Mean Spirit Part 56

As the woman quietly went out, Grayle said, 'Oh, Jesus, no ...'

Cindy stumbled into the kitchen. It stretched away before him like an old-fashioned hospital ward.

He saw Vera before she saw him.

She was at the bottom end, near the fridges. She was tearing off her Victorian waitress's costume. When Cindy came in, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up something wrapped in brown paper. Instinctively, Cindy didn't ask her if she'd heard the shot. He asked her how he might get into the cellars.

'Those outbuildings at the back?' Vera's voice had toughened, was like whipcord. 'The middle one, the stable. Third stall. Where the manger's been moved.'

'Thank you.' He turned, saw Maurice enter the kitchen.

'From what I gather,' Vera said, 'they needed to be able to get in and out from the grounds. That was those ...'

'Crole and Abblow.'

'Yeah, them. Needed access separate from the house. You go down a bit careful, Cindy, but there won't be a problem. Don't worry about them security men, they're staying well out of it. n.o.body to tell them otherwise. They ain't stupid.'

Cindy nodded. Beckoned Maurice.

'You never saw me,' Vera said.

'No.'

'Him neither.'

'Him neither. Count on it.'

Persephone Callard, liquid-eyed, was slowly shaking her head.

'Silly. Really, really silly, Bobby.'

The liquid in her eyes was blood. Her upper face was all blood, to beyond the hairline.

She laughed. 'I suppose that's my ... TV career f.u.c.ked.'

'Just don't move, Seffi,' Grayle said. 'Don't move a G.o.dd.a.m.n inch.'

Maiden and Seffi were still joined at the wrist. Maiden tried to reach for her hand. His fingers refused to respond.

Seffi smiled. 'He done for me, guv.' Em's voice, ironical.

No. Please, no. Please not again.

Grayle hauled on the horror behind her to try and reach Seffi. 'I guess he fired when Vera shot him. Most of it went high. The table protected us, maybe. I guess Seffi must've ...'

'I want to say ...' Seffi spoke softly but firmly, her lip quivering just a little '... I want to explain why he ... it ... didn't come. Perhaps the one time it would've helped, there's the irony.'

'It did come,' Grayle said.

Maiden stared at her. 'I thought-'

'You thought I was faking. Well, some of it. Some of it was faked. Like, it didn't talk. It was a dead thing. I guess that's what you get, with hypnosis. Aw ... Just forget it. I feel stupid now. I don't know what I saw.'

'Very good,' Seffi said. 'And there'll be a vacancy now, too.'

No!

'Listen, I want to tell you where I went, after the window ...'

'It doesn't matter,' Maiden said. 'Just ...'

'I took the Jeep and I parked it about... half a mile away. Then I tried to sleep for an hour or two. In the car. And then I walked up to that place ... with the burial chamber.'

'High Knoll,' Grayle whispered.

'Yah. I took the cross from around my neck and I laid it on the stone, and I sat there and I waited for the dawn. Wasn't much of one, but I felt... I felt some strange things. I mean, it was ... good. And I was able to ... you know, pray and things like that, and I... I told ... whoever ... that I didn't want to see anything like ... again.'

'Honey,' Grayle said, 'you must've been freezing.'

'Froze my a.s.s.' Seffi smiled. 'Actually I didn't feel cold at all. I feel ... I suppose I feel rather colder now.' She reached out. 'Just a bit. Hold my hand, Bobby?'

He tried. He couldn't.

Her hand lay still as stone between them.

'Thank you,' Seffi said. 'That feels so much better.'

Epilogue: Lines Closed THE HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATOR AT ELHAM GENERAL HAS TRIED TO reason with her. Talked about staff shortages, about her pension.

Sister Andy Anderson told him to go boil his head.

Before she can think better of it, she drives home to the red-brick street by the derelict furniture warehouse, does the usual slalom between the old cars, about three per household, and rushes in to pack a case, leaving the front door open behind her.

When she comes down from the bedroom, there's this woman sitting bold as b.l.o.o.d.y bra.s.s on her sofa, under Bobby Maiden's gouache of the ruins at Castle Farm.

'Whit the fock ...?' Andy's accent is always made denser by shock.

The woman sits quite calmly, bag on knee. She's wearing a shapeless old fake-fur jacket. 'Message from Bobby, Sister Anderson. He says if you can make it to Castle Farm your healing skills would be most appreciated.'

Andy relaxes. 'Already on ma way, hen. I must be psychic.'

Earlier, from the hospital, Andy left a furious message on the answering machine at The Vision.

This followed the call she had in the middle of the night from Marcus Bacton, in another hospital. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have abandoned me, Anderson. I'm giving them precisely one hour and then I'm pulling this b.a.s.t.a.r.d monitor out of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d wall and calling for a b.a.s.t.a.r.d taxi.

Andy suspected the Health Service had done all it would ever be permitted to do for Marcus Bacton.

She remembered what she'd said to Bobby Maiden when he told her she'd never leave Elham. It'll happen. One day soon, I'll be just a memory here. A grating Glaswegian growl in the night. A stale smell of high-tar smoke in the lavvy.

Happened sooner than she'd figured. Looked like only alternative medicine was going to get Marcus Bacton back on his feet.

'Don't I know you?' she inquires of the woman. 'Like from years ago? Were you no' once brought in from Feeny Park with ...?'

'That's right. Consuela. Connie.'

'Aye. So you would be Vic Clutton's ...'

'That's right.'

'I'm so sorry, love.'

'Yeah.'

'Wis down tae Riggs,' Andy says. 'You do know that?' What the h.e.l.l, she's away from here today; doesn't matter what she says now. 'And one day, they're gonnae-'

'Riggs is dead,' Connie tells her.

'Nae kidding,' Andy says slowly.

'He was shot. In a lavatory. At a big house in the Malverns.'

'Where'd you learn that?'

'In tomorrow's papers,' Connie says.

'I see.'

'What I reckon, somebody with a real grudge must've been tracking his movements for several days. Must've known somebody inside Forcefield Security. Learned he was due to attend this reception. And ... you know ... planned ahead.'

'That's b.l.o.o.d.y devious,' Andy says.

'Anyway, I just happened to be pa.s.sing that way last night, and I run into Bobby, and I said I was coming back this morning, and he said would I tell you the score. He said you was ... all right. But I knew that anyway. From Victor.'

'I'm honoured, hen.' From Consuela, Andy learns what she already knows about Marcus Bacton. Also that Bobby is going to need his hand bandaging regularly while he thinks very hard this time about leaving the police. And that Cindy Mars-Lewis is considering minor corrective cosmetic surgery.

'Wee Grayle?'

'The American girl's all right, the dog's all right. The police are looking for Kurt Campbell, the hypnotist. Oh. Yeah. Persephone Callard you've heard of her? The psychic?'

'Aye, I have.'

Connie says without emotion, 'She won't be seeing any more spirits. She was in a shooting incident.'

'Oh.'

'She was blinded,' Connie says.

'Jesus G.o.d.'

'Madman with a shotgun.'

'Have they got him?'

'He's dead.'

'I see. Is all this gonnae mean a lot of explaining for Bobby?'

'I wouldn't know, sister.' Connie stands up. Her small handbag seems surprisingly heavy.

'Or for you?' Andy lifts an eyebrow.

'Well, Bobby ...' Connie hesitates. 'Bobby thinks I'd be better off never having left town these past few days. Though, obviously I couldn't've spent them at home.'

'On account of it was too upsetting for you. Keep looking out the front window, seeing where it happened to Vic. I can understand that. It's probably why you'd've been better off staying with me.'

'That's what Bobby thought.'

Andy nods. Thinks about it.

'Well,' she says, 'it's been nice having you, hen.'

LOTTO BLAZE.

WAS CINDY.

St.i.tCH-UP!.

MIRROR EXCLUSIVE.

by Gregory Cook.

The Lotto inferno which wiped out a whole family may have been started in a bid to destroy top TV host Cindy Mars-Lewis.

The amazing allegation came last night from Cindy's former producer after police revealed that the fire in Banbury, Oxfordshire was arson.

Jo Shepherd, 28, said, 'I know it sounds incredible, but we've all known for some time that certain people had it in for Cindy.

'When two jackpot winners died in close succession, it's my belief that somebody saw their chance ...

'I think the Sherwin family were the tragic victims of a secret vendetta that's gone way out of control.'