The Cold Calling Part 35

Almost exploding with self-hatred, he rolled out of bed and crawled away, in his shame.

'What are you trying to say? What are you walking all around on tippy toes trying, G.o.d d.a.m.n it, to say?'

'We don't know what we are trying to say,' Cindy said. 'We are both of us in the dark. And, when it comes down to any form of remedial action, I am afraid, powerless.'

Grayle said, 'You're trying to say my sister is dead.'

'Of course not,' Marcus said gruffly.

'Or maybe she's insane, right?' Grayle shrilled. 'She got taken over by the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Dark Forces of the Stones.'

'Now see what you've b.l.o.o.d.y done,' Marcus said to Cindy.

'See, maybe ...' Grayle standing at the door, waving her arms. '... maybe the Ancient Evil of the Stones possesses everyone who sleeps there, right? And they're cursed for ever, and when they die their spirits hover around the stones and roam the dark hills and it's all ... it's all Stephen King. Oh, you guys, you sure don't help a person just had their first psychic experience. Do I need this? Do I need an evening with the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Brothers Grimm?'

She started to cry.

'I'll drive you back to the pub,' Cindy said.

'Thanks,' Grayle snuffled.

In the grounds, there was a wooden bench by a stone well-head, capped now, so that you couldn't see down below a couple of feet. Bobby Maiden sat on the bench beside the well, his leaden head in his damp hands.Bare-chested, barefoot. All he'd grabbed were his jeans.

He lifted his head, looked up with his uncovered eye at the shambling facade of Collen Hall. Mostly dark now, except for a small peachy light, a bedside table light, in a first-floor mullioned window.

Room five.

As he watched, the light went out.

'No.'

So tell her. Go back and tell her.

Tell her? About the dreams of death? The body, your own body, rotting around you? Tell her about the fear of sleep?

Tell her everything. Tell her what she'd be taking on.

Yes.

Inside the clanky old car, Grayle apologized.

'Good heavens, child,' Cindy said, 'I think you were rather restrained under the circ.u.mstances.'

'All too much. All at once. Plus, with all our preconceptions of England, everybody staid and reserved and bowler hats and stuff.'

'Underneath it all, my love, we are a horribly weird nation.'

The old car chugged under the castle walls. 'But I'm gonna find her.' Grayle tried to settle in the torn and lumpy, sit-up-and-beg pa.s.senger seat. 'I mean it. I won't leave until I find her.'

'Leave St Mary's?'

'This country. She's somewhere in this country. See, I'm going to this wedding tomorrow, there'll be people there who know her. Maybe even ... Jesus, maybe she'll be there. It's possible.'

'You are a determined girl.'

'Don't patronize me ... s.h.i.t, I'm sorry, there I go again ...'

'No, I am sorry. You must think we're all batty. Me, with my shamanic fantasies, my obsessions. Getting old is what it is, Grayle. Getting old and getting nowhere. An old queen in search of a stable throne.'

'And me? With my ghost fantasy?'

'Fantasy now, is it?'

'I couldn't begin to say. Is it all in the mind? The brain pulling some scam?'

'Is that what you feel?'

'No. I feel ... I feel it really happened.'

'In that case, it really happened. You were a witness to the failure of the spirit of Annie Davies to return to the level from which she might go on. It's quite true what they say. A traumatic death ... an unfinishing ... a s.n.a.t.c.hing away. Causes a blip. The term "earthbound" ...'

'She ... she's out there ... ?'

'She is out there.'

'That's scary. And real sad.'

'Terribly sad, Grayle.' Cindy pulled in under the sign of the Ram's Head. 'Get a good night's sleep. Enjoy your wedding, regardless. And afterwards ... perhaps don't come back. Marcus will look out for Ersula. Leave your telephone number and your address with Amy. We'll keep you fully informed. Get on with your life.'

Grayle put a foot out to the kerbside. 'Aren't you coming in?'

'I'm going back. I need to talk to Marcus while Bobby's out. Some things I haven't been told. This is no night for secrets.'

'Just in time, sir.' The night porter's keys swinging from a thumb. 'About to lock up, I was.'

'Sorry,' Maiden said. 'Left something in the car.'

'Should keep them in your wallet, sir.' The night porter eyed his bare feet, gravel between the toes, and winked.

'Right.' Maiden shuffled a smile.

'Very good, sir. Good night.'

'Good night.'

Bobby Maiden set off up the stairs. The thought of warm, firm Em in the bed set off the old stirring, but that was how it had been before. It meant nothing.

All the artificial candle-lanterns had been switched off, except for one at the top of the stairs. Into his thoughts fluttered the image of a woman standing under it, like the woman standing under the streetlamp. Before he died.

He shook his head.

Opened the fire door to the first landing. Perhaps she'd locked him out. Liz, now, Liz, his wife, would have locked the door, attached the security chain and thrown all his clothes out of the window, everything except possibly the car keys.

Stood for a moment outside the door of room five, the honeymoon suite. The light was out. Ran fingers down the jamb; the door was half an inch ajar and a wave of something broke over him and it was something more than grat.i.tude, and he knew that Emma Curtis wasn't going to be asleep. Felt her grin through the darkness. Life gets complicated, don't it?

Maiden padded into the room.

You didn't give in. You didn't ever b.l.o.o.d.y well give in. You came back. Whatever you left behind, you had to get that back too. You didn't let the grave win. You turned a deaf ear to the cold calling. In the end, love wins.

Love wins. In the darkness, he kicked away his jeans.

A wafer of moonlight lit Em's hair on the pillow as he slid between the posts and into the bed.

All right. This is a bed. It isn't a tomb. The mattress is soft. The four posts are not stones. The carpet is not earth. The smell is in your head; ignore it. You can love her, you can do it.

He slipped a hand under the nightdress, around a breast. Slid it down over a thigh, where she was wet.

'Em? Can I talk to you?'

She didn't reply.

'Em?'

Where she was too wet.

And cold.

He leapt out of bed and across the room and slapped on all the lights.

Smears on the switch as the lights came on.

And on his hands: dark wine-red.

On his chest, his arms. A trail of blotchy footprints from the bed to the switch.

The bed itself ... like a waterbed which had burst.

Dark water.

x.x.xI.

The Morris Minor took a bend on what felt like two wheels, Cindy grinding the arthritic gearbox to get out onto the main road ahead of a container lorry.

Marcus closed his eyes. 'Do you want to kill us both, Lewis?'

Cindy said. 'Do you want to tell me the truth about our friend Bobby?'

As Cindy was coming through the door, the phone had rung and Marcus had said, 'Maiden? Maiden, is that you?' a couple of times, before shaking his head and handing over to Cindy. 'Can't make make out what the h.e.l.l he's saying.' And Cindy had listened gravely, for a long time, to a man sounding like someone teetering on the very edge of the abyss.

Asked Bobby precisely where he was, which sounded from his garbled description like Glangrwynne, between Abergavenny and Crickhowell. There was a bridge there, over the river, and Cindy had very calmly told Bobby to wait there, by the pub, and they would come and pick him up.

'All right,' Marcus said, resigned, as they crossed the Welsh border. 'Name's Maiden. Police detective. Got knocked down by a car in Elham. Died in hospital. Dragged back into the picture by a friend of mine. Anderson. Nursing sister.'

'Friend?'

'And, ah, spiritual healer. Initiated, as it were, by Mrs Willis.'

'Really?'

'At the Knoll,' Marcus said reluctantly. 'Anderson says she used the holy light to raise the boy's, ah, dormant spirit. They had one of those crash things going on Maiden's chest. Anderson threw the light into him at the same time.'

'Fusion of science and the Holy Spirit. Also the shamanic art of soul-retrieval, where the shaman takes a trip to-'

'Yes, yes!'

'Marcus, how experienced is she?'

'She's a nurse.'

'I didn't mean professionally. Could she have let something else in?'

'I don't know. How would I know that?'

'See, what we have here is a young man left with a terrible fear of death and prey to images which leave him and me feeling extremely cold. Fair play to the boy, he's only a copper, not going to give us a dissertation on site-specific negative atmosphere, is he? But he's sensitive. He's been telling us, pure and simple, what he feels. Been telling people ever since, I'd guess.'

'First time I met him,' Marcus said, 'was at the Knoll. As Mrs Willis lay dying. Kept urging us to take her down from the stone. I asked him why. Said he didn't know why.'

'Well, of course he didn't. Had a very negative death experience. Not wonderful for everyone, as you know. The nice ones are the only ones people like to talk about, feeling the others tend to reflect badly on what kind of life they must have led thus far.'

'Hieronymus Bosch demons clinging to their toes. Examined it in The Phenomenologist, couple of years ago. Several biddies complained.'

'No wonder he was in a state. He'd never been to the Knoll in his life before, but some part of him knew the place ... intimately. And it was a place without happy memories.'

'You could be right,' Marcus said grudgingly. 'Had a head injury. Perceptions dulled ever since.'

'Plus, whatever he encountered during the minutes of his death was so traumatizing that he's blocking it. His subconscious erected a barrier. Made even more dense, as you say, by the effects of the head injury ... which is also filtering ordinary, everyday sensory input to his brain. His whole experience of life is diminished. Like looking down a telescope from the wrong end. He feels he's in a murky dream. Desperate to wake up, he behaves ... erratically.'

There was a short silence, apart from the choking noises emitted by the car.

'Erratically?' Marcus said warily.