, yonks. Meanwhile the thing just grows, like some sort of alien lichen, and, well, Roger wasn’t too keen on me appearing on the box looking like this.’

‘Oh good heavens, no, mustn’t have anyone epidermically challenged on the Roger Falconer programme.’

‘And the lady in the pub told me how Mrs Willis had cured her of a fairly vile rash, so …’

‘Yes, all right, I get the picture.’

The boy was so painfully sincere it was hard to imagine how he managed to work with Falconer.

Fraser-Hale said, ‘I didn’t mean to be surreptitious or anything.’

‘No, all right. Just the old girl gets tired. She’s … not young, and while she might think she’s pretty fit, I’m trying to discourage people from just turning up.’

Marcus stopped talking and waited for Fraser-Hale to go, but the boy just stood there, looking uncomfortable and fingering his psoriasis.

‘Actually, Mr Bacton, if I could just say … I mean, what happened this morning, and the bad feeling between you and Roger. I’m really frightfully divided about all that. Because, you know, I’m rather more on your side of the fence than his. And I think you’re absolutely right about Black Knoll …’

‘High Knoll.’

‘Yes, of course. I think it was probably the pivotal terrestrial power-centre for this whole area. I mean, one only has to spend time there, put one’s hands on the stone. So I’m … well, I … I think Roger’s wrong to fence it off and try to keep it for himself. I just wanted to tell you that.’

‘Well, it’s, er, good to know that you’re not all tarred with the same brush over at Cefn-y-bedd.’ A thought struck him. ‘You didn’t tell Mrs Willis about what happened this morning, did you?’

‘Oh dear.’ Adrian Fraser-Hale looked bereft. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr Bacton. You see, I thought you’d have already told her.’

‘No,’ said Marcus, ‘I’m afraid I was in a bit of a state. Wanted to walk off the er … before I broke the news.’

‘I’m terribly sorry.’

‘Not your fault. I suppose I was avoiding it.’

Fuck.

Mrs Willis liked to rest after a healing session, so Marcus waited half an hour before popping his head around the door.

‘All right, old love?’

She was lying on her daybed, a copy of her beloved People’s Friend by her side.

‘Sorry,’ he said inadequately. ‘I mean, you know …’

‘I knew there was something when you didn’t come back.’ Her face creasing, activating a thousand wrinkles. The old dear had started to look her age almost overnight. It was frightening.

‘I really am sorry,’ Marcus said. ‘Perhaps it’s all my fault. Perhaps if I’d got down on one knee to the fellow from the start. I’m going to talk to the County Council anyway. He can’t bar that footpath, he doesn’t own the meadow. And there must be some way we can stop him fencing it off.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Mrs Willis.

‘It doesn’t matter? ‘

This was how she’d been for nearly a week. Not bothered about anything. Pale, listless. Dried up. Etiolated. No-one who saw her now would even recognize the bustling widow who’d turned up at the door, having come by bus and walked over a mile after his advertisement for a cleaner.

Cleaner. Ha. Much later, Marcus had discovered that the crafty old soul had made a few inquiries about him, discovered that here was a retired man with no practical skills to speak of but an undying interest in the Mysterious. And a house that was far too big for him: lots of room for jars and potions.

‘Don’t do this to me, old love,’ Marcus said. ‘You know it matters like hell that you won’t be able to go to the Knoll.’

Remembering how unutterably moved he’d been when he’d introduced her to the Knoll. When she’d stood by the burial chamber in silence, taking several long, slow breaths before declaring that he was right, it was special, it had a healing air. And, by God, she knew how to use it. How to focus it and channel it and pass it on. Look at the Anderson woman …

‘I never told you,’ Mrs Willis said in that dreamy way she sometimes had. ‘But I saw a black light.’

‘You saw what? ‘

What remained of the English teacher in him restrained itself from pointing out that you couldn’t actually have a black light. This was no time for bloody semantics.

‘Tell me, old love,’ he said. ‘When was this?’

‘What’s that?’

‘When? When did you see this …?’

‘Last Thursday night, would it be?’

‘You went at night? You shouldn’t be going out at bloody night! I didn’t see you go.’

Mrs Willis smiled the old sweet smile. ‘You’re a sound sleeper, boy.’

‘At night? I don’t understand.’ Bewilderment and panic jostling one another in his chest. ‘What’s going on? Bloody hell, Mrs Willis, that’s why you’ve been off colour, is it?’

‘Not been much of a housekeeper, have I?’

‘Forget that. Jesus Christ-’

‘Marcus!’

‘Sorry. Look. Just tell me. This black light. What d’you mean a “black light”? How can you see a black light at night? What are we talking about here? Was it some premonition about Falconer? Why did you see Fraser-Hale? What did he tell you? What’s going on?’

Mrs Willis just sat there with her back to the matchboard wall and the rickety shelves supporting the old lady’s herbs and potions in jam jars and ancient Marmite pots.

‘Falling apart,’ said Mrs Willis wryly, following his eyes.

‘What did you do for young Fraser-Hale?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Fraser-Hale. Falconer’s lad.’

‘That boy? I said I’d make him some ointment. I advised hot baths in Epsom salts and told him to boil his meat first. It’s only a rash.’

‘Pity you can’t poison his bloody boss.’

‘Never say that,’ Mrs Willis said sternly. ‘It’ll come back on you, boy.’

‘I’d swing for that man.’

She observed him shrewdly through her pebble glasses. ‘You’re saying I shouldn’t treat that boy because he works for a man you don’t like? I would treat Mr Falconer himself, if he was in need.’

‘You’re a bloody saint, Mrs Willis. And unfortunately I’m never going to reach your stage of spiritual development. I’d push the bastard off a cliff I mean, why is he doing this to us? Is it just bloody spite, because I’ve been slagging him off in a little sodding rag nobody ever reads?’

‘Perhaps you should be grateful to him for fencing it off.’

‘What’s that mean? What d’you mean by a black light? A sense of evil? For Christ’s sake, old love, that’s what the Church tried to say when the child had her vision. I’ve spent years trying to knock all that on the head. Is that what you mean?’

‘I’m tired.’ Mrs Willis picked up her People’s Friend. ‘I think I shall finish my story.’