Authors: Phil Rickman
Had to hand it to Cindy; he was good, could switch personalities in the blink of an eye. Right now, no way would Grayle make the mistake of addressing him as Cindy.
‘We got about ten minutes’, Vera said, taking this huge kettle to one of four sinks, ‘before the caterers arrive to criticize everything.’
‘Big dinner?’
‘The Victorians stuffed themselves silly.’
‘Great,’ Grayle said miserably.
‘Vera,’ Cindy said, ‘those removal men …’
‘Removal men?’
‘Bloody big van. Must be around somewhere.’
‘I never seen no van this end.’
‘Just that I could really bloody use a van that size, if it’s coming back. Got a load of stuff for the bastard stall, held up at Cheltenham station. Thought they might have a spare corner, and if Campbell was already paying them …’
‘They’ve probably gone round the front. Or using one of the side doors.’
‘Possibly. Would you mind if …?’
‘You have a look around, if you want,’ Vera said.
‘Excellent. Stay with Vera, Malcolm.’ Cindy crossed to a central door, pushed through, beckoning Grayle.
They were in a low passage with some narrow, cramped stairs. Servants’ stairs. A row of small bells on a bracket, for Barnaby Crole to summon the butler.
‘Quietly.’ Cindy mounted the wooden stairs. ‘We just want to know what they’re bringing and where they’re taking it and then we’re out of here.’
‘What do you think it’s gonna be?’
‘The furniture, of course. If I’m right, they want to recreate the room where Persephone Callard was introduced to the essence of Clarence Judge. They want her to do it again, see, under the same conditions. And this time she doesn’t walk out on them.’
‘They’d go to that kind of trouble? Transport the whole room? But that’s so crazy!’
Cindy paused at the top of the stairs, looked over his shoulder. ‘Is it?’
‘Look …’ Grayle hung back. ‘I don’t understand this, Cindy.’
Cindy stood above her in his tweed suit and his straw-blond wig now under a black beret.
‘That’s because, little Grayle, you are not a fanatic. This is about fanaticism. It’s also about ego. Egos big enough to want to survive death. The fanaticism and the egotism of Barnaby Crole and Anthony Abblow and Kurt Campbell and Gary Seward. Huge and cosmic, it is, and yet also so terribly small and sordid.’
And he turned and continued to the top of the stairs.
‘What kind of freaking explanation is
that?’
Grayle yelled.
‘Oh,’ Cindy said.
He looked back down at Grayle. His eyes flashed:
caution.
Grayle went up slowly and joined him where the stairs came out in a square hallway with rough panelling, blotched with old mould.
Kurt Campbell stood in a doorway watching her emerge.
And Persephone Callard, sleek in black.
MAIDEN WATCHED HARRY DOUGLAS OAKLEY TRAMP OFF, WITH HIS
contentious placard, to join his evangelical guardians on the edge of the festival car park.
It was mid-afternoon. He hadn’t eaten since leaving Castle Farm. It had started to snow again, flakes fine as flour dusting the windscreen. A few days ago, when he’d driven into Gloucestershire with Seffi Callard, it had felt like early summer.
He sat for a while in the cold truck, trying to form a steady picture from the confusion. It was like one of those magic-eye pictures, that short-lived fad some years back: find the Rembrandt inside the Jackson Pollock.
In no time at all, thanks to Harry Oakley, he’d established the connection. Fact: the purchase of Overcross Castle was the fruit of a collaboration between Kurt Campbell and Gary Seward, whose interest in spiritualism had become an obsession. Seward’s other obsession was his need to find the killer of Clarence Judge – because Clarence was part of Gary’s history, his yardstick of hardness. And because it was not safe for whoever killed Clarence to be out there.
Seward’s fervent, if irrational, belief that this knowledge could be attained through the employment of a good medium – the
best
medium – had led him to Persephone Callard, ex-girlfriend of Kurt Campbell. To conceal from her the involvement of either of them, they’d set up the Cheltenham seance, using Sir Richard Barber as a front.
Question: if Campbell had been so close to Seffi, why hadn’t he
just asked her to do the seance, the way he’d asked her to do the Festival of the Spirit? As a favour, presumably.
What was the real relationship between those two?
(i.e. has she betrayed us? Has she betrayed me?)
Unanswerable. He tried not to think about Emma.
So … OK … the Cheltenham seance had ended in disarray but what it produced was convincing enough for Seward to target Seffi Callard, to do anything to get her back. Resulting in two killings.
And then there was the Riggs connection.
Maiden pushed his face through his cold hands. It was like a mad, holistic dream, unbreakable strands of his experience twisted into a pulsing, fibrous knot. Perfectly logical to the likes of Cindy, who always looked for great and abstract patterns, the Pollock beyond the Rembrandt.
He wished he could talk to Marcus Bacton, that unique blend of the impressionable and the incisive.
The thought of Marcus made Maiden suddenly so absurdly anxious that he pulled out his mobile and rang Worcester Royal Infirmary. Even while he was being transferred to the ward, he heard a voice in his head asking if he was a relative, then saying, gently but firmly,
I’m afraid Mr Bacton died this morning.
His hand was shaking. The snow collected like icing sugar on the rubber wiper blades. He heard the staff nurse answer, heard his own voice identifying himself as Marcus Bacton’s nephew, heard the nurse say that Mr Bacton was making satisfactory progress. Heard Seffi Callard, as Em, purring,
Come on, guv, help yourself to the sweet trolley.
‘I’m sorry, sir, did you hear what I said?’
‘Would you mind not calling me
sir
?’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He was coming to pieces. ‘Oh God. Sorry.’ Get a grip. ‘Would you … tell Marcus everything’s OK. And we’ll be in to see him just as soon as we can.’
‘I said, would you like to speak to him?’
‘What?’
‘Because I think he’d like to speak to
you.
’
‘Well, I don’t think …’
‘Hold on a moment, would you? We’ll get the phone to Mr Bacton’s bedside.’
Damn. He didn’t need this now. He knew what he should be doing, what he should have done days ago … tell Ron Foxworth everything. You could go mad considering Cindy’s shamanic solutions, contemplating Marcus’s Big Mysteries, while people were getting killed.
If it were to turn out to be your delicate, artistic fingers on Seward’s collar, as distinct from my gnarled old digits, I just can’t tell you how upset I would be.
Very sensible. Delicate, artistic fingers weren’t equipped to feel collars. He’d call Gloucester police, ask to speak to Mr Foxworth. Report, to begin with, the Bright Horizon connection with Overcross and the festival. Take it from there.
‘Maiden?’
‘Marcus. How are—?’
‘I want you to do something for me.’
‘Well, if … you know … if I can …’ Maiden said weakly. Marcus didn’t sound weak. He didn’t sound any different after his heart attack, this big, sobering, life-shrinking experience.
‘Maiden, I’ve just had a schoolboy in a white coat at my bedside offering me drugs. I told him to go and sell them on the street like everyone else. Or, alternatively, shove them up his arse.’
‘I see.’
‘The kid seems to have called for back-up. So I’m doing the same. Get me the fuck out of here, Maiden. Tonight. All right?’
Marcus cut the line.
Kurt Campbell smiled.
‘Looking for me, Alice?’ The deep, smoky voice, the voice of a much older man. Like
whole lifetimes
older, Grayle thought.
But Kurt was smiling out of a young hunk’s face. That well-washed tawny hair. And, down below, the tight tawny jeans.
‘Oh hi,’ Grayle said. ‘Listen – this is awful; I’m really … you know, I’m really not that kind of journalist – but we saw this door open and we just had to take a peek, I mean, this place … this place is so awesome. Like, real… like Mervyn Peake … like Gormenghast, you know? I’m a big … big Peake freak. You know? I …’
‘Alice …’ Kurt raised a hand to stop the flow. ‘You’re excused.’ Using the hand to introduce the woman at his side. ‘This is Persephone Callard, by the way.’
Those amber eyes met Grayle’s. So she was doing it. Ms Persephone Callard in from the cold to climax a phoney Victorian seance full of dry ice and ectoplasm.
‘Oh …’ Grayle widening her eyes.
‘Hi!’
Lurching forward, hand out. ‘I’m Alice D. Thornborough, representing the
New York Courier
and
The Vision
magazine. Wow. Hey. Persephone Callard. I can’t believe this. You’re looking so … good.’
Stupid thing to say to someone you weren’t supposed to know, but maybe OK for a journalist who’d read all the stuff about Callard being washed up. And she
was
looking good. Looking, in the simplicity of black – the long skirt, the simple, scoop-necked top, no make-up, no jewellery – like the queen of this place.
And she nodded, like a queen does, and she said nothing, like a queen does to journalists.
However – a whole lot worse – Kurt was looking intently at Cindy, like there was something about this tall bottle blonde in the glasses and the country tweeds that he couldn’t quite identify. Oh, Jesus.
‘Kurt,’ Grayle said quickly, ‘this is Imelda Bacton, of
The Vision
magazine. She’s here to run the magazine’s stand in place of her brother, Marcus, who …’ flicking a swift glance at Callard, ‘… had a heart attack.’
Seeing the quiver, quickly stilled.
‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ Callard said steadily. ‘I once met Mr Bacton. How is he?’ There was shock in her eyes, and Grayle intuited that she was thinking this must have happened the night she brought Clarence Judge into Castle Farm and then ran out on them, that it was her fault.
Which was OK. It might just as easily have happened then.
‘Weakened but recovering,’ Imelda Bacton said powerfully. ‘Needs more than a cardiac blip to take that old bastard out.’
At the sound of the voice, so abruptly different from Cindy’s syrupy south Wales, Kurt Campbell visibly relaxed.
‘I was showing Seffi to her room. The problem with this place is that it has about twenty-six bedrooms and, so far, less than half of
them’ve been refurbished. It’s an ongoing operation, this house.’
‘Like the Forth Bridge, I imagine.’ Cindy gazed up at the ceiling from which paper hung in shreds. ‘You must’ve spent hundreds of thousands on this place already. What the hell possessed you to take it on, Mr Campbell?’
‘I like challenges,’ Kurt said. Grayle saw that he now had no interest at all in Imelda Bacton – too old to screw and probably a royal pain in the ass. ‘Look, Alice … I’d like a word with you. If you want to wait in the main hall – that’s just along this passage – I’ll be down in ten minutes. That’s next to the main door, so if Miss Backley wants to get back to her stand, that’s the quickest way.’
‘Well,’ Cindy murmured as Campbell followed Callard through a Gothic-shaped doorway with no door, ‘that’s me in my place, isn’t it? We have two options, little Grayle. One, I stay with you and Kurt gets suddenly called away again. Two, I disappear.’
‘Has to be two, I guess. We’re lucky he didn’t spot who you really are.’
‘I was careful to keep looking away from him. A hypnotist always recognizes your eyes. Grayle, the more I think about this, a third option might be wiser – we both disappear.’
‘No, I’m gonna wait for him. See this through.’
They walked to the end of the passage and when they came out at the other end the architecture appeared to have shed about six centuries. They were in the main entrance hall and you could see this was where most of the money had gone so far. It was the full baronial: a stone staircase, high stone walls with coats of arms and crossed pikes and deerheads on shields and a gigantic wrought-iron chandelier with flickering electric candles.
Not quite tacky, not quite tasteful. More filmset than authentic haunted house. There were five or six people waiting around. Two wore suits, carried briefcases. One was leaning against a wall by the stairs, talking down a cellphone. Overhead, a black heating outlet pumped out warm air.
There was a big reception desk with wrought-iron legs, three phones on top. Next to a woman with glasses on a chain sat one of the Forcefield guys, looking half-cop, half-paramilitary and wholly bored. A noticeboard leaning up against the desk advertised festival events including an illustrated lecture on Friday evening by the
authors of
The Golgotha Manuscript: the Truth about the Crucifixion
and a session by Ronan Blaine, the revered hands-on healer from Ireland.
‘This is the real thing, isn’t it?’ Grayle said despondently. ‘It isn’t a front for anything. It’s gonna build up year by year, become an institution and make piles of money. Turning Kurt into some kind of New Age Bill Gates.’
The original Victorian Gothic castle door, twelve feet high, hung open. A smoked-glass conservatory had been built on the front, and there were people sitting at tables with computers, selling tickets to events like the Golgotha guys. New Age big business. Exploitation of the seekers after truth.
Grayle suddenly felt angry.
‘We’re wasting our time. If Campbell has anything to hide, he’s got a million places here to hide it. And Callard’s looking all cool and distant and fully in control.’
‘I wonder how.’
‘Hypnotherapy?’
‘Grayle …?’
‘Anyhow, not our problem. I don’t even know what we’re doing here any more, now Marcus isn’t part of it. In fact, unless Bobby has anything meaningful to tell us, I say we close up the stupid stall, go over to Worcester, try to cheer Marcus up and tomorrow we don’t come back. Marcus is our problem now.’
‘Hmmm.’
Cindy was standing looking up the stone stairs. A window on the landing was long and churchy, with stained glass depicting two knights in armour. The guy leaning up against the wall by the stairs put away his cellphone and walked off smiling, and Grayle half-recognized him from someplace. He was in baggy jeans and a grey polo shirt with a short row of black battlements and
Overcross Castle
printed on the pocket.
‘The notorious Gary Seward, as I live and breathe,’ Cindy said mildly.
‘Oh, shit, you’re right!’
‘Don’t
look,
child. Might be as well if he didn’t remember us.’
‘Are we sure it’s him?’
‘A few more lines than the face on the cover of the book, a little
less hair, a little more jowl. So unless he has a slightly older brother …’
‘Shit, we gotta tell Bobby.’
‘It doesn’t
prove
a meaningful link, him simply being here.’
‘The fuck it doesn’t!’
It was like a psychic experience. The manifestation of Seward by the stairs changed everything – made the great hall darker, full of shadows, turned the electric candles in the iron chandelier from sparkling orange to a menacing blood-red.
Cindy appeared unmoved, squinting out through the conservatory. ‘No sign of the furniture.’
She remembered what Cindy had said before they met Campbell and Callard. About egos and survival.
Huge and cosmic, it is, and yet also so terribly small and sordid.
She looked up at the window and the walls and decided she really hated Victorian Gothic. She needed fresh, cold air and trees and sky. She pushed her hands into her raincoat pockets, kept her eyes fixed on the stairs.
Cindy said, ‘I wonder if Miss Callard knows what she’s really here for.’
‘You mean you
do
?’
… yet also so terribly small and sordid.
Grayle saw Kurt Campbell come around the landing and start descending the stone stairs. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘We shoulda gone while we had the chance.’
Arriving back at
The Vision’s
stall, Bobby Maiden found it deserted. A few copies of the magazine had been blown away and were stuck in the mud, pages fluttering miserably like seagulls in an oilslick.
‘I’ve been trying to keep an eye on it,’ a woman called from the next tent. ‘I don’t know where they’ve gone.’
The sign on this tent said,
Lorna Crane, Etheric Massage.
Lorna was fiftyish and fit-looking. She had close-cut red hair and lip rings. She wore apple-green sweats.
‘They – is it your wife and her mother? – they went off with the dog, must be nearly an hour ago. I mean, I can understand them not
wanting to hang around here. We’ll do bugger-all business if the weather doesn’t improve. Bloody stupid idea starting midweek, this time of year, but if you’re getting four days for your money you think it’s worth it, don’t you? You want a cup of tea, love? I’ve got a big flask inside.’