Friends of the Dusk (23 page)

‘All right, yeah. He sent me a picture of a manky ole skull. Loads of ’em about. Nobody was interested.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘’Cos nobody come back to me about it, did they?’

‘However, that could be because they decided to go and talk to him directly. And wound up killing him.’

‘No. Wasn’t posted under his name, was it? That’s one of the advantages of Neogoth. It goes through me.’

‘Exactly. You could tell them.’

‘Yeah, well, I didn’t.’

‘There was an email message with it, right? Indicating that someone out there might be interested to know about the skull.
Greenaway saying that if they wanted to know where he found it he could draw them a map.’

‘Some’ing like that.’

‘Mean anything to you?’

‘Nothing.’

Bliss looked down for a few moments at the black tiles on the floor, the ones at the front with vinyl LPs set into them. Then he looked up, hands behind his back.

‘Tell you what I’ll do, Jerry. You lend me your computer and write down all the passwords and things—’

‘No way!’

‘Would save a lorra time, pal, and also, if I have to go to extra trouble to get access, I’m not gonna be well disposed towards—’

‘
You
—’ Soffley’s forefinger came up. ‘You think it’s easy making a living in Hereford nowadays, you go and count the fucking charity shops. And check out the business rates we pays to them Tory fuckers on the council. I lose people’s trust, they stop dealing with me, and word gets round in no time. And anyway…’

‘What?’

‘It wouldn’t help you. Very few of them posts under their real names. They don’t want their names all over the Net as lovers of what other folks thinks is weirdo stuff.’ Soffley sniffed. ‘Anyway, I don’t keep my computer yere.’

‘I’ll expect it here by lunchtime. And if you’ve tampered at all with any files, my expert will know.’

‘This could mess me up bigtime, Frank,’ Soffley said sulkily. ‘This could make me persona not gratis kind o’ thing.’

‘We’ll bear that in mind. Say two o’clock? I’ll send somebody round to pick it up.’

‘No! Shit… wait.’ Soffley was halfway round the counter. ‘How about I just brings it in? Only a laptop. Don’t want no bloody coppers strolling in and out like I’m some fucking fence.’

‘Perish the thought, pal. I’ll tell the desk to expect you by close of play. And don’t piss about with the contents because my techie will know, and I’ll be very cross.’

He was on his way out when Soffley called him back. Bliss stood still for a moment then turned back to the counter.

‘This might sound a bit callous, look,’ Soffley said. ‘But we all gotter live, right? This boy Greenaway, he have any old vinyl at his place?’

‘Vinyl.’

‘Only I was thinking, if there’s a house clearance, look, I wouldn’t mind sifting through any stuff, no obligation.’

‘No obligation.’ Bliss nodded slowly. ‘Very charitable of you, Jerry. I’ll see your thoughtful offer is conveyed to Tristram’s nearest and dearest. I’m sure they’ll be in touch.’

‘Ta,’ Soffley said. ‘Ta very much, Frank.’

‘You call me Frank one more friggin’ time, pal,’ Bliss said, ‘and I’ll have some lads with a spaniel turn over this place to track down the precise source of that exotic pong.’

31

Unsaid

I
N THE
M
ALIKS
’ lofty living room, where the wind sang in irregular, square iron-framed windows, Nadya was saying she didn’t believe in ghosts.

‘You think it’s all imagination?’ Merrily said from a cushion in a window seat. ‘Self-delusion?’

Not sure how much she believed in Nadya Malik or the need for the prim blue headscarf – hijab, right? – in a room full of close relatives and one other woman who, even though it was Sunday, had made a point of coming in plain clothes, no collar, no visible cross. Who came in peace.

‘Not necessarily, but I don’t believe it’s anything to do with dead people, either,’ Nadya said.

‘You personally don’t believe that? Or doesn’t the Koran…?’

No, no.
Shut up. Don’t go down that road. Leave the Koran on the shelf.

‘I think…’ Adam Malik, in a rugby shirt and cream jeans, sat at the other end of the long, cream leather sofa, chin propped up against a fist, looking like he really didn’t want to be here. ‘
I
think, that whatever the Koran may or may not have to say about unexplained phenomena is hardly relevant to us here and now. As our friend—’ Adam shifted awkwardly to face Merrily. ‘Our friend in Worcester is quite unequivocal that we should put ourselves in your hands.’

Emphasizing this to his wife, Merrily felt.

Nadya glared into her hands folded over the long black skirt.
Born-again Muslim. To her, at this stage, very little in life would be detachable from what it said in the Koran.

Silence seemed louder in this room, probably a former barn attached to the original house, high beams and rudimentary trusses exposed. On an end wall, a carpet-sized hanging had minarets against a sunset seen through archways. Dennis Kellow, sharing a brown leather sofa with his wife, had his back to it.

‘I’m simply making my own position clear,’ Nadya said. ‘I don’t expect it to affect anything.’

Merrily suspected that under the scarf her hair was actually very short. Arguably, most men would find Nadya sexier like this, all the emphasis on those full lips, the upturned, very English nose. She wore a high-necked light-blue jumper and she was tall, like her parents, perhaps taller than her husband.

‘So if not spirits of the dead,’ Merrily said, ‘what would be your theory about what might be affecting this place?’

‘I would not want to intrude.’

‘No, please… it’s your home.’

‘All right. We might use the word “djinn”.’

‘Defined as…?’

‘Well, a djinn is…’

‘What might come out at you,’ Dennis said grumpily, ‘if you’re stupid enough to apply Brasso to some antique Arabic teapot-lamp.’

‘Dad, stop it.’

Dennis sat back, feigning chastened. The wind rattled the panes behind Merrily. She could feel a draught on her spine.

‘OK, I do know a bit about this. Let me see if I’ve got it right. In Islamic – or Arabic – legend, a djinn is a mischievous entity, perhaps even malevolent, which may assume human form – even the likeness of someone known to be dead – to deceive people. The essential point being that a djinn is not thought to have human origins. It’s a thing of…
smokeless fire
?’

‘Well done,’ Nadya said.

‘Or even a thought form.’

Nadya frowned.

‘Now you’re going beyond the teachings. We don’t do that.’

Merrily said nothing, sliding back into the window recess. The view from here was to the hills behind the house and, beyond them, presumably, the Black Mountains. She’d left Jane out there, exploring the landscape. Hadn’t told anyone that Jane had come with her. Hoped – ridiculous, she wasn’t a kid any more – that Jane would be careful, come back to the car if the weather turned nasty.

‘
I
don’t usually bother my little head about these things.’ Adam Malik sat up, allowing a hint of his Black Country accent to wander in. ‘Being just a mechanic who—’

‘Who likes to demean himself,’ Nadya said.

‘A mechanic who tries to reassemble people. I often think the reason I drifted into orthopaedics is that it’s the one form of surgery where you’re lucky enough not to see too much of death. Putting people back together and sending them back out into the world, that’s me. Less emotionally-challenging than other areas.’

He was maybe thirty-seven, flecks of grey in his tightly trimmed beard, a quiet smile.

‘However,’ he said, ‘here we all are, trying to survive in an increasingly complex world where faith and spirituality are no longer perceived by many Western people as positive influences. Nadya,
no
—’ Fending off the hard stare. ‘We need to say it. This kind of situation would have been fully accepted by my grandparents, and don’t think I’m dismissing it. It’s just that in my professional situation I have to be wary of being linked with any—’

‘Primitive superstition,’ Nadya said.

A lot of cream leather between them now.

Merrily said, ‘Your friend in Worcester…’

‘We hoped,’ Adam Malik said, ‘that the imam would relieve us of any need to speculate about the nature of the disturbance.
We didn’t think there’d be demarcation lines. He’ll be happy to talk to you if you want that, but he understands if you
don’t
want it. He says it’s a matter of practicality, not politics, if that makes sense to you.’

‘Actually, it does.’

‘Well, there we are, then. We’re in your hands.’ He glanced at his wife. ‘All of us.’

‘All of you,’ Merrily said. ‘Erm… I was about to ask about your daughter.’

‘Upstairs,’ Nadya said quickly. ‘Doing her homework. She usually does her weekend homework on Sunday afternoons.’

‘Does she know about any of this? Does she know about her grandad’s experience?’

‘Reverend Watkins, she’s a
child
. She—’

‘I did look into this,’ Adam Malik said. ‘And talked at length to a neurologist of my acquaintance. It’s not unknown for hallucinations to be linked with strokes. Seeing things that aren’t there, hearing voices when no one is speaking. There are even accounts of people seeing what they’ve described as demonic figures. Sometimes in dreams, sometimes not. It can be very frightening. Sometimes this
is
an effect of the prescribed drugs.’

‘But that’s… after a stroke,’ Merrily said. ‘Surely.’

‘Well… yes. I’ve discovered no recorded evidence of anything similar occurring pre-stroke. Pre-stroke symptoms tend to be physical. Headaches, impaired vision. Not, however, impaired in
that
way.’

‘And…’ Merrily looked at Casey. ‘If Casey heard the clocks…’

Casey said nothing. Merrily saw the accusatory look that Nadya tossed like a dart at her mother, like it was Casey who’d brought the Anglican Church into the house.

‘Has Aisha ever mentioned seeing or hearing anything? Feeling anything?’

‘We’re not sure,’ Casey said. ‘However, we’re aware that a child – particularly an adolescent child, because I’ve read about this – may in some ways be more vulnerable.’

‘And sometimes,’ Merrily said, ‘can be seen as the focus for it. Which does need some consideration. Hormones can be linked to all kinds of anomalous—’

‘
No!
’ Nadya’s hand came down on the arm of the sofa. ‘I’m not having that. Aisha is happy here. She’s settled in at the school, has friends – real friends, Facebook friends. She’s a normal girl. She loves the countryside, goes off for long walks. Likes to read, and… and long may that last.’

‘And, in between all this…’ Merrily hesitated. ‘… is she following the Islamic faith?’

‘She’s free to follow whatever faith she wants to,’ Adam Malik said. ‘Or no faith at all. There’s no pressure here. My wife came to Islam some years after we married, with no demands from me, and I want no demands made on my daughter.’

‘Although I have to say,’ Nadya said, ‘when it happened, it gave my life a direction and a structure I would never have imagined achievable, and I’d like that for her, too. As the Church was always meaningless to me, irrelevant to my needs, I could never have imagined that faith could absorb one’s life at every level. This is the
energy
of faith. Becoming part of something moving forward.’

Nobody reacted. Nadya gazed into space, wearing a little, knowing smile. Merrily saw Dennis Kellow’s big fists tighten. Adam Malik was looking steadily across the big room.

‘And what about you?’ Merrily asked him.

‘Oh, I’m very happy to be here, Mrs Watkins. I’m a convert…’ He smiled. ‘… to the countryside. A convert to the countryside, yes.’ He seemed pleased with that. ‘And I understand what absorbs Dennis about this old house. It’s a unique place, a worthy project…’

‘You see, I’m looking for a way in.’ Merrily moved to the edge of the window seat, leaning into the room. ‘Some way of addressing this in which you’re all willing to play a part.’

So many complications, here. So much unsaid. No wonder the girl went for long walks.

And – the worst of it – none of them helped. They let her talk about the various options: the full blessing, the Requiem Eucharist for the restless dead, the exorcism of place for an indefinite but aggressive presence. She didn’t feel that any of these was right. She didn’t know enough. She had an acute sense of specific things she
did not know.

At one time – in Canon Dobbs’s day, not so very long ago – an exorcism of any kind would demand not merely acquiescence but the active belief of all participants. Attendance at a church service would be required, before and after. And people would go along with that.

At one time. She threw a wordless prayer out into the churchy room, felt it fluttering feebly like a tissue.

‘Can we just…? Before we make a decision, can we lay this out? If I say anything anybody disagrees with, just tell me. OK? Let’s start with what’s been described as a perceptible hostility here. Something Dennis felt. A presence in the Castle Room.’

She looked at Dennis, giving him a chance to deny it, take it all back.

He said nothing.

‘And then the stroke.’

Nadya opened her mouth, then shut it again. Casey’s arms stiffened against a shudder. Dennis drew a long, unhappy breath that seemed, to Merrily, to be echoed and amplified by the wind outside.

‘And I’m getting a bit uncomfortable,’ she said, ‘about the reluctance to involve Aisha. Who, if she’s anything like my daughter at her age – which is not so long ago – will know exactly what we’re talking about.’

Know
exactly
?

Was that not the problem? Did any of them even know enough to frame a theory?

She’d never felt more uncertain. Scared of doing something, scared of doing nothing.

32

Foetal

B
ELOW
J
ANE
,
THE
brown water was wind-whipped through a little, steep-sided gorge before piling noisily under the wooden footbridge.