Mean Spirit (18 page)

XXIV

‘
WELL, WE’LL BE HAVING A HOLIDAY FIRST,’ ONE OF LAST WEEK’S
Lottery winners says – this is a syndicate of five school-dinner ladies from Basingstoke. ‘Taking the kids to Disney World. And, of course, we’ve already bought ourselves a BMW.’

‘Yaaaaaaaak,’
Kelvyn Kite shrieks, stabbing a scornful talon at the monitor.

The audience whoops. The apparent need of so many Lottery winners to rush out and buy a BMW has become a running joke of Kelvyn’s ever since the appalling Sherwin family, from Banbury, immediately bought
five
of them – his, hers, teenage kids’, granny’s … and granny didn’t even drive.

‘Stop it, now.’ Cindy frowns at the bird, pointedly ignoring the autocue. ‘It’s none of your business. People are allowed to buy whatever cars they like when they win two million pounds.’

‘Watch it, Cindy,’ Jo says in the earpiece. ‘I think you’ve taken this one far enough, don’t you?’

‘This has gone far enough,’ Cindy tells the bird.

‘Awk,’ says the cynical Kelvyn Kite.

‘Anyway, I
like
the Lada,’ Cindy says.

Laughter. Kelvyn sulks, beak in the air. Cindy ignores him, turning to the autocue.

‘But one of last week’s big winners has gone one better than a BMW. Colin Seymour is the headmaster of a school in Shropshire
for children with learning difficulties. He’s also a newly qualified pilot … So what was the first thing Colin did with his one point seven million …? Why, he bought the very plane in which he’d learned to fly!’

Cue VT. Up it comes on the monitor. A little Cessna winging in to a rural airstrip. Stirring music. Cut to genial Colin Seymour stepping out, grinning. He is tall, lean and bearded and wears a Second World War flying ace’s leather jacket.

‘Just under two minutes for this one, Cindy,’ Jo reminds him. ‘And – remembering what he does for a living –
no jokes at all.’

‘Wilco, chief.’ Cindy is relaxed about this. Reckless he might be, but he’s not stupid. Camelot, the BBC and BMW, however, are
big
targets; they might not like it, but they can’t appear mean-spirited enough to censure a man in late middle-age and a midnight-blue diamanté evening dress.

Cindy goes for a little sit down, off set – you don’t want the audience laughing at the wrong time, even if they aren’t being transmitted – until Jo says, ‘Thirty seconds, Cindy. Get ready to brandish the bird.’

Cindy slips his right arm into Kelvyn and walks out, an eye on the monitor. Colin Seymour is surrounded by happy children from his school. He’s showing them his plane. Finally, in close up, Colin says, ‘And what I’m planning to do this summer is to buy a slightly bigger aircraft in which I’ll be able to take small groups of the kids up for short flights. Which will, you know, be a really fantastic experience for all of us.’

Jo says, ‘Five seconds … Kelvyn.’

Colin Seymour turns to an engaging gap-toothed youngster. ‘What are we going to do, then, Charlie? We’re going to fly like …’

Charlie beams. ‘A
kite!’

And Camera One goes in tight on Kelvyn, who snaps his beak modestly.

Cindy can’t resist it. He looks dubious.

‘Fly like him, lovely, and you’ll never find the blessed airstrip!’

Kelvyn shuts his beak and sulks; the audience roars.

With his habitual sigh of satisfaction at being able to drive west, beyond the hard lights of London, Cindy tossed Kelvyn’s pink suitcase
on to the back seat of his new saloon car. A Honda Accord, it was, he could never have a BMW now.

However, before leaving the car park, he put on the Honda’s interior light and tore open the bulky envelope which had arrived for him, care of the BBC. Young Jo had handed it to him with something of a grimace.

For, at the foot of the expensive, parchment-coloured envelope was inscribed,

Overcross: experience it.

Inside was a leaflet and a small, stiff-backed book. No covering letter, so perhaps he was just one person among several hundred on some marketing firm’s mailing list.

The leaflet showed a photograph of towers against a red sunset. It was headed,

Overcross Castle:

The Veil is Lifted

On page two there was a brief explanation.

Cindy’s eye travelled to the very much smaller print at the foot of page three, where he learned that one might become a privileged house guest on the night of this extraordinary psychic soirée for a mere £500 for a double room.

Perhaps this reflected the deficit in Kurt’s finances, resulting from his failure to become the most expensive presenter in the history of the Lottery Show.

Barnaby Crole would turn in his grave.

And indeed, perhaps Kurt was hoping for that. Or for some kind of psychic fireworks, anyway.

Cindy glanced at the booklet. It was a reprint of a small history of Overcross Castle and its founder, originally published in 1936. He pushed book and leaflet back into the envelope.

On reflection, he suspected the mailing list had been drawn up prior to Kurt’s appearance on the Lottery Show. He wondered what Kurt’s reaction would be if he actually turned up.

Meanwhile … home.

Only a humble caravan, mind, but think of the location. And the
bonus, this time, of a visit to little Grayle and her irascible employer – that somewhat lesser known castle owner – with rather an intriguing purpose. For which one would require energy and attunement.

Therefore, at first light tomorrow, taking his painted shamanic drum, he would follow the shining path to the gorse-prickled hill overlooking the sea on one side and, on the other, the Preselis. Perhaps even as high as the great magnetic centre Carn Ingli, which he was presumptuous enough to consider his power base.

He would stand alone in the stiff, wiry, sheep-munched grass and give thanks to the elements, to the forces of earth and air, sea and sky which, together, became something approximating to God.

And pray. In his fashion.

Avoiding the horrors of the M25, Cindy found his way to the M4, the motorway of the west. Before the junction, as usual, he put on the radio to catch the ten o’clock news on ‘Five Live’.

And with that shamanic flair for pinpointing the moment which, in more pleasant circumstances, would be termed serendipitous, the switch clicked on this:

‘…
and it’s just been confirmed that the pilot who died when his two-seater aircraft overshot a runway and smashed into a barn in Shropshire has been named as Lottery jackpot winner, Colin Seymour.

‘42-year-old Mr Seymour was headmaster of a special school for children with learning difficulties, and earlier tonight millions of viewers of the BBC’s National Lottery Live saw him showing pupils the plane he’d bought with his one point seven million pound win …
’

Cindy drove numbly into the mesh of lights at the M4 junction.

He was tasting the bitter tang from the sea.

XXV

RON WAS WAITING FOR THEM IN A LAYBY ABOVE STROUD, AS
arranged. Seffi flashed the headlights and Ron lumbered across from his Rover, a bulky bloke in an old anorak. Maiden got into the back of the Jeep so he could stretch his legs in the passenger seat and appraise Seffi by the interior lights.

‘They were right about you having exotic friends these days, Bobby. I’m sorry, love, you don’t mind exotic, do you? Ron Foxworth, my name.’

‘Hello.’ Seffi a touch guarded.

‘You’re the one I been reading about. The one who’s disappeared.’

‘Psychic Seffi,’ she said with distaste.

‘Better watch what I’m thinking then, hadn’t I?’ Ron said.

‘It doesn’t work like that, Mr Foxworth.’

‘Oh, really? A little limited, my knowledge of these things. Nuts and bolts rationalist, me, I’m afraid. Where we going then, Bobby? I don’t think I feel like a drink, and I’m sure our famous friend here doesn’t want to be seen in a pub with a battered old bugger like me. Can we just drive around? Cotswolds by night?’

Maiden had almost forgotten what a tricky bastard Ron could be. He started frisking for holes the story he and Seffi Callard had concocted in the harsh light of the discovery of a second body, with a hacked face and few doubts this time about the origin of the wounds.

‘So you and Miss Callard, Bobby …’

‘Friends,’ Maiden said.

‘Quite close friends.’ Seffi pulled out of the layby.

‘I
see.
Well …’

‘We met when Bobby was gathering background information in connection with the Green Man murders. I was able to explain a little about the psychology of people who believe they’re being influenced by elemental forces. Working together on something essentially frightening can be curiously … intimate, as I’m sure …’

Seffi let the sentence hang. Maiden sensed her smile.

How fluently she lies.

‘So when I was feeling rather threatened recently, I asked Bobby for advice.’

Telling Ron how, in this line of work, one received endless crank mail. Mostly from fundamentalist Christians warning that the fires of hell were already being stoked in readiness for one’s arrival. A very few implied that physical retribution might be exacted on the earthly plane.

Seffi sounding loony enough for Ron to take it all less than seriously, but looking alluring enough for him to see why Maiden had stuck around.

Below them, the lights of Stroud formed a glowing bowl.

She told the story of the party, but only as far as the Kieran Hole incident. When they were into the countryside again, Ron said, ‘Yeah, I can see how that would offend Les Hole. This was a message you had … on the, er …?’

‘A spirit message.’

‘Ri-ight.’ Ron nodding sceptically. ‘From the boy, Kieran, you say?’

‘He did hang himself, then,’ Maiden said.

‘Oh indeed, Bobby. No note, no clothes on. We had it down as a wanking job.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Seffi said.

‘Sexual hanging. Auto-erotic strangulation. “Come Dancing” on the end of a rope. Commonplace enough, but occasionally a bit difficult to prove medically, so coroners often tend to be merciful and put it down as suicide. It affected Coral very deeply, as you obviously realize. And Les, of course. So you’re saying Les blamed the, er, messenger.’

‘There was a letter’, Maiden said, ‘from the wife. Trying to set up another meeting with Seffi. But it was the phone calls …’ Lying now. ‘Late at night, nobody there. And this sense of being …’

‘Stalked,’ Seffi said. ‘Although I never got a good look at him.’

Ron leaned back against the side-window, getting a good look at her. ‘So all these stories about you packing it in …?’

‘This was just a part of it. I’ve been feeling generally vulnerable. No-one likes to be on the receiving end of scorn and hostility.’

‘It seemed to me we ought to go and see Mrs Hole,’ Maiden said. ‘She wasn’t there, but he was. He didn’t know I was a copper. He was aggressive. He seemed to think someone might have set him up and he wasn’t looking at Barber. He mentioned the name Gary.’

‘Oh,
did
he?’ Ron’s voice thickening with satisfaction.

‘That means something to you, Ron?’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Should I? I got the feeling he was a little scared of Gary.’

‘Well, of course he is, Bobby, of course he is. Everybody’s a little bit scared of Gary.’

‘I feel I should know who we’re talking about here, but I don’t.’

‘Bloody right you should,’ Ron said. ‘Oh, yes.’

Cindy pulled into the Severn Bridge services and went in for a coffee. Sat in the restaurant, unrecognized in his blazer and slacks, gazing across the dark water to the Welsh side. His mobile phone, switched off, felt like a housebrick in the inside pocket of his blazer. So many people attempting to contact him in the past hour; he could always feel the weight of them.

Back at the car, he sighed and switched on the phone, sat back, closed his eyes and waited.

The first call came through within four minutes.

‘Oh, Cindy, hi, this is Simon Tremain at BBC Radio News in London. Really sorry to bother you at this hour, but I was told you always drove through the night after the show. I hope that’s right, and I haven’t disturbed you during—’

‘No problem, Simon,
bach.’

‘Great. Well, look, it’s about this poor guy, Colin Seymour, who crashed his plane tonight. Obviously, we’ll be running clips from the
Lottery Show on all the morning bulletins, and I’m putting a package together for “Five Live”.’

‘What is it you want then, lovely?’

‘Well, I
was
asked to see if you could go into our Haverfordwest unattended studio, but obviously you’re going to be a bit knackered, so maybe we could record a short interview on the phone?’

‘Fire away, boy.’

‘Right … can you hold, or should I get plugged in and whatnot and give you a call in a couple of minutes?’

‘I’ll hold.’ Knowing that if he cut the line there would be another call.

Presently, Simon Tremain said, ‘OK, I’m rolling. Cindy, if we can start with the obvious … this must have been a shock.’

‘A terrible,
terrible
shock. I was driving home when I heard the news, and I had to stop. You know, when you’re doing the show you feel you come to know the winners personally … and, though I never met Colin, it was clear that this was a man who would put his good fortune to good use. He wasn’t going to retire to the south of France, he wanted to continue working with these children and use the money to bring some excitement into their lives. An utter tragedy, it is.’

‘And I suppose the bitter irony of it is that when Colin and his young friend said they were going to “fly like a kite” you commented that if they did that they’d never find the runway. Which, unfortunately, seems to be roughly what happened.’

‘Ah. Yes.’
This is the bit they’ll use.
‘Well, you know, you make these flip comments without a thought for the brutal hand of fate, and when something like this happens your own words go echoing in your ears and you’d do anything, you would, to take them back. But I suppose if I really
could
rewind time, what I’d do would be to have Colin Seymour put off his flight until the next day.’

Afterwards, Simon said, ‘Sorry, I had to ask you that, but I suppose I won’t be the last. I mean, with that guy who had the heart attack and everything … bad week for Lottery winners.’

‘Indeed,’ Cindy said, resigned. He asked the reporter when exactly the accident had occurred and learned that it was actually
before
the Lottery Show. Less than an hour before.

Perhaps poor Colin had been in a hurry to catch himself on television.

*       *       *

The proximity of retirement could take them different ways. Some coppers nibbled away the final year as if they’d already been put out to grass, the crime reports on the desk separated by estate-agent particulars of cottages in Cornwall.

Others were really driven that last year … racing against the calendar, determined that a certain piece of business was not going to be
unfinished
business when they collected the Teasmaid with the built-in radio. Driven by the sour certainty that if they didn’t finish it nobody ever would.

This, it emerged, was Ron Foxworth. The business in question: Gary Seward.

Ron’s obsession. So little time left. Ron abandoning discretion as they cruised through the Cotswold night.

It was a generation thing. He and Gary were about the same age. When Gary was gone, the youngsters wouldn’t give a shit. To young coppers, old villains were teddy bears. It was like Reggie Kray and Frankie Fraser – regarded with amusement, even affection if you were too young to have mopped up after them.

‘He laughs, you see,’ Ron said. ‘Laughs all the time. Laughing Gary. Whenever you see him on some bloody chat show, he’s laughing his balls off.’

Ron Foxworth, white-haired and big-bellied, did the laugh, slow and measured, like a nasal duck.

‘And whenever I hear that laugh, Bobby, it’s personal. He’s laughing at me.’

Ron and Gary. Coincidence upon coincidence, from the start. Ron was still a probationer in south London when he walked in on Seward doing an off-licence at knife-point. Ron nearly losing an eye.

‘In it for the excitement,’ Ron said. ‘I knew that from the first. This is a villain does it for the buzz. The money’s always been secondary. And that’s why I think he can’t stop. Where’s the excitement in addressing Rotary Club lunches?’

Protection and muscle, these had been Gary’s business. Usually hands on, Ron said. Gary was never going to be the chairman of the board, delegating, sub-contracting. Except, of course, to long-time close associates.

‘Sometimes there’d be some poor sod cut to ribbons or bits shot
off him. Minimum life-threatening injury, maximum pain. And some big dummy’d go down for it. But you knew, you just
did,
that Gary’d done this one himself. Stubbed out his slim panatella, climbed into his Daimler, drove well within the speed limit, parked outside some mean little terraced house, gone coolly in and done it. For the buzz.’

Seffi Callard said, ‘It always amazes me how people can go on getting away with this kind of thing for years and years, never getting caught – when you quite obviously know who they are and what they’re doing.’

‘What they’ve
done
,’ Ron said. ‘Past tense. There’s a big difference. Now if only we were clairvoyants like you—’

‘I’m not a clairvoyant.’

‘Yes, it’s odd,’ Maiden said hurriedly. ‘The thing is, sometimes they’re tolerated by certain officers. For a number of reasons.’

Ron grinned. ‘What’s Martin Riggs doing now, Bobby? Still with Forcefield?’

‘Far as I know.’

‘Makes you think,’ Ron said. ‘Riggs would’ve been at the Met in Gary’s day, wouldn’t he? But then we all thought Riggs was straight as they come, back then. You didn’t, Bobby, but you were just a boy, no clout. Me, I was ready to nick Seward twice and both times the rug was pulled. Makes you think.’

Seffi said, ‘But Seward
was
eventually arrested, wasn’t he? If it’s the one I’m thinking of.’

‘Gary Seward did seven years for extortion, my dear, compared with the three life sentences he’d’ve had if it was
me
who’d pulled him. But it wasn’t me, and when he comes out he gets together with a Sunday newspaper journalist and writes his memoirs, name-dropping every famous villain since Jack the Ripper.’

‘Oh yes. It was called …’

‘Bang to Wrongs.
Serialized in the
News of the World,
sold quite well, but not well enough to furnish him with his current lifestyle. Even allowing for all the chat shows. No. The boy’s still at it.’

‘Up here?’ Maiden said.

‘It’s where you come when you’ve made it. It’s Beverly bloody Hills UK. When I left the Met – in something like disgust, I might
say – to take command of Gloucester CID, who should I find in his gracious Cotswold retreat…?’

‘Must be irksome, Ron.’

‘And he’s at it, Bobby. The bastard is
at it.
All right, he’s got laundered money in a bunch of business ventures, but where’s the excitement in that?’

Seffi pulled off the road into one of those hilltop viewpoint parking areas. All you could see now was a vast scattering of lights over four counties. She stopped the Jeep and switched off.

‘So who exactly is Mr Hole?’ Maiden asked.

‘Les Hole. Import and export. Mainly import.’

‘Porn?’

‘Not now. Least, nothing severe. No kids, no snuff. A bad boy in his youth, mind, but that was a long time ago. Long enough that two years ago he qualified for a conditional discharge from Gloucester mags on a few dozen Italian videos. Course, Les’s mistake was to do it again too soon. With me watching closely by now. Because of Seward.’

‘Associates?’

‘Shared investments – legit – and crossover social lives. So, with the conditional hanging over him, he was more than amenable. You know?’

‘Amenable?’

‘
You
know.’

And Maiden did. Knew why the mention of Mr Hole over the phone had turned everything around, Ron making sure the two of them met up that very night.

‘You’re saying Les Hole’s your
informant
?’

Ron looked at Seffi. Who expelled a short breath of irritation.
‘I’m
hardly going to tell anyone am I?’

‘All right.’ Ron leaned right back against the door so he could see them both, if only in shadow. ‘Seward-watcher, I’d call it. He tells me what the boy’s up to, the stuff he’s party to, and I store it up. Waiting for the moment. I don’t want Seward on chickenshit, I want … Anyway, the longer it goes on, naturally, the more paranoid Les is that Gary’s on to him. Every little remark makes him tremble, every little practical joke. Next thing it might be the exploding petrol tank – he said that to me once.’

Maiden said, ‘The odd practical joke? Like setting up a medium to deliver a devastating, humiliating message from the dead son?’

It was dizzying looking down at four counties of lights. Like being on a cliff edge.