The Cold Calling

XLII

Outside, the Morris Minor spluttered indignantly.

Marcus felt that way, too. He glared resentfully at the front door as the Morris chugged away.

The bastard hadn’t explained. Other than to say he’d been summoned to Cefn-y-bedd, suggesting Marcus hold the bloody fort. Which made Marcus furious, because if anyone was going to tackle Falconer it should have been him.

To make it worse, Lewis, the smug bastard, had buggered off upstairs, bracelets jangling, and come down five minutes later looking not entirely unlike a normal man. He was going to Cefn-y-bedd to play it straight.

And whatever was happening there, Marcus Bacton was being excluded. On grounds of age and infirmity … and the likelihood of his causing a scene, no doubt.

Bastards.

Irritable and unsettled, Macus slumped back to the study. Amid the clutter on the desk were the cup-stained maps with leys drawn in, the book displaying an illustration of the Green Man. And the Edwardian photo album.

He opened the album at the picture of Annie Davies, from which Grayle Underhill had identified her ghost. Annie’s eyes, in the sepia picture, looked aeons old. He tried to see in them the birdlike eyes of Mrs Willis and couldn’t.

If Underhill hadn’t reacted to that photo, he would have chanced his arm with another one. In colour. Girl in a deckchair, wearing her mother’s sunglasses and a very sad and knowing smile. Sally’s last summer. Marcus blinked away the tears as the phone rang.

‘Marcus,’ Andy Anderson said. ‘Listen to me. Don’t argue, all right?’

‘Haven’t the strength to argue with you, Anderson. Where are you?’

‘I’m … doesnae matter. Marcus, you take Bobby and the dog and get the hell out.’

‘… bloody hell …?’

‘Just do it. You may have visitors, know what I’m saying?’

‘Maiden’s not even here. I’ll simply tell them I’ve never heard of him.’

‘I’m no talkin’ about the police. All right? Y’understand what I’m saying? This is bad guys, Marcus. Won’t take no for an answer.’

Marcus was suspicious. ‘How can you possibly know about this?’

‘Doesnae matter. I know. This is no a scam. These people, they won’t want any witnesses. That means you, Marcus. This is very, very bad guys, y’hear me?’

Marcus pondered a moment.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I get the message.’

‘Thank Christ. Act on it. I’ll call back in ten minutes’ time, I don’t expect an answer.’

Anderson hung up.

Marcus didn’t move for a whole minute. He looked out of the window at the empty yard. The castle ruins firm against a white sky. He remembered how excited it had made him feel when he first saw it, when he realized the castle came free with the house.

From his inside breast pocket, he pulled the colour photo of his daughter in the deckchair. The sunglasses with diamante frames, too big for her.

Malcolm stuck his bucket head round the door and then wandered in, tail waving nonchalantly.

‘Wants us to get out.’ Marcus placed the photo on top of the picture of Annie. ‘Very bad guys.’ He went down on his hands and knees, put his nose up to the dog’s. ‘Very, very bad guys.’

Malcolm growled.

‘Englishman’s castle is his bloody castle,’ Marcus said. ‘Get out for good when I sell this place and not before.’

In the stable block, Maiden pushed at Adrian’s door.

‘You’re the law.’ Magda watched, a little hostile now, but made no attempt to stop him. ‘I suppose you can do what you like.’

The door was made of old pine boards. It wasn’t even locked. Maiden stepped back, let her go in first.

‘But I don’t know what you think you’re going to find.’ She stood in the middle of the small, wooden room, as if she knew she was by far the most interesting item in the whole place.

Which was true enough; conditions here would have made a Spartan recruit feel underpampered. Single wardrobe and a bed. No clock, no books. The bed had been stripped to its boards, the mattress up-ended against a wall.

Maiden raised an eyebrow at Magda. ‘Some kind of fakir, this bloke?’

‘I didn’t realize it had gone quite this far. He spends so many nights on stones, his body probably revolts against an orthodox bed. Or he’s educated it that way, more likely.’

Maiden was going through the clothes in the wardrobe. Shirts and trousers — army trousers, tweed trousers, not jeans. One suit. He thought, It’s a soldier’s wardrobe. An old-fashioned soldier.

‘What’s his background?’

‘Small-time country-gentry. Military family. Hunting-shooting. Father’s a retired colonel, lives near Salisbury. Came over once. Nice man. Quiet.’

‘What did he do before he came here?’

‘Some form of youth-worker, I think. VSO, perhaps. He’s just a big boy scout. I really don’t see why you’re doing this. Why aren’t you raiding Roger’s quarters? Too influential, is he? Too well connected?’

‘Actually,’ Maiden said, ‘difficult though it may be for you to understand, that really doesn’t worry me a lot right now. But, if Ersula was murdered, she was probably murdered while you and Falconer were away. Which leaves Adrian in the frame. Where was he last night, do you know?’

‘I don’t see him come and go. I have a three-room apartment in the granary across there, and it has nice, thick walls. I mean, he was around, I assume. Messing in his workshop, up at the Knoll, doing his EVP tapes. He’s always around. ‘

‘EVP?’

‘Electronic Voice Phenomena. Recording so-called spirit voices. Some people claim to pick them up between stations on the radio. Adrian left cassette recorders in ancient sites. He says you can sometimes hear voices.’

‘Like the Yorkshire Ripper heard voices?’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘All right. You said Falconer got his ideas about hunting generating energy and feeding the earth and all that … from Adrian.’

‘Through Adrian, I ought to have said.’ Magda sat down on the wooden bed-frame. ‘Through his dreams.’

‘His dreams?’

‘Keeps tapes of all his dreams at ancient sites. He’s become so practised at it now, he doesn’t need anyone with him. Wakes up promptly at the end of a dream and talks it into a recorder. Sometimes — increasingly, in fact — he has, you know, prehistoric dreams. He’ll dream about tribal rituals and ceremonies and sacrifices and-’

‘Sacrifices?’

‘All kinds of things. Sacrifices were part of life then.’

‘Human sacrifices?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t listen to them. I mean, Roger was deeply cynical at first. Then he began to see information and descriptions that Adrian couldn’t possibly have learned from books … not that he ever reads. He hardly ever reads anything any more. And yet, possibly because he’s such a simple soul, he seemed far more in tune with Stone and Bronze Age thinking than Roger could possibly be. I don’t, you know, think Roger believes he’s getting psychic messages or anything like that. But the points he makes seem to gel. Trigger off ideas which somehow germinate into programmes. There’s going to be a book, too, on the mind of Neolithic man. That’s an ongoing thing.’

‘But you don’t listen to these tapes.’

‘I listened to a couple. I didn’t like them much.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know, it … it was somehow like listening in to one of these sex chatlines. A sort of … gloating tone. I didn’t like it. It wasn’t like Adrian. I have to work with the guy. It’s bad enough working for Roger.’

‘Why do you stay?’

‘Because I was divorced and not too well off and now I’ve been able to buy a lovely town house in Hay, which I shall move into quite soon. And because we’re producing some wonderful TV programmes, and one day … one day, it’s … it was … really going to take off. The University of the Earth. That’s why we started with such an ambitious title. There’d be a lot of people working here … not just here, we’d have places all over the country. It wouldn’t always have to be so … intimate.’

‘Adrian ever make a move on you?’

‘God, no. Not connected enough. Has to be the full deep-and-meaningful for Adrian. And not deep and meaningful, necessarily, in the way you’d expect. Until Ersula, I don’t recall Adrian ever showing much interest in women. Some of the students were very interested, but he’s always the gentleman. I sometimes thought — this is strange — that he was more attracted — I mean in an almost erotic way — to the Earth. His idea of the Earth.’

A sharp, soily smell stabbed at Maiden’s senses, and he wanted to run out into the fresh air and keep on running.

‘Where does he keep his tapes?’ he asked her.

In the mirror in the pub’s ladies’ room, Grayle saw herself, really saw herself for the first time in what seemed like months.

She was shocked.

Tried to flatten down the bunches of hair. Jesus, this wasn’t a grown woman’s hair, this was goddamn teenage hair. Didn’t go too well with the puffy eyes and the lines. Lines? Were those lines? Back home, there weren’t lines; there were never lines back home. See, the hard lights in these British bathrooms seemed designed to condition you to the idea of your own mortality. You’ll die, the light on your face said. Sooner than you can imagine.

‘I’m out of here,’ Grayle said aloud.

She wouldn’t spend too long at the wedding. Tonight she’d check into a good hotel, where the rooms had phones. She’d take a long, hot shower then spend a small fortune calling home. Call her dad, who, for all she knew, had news of Ersula. Call Lyndon McAffrey. Maybe she could get a new column someplace, and one thing was sure, it would be a different kind of column; it would deal with the same stuff, but this time it would be responsible, it would recognize this was serious stuff. Stuff that could screw up a person in a big way.

Adrian was waiting out in the parking lot. Beyond him, fields of light green, cottages and barns of golden stone under the whitewashed October sky.

‘Super,’ he said.

Asshole.

She looked into his bland, smiling face and saw the other face. The face with meat fibres in its teeth. Dream-junkie. Fanatic. He was immature, this was the problem. He hadn’t learned how to live in the real world.

Jesus. Here was Holy Grayle thinking this?

‘What should we do, then?’ Adrian looking at her across the car, chin resting on folded arms on the red roof. ‘Should we go straight to the stones and acclimatize ourselves, or join the others in Chipping Norton?’

‘Maybe I need to change. My clothes. I oughta check out what the others are wearing.’

‘OK. You’re the driver. Chipping Norton it is.’

When they were on the road, he said, ‘I say, look I’m sorry for getting so … preachy.’

‘Oh. Well. I, uh … it was all fascinating stuff, Adrian. Really.’

‘I get sort of carried away.’

‘It’s enthusiasm, is all. People today, uh … not enough people have enthusiasm. It’s become a very bored society.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Sure. Folks just staring at the tube for hours. Listening to the same old Guns ‘n’ Roses albums.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a band, Adrian.’

‘Oh.’

‘You aren’t into music?’

Adrian considered this. ‘It’s unnecessary. It diverts us. Stops us listening to natural sounds. If we pollute our ears with music, we can’t hear the Earth breathe. My father listened to Mozart all the time when he was at home. Blaring through the house. You couldn’t think. Worse now he’s retired. Believes he needs to educate himself on the finer things of life. What does your father do?’

‘He’s uh, he’s an academic. At Harvard. Didn’t Ersula talk about him, ever?’

‘To Roger, I expect.’

‘Yeah, well, Ersula can be kind of hurtful sometimes. She doesn’t mean to be that way, she’s just a little impatient of, uh …’

‘People who weren’t as brainy as she was?’

‘I guess. I’m sorry. This included me, too. To Ersula, I was just … just crazy Grayle … and she’s younger than me.’

‘Brains aren’t everything. She needed to find her spiritual side, she knew that. She did recognize that I could help her in that direction.’

‘She did?’

‘Thought at first that she could get what she needed from Roger, but I showed her how wrong she was. How utterly wrong.’

‘How did you do that-Hey, what’s wrong here? I’m losing … What’s wrong with the car?’

Loss of power. Keening noise.

‘Don’t rev it like that. Pull in. Pull in here.’

‘What’s that noise mean?’

‘Better switch off.’ Adrian opened his door. ‘Do you know how to loosen the bonnet?’

‘Huh?’

‘To get at the engine.’

‘You wanna look under the hood? You know what you’re doing?’

‘I’m a practical sort of chap,’ Adrian said.

They came back out the front way. As Maiden followed Magda towards the small Gothic door in the side wall, a venerable Morris Minor creaked into the forecourt.

‘Who on earth is this?’ Magda said, strained. ‘I’ll get rid of them.’

‘Don’t do that, it looks like the local CID chief. It was, er, politic to bring him in. Case like this, the local guys need to be seen holding your hand.’

‘In that thing?’

‘You never watched Columbo, Magda? Afternoon, sir.’

Cindy strode towards them. Strode. He was wearing slacks and a blazer and something that might have been an old school tie. His hair was slicked back, the mauve area so faint it might have been an effect of the light.

‘This is Detective Superintendent Lewis,’ Maiden said, very slowly and clearly. ‘Sir, this is Ms Ring. She’s in charge here in the absence of Professor Falconer.’

‘How are you?’ Cindy turned to Maiden. His voice had deepened and seemed to have acquired a coarse London accent. ‘Sincerely hope this isn’t a waste of my time, sunshine. Got an armed blag in Hereford on me plate already this morning. Plus a floater in the Wye.’

Maiden said to Magda, ‘Would you excuse us a moment?’ Cindy followed him into a corner of the forecourt, under trees.

‘Not overdoing it, am I, Bobby? Played a detective in The Sweeney, in the seventies. Shot dead before the first commercials.’

‘And not a minute too soon,’ Maiden said bitterly.

‘I shall temper my performance. Good of you to make me your superior, Bobby.’

‘It was your age. Listen. We’re going to hear some audiotapes of ancient-site dreams recorded by one Adrian Fraser-Hale. If they answer any of your Green Man questions, try not to show it. You might also have to look at a body.’

‘Oh dear God.’

‘An American woman. Ersula Underhill. Grayle’s sister?’

Cindy closed his eyes briefly. ‘I wish I could say I was surprised. She was killed?’

‘And buried inside the concrete helipad, round the back.’

Cindy winced.

‘On a ley line,’ Maiden said. ‘As it happens.’

‘Yes,’ Cindy said heavily.

… and the smell … No, I don’t suppose the smells are stronger as much as the air itself is cleaner and keener. One can smell smoke from … oh, miles away. One can see, in the air, all around, a rainbow of colours, although far more than a rainbow, and each colour is represented by a smell … the auras from different kinds of vegetation and wildlife … and stones, rocks. The rocks are very much alive. There’s distant smoke. And blood. The blood is the keenest, sharpest smell of all and it’s coming from … I think it’s a chicken or something. Killed by a fox, I expect…

‘Are they all like this?’ Cindy said.

‘More or less.’ Magda Ring flipped the tape out of the machine. There were scores of cassettes on metal shelves above the tape decks in the Portakabin. The spine of each plastic box had a reference number.

Bobby had stopped talking as soon as the voice began and he hadn’t spoken since. Something was disturbing him; the poor dab probably could not identify it. Although he’d be closer, after last night, much closer.

It was not a particularly dramatic voice. Educated, to a point. Certainly well brought up. Amiable, but bland in itself. There was a zest here, but it seemed relatively innocent. The enthusiasm of a trainspotter. But still … the voice of the Gloucester mass-murderer Frederick West was, apparently, matter-of-fact and almost jovial about his murders.

‘Certainly a man with a mission,’ Cindy said.

‘It gets incredibly boring after a while,’ said Magda Ring. A rather beautiful woman, if somewhat sullen. Feeling slighted, perhaps, that this Adrian seemed oblivious of her charms. And oblivious he would be. If he was the Green Man.

If …

‘Where does he sleep?’

‘In a room above the stable.’ Bobby blinked, as if waking up. ‘On bare boards. I’ve checked it out. Nothing.’

‘Nowhere else?’

‘He doesn’t have much baggage,’ Magda said. ‘Travels light. Roger admires that. The itinerant hunter-gatherer. There’s his Land Rover …’

‘Worth a look, I suppose.’

‘Oh, and the forge. He restored an old blacksmith’s forge. Nobody else goes in there.’

‘Let’s see it.’ Cindy held open the door for her. She led them to a building very much on its own, part concealed by laurels and leylandii. A squarish, stone building with a chimney and castle-like slits for windows. A cast-iron bar ran the length of each slit. A rough, thick door of oak had no handle, only a large keyhole. Cindy pushed it; it didn’t move.

‘Well, Maiden, what do you suggest here?’

Magda said, ‘Don’t you people need a warrant for this?’

‘With a woman’s body out there,’ Cindy said menacingly, ‘do you really think it would take us long to get one? Let’s not waste time. Kick it in, Maiden.’

But the door resisted the flat of Bobby’s foot.

‘All right. I’ll get you a crowbar,’ Magda said dully. As if she also knew that this was the place.

They found the tapes behind some loose bricks at the back of the forge itself. Maiden thought they wouldn’t have found them at all if one of the bricks hadn’t been left half out, as if it had been replaced in a rush. The cassette cases were numbered one to six, in Roman numerals. Except for one, which had been placed on top of the others in the cavity.

‘So he’s been here recently.’

‘So it appears, Bobby.’ Cindy opened the unnumbered cassette case; it was empty. ‘Safe to handle these? Fingerprints?’

‘If it’s his voice on the tapes, we’ll hardly need prints. Sir.’

‘Quite. Maiden. Just testing.’

Cindy gathered up the tapes. Maiden looked around. There were cinders in the forge.

‘What’s he do here?’

Against the wall opposite the door was a small lathe, metal shavings on the cobblestone floor. An acrid tang in the air.

‘Turn his hand to anything,’ Magda said. ‘Made those bars for the window slits, for instance. As I said, Roger loves this in him. His self-sufficiency.’

‘He do much hunting?’ Maiden said.

‘He goes out with the local hunt sometimes. And I believe he belongs to a gun club in Hereford.’

‘A gun?’

‘There’s a cabinet in the house, a couple of twelve-bores in there. Roger goes with him sometimes. Roger says he’s just an extremely balanced person, which is why he’s so affable most of the time. No stress, Roger says. A simple man. We all have a lot to learn from Adrian.’

‘I suppose …’ Cindy picked up a strip of black metal. ‘… if he’s so practical, he could manufacture such a thing as a crossbow. How long did you say he had been here?’

‘Just under two years.’

‘Ah. Not relevant then. Shall we play these?’

Back in the Portakabin, Cindy took out the cassette marked I, handed it to Magda.

Maiden discovered his mouth was dry. Magda put the tape into the machine.

A swishing sound issued from the speakers.

‘Rain,’ Cindy said.

The voice began, hesitant at first, but a certain swelling excitement beneath it. The voice was distorted and tinny.

No-one can see me. I feel almost invisible … a part of … of everything. So utterly relaxed. So fused. I’ve never felt like this before. I…

There was a squeak.

Wind that back again,’ Maiden said. ‘It’s different. It’s not the same machine … you hear that? That’s one of those little hand recorders. The squeak is when he pushes the pause button. I’d guess this is not the kind of gear you’d use on the dream project?’

‘We use Marantz. Or Sony Pro-Walkman. With a microphone, with a windshield.’

‘No windshield on this. You can hear the wind banging against it.’

‘Which suggests?’ said Cindy.

‘That when he made this particular tape, he didn’t have access to the equipment here. Maybe the original was on a mini-cassette and he transferred it. Roll it, Magda.’

The rain noise again. But when the voice came back, it was stronger. As the tape continued, it became more confident, more fluent, more insistent.

… he is invisible in the greenery.

The Green Man.

The very oldest Guardian of the Earth, whose face one sees carved in stone above church doorways, his hair luxuriant with leaves, the leaves bearing fruit — stone nuts and stone berries. More leaves sprouting whole from the grinning mouth, foliage gripped between stone teeth. The grin that says, I am the Earth.

There was a crash. Cindy had slumped against the metal shelves, collapsing one.

‘It’s all right.’ He picked himself up. ‘Don’t mind me. Slipped. Clumsy. It’s all right … Maiden.’

Nobody spoke until the crackly, distorted tape was over.

The speakers hummed. Magda made no move to remove the cassette. Her hands were squeezed tight together.

‘It …’ Her voice cracked. She coughed. ‘It doesn’t sound like a dream.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Cindy said. ‘I can assure you of that.’

‘Christ, that’s why you asked if he could make a crossbow.’

‘Play the last bit again,’ Maiden said.

… broken the convention.

And wasn’t it easy?

‘His first kill.’

‘His first human kill,’ Cindy said.

‘The convention. The convention. ‘

Magda said, ‘Excuse me,’ and went out into the yard. They heard the slap of vomit.

‘She dug up Ersula’s body this morning,’ Maiden said. ‘She’s seen what he can do.’

‘Ah, me …’ Cindy took out the cassette tape, held it up between two fingers and dropped it in the box, as if it was radioactive. ‘Can you imagine anyone more despicable?’

‘And like all of them, like all serial killers, he doesn’t believe he’s doing anything wrong. He’s broken a convention. He’s feeling alive for the first time, the cunt.’

‘No … me, I meant. I wanted … so much to believe it. I wanted to be proved right. Can you imagine anyone more contemptible than that?’

‘Shut up, Cindy. If it hadn’t been for you …’

‘Maria. I knew that girl so well. She could talk to me. Damn. If I was any kind of shaman, I should have seen the danger, should have been able to warn her. I’m no bloody shaman, Bobby.’

‘Cindy, this was random, in its way. He just wanted a hunt saboteur. Someone he believed the Earth would be better off without. He thought it might be difficult, so it’d be better starting off with someone he expected not to like. It could have been any one of them.’

‘And it wasn’t difficult at all, in the end, was it, lovely? Wasn’t it easy? he says, Wasn’t it easy? ‘

Maiden walked to the door. He could see Magda Ring with her back to the perimeter wall, gazing nowhere.

What I find disturbing is the way he starts off saying “I” and then he switches off the recorder. We don’t know how long he’s sitting there. Could be a few seconds, could be an hour. Longer. But when he switches back on, he’s become “he”. He’s created this character. The Green Man.’

‘He hasn’t created him. He exists. He’s an ancient archetype, almost a god. Our friend Adrian is taking on his magic, his charisma.’

‘His voice changes. He’s immediately stronger, more fluent. He tells the story without hesitation.’

With an absolute belief in himself and his mission. A refuge, too. He can slip into the persona of the Green Man whenever … whenever it’s called for. This man is unbelievably dangerous. Do we know where he is now, Bobby? Could he, I mean, come back any time …?’

‘Not imminently. Gone, apparently, to a wedding.’

Cindy froze.