December (90 page)

      
Sile stops. 'Make it quick, I'm easily bored by engineers.'

      
'It's about the blues.'

      
Moira says, 'Let it lie, huh. Prof, please?'

      
'I just want to say, Sile, that I'm one of a lot of people who've
always known why you needed all those young guns brought into the band over the
years.'

      
'Not what you think,' Sile says. 'Goodnight.'

      
'That you're queer? Nothing so admirable, mate. Reason you
needed those young guys was to provide the one commodity you hadn't got. You
had the voice and the technique and the image and the confidence. But what you
ain't never had . . Prof pauses '... is the blues.'

      
Sile's face darkens. From across the room, fifteen feet away, Prof
can see it happening, like a photo going into negative, and it makes him feel
much better.

      
Moira sighs. 'Don't do this to us.'

      
'The blues,' Prof says, 'is, like, a very
heroic
form of self-pity. The blues is without arrogance. The blues
is having the guts to accept what you are. Like, I lost my woman. I drink too much.
Tom Storey, he's got the blues.'

      
'I know. I taught him.'

      
'Balls. You wouldn't know where to fucking begin, Sile. The only
blues you had was the blues you bought.'

      
Prof turns away, bitter moisture in his eyes. There's a crash
of the door. When he looks over his shoulder,

Sile Copesake has gone.

      
'Oh God,' Moira says, 'I agree with everything. But that was a
mistake, Prof.'

      
Prof kicks vaguely at the partition of the booth where Dave died.
'What we got to lose?'

      
'You just don't understand, do you?'

      
'Everybody keeps saying that. I don't know what it means. Dave's
dead. Dave. Our mate. You heard what that cunt said - the Abbey's had its
seven-year sacrifice and everybody's happy. We can all go home.'

      
'Sure we can. And in seven years' time we can make sure we're
all safely abroad on a skiing holiday or locked up in our houses with the
central heating up full. All of us knowing that Dave,
our mate
, is part of the filthy fabric of this place now. Just like
Aelwyn.'

      
Prof looks back at the death-booth, as if he might see Dave's
tortured shade strumming into eternity.

      
'Prof, it's no' gonna go away. You think your nightmares will
end? You think Tom's gonna go back on the road, three nights at the Albert Hall
and then Wembley Stadium?'
      
'Fuck it,' Prof says hoarsely.
'Fuck Copesake.'
      
'But
not here
. Not yet.'
      
'What is he? High priest?
Caretaker?'
      
'Whatever he is, he's brimming with
power. Prof. He's just, like, lit up with dark energy. I never saw anything
like this. He's like the man who just sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads.
Except it doesn't happen like that. It's gradual.'
      
'He told Simon he was here as a
kid. Evacuated.'
      
'Yeah, yeah, he found his spiritual
home early in life. Maybe he had a small, seductive, black vision like that
Walden guy, he …'
      
'He persuaded Goff to buy it.'

      
'Sure. And he almost certainly persuaded him to put together a
psychic band. The Philosopher's Stone is Sile's product. A manufactured
sacrifice, like sheep bred for slaughter. We're the Abbey's children. What he
just said was, there's only one way we get away from it.'
      
'Like Dave?'

      
Never mind, he's at
peace now, eh?

      
'Except we don't. You think Dave's at peace? Like Aelwyn's at
peace?'

      
'I'm out of my depth, Moira.'

      
'Too right. Copesake can walk in here and sneer at us and send
us away, knowing that he ... it, the Abbey ... can get us back here just
whenever it likes. Whenever it needs a life. And that goes for you, too.'

      
'He's only a bloke, Moira.'

      
'And the Abbey's only a heap of stones. What kind of shithead
are you, Prof?'

      
'This is not real.' Prof hooks back a foot and sends it crashing
through the glass door of Dave's booth. Reality.

      
Glass is still tinkling when the top door flies open and Simon
bursts in, followed by Tom. They stop when they see Prof picking splinters from
down his sock.

      
'Well done, Prof.' Simon sighs in deepest weariness. 'I did that,
once. Maybe we should act like a traditional rock band and trash the whole
place.'

      
There's a brief silence before, with all four fingers, Moira plucks
a ringing A-chord from Dave's guitar.

      
'Right then.' She puts down the Martin and stands up.
      
'Let's do it. Let's do just that.
Let's invoke the destructive spirit of the great Keith Moon.'

      
Prof is the first to realise she's serious. He takes a step
back as Moira selects a straight mike-stand, chromium-plated, with an
old-fashioned solid base. She lifts it, holds it briefly above her head and
then swings it around like an Olympic throwing-hammer.

      
'Look, Moira.' Simon tries to grab the end of the stand. 'I know
how you must feel. It's just the police are going to be in here soon. You know
what that...'

      
Moira smiles briefly. And then, with all the force she can summon,
she hurls the mike-stand at the five-foot-wide glass panel between the studio
and the control room.

VI

Home at Last

Meryl calls out, 'Isn't she
lovely, Vanessa? Isn't she graceful?'
      
Are they hand-in-hand? She can't
quite tell.

      
A glimpse of blue, a swish of taffeta.

      
But Vanessa's dowdy brown school blazer is almost the same colour
as the mist among the trees and the stones.

      
'Don't go without me.' Meryl begins to run. 'I'm coming. I'm
coming.'

      
Blue is the only colour she can see and the only colour she
wants
to see. Blue is a delightful colour,
whereas brown's the colour of old, varnished furniture in the dingy kitchens of
days gone by and the colour of Tom Storey's sad old father, the Man with Two
Mouths.

      
Meryl can do without brown.

      
Perhaps, when they get home, the Lady will dress Vanessa in
blue.

      
Meryl runs gaily through the fog, the little blue light
dancing ahead of her like a gas-flame.

Pardon me, Eddie,' Gwyn
says, 'but this is one for me.'

      
'Look, are you really a policeman?' The crinkle-haired man seems
harassed. 'Because we don't have a great deal of time.'

      
'Jones, Gwyn Arthur, Detective Superintendent.' Gwyn opens his
wallet, holds it up.

      
The man nods gratefully. He tells Gwyn about the missing child,
Vanessa.

      
'Vanessa?' Eddie Edwards interrupts. 'Are you Vanessa's parents?
But I thought ...'

      
The crinkle-haired man explains that neither of them, in fact,
is a parent of Vanessa, an admission which makes Gwyn Arthur begin to trust
him. And the woman ... the woman is close to coming apart.

      
'If I can just explain, see ...' Eddie begins, but Gwyn plants
a large hand on his shoulder and administers a painfully meaningful squeeze:
Gwyn would like Eddie to keep his garrulous Valleys trap
shut.

      
He smiles encouragingly at the couple. 'My immediate thought
is to follow you to the Abbey in my car, and we'll ask one or two questions.'
Turns to Eddie, enunciating, 'I should like to see the Abbey.'

      
'Fine,' Eddie says, 'Fine, but...'

      
'... while my good friend Mr Edwards remains here, on the offchance
that the little girl should reappear. And if we get no joy at the Abbey, we can
consider calling out the troops. How does that sound?'

Prof has never liked
violence.

      
OK, he's angry, he's frustrated, he's frightened. Yeah, he wanted
to kill Copesake, yeah, he wants Dave's death paid for.

      
But not like this.

      
With the glass panel gone, it's clear that the wall between
the studio and the control room is no more than a partition, made of several
layers of plywood under soundproof wadding.

      
From inside the control room, Simon is hacking at it with a
microphone stand, the end unscrewed to expose an edge of raw metal. He's
managed to dislodge two bolts attaching the partition to the curved stone
ceiling.

      
'OK, Tom?'

      
On the studio side, Tom jumps up and gets his fingers in the
space between the partition and the ceiling and hangs all his weight from it.
Prof winces. If Tom slips he's going to wind up with huge gashes across the
fingers of both hands.
      
This man is a guitarist.

      
This man is mad. Everybody here is totally bloody mad.

      
Prof turns away to avoid a storm of splinters as, with a creaking,
splintering roar, the partition and Tom come down together. Tom lies
half-stunned on his back on the studio floor with about a hundredweight of
smashed-up panelling on top of him. He squirms from underneath as Simon steps
through the gap.

      
'You OK, squire?'

      
'Never fucking better.' Sawdust in Tom's moustache and a cold
fire in his eyes that scares Prof. Nobody smashing glass, tearing down fabric,
actually screams out, this is for Dave. They don't speak any more than they
have to; it's savage, systematic destruction, grown-up people - one of them a
minister of the church - chopping and slashing and clawing. If they had
paraffin would they torch the place?

      
The dust clears, like after an earthquake.
      
'OK,' Tom says. 'Give us a hand wiv
the desk. Si.'
      
'Hey!' Prof is shocked. 'No!' He's
spent half his life behind mixing desks. 'You can't smash the bloody desk.'

      
'Sorry, Prof,' Moira says. 'Si, just make sure the master switch
is off, huh?' This is the Moira who didn't want him to cause trouble with Sile
Copesake. Who wouldn't condone a little sarcasm.

      
'Off,' Simon confirms.

      
The two horizontal banks of speakers hang forlornly in space
as Tom gets underneath to examine the plinth into which the desk is built.
'Interesting. It is definitely stone. Tell you what, Prof, maybe we can just
shift the desk to one side. If you get that end ... triffic.'
      
'I'm not ...'
      
'Just bleeding do it, yeah?'
      
A hundred coloured wires are ripped
and snapped.

      
The deck is dumped, upended in the corner by the tape-machines.

      
Simon looks into the gap. 'You're right. It's stone ... and
it's old. Moira, what can I say?'
    
He
smiles thinly. 'You must be psychic'

      
'Just save your breath for the masonry. The cops show up,
we're screwed.' Moira leans over and starts brushing rabble and sawdust from
the stone. 'Something on it. That Latin. Si?'

      
'It's not even lettering, I don't think. It's some sort of symbol,
quite crudely carved. Can we ...? Thanks. It's extremely old, probably as old
as the Abbey. It's almost like ...'

      
'Almost like a tomb,' Moira says.

It's Lee Gibson who
discovers the child.

      
As a rule, Lee does not like to go outside here at night, except
to walk (if there were cabs, he'd take a cab) the couple of hundred yards
between the studio and his apartment. Two reasons: A: it's cold as hell and depressing;
B: these are goddamn
religious ruins
and they are kind of eerie.

      
Except tonight it's even eerier, godammit, a whole
lot
eerier, inside his so-called luxury apartment
behind the admin office.