The Cold Calling Part 45

'Do me a favour, Tony, don't patronize me. Riggs is as bent as b.l.o.o.d.y Quasimodo's spine. He's tryin' tae st.i.tch Bobby up. I know that, and if you don't know it, you're more f.u.c.kin' decrepit than you look.'

Parker's eye twitched again, which made him angry; he controlled it.

'You know Jim Bateman, Sister?'

'Of Bateman and Partners? Aye.'

'You may be hearing from him.'

'You mean ...' Andy almost laughed. '... you mean you didnae stay with your London lawyers? What a b.l.o.o.d.y loser you are, Tony. It's all Jimmy Bateman can do tae conveyance a hoose. Present him wi' a slander case tae prosecute, the guy'd go off sick for three months. Listen, I couldnae care less what you and Riggs are intae, I just don't want anybody doin' anything hasty in relation tae my friend Bobby Maiden, you got me?'

She watched Parker tighten. 'Like who, Sister?'

A phone rang. Parker picked up the one next to it. 'Yeah. Take her back. Say I'll call her. Who? All right. Yeah.' Hung up. Lifted his sick eyes to Andy. 'Who might act hastily, Mrs Anderson?'

'A few people might. Given the circ.u.mstances.'

Truth was, he didn't look capable of haste. He looked like a man on whom age had crept up like a mugger. Turned round and thump. Never saw it till it happened. Wakes up with no hair and thick gla.s.ses and he has to cut down on his drinking and his late nights, and London doesn't seem so homely, and Elham is a tacky wee retirement haven, in the care of kindly Superintendent Riggs. Sad, eh?

Parker said. 'You're from Glasgow, ain'tcher?'

'Aye, but I was educated at Roedean, as you can tell.'

'You people.' Parker shook his head. 'You're all barbarians up there. Act hastily ... Jesus wept.' A digital timer on his desk bleeped twice and Parker took a gold-plated pillbox from his top pocket. 'Save us all from television.' He put a small white pill on his tongue and swallowed it.

'You should take water with that,' Andy said.

Parker looked politely contemptuous.

'You need to look after yourself, Mr Parker.'

'Why?' He put away the pillbox. He didn't look at all well. 'That girl was the only kid I had. I was gonna sell this lot, set her up nice. Whatever she wanted.'

'I think she wanted you to slow down.'

'Talked about me, did she?'

'A wee bit.'

He stared at her. He'd probably aged a couple of years since she came in.

Andy stood up, moved round the desk. Parker watched her without much curiosity. She went behind him, placed both her hands on his forehead.

'What's this, Sister?'

'Reiki. j.a.panese therapy thing.' His skin felt like crepe paper.

'Never heard of it.'

'Cost me d.a.m.n near two grand for the courses.'

Parker grunted. Talking his language.

'Shut up. Close your eyes.'

She'd given him nearly ten minutes' Reiki when the phone rang. 'Unplug the f.u.c.ker,' Parker said.

Andy's hands moved down his face. She didn't think about High Knoll.

After a while, Tony Parker fell asleep. When he awoke, there were tears drying in the hollows of his cheeks. He was maybe too relaxed to notice.

After a minute or two, he said, 'You want a job, Sister? Eight-fifty a week and a lump sum when I'm brown bread?'

He didn't seem to know he was crying. It could be powerful, the Reiki, if the patient was willing to disconnect.

'I'm no looking for a job,' Andy said. 'But you can do me one favour. Just tell me if you did anything hasty this morning.'

XLI.

Following Magda Ring towards the mellow farmhouse home of the University of the Earth, Maiden felt a spasm in his chest.

A brief tightening sensation was all it was, and the other bloke would have ignored it. But the other bloke was only aware of surface things. And the other bloke died.

Magda almost fell at the door, shoving in a long key. As though she was desperate to put that fat slab of oak between her and the smell of corrupting flesh tainting the grounds of Cefn-y-bedd. He could understand that. But he also understood that the tightening of the chest was a response to a deep-down feeling that this house enclosed something darker and worse. And personal. As if he'd followed a preordained trail and the trail ended not at the grave in the concrete, but here, in this quiet old house.

He followed her into a big, square hall with a wide wooden staircase, several doors leading off, a deep window halfway up the stairs.

And, on the only blank wall, almost exclusively lit by this window, a picture. A picture which sent a weight slamming into his chest, like a wrecking ball fracturing some old factory wall.

Turner. He was transfixed. J. M. W. b.l.o.o.d.y Turner.

His heart seemed to crunch.

Adrian had steak, done rare. Grayle, compromising with a ploughman's lunch with cheese, was surprised.

'See, most of the New Age people I know are vegetarians.'

Adrian groaned. 'Oh ... really, Grayle! An interest in earth-consciousness doesn't necessarily make one New Age. Those people are doing our subject so ... much ... damage. As the cave-paintings so amply demonstrate, Neolithic people were hardly veggies. They hunted. They hunted to live and they lived to hunt!'

Lecturing again. The didactic side of him taking over, changing him from schoolboy to schoolteacher. It was beginning to irritate her. Grayle shook her hair out of her eyes. And also ...

... also, apart from placing his hand over hers on the gear shift that time, his interest in her as a woman seemed actually to be receding.

No problem. Sure, a good-looking guy, and she was unattached, but anything of a personal nature could only be a complication and right now she had enough of those. It was just that a little recognition, that's all, of mutual attraction, generally made things easier.

Ho-hum. Too late now. They'd soon be among a whole bunch of people, celebrating, having a good time. The pub was just outside Stow-on-the-Wold, and less than a dozen miles from the Rollright Stones. It was old, like the Ram's Head at St Mary's, but it had polished panelling and bra.s.s lamps, and it was full, suggesting a wealthier, more populous area.

'Well, all right.' Adrian sawing up pink steak, real efficient. 'A lot of the people on the courses are, naturally, New Agers, and it's my job to keep them amused. But, really ... I mean, some of them are such incredibly silly, shallow, inconsequential people that it's a struggle sometimes to hide one's contempt.'

Jesus, was this Ersula or was this Ersula? 'What about Janny and Matthew? They're kind of New Age, aren't they?'

A shadow crossed his eyes. 'They're nice people. They're friends.'

Something here she wasn't getting. 'How'd you get into this stuff, Adrian?' Grayle abandoned onto a side plate the cob of squelchy, white bread that came with her lunch.

'Didn't get into it.' He pushed a piece of meat into his mouth. 'Got into me. You don't want that bread?'

'Sure, help yourself. It?'

'The Earth. Always aware of Her, of course.' He grabbed the bread, took a bite. 'Grew up in Wiltshire. Father was an army officer. Stonehenge was always there. Better seen from a distance, rather lost its magic with all the main roads and tourists. And the army, all manoeuvres, no real ... Anyway. At least Avebury's surviving. Despite the undesirables it attracts. At Avebury, I had a sort of vision. A calling, I suppose.'

'In a church-minister kind of way?'

'In exactly that kind of way.'

'To go out and spread the word about earth-mysteries?'

'But that's not enough, is it? Everybody's just living on the Earth. We should live in Her and She in us. We should move with Her, breathe with Her.'

Sounded kind of s.e.xual. 'Where'd you get this, Adrian? Where'd it come from?'

'From?' He looked surprised. 'From the Earth, of course.'

'No, I mean, which books, in particular?'

'Books?' He was almost shouting. Strands of steak clung to his teeth. 'I received it from the Earth, Grayle. I received it.'

'Yeah, sure, but ...' Feeling herself going red. 'I mean ... how?'

He looked at her for a long time, the way a teacher looks at the dumbest kid in the cla.s.s when the kid reveals, by some inane answer, that it hasn't grasped what the lesson was even supposed to be about.

'The dreaming,' Adrian said.

'I'm sorry ... You get guidance from dreams. Of course.'

'Guidance? Instructions! Look, you don't seem to realize, the dreaming is the University of the Earth. You're surrendering your consciousness to the oldest teacher of all. And when you've been doing it for so long, when you've shown you're ready to serve Her, the Earth will tell you what She wants from you.'

Ersula had written, What you are dealing with here is the unconscious and that must be lift to find its own route to what you would probably call enlightenment.

'Adrian, how long you been doing this?'

'Oh, I don't know. Several years. Put it this way.' Adrian began to mop up the remains of his gravy with the remains of Grayle's cob of white bread. 'So far, I've spent ... hold on, tell you exactly ... seven hundred and thirty-eight nights in ancient sites.'

'What?'

'It was why I just had to have this job. I can take groups of students all over the country to sleep at sacred sites. Go alone, first, of course, to test them out.'

She had a picture of him, some big boy scout with his knapsack, leading a crocodile of well-heeled innocents in anoraks.

'The sites know me now. Most of the guardians know me. Of course, if a certain guardian has a particularly fearsome aspect, I won't take students there.' Adrian grinned. 'Wouldn't do to lose one of the poor punters through a heart attack or something.'

Grayle recalled Matthew Lyall talking of the grotesque hag-like guardians invading your dreams, barring the way. Also recalled what Cindy had said about the death of Mrs Willis at the Knoll. A stroke.

'Can be quite terrifying at first,' Adrian said. 'Mind you, it can also be a wonderfully healthy thing. Quite often, after a dreaming, you'll notice that the subject's health has improved.'

He looked past Grayle, at green hills through a window, his knife in one hand, the last of the bread in the other. 'Funny thing. When I spend a night in an ordinary bed, I feel quite disoriented. Dislocated, you know?'

Dislocated? Jesus, was this any wonder after seven hundred and thirty-eight nights inside prehistoric ritual temples? According to Ersula, just a couple of experiences could blow your mind. Well, it was clear enough now: what this guy did, he OD'd ... he OD'd on the dreaming. Turned himself into a dream-junkie.

'But, Adrian, what happens when the dreaming experiment comes to an end? When all the stuff goes into the computers?'

Adrian threw down his knife. 'It will never end. It's already way beyond an experiment. Do you really think we can learn all the Earth has to teach us in a few years? In a lifetime, even?'

'Let me get this right.' Oh boy, just when you think all the world's crazies are gathered in LA, with a small New York overspill ... 'You see the University of the Earth developing into some kind of channel ... into like a universal planetary consciousness?'

'Already is. And one day I'll prove it. At present, She speaks to just a few of us, in our dreams. One day, quite soon, She'll speak to everyone. You'll hear Her. You'll all hear Her.'

'The EVP tapes? You think one day you'll get to record the voice of ...?'

'Perhaps we already have. We just can't understand it. Any more than we understand when She speaks to us in the wind, the sound of waves on the sh.o.r.e.'

'Well,' Grayle said. 'I guess he even convinced Ersula.'

'Who? Who convinced Ersula?'

'Roger.'

'Roger?' Adrian pushed aside his plate. 'What does Roger know?' He stood up. 'We'd better go. Do you need to use the loo or anything?'

Sky coming to the boil. Finger of lightning prodding languidly out of sweating clouds. Below, several sheep already struck down, a heavy tumble of bodies, milk-eyed heads flat to the plain.

A few yards away, the shepherd lying dead. His dog, back arched, howling a pitiful protest at the vengeful heavens.

Energy. The hideous energy of violent death. In this painting, only Stonehenge was truly in its element. Whitened, as though lit from within by electric filaments, the stones exulted in the storm.

Inside his tightening chest, Maiden felt he was howling like the sheepdog.

The print, gilt-framed, hung at the foot of the wide wooden staircase in the panelled hall at Cefn-y-bedd.