Mean Spirit Part 51

By the time he reached The Vision stall, it was more than just a few people. He remembered the jokes with Vera about a tabloid reward.

'It'll all end in tears, you mark my words!' a man yelled, and there was laughter. Images battered Cindy: the car siege in Malvern Link, the jeering, the taunts, the anger, Marcus slumped under a lamp post.

'Please! Leave me alone!' he yelled helplessly. Bobby, Bobby, where are you?

Flinging himself into the tent, where he stood gasping, appalled at his loss of control. But he couldn't cope with this now. Let them all tear each other to pieces in the race to the phone, to be the first to finger the fugitive Cindy Mars-Lewis and claim their blood money.

'Well, well,' a woman said dryly. 'I thought it was, all along.'

'What are you doing here?'

It was the woman from the next tent, the etheric ma.s.seuse, Lorna something.

'Lorna Crane.' She was standing, hands on trim hips, under the photos of High Knoll, spotlit now. 'And what I am doing here, Mr Cindy Mars-Lewis, is helping you out. I've sold a hundred and three copies of The Vision, between clients. Also seven subscriptions. And taken the addresses of two women who would like to correspond privately with Marcus Bacton. One left a photo of herself. Taken fifteen years ago, if I'm any judge. Money's in a cashbox under my treatment couch, it's all quite safe.'

'Thank you,' Cindy said, bemused. 'It's very good of you. We must ... pay you.'

'Nah,' Lorna said. She shouted at the small crowd gathering outside. 'p.i.s.s off, eh? He'll be out later.' She grinned. 'Must be amazing, having fans, being adored.'

'I fear you misunderstand. They want to tear me apart. The bogeyman, I am now. Baron Samedi. Kali the Destroyer.'

'What are you on about?' Lorna took from the sleeve of her multihued jumper a sizeable spliff and a book of matches. She got the spliff going, inhaled joyously, offered it to Cindy, who declined. 'Don't need this stuff, I suppose, when you're a shaman. That all true, Cindy? The Celtic shaman bit?'

'I never have denied an interest,' Cindy said cautiously. 'Excuse me just a moment.' He pushed into the tiny rear compartment, where Grayle had left the small case containing her dress for the seance. Flipped open the case. The clothing was still there, neatly folded. Cindy went cold.

'She hasn't been back. She hasn't been back.'

Lorna stood and eyed him blearily through the smoke.

'That guy, the photographer, he came back.'

'When?'

'I dunno. Two, three hours ago. I haven't got a watch. Maybe longer. Yeah, it was light. He come in and had a cuppa, then some guy was shouting for him and he p.i.s.sed off.'

'And you haven't seen him since? What about the girl?'

'Nah. n.o.body else. I tell you, though, his aura looked like s.h.i.t.'

'Bobby?'

'I told him to go and sleep it off and not talk to anybody.'

'Lorna, have you any idea where he-?'

Cindy froze over the case. A man had entered the tent behind Lorna.

Blue-black uniform, with silver epaulettes. Cap with black, shiny peak.

He said, 'In here, Gavin. We got her.'

Suddenly it was real eerie.

The bulb was low wattage, you could look hard at it, see its filament, how spidery and frail it was. Like in the early days of electricity, when technology was a small glow in a big fog. When spiritualism was born.

And Seward, all light and shadow in his evening suit, looked out of that era, too. She was recalling him now from the TV talkshow in the States. Dave! How are ya mate? 'Ere ... brought yer some'ing ... Get these dahn yer ... jellied eels. You'll never go back to pizza again, mate.

Leaning back in his chair now, the shotgun on his knee. He couldn't let that thing off in here; the honoured guests would hear it booming like an earth tremor under their feet.

Sure. And think it was just another sound-effect, courtesy of Mr Daniel Dunglas-Home and the first age of spiritualism.

Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, I never gave you too much respect, you were never enough fun and I only prayed to you when I was in real deep s.h.i.t, but please, please ...

Her wrist, cuffed to the fat, hairy wrist of the big detective, Foxworth, was beginning to ache. Only way she could move it would be to pull his hand down onto her lap. Maybe not.

How long? How long were they gonna sit here, the four of them? Waiting for the toffee-nosed b.i.t.c.h. Just pray she never came. Pray she called the cops instead.

Bobby said casually, 'So who did kill Justin Sharpe, Gary?'

Foxworth's shoulder jerked, dragging the handcuffs, hurting Grayle.

'Oh, that prat,' Seward said. 'Well, he deserved it, didn't he? He was a pain in the a.r.s.e. Little big man. b.l.o.o.d.y nuisance.'

Bobby said, 'He gave you Grayle's name?'

'Did he? Yeah, could be we had it from him.'

Grayle said hoa.r.s.ely, '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 n.o.body 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 a.r.s.e. 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 pa.s.s 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 t.w.a.ts! You're just f.u.c.king hippies! You're like them bleedin' doped-up crazies we're fleecing out there! Shirley f.u.c.king 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 s.h.i.t. 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, c.o.c.k?'

'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 cla.s.s. '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 h.e.l.l.

'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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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, b.u.g.g.e.r 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. G.o.d forbid. Cindy was suddenly quite afraid of this humourless boy and his masters, and of where it was going to end.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' Lorna said. 'And you've got an aura the colour of s.h.i.t.'

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.