Mean Spirit (25 page)

‘Pentagrams?’

‘I don’t know. I was a bit shaken. Lost track of time. And then,’ Bobby thought back, ‘he told me to stay there and he went off and came back with Malcolm.’

‘Right.
He was checking if you were clean. If the dog had growled and backed away or taken a piece out of your ass, there’d still be a problem. He was scared you’d become possessed.’

‘By what?’

‘By …’ Grayle jerked a thumb at the drawing. ‘Look, like I said, I’ve seen this … well, I’ve seen so-called spirit drawings and … I guess none of them were like this. They were all kind of two-dimensional. Or do I mean one-dimensional? Whatever, they didn’t have this level of … of … expression. I mean like the expression on that face. That is … that is some … expression.’

The wind peeled back the page of the flimsy pad – the page made even flimsier by the pencil-scraping and thumb-smudging. Grayle moved to stop it getting torn off, blown away.

‘Leave it,’ Bobby said.

‘It might be important. Don’t you … think?’

‘It doesn’t prove anything, does it? There’s nothing to show exactly when I drew it, is there? Nothing to show it was me who drew it at all.’

Grayle looked at him. Bobby was way off-balance. Bobby was scared.

‘Grayle … I attacked her, didn’t I?’

‘Naw … hey … What happened, she starts saying it’s …
it
… is touching her face. You try and grab her … or maybe you’re trying to grab
him.
It was confusing.’

‘That’s why she ran away, isn’t it?’

‘That’s ridiculous. She ran away because there were things she didn’t want to explain.’ Grayle looked back at the picture; she hated it. If it was her who drew that she’d be setting light to it then burning incense. She said tentatively, ‘I guess if we kept it … and we showed it around … like, I don’t know
where
we’d show it around … but maybe there’s somebody somewhere who could like attach a name to this person. Like if there
was
someone who looked like this.’

Bobby said, ‘Oh, there was.’

‘Bobby?’

He bent down and helped the wind take the drawing of the guy with the thin, mean face and the slicked-back hair, the Roman kind of nose and the watery-looking eyes and the scar that cut horizontally across from eye to ear, like half of a pair of glasses.

‘That’s the thing,’ Bobby said. ‘I know who this is.’

The paper got scrolled up into a funnel, and the irritable wind hurried it across the yard towards the castle walls.

XXXVI

THE PLUMP WOMAN IN THE EIGHT-TILL-LATE STORE IN ST MARY’S
stared hard at Cindy. She was thinking, Was it? Could it be?
Surely
not?

Cindy was in his blazer and slacks. Perhaps he should also be wearing dark glasses and a false beard. Come to buy another paper. A
Times
or a
Telegraph
or a
Guardian.
Wanting to know how the broadsheets had treated the story of the Sherwins’ fatal fire. Trying to tell himself tabloid hysteria was not necessarily the end of the world.

Even though the new producer, John Harvey, had said it had been decided that Wednesday’s show should be compered by Carl Adams, the stand-up who occasionally stood in for Cindy. A breathing space, Harvey had claimed. They’d be in touch soon. And after all, Cindy’s contract had another three months to run, did it not?

Oh, three whole
months!
And the very fact that Harvey knew how long the contract had to run … what did
that
tell you?

Cindy had tried to contact Jo at her home, but there was no answer. She must be somewhere inside the warren of the BBC. Trying to call him, no doubt. But he was unreachable now, a man with no mobile – unthinkable in London, might as well be dead.

There was just one
Telegraph
left. The shop woman, unsmiling, eyed Cindy as he bent to lift the paper from the rack.

From the front page of the
Sun,
at the top of the rack, his own face leered at him, all lipstick and long black lashes. Next to it, the pop-eyed profile of Kelvyn Kite. The photograph had been printed
hard and contrasty, making Cindy look demented and the bird positively demonic.

Cindy scratched his ear, put on a querulous cockney voice. ‘Looks like that geezer’s gorn too far this time, dunnit, love?’

The woman looked relieved. Not him at all, then. Just an early holidaymaker on a Saga tour, or someone here to visit his grandchildren.

‘Well, I must say, I never liked him myself,’ she said. ‘People like that, they’ve always got a chip on their shoulder, haven’t they?’

‘Size of half a brick,’ Cindy agreed. ‘Bleedin’ perverts.’

He paid for his paper. In the doorway, he turned back.

‘Oughter get treatment for it, I reckon. Compulsory. They says this whatchacallit, electric shock, sometimes works. Attach a couple of wires to their privates, that’d teach ’em to wear ladies’ frocks. Few hundred volts up the goolies, madam. Yes, indeed. Good mornin’.’

Shattered, he was, however. Everywhere he’d been, in the past months, people had smiled, made jokes, tossed Kelvyn’s catch-phrases at him.
It’ll all end in tears,
they’d chorus as he sat in some café with a cup of tea and a Bakewell tart.

Cindy Mars-Lewis: lovable, irreverent, saucy in his backless cocktail dress. An institution. Who could even remember the Lottery Show without him?

He crossed the street back to the pub, feeling hunted, glancing at cottage windows for furtively twitching curtains, turning his head the other way when a car came past.

If this was the attitude in St Mary’s, what would it be like in more populous places? In London, he’d have to start taking taxis door to door to avoid the vengeful public, and thus endure the cabbies’ crunching wit.

And back home, back home on his lovely piece of the Pembrokeshire coast, it would be a return to:
What have I told you about going near that creepy old man?

Tears sprang into Cindy’s eyes.

Grayle said, ‘This is so crazy. The British press has no sense of responsibility.’

Papers all over the table in the editorial room.

‘Underhill,’ Marcus produced this infuriatingly knowing smile, ‘it’s practically a British tradition. Back to Tutankhamun, Macbeth. The British love a curse.’

‘Three times. Inside a
week,
Underhill.’

‘For Chrissakes, it happened just a coupla times. That’s a curse?’

‘Aw, this is bullshit. What do the others say?’

She pulled the
Independent
off the pile. There was a page one story about the fire, noting it was the third tragedy to befall a jackpot winner in a few days, but no mention of Kelvyn Kite.

Walking into the shop this morning, thinking about last night, wondering if Callard had returned, she’d come face to face with Cindy and the kite, in triplicate across the daily paper rack. His face was big on the front of the
Sun,
the
Mirror
and the
Star
but just a single-column shot on page one of the
Daily Mail,
where the big picture was the burned-out house with one surviving BMW in the drive. The
Mail
still had the line about the brother claiming Cindy had punctured the family’s joy, it just wasn’t making such a big deal about it. But then the
Mail
didn’t have the stuff the
Sun
had about Cindy’s mystical pursuits.

‘Where’s Maiden?’ Marcus asked.

‘I think he went to look up something in a book,’ Grayle said cautiously.

‘Like what?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Maiden behaved particularly strangely last night, I thought.’

‘We all did, Marcus.’

She hadn’t told him about the drawing of the face. Kind of hoping Bobby Maiden would come back wearing a bashful smile because the guy he’d been thinking of looked nothing like this, had a completely different kind of scar.
Delayed shock, Bobby. We all jump to crazy conclusions in stressful times.

‘You see, the point is’, Marcus said smugly, ‘Lewis the Lottery Man was a tabloid creation. Tinsel thin. Essentially inconsequential. And those who the tabloids create, they reserve the right to destroy. Of
course
they know all this curse stuff is complete balls – that’s why they’re not actually saying it.’

‘I know what they’re not actually saying, Marcus. I used to be a tabloid journalist.’

‘American tabloids are rather tame in comparison with ours.’

‘Jesus, most American
porn
is tame compared with your tabloids. What nobody seems to realize is this is a career they’re wrecking. Guy struggles along for years, bit-part acting, summer season, finally gets his break when he’s looking at a cold and lonely old age—’

‘That’s show business,’ Marcus said heartlessly. ‘All the same, one can’t help wondering who gave them the crucial background information. Obviously no use asking who particularly has it in for Lewis, when the entire entertainment industry’s riddled through with jealousy and back-stabbing. The answer is: every bastard who isn’t making as much money.’

‘Including you.’ Grayle dragged the phone over. ‘I’m gonna call the pub. Get him to come over here right now. Time like this, a guy needs friends. Even friends like you.’

Marcus snorted.

‘’Sides, we need to talk about last night.’

‘Nothing to talk about. Lewis blew it. It was beyond him. He hadn’t the faintest idea what he was doing. And when Persephone realized it, she just got out. A little too late, unfortunately.’

‘Marcus, that is just so simplistic.’

Marcus hit the table with the heel of his hand. ‘Well, I’m
feeling
fucking simplistic.’ He came to his feet, walked to the wall, began to pick at a piece of crumbling plaster near the door. ‘I just hope she’s all right.’

‘Jesus, Marcus …’ Grayle stood up, too. ‘What’s it gonna
take?
What is it gonna take to actually make you feel sore at Callard? The woman stays in your house, eats your food, borrows your friends, turns me into a murder suspect, then drives off without a damn word, leaving a pile of glass, and it’s still like
poor Persephone.
Jesus Chr—. Oh. Hi, Bobby.’

He wasn’t wearing a bashful smile. Or any particular expression at all. He carried a paperback. He put it on the table. There was a vaguely familiar face on the front of the book, guy with a raffish smile but cold eyes.
Not,
Grayle was supremely glad to note, the guy in the drawing that the wind blew away.

She glanced up at Bobby.

‘Page one hundred and ninety,’ he said.

Grayle picked up the book. ‘You’re kidding, right?’ Flicked over
the pages. Around the middle of the book was a stack of photo-pages all together. Pictures of newspaper headlines, reproductions of news pictures – guy in handcuffs being led to a police van, bunch of guys in bow ties getting showered with champagne around a dinner table.

‘Over the page,’ Bobby said.

Grayle turned the page to find a police mugshot.

Underneath, the caption said,

‘Holy shit,’ Grayle said.

XXXVII

‘
WELL, WELL,’ MARCUS SAID SOURLY. ‘IF IT ISN’T THE ANGEL OF
fucking Death.’

And Cindy, while hurt, could understand the dismay. Marcus’s heart would have done a small leap when he saw a flash of blue skirt.
She came back.
Flinging wide the door to welcome back the prodigal daughter. Only to find, instead, his favourite deviant in twinset and pearls, hair fluffed out, with a fresh mauve rinse.

Cindy and Marcus looked at one another for two silent seconds before Cindy smiled his gentle, ironic smile, an old clown painting out his sorrow.

‘If I am going to be hanged, it seemed beholden on me to present a more tasteful figure upon the scaffold.’

Wearing men’s clothing last night had been a mistake. He had wanted to present to Miss Callard an image she could not deride, which would give her confidence. How foolish to allow his psychic responses to be inhibited by image and taste and diplomacy. The result was an overload of masculinity in the room, an imbalance. Cindy’s nose twitched in memory of the stench of the urinal sharpened with soiled lust, an unmistakable odour of male evil.

But the clothing had been only one of his errors. All of them the result of giving into material neuroses, worldly apprehensions, fear of public hatred, fear of penury.

Marcus, for once, was right to be suspicious. He scowled.

‘Suppose you’d better come in.’

*       *       *

At once he detected an electricity in the room. A dreadful excitement. At first falsely attributing it to the stack of morning papers on the table, the evidence for the prosecution.

Little Grayle, at least, seemed glad he’d returned. She rose, hugged him.

‘Jesus, why are they doing this to you?’

Cindy was stoical. ‘When things happen to us which we clearly cannot alter, little Grayle, we must ask ourselves what is to be learned from them. What they may be telling us abut ourselves that we were unwilling to recognize.’

‘Oh sure. Like you’ve been chosen as God’s tool to break the hold of the National Lottery on the public’s consciousness? Did the BBC respond yet?’

‘My career with the BBC is, you might say, in a state of cryogenic preservation. Someone may perhaps consider thawing me out in five years’ time.’

‘Cindy, can they just do this?’

‘I fear they have done it, lovely. Some years ago, the mandarins might have stood by me. Those days are gone.’

Bobby Maiden looked up from the
Mirror.
‘This didn’t just happen, did it?’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘Somebody had to start it, didn’t they?’

‘I also tend to be sceptical about spontaneous combustion, Bobby, but I rather suspect we have something more important to discuss than the descent of Kelvyn Kite.’

He had seen the exchange of glances. Oh yes, something else had occurred in the aftermath of the explosive exit of Miss Persephone Callard.

Grayle said, ‘You better tell him, Bobby.’

This was the standard mugshot issued to the papers when Gary Seward’s long-time enforcer, Clarence Judge, escaped from police custody in 1976. Used many times since because Clarence always hated having his picture taken.

‘You could argue’, Maiden pointed out, ‘that I came across it
browsing through Seward’s book, and it just stuck in my head. A famous picture of a minor gangland celebrity.’

‘Which was subconsciously stored’, Marcus said, ‘and surfaced in a moment of heightened consciousness during a meditative state induced by sitting around in the dark with a group of people who—’

‘Hey, whose side are you on?’ Grayle demanded.

‘Just giving the psychological explanation, Underhill.’

Maiden smiled to see Grayle setting up in opposition to Marcus, the way she often did, without realizing this was what Marcus intended.

Cindy examined the photo in Seward’s book. ‘It’s a face which seems to convey a brutal distrust of the entire human race.’

‘A criminal stereotype, in fact,’ said Marcus.

‘And another stereotype’, Grayle said, ‘is bad guys always having scars. I don’t see a scar in this photo. Otherwise, yeah, it’s very like the face you drew. Got the scar when he died, maybe?’

‘He was shot in the back of the head,’ Maiden said.

‘Oh.’

‘I believe he got the scar in prison.’

‘So he
did
have a scar.’

‘If not several. According to Seward, another inmate with a longstanding grudge surprised Clarence in the prison library. With a fish slice he’d nicked from the kitchens. And sharpened.’

Grayle winced. She was probably thinking about hedging tools and a dead man in a ditch. Maiden hesitated.

Grayle took a breath. ‘Just finish the story, Bobby.’

‘It’s really about what Clarence did next. He’s half-blinded by the blood, according to Seward, but still manages to push the guy’s head through the back of a free-standing bookshelf. OK? Leaving his face sticking out among the books, like in a pillory?’

‘Uh-oh,’ Grayle said.

‘And he can’t get free, and he’s hanging there. And then Clarence goes around the other side and props up these leather-bound encyclopedias against the guy’s ears on either side for further support. And then he starts hitting him. For … well, for a long time. It was said the blood spread so far that the library had to throw away more than a hundred books.’

‘This was in the pen? Where were the … wardens … the guards?’

‘Oh, well they were attending to a small disturbance elsewhere. It probably didn’t even involve a bribe – none of the screws would’ve lost sleep over something unpleasant happening to Clarence. They hate people prison life doesn’t seem to bother, and nothing ever got to Clarence. If you spat in his food, Seward says, he’d eat it all up in front of you and ask for seconds. And then he’d bide his time, but eventually he’d come and “visit” you, as he liked to put it.’

‘Jesus. And this is what… visits Callard? I take everything back. No wonder she’s so fucked up. Jeez, I only have to look at that drawing and I’m …’ Grayle shuddered.

Marcus said, ‘You ever come across this man personally, Maiden?’

‘No, I didn’t know him at all. Clarence would’ve been doing his bird when I was at the Met. I’ve just been having a quick look at Seward’s book. Looked up Judge in the index. Lots of references. Clarence has rare qualities, Seward says. Possibly the only person he truly admires, apart from Lady Thatcher.’

‘Hold on,’ Grayle said. ‘Let’s get back to the scar. Were there
no
pictures of him with this scar from the fish-slice attack?’

Maiden thought about it. ‘I don’t know. None that I’m aware of. With a scar like that you can understand him keeping a low profile.’

‘So you can categorically state that you never saw a picture of it?’

‘Not categorically. But I’m pretty sure. It could be artistic licence, though, couldn’t it? We’re never going to know for certain unless we dig him up and call in a facial reconstruction expert.’

‘So, Bobby – let’s just get this right – you only know what the scar looked like from Callard’s description, that it was like half of a pair of glasses. In fact it may not be quite like you’ve drawn it here, but we’ll never know. OK, let’s deal with the other rational explanation. What if Callard deliberately fed us this image of the face, with the glasses’ scar? Maybe planted the whole idea of this Clarence. And even Seward, with his peculiar laugh.’

‘Except that it was Les Hole who first mentioned Seward,’ Maiden said.

Marcus looked pained. ‘Underhill, why would she anyway?’

‘I have no idea. I’m exhausting rational possibilities, is all. It still
makes no sense to me why she suddenly skipped out last night, and it doesn’t to you, Marcus, if you’d only admit it.’

Marcus was silent.

‘So let’s look at the crank stuff,’ Grayle said. ‘Spirit drawings. It’s a common enough thing for an artist to be present at a seance, right?’

Cindy, who’d been absorbing all this stuff in silence, said, ‘And the artist does not necessarily have to be a medium. Sometimes he or she works the same way as I believe police artists do, creating the face according to the instructions of the medium. And on occasion,’ Cindy coughed lightly, ‘this is done without them even speaking.’

‘The image gets transferred mentally,’ Grayle said. ‘It sounds crazy, but I’ve seen this happen.’

‘Usually, I think,’ Cindy said softly, ‘when there is, er, a close personal link between the medium and the, er, artist.’

Marcus stiffened, directed a hard look at Bobby. Grayle made no comment.

Cindy said, ‘What were your feelings, Bobby, when you were doing this drawing? What sensations were you experiencing?’

‘I can’t remember. I can’t remember doing the drawing. All I have a clear memory of is Seffi saying, “He’s touching me”, and me diving at her. And then the window bursting.’

Grayle wondered what might have happened at this point if the window
hadn’t
exploded. ‘This gets us nowhere,’ she said hastily. ‘What actually happened to Judge?’

‘From what I can remember,’ Bobby said, ‘his body was found in a rubbish skip somewhere. He’d been shot in the back of the head. It was assumed it was a gangland killing. Only one shot, close range. Looked professional. No-one was ever caught.’

‘When was this?’

‘Over a year ago.’ He opened the paperback. ‘I assume this edition’s only just out. In the front here, Seward’s written a ridiculous kind of eulogy to the old thug, also offering a large reward for information leading to his killer. He says he’ll hand any new information over to the police immediately. I think that’s where we’re supposed to laugh.’

‘What exactly was Clarence to Seward?’

‘Minder, enforcer. Basically, what he did to that bloke in the prison
for free was what he did professionally to people on the outside.’

‘Oh boy,’ Grayle said sombrely. ‘If we believe Callard, both of them were present at this Sir Barber’s party in Cheltenham. One of them alive, one—’

‘Quite.’ Marcus gave a short cough. ‘Er … no matter how bizarre it seems, we probably have to consider this is what we’re looking at. The planned reuniting of the ex-criminal, Seward, and this … this Clarence Judge … across the, ah … the, ah …’

‘I think the word you’re groping for, Marcus, is, uh, grave. Question: was this Seward intent on using Callard to reach his dead pal, Clarence? Was that what this whole Cheltenham charade was about?’

‘We know he is obsessed with spiritualism,’ Bobby said. ‘We know he has used mediums to try and contact his mother because it’s in the book. And we know he was shattered and angry – almost
affronted
– by Judge’s murder.’

‘And we
know’,
Grayle felt suddenly very excited, ‘that he was real determined to find out who the killer was, because he was offering …
how
much, Bobby?’

‘Up to twenty grand.’

‘Strange, huh? That’s close to what Callard was paid to put on a seance.’

‘Right,’ Bobby said, ‘we also have reason to think that it was Seward, not Barber, who was putting up the cash that night. That Barber was a front, presumably because Seward suspected Seffi would refuse to do it if she knew she was being employed by someone like him.’

‘Right! Hey, this is cool. Seward, who believes firmly in this stuff, is investing twenty grand in Callard being able to put him in contact with Clarence so that – this is
it,
guys –
so he can find out from Clarence who it was shot him!’

‘Good God,’ Marcus said.

‘It adds up,’ Bobby admitted. ‘Seward’s making no secret of being determined to find out who killed his friend, but the underlying truth there might be that Judge and Seward have the same enemies, and Seward’s watching his own back. He’s thinking: they got Clarence, am I going to be next? Yeah. I can accept, given his beliefs, that he would set this up.’

‘I can see this whole thing,’ Grayle said. ‘Seward stays in the background until Callard says, “I’m getting a guy coming through with like weird eyes and a funny scar. He’s got a message for Gary. Do we have a
Gary
in the house?” And up steps Seward with some heavy questions. Who did it, Clarence? Who blew you away? Just gimme a name.’

‘However, the man presumably doesn’t realize’, Marcus said, ‘that the most useful piece of information ever gleaned from a denizen of the bastard spirit world is that the brown socks mislaid by Uncle Tom in 1946 may be found behind the fucking hot-water tank.’

‘Ah.’ Grayle lifted a finger. ‘I think he does know that. I think that’s why he wanted Persephone Callard.’

‘Only the best,’ Bobby said.

‘Plus … what about this? … all the people at that party, with the possible exception of Sir Barber, had one thing in common. They were all people who knew Clarence Judge! It was like
Clarence’s
party! How could he – Jesus, this is eerie – how could he not turn up for his own party?’

‘Underhill, I would hate to think you’re getting carried away …’

‘It’s a hypothesis, Marcus, but I think it’s a good one. Callard kept saying how like a fish out of water Barber seemed among these people. He didn’t know them, he was a little nervy in their company.’

‘I figured that too,’ Bobby said. ‘These were mostly, if not all of them, decidedly iffy people.’

‘It’s still a bloody gamble, Maiden.’

‘So? Seward’s a gambler. He loves risk. Also, he put himself very close to Seffi earlier on, when he posed as Barber’s chauffeur so he could pick her up at the hotel. So he could get close to her. Would he see that as establishing a link – with someone who wouldn’t normally handle pond life like Gary Seward?’

Grayle stood up. ‘There’s clearly a whole lot we don’t know, but we have a working theory. So let’s follow it through. Callard gives out real indications that she’s in contact with Clarence. But then it all goes wrong because Callard’s this loose-cannon kind of medium. The breaking of the vase, all this chaos … and then she runs out on them.’

‘Taking Mr … Judge with her?’ Cindy said delicately.

‘Right! And then’, Grayle grabbed his hand with a jangling of bangles, ‘she goes off into the night … with this dead guy … attached to her. And she can’t get rid of it.’