Mean Spirit (27 page)

‘Look, Rich, this is a police matter now. I have a detective with me. Would you like to speak to him? Name’s Maiden. Inspector. I can put you—’

‘Absolutely not!’ Rich said, aghast.

The sun struggled against heavy, muscular clouds, strings of vapour twisting like tendons. A meshwork of illusion and lies obscuring the light.

Lies. Lying to himself. Sheltering behind the confusion of his identity, flailing in the dark and swirling soup of his motivations, his impulses, his ambivalent sexuality. This way, that way, insubstantial, capricious. His bangles rattled cheaply, his pearls were paste, his Oxfam shop woolly jumper a mass of plucks, his bra full of bubble-wrap.

‘
I hate that Cindy now for what he’s caused. It’s like he’s sneering at ordinary people’s good luck.’

Taunting voices carried on the wind.

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

‘Angel of fucking Death …
’

‘…
chosen as God’s tool to break the hold of the National Lottery on the public’s consciousness?’

Cindy’s mouth stretched into a silent scream. What if this flip remark was on target? What if he had become a channel, a conduit?
But not for God, not for good. He thought of Colin Seymour, who planned to introduce handicapped youngsters to the thrills of flying, rising above nature’s blackest jokes.

Cindy laid his hands on the collapsed capstone, massaging its ancient heart, until the stone and his hands grew warm.

Give me knowledge, give me inspiration, give me truth, give me direction, give me clarity of mind.

He straightened his spine, breathed deeply into his abdomen for a hundred seconds. Then he closed his eyes and set up an earth rhythm on the drum until it began to sound in his solar plexus beneath the waistline of his blue skirt. The beat vibrating directly through his body, emerging in his spine. Ascending the spine

(dummm)

… to
her
head

(dummm)

… to
his
shoulders

(dummm)

…
down
her
arms

(dummm)

…
into
his
fingers

(dummm)

…
and into the stone.

‘Old stone.’

(dummm)

‘Strong stone.’

(dum-dummm)

‘Strengthen me.’

(dum-dummm)

‘Hold me hard.’

(dum-dummm)

‘Against the dark.’

(dummm)

Marcus put down the phone.

Maiden and Underhill were standing on either side of the unlit woodstove. Marcus shook his head.

‘Surprising how educated, law-abiding people are so reluctant to get involved with the police. Oh, she said, that would put her in a
very difficult position. Client confidentiality, all that bollocks.’

Underhill said, ‘They found Justin, Marcus. The cops finally found Justin. Bobby just talked to—’

‘Where’s Lewis?’

‘Up at the Knoll.’

‘Hmm,’ Marcus said. ‘How much do either of you know about this fellow Kurt Campbell?’

XXXIX

IN THE EARLY EVENING BOBBY MAIDEN BORROWED MARCUS’S TRUCK
and drove down to the village, to Grayle’s cottage. He’d never been here before. The windchimes gave it away – two sets, hanging either side of a lantern over the old, studded door.

The cottage was in the middle of the terrace which lined one side of the short street, with the church wall on the other. The tiny forecourt space was filled by the Mini. Maiden parked the truck in the rutted road.

It was dark; the wind had died but the air was colder. There was a dim light in the squat-towered church. It was all very quiet, no kids around, no dogs barking. The lantern came on and by the time he reached the front door Grayle had it open.

‘Isn’t New York, is it?’ Maiden said.

‘Guy in the shop says the last time the council retarred the village street it was for Queen Victoria’s carriage.’

She wore a dress tonight: woollen, red, long-sleeved. Maiden guessed that after today – Grayle in the baseball jersey, Cindy in the twinset – she was reclaiming her gender.

He paused on the threshold. ‘You really feel you belong here?’

Grayle frowned. ‘You know how much I hate small talk, Bobby. Why don’t you ask something heavy?’

‘You annoyed with me?’

She didn’t smile. ‘I’m annoyed with everybody. Why I came home
early. Put it down to time of the month. Like, it isn’t, but it tends to satisfy guys, you tell them that.’

‘There many guys around here?’

‘Sure. Farm guys. Retired guys. Rich guys with weekend cottages and two kids. Who needs guys anyway? All guys are stupid. Come in.’

He saw crystals on the windowsill, a brass Buddha in the small inglenook fireplace next to a bed of ash. Reflected in a long mirror opposite, he saw, to the left of the front door, a plaster statue of Anubis, dog-faced Egyptian god of the dead, wearing a jewelled poodle collar.

Grayle said, ‘Cindy still up there with Marcus?’

‘Examining the psychic history of Overcross Castle. Driven men. It’s like they’re planning a siege. I needed to get away for a while.’

‘Maybe this is a good thing for Marcus, I don’t know. Anyhow, welcome to the bijou dwelling. Siddown, grab a crystal, strengthen your vibes. I have water boiled for herbal tea. Or you can have coffee.’

‘Herbal tea? Wonderful.’

‘New Age freaking cop. Oh boy.’

Maiden didn’t sit down; he followed her into the kitchen, where bunches of dried hops hung from the ceiling beams.

‘Speaking as a cop, I don’t know whether it’s a good thing for Marcus or not. A psychic festival run by a TV hypnotist doesn’t worry me a lot. But if the spiritual input somehow involves Gary Seward …’

‘You feel that, in spite of two killings and all that horrific violence surrounding Clarence Judge, Cindy and Marcus are not taking him seriously enough.’

‘The whole nation doesn’t take him seriously enough any more. If you smile on TV, people think you’re their friend. As for Marcus and Cindy, is there an age after which you just don’t care any more?’

‘It’s my fault.’ Grayle poured boiling water into a small brown pot. ‘I wish I’d never remembered we’d had an invite to that thing.’

How
YOU
can be part of
The Overcross Experience…

Grayle had found the leaflet in the boxfile she’d marked
Probably junk, but who knows?

The leaflet said the organizers of the Festival of the Spirit were offering the magazine a unique opportunity to meet its public face to face by taking a stand at the most prestigious event of its kind ever staged on British soil.

Marcus had gone ape when he saw what they were charging for a stand.
Bloody grasping little con-man
– all this and more. Which was just as well, far as Grayle was concerned. The way she saw it, if they took a stand at the festival, readers would indeed have a unique opportunity to meet with Marcus. After which
The Vision
would have no circulation worth a damn.

The leaflet promised a world-famous medium for the re-creation of a Victorian seance. Today Callard’s agent had confirmed to Marcus that she was the one and now under heavy pressure from Kurt Campbell not to renege – Campbell even suggesting he might be able to
solve her problem.

How did
he
know what the problem was?

Because he used, until recently, to sleep with her. Ah.
Right.
Well, no big surprise there, given Callard’s reputation and that they were both tied into the entertainment industry – tight enough in the States, over here it was claustrophobic. Also, Campbell was a male person under ninety years of age with links to paranormal research.

And also, in a negative kind of way, to Cindy.

Oh boy. When Cindy came down from the Knoll and heard about Callard and Campbell and Overcross, he became real weird, weirder than last night when he’d come out with all that stuff about getting old and washed up. It swiftly became clear that Cindy figured it was Campbell who had fucked him over with the papers.

The upshot was that Cindy had offered to pay half the fee if they could still hire a stall for
The Vision
at the Festival of the Spirit. Which started, as it happened, in two days’ time, Wednesday through to the weekend.

Like this was part of his destiny. He’d been up to the Knoll to ask for an answer, and when he got back to the farm, there they all were around a marketing circular headed,

Overcross Castle:
The Veil is Lifted

Some kind of shamanic signpost.

Jesus.

‘This Kurt Campbell,’ Grayle said, putting down the teatray in the living room, ‘he isn’t really known in the States. He’s like David Copperfield?’

‘He’s not a magician,’ Bobby said, ‘he’s just a hypnotist. Has his own consultancy. But also does TV. These shows where people come on to be made to do humiliating things. Bit like Paul McKenna?’

‘Right. So the thing he did with Cindy – or tried to do – on the Lottery Show …’

‘That was his routine act. But there’s also a serious side to the hypnotism. And this interest in the paranormal, which led to the Overcross project.’

‘So apart from that Seward’s into spiritualism, do we know of a connection between him and Campbell?’ Grayle put the pot on the tray between two mugs with Cottingley fairy faces on them. ‘I’ve been trying to read his book, but it’s all written in dialect and jargon, so presumably ghost-written from taped interviews. Jeez, I don’t even understand the title.’

‘Clumsy pun on London villain-speak. The only mention of Campbell is a passing reference to him and Seward once appearing together on a TV talkshow.’

‘So?’ Grayle shrugged. ‘Showbiz is a small world. Seward’s plugged into the same circuit. It means squat.’

She thought Bobby looked tired. Sitting there by the inglenook, all dark eyed and unreadable. Was his agenda linked to amber eyes and brown breasts and hair you could use to tie up a boat in a storm?

She poured pink tea. ‘So what’s gonna happen at this seance?’

‘That’s what bothers Marcus. What happens when she goes into trance and Clarence – if it is Clarence – takes over?’

‘But if Seward’s behind this, isn’t that what he wants?’

‘But if this Victorian seance is a highly public event … I mean really public, as distinct from an invited audience of Midlands villains.’

‘It’s a conundrum, Bobby. I guess you want to be there, too, don’t you?’

‘I don’t know. I hate going into anything blind.’ He drank some herbal tea, didn’t wince. ‘I wondered about going to see Kurt Campbell.’

‘Now?’

‘Well, tomorrow.’

‘On what pretext?’

‘I thought that I could take a temporary job with
The Vision.
Request an interview about the festival, with its founder.’

‘Sure. Except the next
Vision
doesn’t come out till next month.’

‘He doesn’t know that. I could say it’s out on Thursday, and I’ve just got time to get an article in.’

‘You don’t know too much about production schedules, do you, Bobby?’

‘Yeah, well, he probably doesn’t either.’

‘And interviewing? What do you know about interviewing?’

‘Done thousands, Grayle. In depth.’

‘Oh, yeah, sure. Like, “Where were you on the night of the fifteenth and don’t give me no shit or I’ll slap you around the cell?” What are you, crazy? He’d have you sussed in like four minutes. Listen, I’ll go. I shoulda thought of this. I’ll do the interview. Which is why you came here, right?’

‘It is
not
why I came. Besides, they very likely know your name.’

‘So you think this would, uh, expose me to some risk?’

‘Well, no, not particularly. That just happens in movies, but—’

‘Like the movies where they crush you to death with an old car? What the hell, the way I’m feeling I could use risk.’

‘Bad attitude, Underhill. Consider yourself off the case.’

‘Screw
you.
Listen, OK, here’s what’s gonna happen. We both go. I’m Alice D. Thornborough of
The Vision.
And you could be … you could be like Lenny Lens, the photographer. You can handle a
camera, aside from mugshots and pictures of DOAs in chalk outlines?’

‘I can handle a camera. We don’t do chalk outlines.’

‘Well, as it happens, I have a camera here. A Nikon,
ex-Courier.
Convincingly professional. We’ll do it. Hell, let’s go interview Seward too. Let’s stir some shit.’

‘That’s a
very
bad attitude,’ Bobby said.

‘Yeah?’

Grayle caught sight of herself in the long mirror, amid the crystals, the Tree of Life poster, the Egyptian dog of the dead. For all the tough talk, she looked small and lonely in her red frock, a lost kid in a fairy grotto. She was just four miles from where her sister was murdered.

She coughed. ‘This herbal tea’s making me feel sick. Let’s get some serious coffee. Old-cop strength.’

XL

‘GUY’S A SAINT, IT APPEARS.’

On the editorial room table, Grayle gathered together the cuttings on Kurt Campbell. Say what you like about Marcus, he was assiduous in compiling files on anything and anybody connected to the paranormal.

Just that these clippings were hardly firming up the image of a man who would facilitate a not-necessarily-ex criminal’s plan to contact the spirit of his psychopathic buddy.

‘Seems Campbell once flew to Belfast to give hypnotherapy free of charge to a kid of four who’d become mute after both his parents were shot in front of him by the IRA.’

‘Worked too, as I recall,’ Marcus said.

‘Apparently.’

At nine a.m., she’d called the PR firm handling the Overcross Festival and left a message requesting an interview with Kurt. In case
The Vision
sounded too smalltime, she’d given the name of the
New York Courier
– well, they
had
invited her to submit freelance pieces after she quit.

‘Also, Campbell gives his services to all kinds of youth charities, and he’s worked with terminally ill people to calm their minds, and ease pain to the extent that some of them no longer needed drugs. Gee, Cindy,’ Grayle looked up in dismay, ‘you’re a guy really knows how to choose his enemies.’

‘Indeed,’ Cindy said gloomily. ‘Even though – as all too few
will now remember – the saintly Kurt, it was, who chose me.’

He still wore yesterday’s twinset, but without the pearls and fewer bangles. No defiance today, Grayle thought, this was comfort-dressing.

None of today’s papers actually said he was finished. They didn’t have to.

The
Mirror’s
lead headline was

Lotto-phobia!

The angle was that outlets and agents all over Britain were reporting that the sale of Lottery tickets had slumped to an all-time low because so many people were now ‘afraid to win’.

‘It gets worse,’ Bobby said glumly. ‘Look at this.’

Grayle peered over his shoulder. One of the tabloids had found another bunch of ‘victims’ of the curse of Kelvyn Kite, two pages’ worth.

“’I haven’t had a day’s luck since I won two million,”’ Grayle read out. ‘“The day after we were featured on the Lottery Show, I discovered my wife was having an affair with her boss. Now we’re getting divorced and she’s demanding half my money and the new house.”’

Bobby said, ‘“My partner’s health seemed to break down all at once, and we had to cancel the cruise …’”

‘”… and the money meant we were able to fly to Houston, Texas for the fertility treatment, but it all went horribly wrong …’”

‘Stop,’ Cindy cried weakly. ‘I can take no more.’ He passed a limp hand over his forehead, half-hearted theatrics. Tried to call up his former producer again this morning. No answer, no machine switched on. Like she was avoiding having to speak to Cindy or call him back.

‘Well, I’ve seen this happen before,’ Grayle said, as brightly as she could. ‘You plant the idea of a jinx and all these jerks suddenly realize they never knew what bad luck was till they got lucky. Perverse. People are assholes. And, you know, it snowballs for a couple days and then it’s just like it never—. Oh, Jesus, will you look at this? The
Sun
just opened a Lotto Curseline. You believe that?’

‘Interestingly,’ Marcus said, ‘the broadsheets barely mention Lewis. The
Guardian
quotes a psychologist who says a major surge of disillusion with the Lottery was inevitable after a few years and people are simply using this nonsense as a vehicle for expressing it.’

Nonsense?
This sounded like Marcus actually trying to cheer Cindy up. Wow.

‘Hey, they actually use the word nonsense, Marcus? Gotta be a step toward sanity.’

‘I’m afraid, my friends,’ Cindy said in a voice full of finality, ‘that it doesn’t matter
what
they call it now.’

And Grayle knew he was right. The BBC would fire him, change the show around and everything would be just fine again inside a couple of months … except, of course, if you were Cindy, for whom the Lottery Show meant more than he was ever going to admit. He loved it when people loved him despite that he was weird. And he knew that this time he was too old to come back.

Cindy straightened his cuffs, half-smiling like some elderly maiden aunt with no stake in the present, no hope for the future. The future was Kurt Campbell – a couple years younger than Grayle, a lot of money and a reputation that was firming up again after a minor hiccup. Caused by an old guy who wasn’t coming back.

The phone rang.

Kurt Campbell’s PR firm, for Grayle.

‘It’s gonna be tight,’ she told Bobby, hanging up. ‘Kurt’s doing an interview at BBC Pebble Mill in Birmingham late morning, then he’s over to Radio Gloucester this afternoon. Bottom line is he can give us twenty minutes at his hotel, early evening.’

‘Which is where?’

‘Cheltenham, ironically. Twenty minutes isn’t much, but I told them we’d be there.’

It was ten-thirty, just gone. Marcus had his tweed hat in one hand, Malcolm’s lead in the other. ‘Thought we could go in your car, Lewis. Leave Maiden the truck.’

Grayle shook her head at him. ‘I don’t see this. I don’t see why you had to hire the damn stall. Why not just go in as a visitor, tomorrow, when it starts? Mingle with the Tarot readers and the palmists and the Kirlian photographers.’

‘Because, Underhill, visitors asking too many questions attract attention, whereas someone who’s invested in the thing has a right to want to know what the fuck’s going on. Anyway, we’ve arranged to go and look this morning, and if we like the pitch we’ll take it. Also thought we might open ourselves to the ambience of the world’s only purpose-built haunted house. See if we can uncover what this bastard was up to.’

He placed in front of Grayle and Bobby a weighty volume from his reference section,
The Encyclopedia of the Unseen.

‘Man of his time, then,’ Bobby said.

‘Jeez.’ Grayle raised disbelieving eyes to the beams. ‘Sounds like he just about stopped short of telling the rich they could take it with them. Surprising he didn’t get rediscovered in the 1980s.’

‘Be interesting …’ Marcus clapped his hands to summon Malcolm, ‘… to see how many of the New Agers at this fiasco realize the kind of man whose memory the event appears to be commemorating. ‘

‘Marcus …’ Cindy looked down, self-consciously removing
some fuzz from his jumper. ‘Marcus, I don’t think I can go.’

Marcus looked up so quickly his glasses wobbled. ‘What did you say?’

‘I … don’t want to go. Not today, anyway.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘I suddenly feel quite uneasy. I’m sorry, this is most unlike me. Never before felt the weight of fate and circumstance so heavily against me. I’m not ready to go out there. I need more time. Why don’t we go tomorrow? There’ll still be time to set up the stall. What I thought … I thought I would walk up to the Knoll again. Dwell for a while. Consider. Uneasy, I feel. I’m so sorry.’

‘Uneasy?’ Marcus changed colour. ‘It’s me who should be feeling bloody uneasy! Do you think I
want
to be seen around with a blindingly obvious transvestite?’

‘I’m sorry … perhaps a breath of air.’ Cindy brushed at his skirt. He truly was agitated, Grayle thought. This wasn’t acting.

Marcus expelled breath. ‘Just go and get in the bloody car, Lewis. You’ve got to face the damned public sometime.’

Cindy bit his lip, pulled down his jumper. Made his way down the passage. ‘S’truth,’ Marcus said through his teeth.

‘He’s got big problems, Marcus,’ Grayle admonished. ‘His career just took the final dive.’

‘I know he’s got problems.’

‘He’s also receptive to things.’

‘Don’t start
that,’
Marcus snapped.

They walked out to the yard. The wind had changed and the sky over the ruins was heavy with clouds veined and yellowed like mature Stilton. Something had clearly altered since yesterday. Or maybe it was just wrong to use Cindy as a weather-vane.

‘Why do I feel that if Kelvyn Kite was out of his case,’ Grayle said to Bobby, ‘he’d say this was all gonna end in tears?’