Mean Spirit Part 30

'This is a dream, isn't it?' Jo said. 'This has got to be a b.l.o.o.d.y dream.'

'It sounds to me', Cindy said soberly, 'as if the feeding of this background information to the press has been quite cleverly orchestrated.'

'By whom?'

'Not sure. Look, we both knew it was never going to last for ever, Jo.'

Jo gave a kind of yelp. 'What are you saying? Listen ... Listen, listen, listen! Just you stay out of the way. All right? Wherever you are, stay there! Don't talk to anybody. I'm going to tell the Press Office I couldn't get hold of you. Meanwhile, I don't care how you do this lie, cheat ... deny, deny, deny ... but you have to think of a way out of this. You're smart, Cindy, you can talk your way out of anything. Look at the Campbell incident.'

'Ah, yes,' Cindy said. 'The Campbell incident.'

He's obviously just extremely vindictive, Jo had said.

'Just think about how you're going to get us out of this, Cindy.'

The line went dead.

In a big roadside pub, its bar like a deserted factory floor, they took a distant table, ordered coffees. Maiden laid on the table the brown paper bag from the bookshop in Gloucester. They'd stopped in Gloucester because Seffi needed a chemist's. On his way back from the bookshop Maiden had seen her standing against a concrete wall, talking into her mobile.

He tipped out the book. On its cover was a smiling face. A cheery face under a slab of pavement-grey hair. One tooth off-centre, giving the smile that dangerous edge, that Jack-the-lad, lock-up-your-daughters, cross-me-at-your-peril kind of gleam.

The force of the smile gathered in all your attention so that you didn't really notice the eyes, not at first. You didn't notice how cold and fixed they were, like the eyes of a big fish packed in ice; all you saw was the cheery smile and the cheery t.i.tle.

Maiden turned the book round, pushed it in front of Seffi.

BANG TO WRONGS.

A BAD BOY'S BOOK 'Good G.o.d.'

'You recognize him? From the party?'

'Yes. Yes and no. All I remember from the party is hearing the laugh. Not the face. I'm not aware of seeing him at the party, so he must've been keeping well away from me. Maybe another room, I don't know. But, yes, it was nagging at me last night, where I'd heard that laugh apart from the party.'

'And?'

'This was Barber's driver,' Seffi said. 'He picked me up at the hotel.'

'The chauffeur? The chauffeur was Seward himself?'

'Peaked cap, the whole bit. Very friendly, very jovial, big smile. This smile. And, yes, the laugh, for heaven's sake ... that was what I was half remembering. The chauffeur had the laugh.'

'What did you talk about with the chauffeur?'

'He told me how seriously interested his employer was in the spirit world. Suspicious in retrospect because Barber obviously couldn't care less.'

'Is it possible Seward knew that something ... extraordinary ... was likely to happen to you that night, at that party? Did you get that feeling when he was driving you there?'

'I wasn't particularly ...' Her phone went off in her bag, like a small police warbler. 'Yah.' Brusquely.

The female voice in the phone was animated, insistent.

Seffi said, 'Nancy, look, I'm going to have to call you back ... No. No, I don't. Yes, I will. But when I'm ready ... I'll call you back.'

She tossed the phone back into her bag, biting her lip then forcing a smile.

'My agent. In a state of some anxiety. Wondering if she's ever going to make any money out of me again.'

'She know about the ... trouble you've been having? The nature of it?'

'She seems to know too much,' Seffi said, 'but that's not your problem.'

Before they left the pub, she went to the lavatory. She was gone more than fifteen minutes and didn't explain. Maiden guessed she'd been on the phone in there. Very evidently, now, there was something she didn't want him to know about. He was feeling uneasy as they took the road towards Ross-on-Wye and the border.

After a while, she said, 'I won't stay. At the farm. I'll just pick up my stuff. Perhaps you could explain to Marcus.'

'Oh.' He watched her biting her upper lip as she drove, hugging the wheel.

'It was a mistake, anyway, Bobby. I've brought him nothing but ha.s.sle.'

'Marcus likes ha.s.sle.'

'When he's well. But he's not well. I'd never have written to him if I'd known that. I just wanted someone to tell it all to, who wouldn't be judgemental.'

The Jeep rolled into a sandstone village with a Norman church. He saw how she'd tightened up, pulled back into herself. Like last night was something which had happened in a different time-frame.

Which bothered him. He'd felt so close to her. She was right: what had pa.s.sed between them was as intimate as s.e.x. Not casual s.e.x, either.

'What's changed, Seffi?'

'Nothing's changed.'

'You sure? You go to Marcus for advice after twenty years, because he's the only person you feel you can trust. And then you just walk out. You know, it's going to make him feel like a useless old b.u.g.g.e.r.'

She slowed as the road narrowed. She cleared her throat. 'I've got to be somewhere, OK? Tomorrow, probably.'

'You could stay tonight, then?'

'No.'

'Only there are things we need to discuss. All of us. Like the fact that there's someone out there who wants you.'

A truck loaded with gravel came grinding and clanking past, making even the Jeep shiver.

'That's no-one's problem but mine,' Seffi said.

x.x.xI.

'BECAUSE YOU'D'VE SAID NO!' GRAYLE BACKED TOWARDS THE DOOR of the study. 'Am I crazy?'

'Yes!' Marcus roared. 'Also irresponsible and treacherous! How the f.u.c.k dare you go behind my back, you devious b.i.t.c.h?'

'Like you had better ideas? The h.e.l.l you did! All you could say was how you'd failed her, and stomping around in the hair shirt, scourging yourself.'

'You called me ...' Marcus was stabbing a stubby finger across the desk '... a self-righteous old phoney.'

'But a self-righteous old phoney with good contacts. We aren't either of us psychics, but you're the guy who knows people who are. The best people.'

'Mars-Lewis.' The name came out at last, like Jello from a mould, floated there, quivering, between them.

'It was always gonna need someone who works on Callard's level,' Grayle said. 'Spirit level. Whatever.'

Marcus said grimly, 'Where is he?'

'Out back. In his car. He won't come in till you say it's OK.'

'Excellent. That solves everything then. He can b.l.o.o.d.y well sleep out there.'

'Marcus!'

'What do you want me to do? This is your project, Underhill.'

'Go out there and talk to him. It's gonna take you to convince her this is a person she can trust.'

'How can I convince her to trust him, when-?'

'You trust what he does. Come on, Marcus! OK, he offends you as a person, that's neither here nor there.'

'And ... and neither is she ... in case you hadn't noticed! We don't know where she is or when she's coming back. According to your theory she could be in some hotel bedroom with b.l.o.o.d.y Maiden and a do-not-disturb sign on the b.l.o.o.d.y door.'

'You just...' With some difficulty, Grayle controlled herself. She held open the study door. '... go talk to him. Tell him what we need. You can do this.'

But when they got outside, Grayle came to a sudden halt.

'Uh oh.'

Two vehicles nose to nose in the yard: Cindy's Honda and the Grand Cherokee.

'You knew,' Marcus snarled.

'Marcus, so help me, I had no idea! How could I know they were on their way? What am I, psychic?'

Callard stepped down from the Jeep, Bobby Maiden climbing out the other side. Cindy didn't move from behind the wheel.

Marcus turned to Grayle, the volcano in him only smoking. 'You'd better get that mutation out of here for at least two hours.'

'You're gonna talk to her, right?'

'You devious b.i.t.c.h.'

Up beyond the castle, where the pink fields lay quiescent under the glowering Black Mountains, the small late sun poked out of quilted cloud, like a kid's torch under the bedclothes. And Cindy unpacked his case.

Grayle said, 'No birdsuit?'

Cindy had this cloak thing with feathers all over it that you'd think would make him look real silly, but actually it was kind of dramatic if you saw him against the light. And somehow, when he was wearing that cloak of feathers, Cindy was always against the light.

'Today, I think not.' He brought out the drum, the goatskin bodhran with the maze-like patterns representing various journeys of the soul. He was wearing slacks and a tweed jacket. The kindly uncle who took you hiking.

'You figure on taking Callard up to the Knoll?'

'No, little Grayle, but I shall take myself for a while. Originally planned to go up to Carn Ingli, I had, to recharge the inner batteries, but circ.u.mstances dictated otherwise.'

He looked up towards the hills, shading his eyes.

'Of course, the problem with the Knoll, as an energy centre, is that it is oriented to the sunrise and at eventide is itself a touch depleted. However, if I can still my own personal fears, it will be a start.'

'I never think of you as having fears.' Her own worst fear had been a.s.suaged a good deal by what Bobby Maiden had told her quickly, before she'd followed Cindy into the fields. But not totally. The guy was still dead.

'It's nothing,' Cindy said. 'Trivial. Strange, it is ... I had never imagined that piffling career problems would ever weigh on my mind. I suppose it's the thought of getting old, in poverty. Losing friends.'

Grayle was shocked. She'd never heard Cindy talk like this or seen him looking so down. Never even thought of him as old. Was he sick or something? Had he found out about some encroaching disability?

'We're your friends. Even Marcus.'

Cindy smiled sadly.

'And your career's soaring.'

'Like a kite,' said Cindy. 'Like a light aircraft.'

Grayle frowned. 'This have anything to do with that Lottery guy who crashed his plane?'

He didn't react. Grayle watched a layer of deep grey cloud forming over the mountains like smoke from a gra.s.sfire.

'Cindy ... uh ... how exactly do you plan to handle this, can I ask that? Is it gonna be some kind of exorcism?'

'If you mean the gentle detachment and sympathetic redirection of an energy form, then ... perhaps. We shall have to see what's there, isn't it?'

'Will you have to treat her? Rather than ... it? I mean, if this is a purely psychological blockage, how will you approach that?'

Cindy spread his hands.

'The medium speaks of spirits, the psychiatrist of syndromes.'

That was an answer?

So Cindy went off to the Knoll, minus birdsuit, and Grayle carried his shaman's case back to the farmhouse. She found Bobby Maiden hanging around the yard. He was in a curious state. Restless, looking a touch bewildered. He said Marcus had taken Callard into the study.