The Cold Calling

XXXVII

It occurred to Grayle, as she waited on the forecourt at the University of the Earth, that she was going to have to come clean with Adrian.

Problem with this wedding was that the bride and groom both knew whose sister she was; no way it wouldn’t get mentioned before or after whatever kind of ceremony this turned out to be.

At least there wouldn’t be the embarrassment of having to admit to Roger Falconer that she would not be doing any kind of article on his project. Adrian had invited her in for coffee, but she said she wanted to get to Rollright in good time, get an idea of what kind of clothes people were wearing.

Now he came bounding out of Cefn-y-bedd, still in his army sweater. Looking like the son of the house, some young officer, played in the movie by — yeah, yeah — Hugh Grant. Only a little beefier and with Redford’s hair. He was carrying his stuff in this ridiculous, sausage-shaped leather bag.

‘What the hell is that?’

‘It’s a cricket bag,’ Adrian said, and she started to laugh, because this guy would just have to carry his suit in a goddamn cricket bag.

Suddenly feeling better than she had since she arrived here. Adrian … well, he might be into dreaming on stones and recording EVP messages and all that Holy Grayle stuff, but he did it in this big-schoolboy way that was kind of infectious. Maybe the whole scene would be healthier if there were fewer stoned, wild-eyed beardies and more straight-up guys like this.

Reversing on the forecourt, she glanced in the driver’s mirror and saw someone watching them from the porch. Falconer, with his ponytail and his denim shirt and his tight jeans. Some guy on the Courier had once said a ponytail was just a swinging dick you were allowed to wear outside your pants. Watching Falconer watching her, as she swung the little car out through the gates, she just knew that, at some stage of the game, this man had fucked Ersula.

No big deal, unless he also fucked her mind.

‘The foliate face,’ Cindy said. ‘The Green Man. You saw one on St Mary’s church yesterday and it frightened you.’

Maiden leaned over the book, hands flat on the desk. ‘This is a different face.’

‘Oh, they’re all different. But substantially the same. An image which is half man, half vegetation. A woodland sprite, he is, or a fearsome giant, with leaves and twigs sprouting from every orifice. A personification of nature, with enormous energy and fecundity and … an absolutely ferocious life-force. He is a guardian of the earth, Bobby. A god of ecology, powerful and forbidding.’

Maiden closed the book. ‘He doesn’t look the kind of guy who helps old ladies with their gardens.’

‘Looks inexplicably malevolent. Usually seen as a kind of mediator between man and nature who fertilizes the earth, but a woman called Kathleen Basford, who’s written a study of the chap, suggests he’s also a symbol of death.’

‘Violent death?’

Cindy looked up. ‘Aggressive enough for it, isn’t he?’

Poured himself a glass of spring water, and Maiden saw how tired he was looking. Up all night too, and he was not so young. There were cracks in the face make-up, the bangles hung from knobbly wrists.

‘Bobby, I asked if you’d seen the face in one of your unfortunate dreams and I don’t think you replied.’

Wasn’t sure if it was a dream or not. Couldn’t remember. I can now.’

H. W. Worthy’s funeral parlour at the bottom of Elham high street. A wreath on a mock grave. A sombre, dark-leaved wreath.

‘You know how you see things from a certain angle, and you sometimes make out a face. Clouds, coals in the fire, knots on the back of a door. I suppose, if you see a face in a wreath, it’s going to look like this.’

Remembering when he saw the face in the wreath, what had happened to take his mind off the grotesque illusion.

You look lost, Bobby …

How good she’d looked in the back of the old Sierra, in the twilight, aglow in her orange sweatsuit, looking so happy to see him. Love-at-first-sight situation. Love at second meeting.

Love.

Life gets complicated, don’t it?

He sat down again. ‘Tell me everything about this bugger.’

And Cindy brought him the letter.

The letter was word-processed in Old English type.

‘Came this morning,’ Cindy said.

‘Stick to the truth, Lewis. Post hasn’t even arrived yet.’

‘It was faxed, Marcus.’

‘I haven’t got a bloody fax!’

‘No, but I have. I brought it in from the car while you were getting what sleep you could manage. And then I telephoned my friend Gareth, from Crucible magazine, and prised him from his bed.’

‘Crucible magazine? What the hell is that?’

‘It’s a pagan periodical with a circulation no doubt approximating to The Phenomenologist’s.’

Marcus scowled. ‘I’m going to make some more tea.’

‘But less credibility among elderly ladies,’ Cindy called after him. ‘Read the letter, Bobby. You’ll notice it begins, somewhat unusually for Crucible, with a polite “Dear Sir.” The more usual term of address being, one imagines, something more on the lines of “Hey, listen, man.”’Dear Sir,As a sporadic reader of your publication and other pagan periodicals, I must object to the assumption that those of us who believe ourselves to be more attuned to the living pulse of the earth must automatically be opposed to country sport.By ‘country sport’, I mean, of course, blood sport. While I deplore the use of the appendage ‘sport’, I can understand why it is applied. By equating the ritual shedding of blood with such pursuits as football and tennis, it gains a certain social respectability in these anaemic times.An essential element in the physical and spiritual equilibrium of a planet or country is the regular free-flowing of blood, in the open air.As your readers ought to know, blood is the original creative and materializing medium. It is the physical substance best capable of interpenetrating the planes. It has been used (and sometimes misused) by magicians throughout history to assist in the manifestation of spirits and daemons.It is also vital for the sustenance of the spirit of the earth. When a fox is killed, after the cumulative energy of the chase, it is a holy moment. The violent spurting of the blood equates with the climactic instant of orgasm. Both the energy and the blood itself are absorbed by the earth and converted to fuel both the planet and the human race.There are, of course, places upon the surface of the earth where the shedding of blood is most effective. And, for this logical reason, rites of sacrifice were practised by the oldest cultures of the earth. The insistence by many modern pagans that blood sacrifice is unnecessary and ‘barbaric’ is unbelievably stupid and damaging to all that your readers purport to hold dear.Green is the opposite colour to red, and therefore it follows that these two colours represent the essential friction without which we shall all weaken and perish.As long as it continues to embrace vegetarianism and oppose the killing of animals in the wild, the so-called ‘green’ movement, and the so-called ‘pagans’ who support it, is a dangerous sham.Yours faithfully,The Real Green Man.

‘No signature, no address,’ Cindy said. ‘Gareth’s excuse for not publishing it.’

‘A nutter,’ Maiden said.

‘Oh no, Bobby. Sadly, not a nutter at all. A valid argument, it is, in theory. But hardly, as he implies, one that the blood-sport fraternities would use in defence of their rural pursuits.’

‘OK,’ Maiden said. ‘Let’s get this right. When you first told us about this, you said that some woman argued that when William II was topped in the New Forest, his blood …’

‘Dripped all the way along the road from the sacrificial site in the New Forest to Salisbury Cathedral. According to Margaret Murray, the ultimate fertilizer for the earth because William was, as she put it, the Divine Victim. The god-king.’

‘Human blood being more effective, in this guy’s view …’

‘In the view of every primitive tradition in the world, Bobby.’

‘… than animal blood. So he’s taken to hunting people.’

‘Because he believes the Earth needs it.’

‘Especially with all the threats to traditional blood sports, right?’

‘I think you may have grasped the essential point.’

‘He’s mad,’ Maiden said.

‘No … as I keep saying, he is not. This man is not a conventional psychopath. He even prefers his victims to be people who, according to his philosophy, might well deserve to die. He is a man with a cause. He believes utterly in what he is doing. And he has some rather influential support.’

‘What?’

‘I’d like to show you a videotape on the television. Little Grayle Underhill gave it to me, bless her. We’ll wait for Marcus to return. Be especially receptive to this, he will.’

But when Marcus came in from the kitchen he looked in no mood for TV. He was carrying a radio. He looked no less exhausted than Cindy and a lot more agitated.

‘Maiden, they’re giving your name out.’

‘Who are?’

‘The police. On the radio. Christ, they’re as good as saying you murdered that woman. Say if anyone spots you they shouldn’t approach you. They’re saying you’re bloody well unstable.’

‘They’re not wrong, are they?’ Maiden sighed. Maybe the whole thing was a set-up. He tried to feel angry, but there was no tension in him, only a dark sorrow.

‘Bobby …’ Cindy put down his glass. ‘How long, do you think, before they find out where you are?’

‘Well, they probably suspect I’m still in the area. I don’t know. They’ll lean on Andy, maybe. Hard. So … Best thing is if I just walk into Abergavenny police station and-’

‘No! Sit down. Do you really want to go to prison?’

‘It’d give me a bit of time to think,’ Maiden said heavily. ‘Pending the trial. Pending the appeal.’

‘While this man goes on killing?’

Maiden sighed. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe.’

‘We need you, Bobby. Look at us, Marcus and me … old men. An end-of-the-pier embarrassment and the editor of an excuse for a magazine dying slowly and ignominiously. Pathetic, we are.’

‘Bastard,’ Marcus muttered.