The Cold Calling

XXXI

The Morris Minor took a bend on what felt like two wheels, Cindy grinding the arthritic gearbox to get out onto the main road ahead of a container lorry.

Marcus closed his eyes. ‘Do you want to kill us both, Lewis?’

Cindy said. ‘Do you want to tell me the truth about our friend Bobby?’

As Cindy was coming through the door, the phone had rung and Marcus had said, ‘Maiden? Maiden, is that you?’ a couple of times, before shaking his head and handing over to Cindy. ‘Can’t make make out what the hell he’s saying.’ And Cindy had listened gravely, for a long time, to a man sounding like someone teetering on the very edge of the abyss.

Asked Bobby precisely where he was, which sounded from his garbled description like Glangrwynne, between Abergavenny and Crickhowell. There was a bridge there, over the river, and Cindy had very calmly told Bobby to wait there, by the pub, and they would come and pick him up.

‘All right,’ Marcus said, resigned, as they crossed the Welsh border. ‘Name’s Maiden. Police detective. Got knocked down by a car in Elham. Died in hospital. Dragged back into the picture by a friend of mine. Anderson. Nursing sister.’

‘Friend?’

‘And, ah, spiritual healer. Initiated, as it were, by Mrs Willis.’

‘Really?’

‘At the Knoll,’ Marcus said reluctantly. ‘Anderson says she used the holy light to raise the boy’s, ah, dormant spirit. They had one of those crash things going on Maiden’s chest. Anderson threw the light into him at the same time.’

‘Fusion of science and the Holy Spirit. Also the shamanic art of soul-retrieval, where the shaman takes a trip to-’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘Marcus, how experienced is she?’

‘She’s a nurse.’

‘I didn’t mean professionally. Could she have let something else in?’

‘I don’t know. How would I know that?’

‘See, what we have here is a young man left with a terrible fear of death and prey to images which leave him — and me — feeling extremely cold. Fair play to the boy, he’s only a copper, not going to give us a dissertation on site-specific negative atmosphere, is he? But he’s sensitive. He’s been telling us, pure and simple, what he feels. Been telling people ever since, I’d guess.’

‘First time I met him,’ Marcus said, ‘was at the Knoll. As Mrs Willis lay dying. Kept urging us to take her down from the stone. I asked him why. Said he didn’t know why.’

‘Well, of course he didn’t. Had a very negative death experience. Not wonderful for everyone, as you know. The nice ones are the only ones people like to talk about, feeling the others tend to reflect badly on what kind of life they must have led thus far.’

‘Hieronymus Bosch demons clinging to their toes. Examined it in The Phenomenologist, couple of years ago. Several biddies complained.’

‘No wonder he was in a state. He’d never been to the Knoll in his life before, but some part of him knew the place … intimately. And it was a place without happy memories.’

‘You could be right,’ Marcus said grudgingly. ‘Had a head injury. Perceptions dulled ever since.’

‘Plus, whatever he encountered during the minutes of his death was so traumatizing that he’s blocking it. His subconscious erected a barrier. Made even more dense, as you say, by the effects of the head injury … which is also filtering ordinary, everyday sensory input to his brain. His whole experience of life is diminished. Like looking down a telescope from the wrong end. He feels he’s in a murky dream. Desperate to wake up, he behaves … erratically.’

There was a short silence, apart from the choking noises emitted by the car.

‘Erratically?’ Marcus said warily.

Cindy sighed. ‘Perhaps our friend Grayle’s outburst was closer to the truth than she imagined. The virus in the stone seems to inflame dark emotions. I should tell you …’

‘Yes. Perhaps you could tell me why we’re picking them up.’

‘Not them. He’s alone. I wish I had known what he was doing. What he was proposing for tonight.’

‘Merely proposing to get his end away, far as I could see.’

‘Because the situation, I am afraid, is that Bobby seems to think he may have murdered the girl.’

In this dismal room in the Ram’s Head, even in the dark, Grayle was finding it hard to relax, drift off. Too much had happened. All of it scary. And the worst thing kept rearing.

Ersula dead.

She’d never let herself even contemplate it.

Outside the window, in a village out of time, the wooden pub sign creaked on its pole. Grayle rolled over on the mattress which was surely no more comfortable than the top of some frigging burial chamber.

You never like to think of yourself as a religious person — spiritual, maybe, sensitive, sure — but religion, in the end, is what it came down to: I’m religous; I need something to lean on. I come over here to lose Holy Grayle and who do I find but Holy fucking Grayle?

She realized she was lying here in the dark, mentally cutting up fragments of Ersula’s letter and fabricating that long conversation she’d been planning to have with her when they met up here in England. This made her feel even more lonely.

Believe it, Grayle.

I told you. I do believe it. I’m a half-ass, gullible, New Age goofball, I …

I mean, take it seriously, for the sake of all that’s holy …

Ersula throwing back the hood of her dark parka and putting her face right up to Grayle’s, her eyes burning with urgency.

‘Jesus!’

Grayle’s whole body lurched. She blinked in terror. The inn sign crashed back in a gust of nightwind.

… all that’s holy … Ersula’s voice echoing in the room.

Ersula, who didn’t believe in holy. Who didn’t believe in ghosts.

Who hadn’t written, in her letter, half of the stuff Grayle just heard her say.

Eyes stretched wide, Grayle gathered the sheets and the eiderdown around her and shivered herself into dream-sodden sleep.

They found him, as arranged, a few miles north of Abergavenny, where the road narrowed into a clutter of white and stone cottages and a pub that was closed. He came shambling up from the darkness of the riverbank, head bowed, unsteady, looking like a man who’d been dragged by muggers into some alleyway and had the stuffing kicked out of him.

‘All right.’ Cindy throwing open the passenger door. ‘Get in the back, Marcus. Bobby and I have to talk.’

Cindy plucked at a sleeve of Bobby’s jacket as he got in, then inspected his fingers.

‘Blood.’

Bobby did not respond; he sat silently, wrists crossed over his knees, as though they were already in handcuffs. He looked like a man who could imagine no future.

Cindy flung the Morris into gear, accelerated away in first, Marcus howling that he was going the wrong way, should have turned round on the pub forecourt.

‘Scene of the crime,’ Cindy said softly. ‘I would like to see the scene of the crime.’

Bobby’s shoulders jerked at this, but he said nothing. The old car made it to fifty mph with a horrible metallic shriek. Two minutes later, Cindy slowed at a sign which said Hotel/Gwesty.

‘This the place, is it, lovely?’

‘Look.’ Bobby’s voice parched as a ditch in August. ‘I’m sorry about this. I panicked. Should’ve driven the BMW to the police station in Abergavenny. If you go back that way, you could drop me outside.’

Marcus leaned over from the back seat. ‘Makes sense, Lewis.’

Cindy stopped the car just inside the hotel gates but didn’t switch off the engine, which juddered, shaking the whole car. He reached up to turn on the feeble interior light.

‘That way neither of you are involved,’ Bobby said, pale as death. ‘I’ll just tell them I thumbed a lift into town. Drop me at the station, drive away, no risk of anyone-’

‘All of life …’ Cindy lowered the handbrake and the car lumbered a little further up the drive. ‘… is one delectable risk after another.’

An old house came into view, more stately, less rambling than, say, Cefn-y-bedd. Security floodlights shot emerald rays across the bowling-green lawns.

‘You realize,’ Marcus said, ‘that if this engine cuts out, as it seems in imminent danger of doing, you’ll never get it going again, and then we’ll all be …’

‘Sixteenth century at least,’ Cindy mused. ‘Probably older. Possibly much older.’

‘Look, if you want to come on like Nicholas bloody Pevsner, let’s make it some other time, shall we? Just turn this heap of scrap round and get your dainty little fucking foot down.’

The front door of the hotel opened. A man peered out towards them, shading his eyes against the floodlights.

‘Night porter,’ Bobby said. ‘He’ll get your number.’

‘In that case, I hope you paid your bill, lovely.’ Cindy put on the headlights, full beam, and you could see that the night porter’s jacket was green and Marcus grabbed Cindy’s shoulder from behind.

‘Are you completely bloody mad?’

‘Abergavenny police station,’ Bobby said. ‘Ten minutes.’

‘So that you can confess to murder? Because, see, I really think you ought to confess to me first. I’m your fairy godmother. Talk to me, lovely.’

‘Go, Cindy.’

‘Turn the engine off, then, I will, if you want time to think about it.’ Cindy leaned back and reached for the keys.

‘At your fucking peril …’ Marcus snarled.

The night porter was strolling across the grass towards them.

‘Did I kill her? You want to know?’

‘All the time in the world, lovely.’

The night porter took what appeared to be a notepad from his top pocket.

‘No,’ Bobby said. ‘For what it’s worth.’

‘Worth the Earth, it is.’ Cindy cut the headlights, slammed into gear, let out the clutch with a bang and reversed her in a long, orgasmic scream.

Bobby breaking down into dry sobs, poor dab.