Mean Spirit (37 page)

Grayle said hoarsely, ‘Why’d you have to kill him?’

Seward shook his head a little, in non-comprehension. ‘Darlin’, you’re talking like this was an innocent member of the public. He dabbled. He had his fingers in the pie, he lost his fingers. It happens.’

‘Where do you draw the line?’

‘I dunno.’ Seward looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe I ain’t as pragmatic and businesslike as I was. Comes from not needing to do it for a living no more. All them years you spend watching your back and the law and planning everything careful, like a military operation. And then you write a book, do telly, and the money just bleedin’
rolls
in. It’s weird – you don’t have to do nothing to nobody for it. Get invited to invest in legit business. And suddenly you’re just bleedin’
loaded
– you’re turning over twice, three times what you used to take off the suckers.’

Ron Foxworth sniffed in contempt. ‘Military operation my arse. All you ever were was a grown-up version of the kid that used to take other kids’ dinner money.’

‘Ronald—’

‘Drugs and protection, that was you, Seward. The dregs. The gutter. You never planned a clever job, not ever. You were just this mean, ruthless bastard who never cared who got hurt. That was the whole secret of your success, Gary, you never gave a flying fart who suffered along the way.’

‘Ronald,’ Seward smiled delicately, ‘I rather think, my old friend, that you are beginning to show off to the children. Which cannot be tolerated. I don’t think I’m gonna tell you again not to do that, know wha’ mean?’

Grayle said, to diffuse the horrifying tension, ‘If you’re making so much money, Mr Seward, why are you still—?’

Seward shifted in his chair and she caught the cold eyes in the gloom, and it was like coming face to face with a wolf in the undergrowth.

‘You’re a clever girl. I got to say I never really liked clever women. They ain’t never clever enough to know when to stop.’

Foxworth sighed. ‘
I’ll
explain this, if Gary doesn’t mind, Miss Underwood. It’s because he’s got everything he ever wanted and
he doesn’t feel alive any more. He got addicted to the buzz. And the buzz in having everything you ever wanted … for a man like Gary, it starts to fade on day two.’

‘You mean like when the body’s replete you realize how starved the spirit is.’ Grayle frantically recalling a think-piece she once wrote for the
Courier
about why so many billionaires and movie stars and rock stars got obsessively into New Age studies.

‘But in that case’, Bobby said, turning this into some kind of crazy, surreal debate, ‘don’t you start to reject your material wealth and remember all the people you misused and try to repay them? Don’t you start trying to put something into the world to replace what you took out before you saw the light?’

‘Yeah. And that’s …’ Grayle sat forward. ‘Like, this one time I had a long discussion with Shirley McLaine, and she—’

‘And it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of Heaven,’
Seward said.

‘It’s a point of view,’ Grayle said.

And then cowered back in her chair as Seward rose, snarling, tiny jewels of spit popping out.

‘You airy-fairy, nampy-pamby
twats
! You’re just fucking
hippies
! You’re like them bleedin’ doped-up crazies we’re fleecing out there! Shirley Fucking McLaine? Listen … do you know why the Victorians got closer than anybody has since to proving life after death? ‘Cause they didn’t fart about wiv peace and love and this shit. The Victorians, the old spiritualists, Crole and Abblow and them … they was scientific. They didn’t make the mistake of thinking life after death had to do with bleedin’ religion. They did what had to be done. Know wha’ mean? Nah, you don’t, do you? None of you bleedin’
know
!’

There was a pool of silence.

Then Bobby tossed in a rock.

‘I know what you mean. It’s like the way Crole and Abblow realized it was necessary to kill John Hodge.’

‘And what do you know about that, cock?’

‘I think they wanted him for a ghost,’ Bobby said into a sudden cavern of silence. ‘For the first purpose-built haunted house.’

Grayle said, ‘Huh?’ Then a pulse of pure understanding went through her like white fork-lightning.

‘Go on, Bobby,’ Seward said.

There was a tap on the door.

‘Come,’ Seward said.

Grayle turned her head to watch the door. When it opened and the blue-white light fell in, she realized how dark it had been with that one miserable bulb.

With the light came Persephone Callard. Behind her, Grayle saw the thin security guard.

Callard stood there in her dark dress. Her hair was in one long, dense, bellrope plait. She looked slowly round the cellar. From Seward to Grayle to Foxworth to Bobby Maiden, making no response to any of them, giving no hint that she knew them. Then she shook her head. She hadn’t seen the handcuffs, but she’d seen enough.

‘Oh no,’ she said, all quiet and succinct and upper class. ‘Oh no, I really don’t think so.’ She turned to the security guy. ‘Take me back. I want to talk to Kurt.’

Seward stood up. He looked suddenly out of condition, like an old-fashioned restaurant manager who ate too many of his own rich meals. Maybe he was aware of this: irritation twisted the fixed smile downwards. He walked into the middle of the room.

Held the squat shotgun at waist-level.

Grayle said,
‘Oh
—’

The holes down the shotgun barrels were mineshafts into hell.

‘Shut the door, please,’ Seward said.

LII

‘WOULD YOU COME WITH US, PLEASE, MADAM?’

‘Are you arresting me, officer?’ Cindy held a hand to his throat, affronted but dignified.

‘You could say that.’

‘I don’t think you
can,
mate,’ Lorna Crane said. ‘You got no powers to arrest anybody.’

The Forcefield officer quite clearly believed otherwise. He had the frame of a bodybuilder and the considerable acne of a fifth-former. He carried a rubberized torch nearly two feet long.

‘This woman has stolen money and jewellery from a number of stalls,’ he said with a certainty the actual police were rarely permitted to exercise.

‘Oh.’ Cindy began to feel resentful. ‘Jewellery
and
money? And do you have the evidence?’

But he knew he was trapped. The youth had at least one of his colleagues behind him. And behind
him,
probably a great many members of the Lottery-following public who would enjoy seeing a disgraced Cindy Mars-Lewis ignominiously led away into the gaily coloured night.

‘Get lost, sonny,’ Lorna said. ‘I’m paying silly money to occupy this tent and as long as I’m doing that you’re not welcome here. Go on. Push off.’

‘Please stay out of this, madam. It’s really not your concern.’

Lorna erupted. ‘You got a flaming nerve! You clowns marching
round like bloody storm-troopers – you’ve got less authority than traffic wardens! This is supposed to be a
spiritual
event. You know what that means? I doubt it. I tell you, a lot of things here don’t fit and you Gestapo bastards are one of them.’

‘I think you’ll find,
madam,
that this will go down on record as one of the least troublesome festivals of its kind ever staged. And that will be precisely because we don’t tolerate stealing or’, he sniffed, ‘drugs.’

‘Oh, do me a
favour
…’

‘We don’t do favours on drugs.’

‘No? Depends who’s selling them, doesn’t it?’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘What’s a lie? Go on, bugger off, you’re all bent.’

The boy turned his back on Lorna. A leather-gloved hand went out to Cindy. ‘Come on. We don’t want a scene. I’m only obeying orders.’ Steering him towards the tent flap.

Only obeying orders.
God forbid. Cindy was suddenly quite afraid of this humourless boy and his masters, and of where it was going to end.

‘Bastards,’ Lorna said. ‘And you’ve got an aura the colour of shit.’

Grayle felt a small tug on the handcuff as both Bobby and Ron Foxworth moved to the edge of their chairs. Both pairs of cuffs clinked, and Persephone Callard glanced across and saw the situation for the first time, and her whole body went taut.

Grayle could almost see Bobby thinking that now would be the time for all three of them to rush Gary Seward, hold him in a chained circle … that this would be the last chance they’d get.

And then, what would happen was that Seward would let off the gun.

The sawn-off twelve gauge.

As Grayle understood it, British hoods appeared to hold this weapon in some kind of black affection as part of their criminal heritage. The only time she’d seen one before was last year, with Marcus, when they visited a grisly crime museum in a small town near the Forest of Dean. There were also old police helmets, domestic artefacts from the Kray household and a skeleton in a cupboard. You tried to laugh.

Close up, this gun, like Seward, was about as funny as cancer, as sentimental as Hitler’s smile. Close up, you could clearly understand the point of sawing off the barrels more than halfway down. If all three of them went for Seward, whatever was down there would come out like some kind of heavy metal custard pie, and if any of them survived it, it would not be a great life thereafter.

Bobby half-turned and Grayle met his dark eyes and saw that he was arguably more scared than she was, maybe having seen at some stage of his career the carnage a weapon like this could leave. Foxworth stared straight in front of him, but his breathing was faster, and Grayle knew that because of Foxworth, most of all, and the weight of law he represented, there was no way any of them would be walking out of here as long as Seward was in the way with his arms full of death.

Only Persephone Callard looked calmly into the two barrels.

‘The way I see it’, she said candidly to Seward, ‘you could probably also be an actor. Like that idiot upstairs with the whiskers stuck on. I mean, I have, as yet, no reason to think otherwise, yah? You understand what I’m saying?’

The silence lasted long enough for Grayle to try and count, for the fifth time, the filaments in the feeble light bulb.

Callard said, ‘You could put that ludicrous thing away, unlock those people, and we could all go upstairs and have a quiet drink and talk over what I can do to help you.’

‘That’s your proposal, is it?’

Seward walked over to the wall, as though he was giving this serious consideration. He stood with his back to a photograph framed in black lacquered wood. It showed two men posing on either side of an antique microscope. Except it was probably a brand new, state-of-the-art microscope when the picture was taken and the men’s watch-chains and yard-brush moustaches were the height of fashion.

‘Know who these two are?’

Callard shook her head.

‘That’s Crole, that’s Abblow. That picture was took right here where we’re standing. This was their research lab. This basement, where we are now.’

‘I guess that’s why you couldn’t bear to change the bulb,’ Grayle said.

‘Shut the fuck up, Grayle. Do you feel their presence, Miss Callard?’

‘I really don’t believe’, Callard said, ‘that you’re stupid enough to think the atmosphere in here at the moment is conducive to any kind of psychic communication.’

‘No?’ Seward walked round the wall until he and his weapon were somewhere behind Grayle and the others, sending a cold tingle of apprehension through her neck. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, sweetheart, I got good reason to think this atmosphere is close to bleedin’ perfect.’

Outside a small crowd had gathered, ten or fifteen people. Cindy recognized a number of them as stallholders and resident psychics. A murmur rippled through the group as Cindy was brought out.

A young man stepped forward. He wore a motorcycle jacket. A golden ankh hung from one ear and his shaven head was green and red under the coloured lights. He stood in the path of the second and older Forcefield officer. His accent was deepest Lancashire.

‘You know who you’ve got there, man, don’t you?’

‘We’ve got a thief.’ One of the security guards gripped Cindy’s arm, bruisingly, above the elbow. ‘Out of the way, please.’

‘That is Cindy Mars-Lewis, man.’

The Forcefield man snatched a look at Cindy; his eyes widening momentarily. ‘It doesn’t matter to me who it is. It’s what she … he … has nicked is what concerns us, so you just—’

‘Perhaps,’ Cindy said, ‘I could meet the person who is accusing me of theft. Or you could simply name the stall from which the items are alleged to have been removed.’

‘I think what you do is you let go of him, man,’ the young man in the leather jacket said. ‘You’re nowt but a bumped-up bouncer, anyroad.’

At which the Forcefield men hardened visibly, the two of them shoulder to shoulder, like riot police.

The older one said, with a formality which was indeed indicative of an earlier career in the police service, ‘Under the authority invested in me by the organizers of this event, I must ask you to step out of the way. And I must warn you that if you
don’t
—’

The young man smiled. ‘And by the authority invested in
me
by
the radiance of the unquenchable flame, I’m warning
you
that if you don’t let go of Mr Mars-Lewis right now, me and my enlightened brethren will take you and your mate over the field there and shove them bloody big torches where the eternal light never shines.’

A cheer went up. Several other people moved forward. Including, Cindy observed, the mild little man who had carried the placard relating to the death of John Hodge. When the Forcefield officer let go of Cindy’s arm so that he might grip his long torch with both hands, the shaven-headed boy grinned in satisfaction, thrust himself between the security men and Cindy and pushed out a hand.

‘Maurice Gooch, Federation of South Pennine Dowsers. Glad to meet you, Cindy, man.’

Seward’s nasal voice was so close behind Grayle that she imagined she could smell his breath. ‘See, what you got in here is Clarence’s, as you might say, vibe. Clarence’s kind of atmosphere. Put the old love in a dark room wiv a few frightened people and an air of – as you might say – repressed violence, and poor old Clarence, he’d become very excited indeed. Isn’t that true, Ronald?’

‘You mean, was he sick?’ Foxworth said. ‘Yes, the man was very sick.’

Callard pointed at a silver-framed photograph on one of the tables. ‘Is that him?’

Holding her cool with difficulty now. She’d walked down here, presumably, of her own free will. Convinced that, whatever was going to happen, she would be in control. She was Persephone Callard, she was famous, she was unique; either she got to call the shots or she walked away.

Here, in this half-lit dungeon, Gary Seward, with his sawn-off gun, was calling the shots. Callard’s outrage, Grayle guessed, had not yet quite been overtaken by fear.

‘Clarence was young then, Miss Callard.’ Seward motioned with his gun at the photo. ‘And the ladies was fond of him. Sad, really. He never could understand why, as he got older, they shied away.’

‘So not too smart either,’ Grayle said.

‘Grayle Underwood, you get the second warning,’ Seward said quietly. ‘Now, Miss Callard, you see that jacket on the hanger? Over the heaters?’

Grayle saw that the jacket was black or dark grey. That all three buttons were fastened. Oh Jesus.

‘He had two suits like that,’ Seward said. ‘He was cremated in the other. That one over there is the actual jacket he was wearing when he died.’

Callard made no comment. Grayle saw her glance at Bobby.

‘We did have it cleaned. That was probably a mistake. Too late now. Now this shotgun. This wasn’t actually Clarence’s – he was more of a hands-on craftsman, know wha’ mean? – but he was the geezer modified it. Sawed off the barrel for me, filed it down nice, so it didn’t rip the lining of your coat.’

‘This is the Clarence Museum,’ Bobby said.

‘A Clarence
shrine,
cock. Now, in my understanding, Miss Callard, and from what young Kurt’s figured out from studying the pioneering work of Anthony Abblow, I think I’m right in saying we could not have a better atmosphere into which to invite the spirit of my dear old friend.’

‘That’s simplistic,’ Callard said, but there was a faint sheen on her face.

‘Nor indeed a better person to facilitate the connection. You’re number one, ain’tcha? The most effective medium in this country, maybe the world?’

‘I don’t think so. I think I’ve just had the most publicity.’

‘Nah. Don’t undersell yourself, sweetheart. See, even Kurt thinks you’d be the one Abblow hisself woulda picked for the job. On account of you got no religion.’

Grayle remembered the heavy cross Callard had worn around her neck. It was not visible tonight; she wore no jewellery with the plain black dress.

‘Plus,’ Gary laughed his awful laugh, ‘Clarence was quite fond of coloured ladies. As I recall. And Ron recalls. Tell the people, Ronny.’

Foxworth sighed bitterly.

‘Gary means he raped one once.’

They guided Cindy, somewhat bemused, to a spacious tent jointly rented, apparently, by practitioners of t’ai chi and transcendental meditation. There were cushions and rugs and oriental lanterns, and the central space was swiftly filled by people reflecting that mixture
of the quaint, the exotic and faintly menacing which had come to characterize such gatherings as this.

‘Why the disguise, Cindy?’ Lorna Crane asked him. ‘I don’t get it. You’re a legend. We were all having a laugh earlier on about the directors of Camelot jumping from the fourteenth floor.’

Cindy was startled. ‘They haven’t?’

“Course they haven’t. But I think everybody here agrees the National Lottery’s a force for the dissolution of society.’

‘It is?’

‘What?’ Lorna snorted. ‘Millions of people living from ticket to ticket? Gotta be a millionaire by weekend or life’s not worth living? Buying more and more tickets, five times as many on a roll-over week, ’cause that’s
big
big money? And if they lose on Saturday, they’re spiritually comatose until Wednesday, existing day to day on a drip-feed of Lottery Instants. And if they win, everybody who ever knew them expects a piece and it’s never big enough, and you’ve got this dark fog of hatred and jealousy radiating all around them.’

A small Indian gentleman in a white suit told Cindy, ‘Sir, you have helped enlighten the populace about this pulsing core of negativity thrusting its black tentacles into every household. You have become the vehicle for a necessary karmic force.’

‘Well, I’m not too sure about that,’ Cindy said. ‘Indeed, it was never my intention to become the vehicle for anything more than a mild irreverence, but…’

‘Don’t knock it, man,’ Maurice Gooch whispered in his ear. ‘You’re on a roll here.’ And then, raising his voice, ‘Well, it’s good to have Cindy wi’ us.’

‘It’s a sign!’ someone shouted.

‘Aye,’ said Maurice, ‘but let’s not forget the original purpose of this meeting, which was to elect delegates to express our general dissatisfaction to organizers with the exploitative way the festival’s being run. First up, Forcefield Security. We’ve just had an example of the way them buggers operate – law unto ’emselves, private army – and that’s not acceptable in a civilized society, least of all in what’s supposed to be a centre of enlightenment and human potential. Agreed?’

‘Forcefield must go,’ the Indian gentleman said firmly.

‘Point two – the fees. We all thought the basic charge for a pitch
were a complete rip-off, but we thought it were worth coppering up for on account of it were such a prestigious event.’