Mean Spirit Part 28

Or even, perhaps, the Persephone Callard?

Miss Callard. Yes. Cindy rose. Remembering also that he needed to buy some newspapers, he felt a plummeting of the soul.

Kelvyn Kite glared spitefully from his chair.

Grayle collected the Sunday papers and by nine was driving between the castle walls to find ...

... still no Cherokee in the yard! s.h.i.+t.

She found Marcus in his study, delving into a book. Grayle tossed her raincoat on the sofa, dumped the string-bound bundle of papers on the desk.

'So they didn't come back.'

'Appears not,' he said, like this was of only marginal consequence.

'I knew it.'

'Knew what?'

'From the moment she was showing him her t.i.ts, right there on that sofa.'

Marcus looked up from his book, shocked. 'Maiden and Persephone?'

Doing that tone of voice again. Like Callard was serious royalty, or worse sacred and untouchable. How could he possibly have read all those magazine stories about her and failed to take in any details of a rich, varied and predatory s.e.x life?

'One a.s.sumes they hit on something interesting. Stayed in a hotel.'

'Oh, right.'

'Man's still a policeman, Underhill. Just about.' Marcus began untying the papers. 'And Persephone, I fear, was probably glad to get out of here, for all the use I was being.'

'Jesus.' With some effort, Grayle calmed herself. 'Uh, no-one else called, did they?'

'You mean apart from the anonymous man asking if there was a small blonde with a hatchet on the premises?'

'Don't joke, Marcus.'

'No,' he said. 'n.o.body called. Neither did the dog bark in the night. And neither ... b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, look at this ...' laying the People flat on the desk. 'Some poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d Lottery winner died after cras.h.i.+ng his plane, around the same time that Mars-Lewis was virtually predicting it on television.'

'Huh?'

'Obviously, that's not what it says as such, but the inference is pretty clear.'

Grayle leaned over Marcus's shoulder. The main piece was a straight news story about the airfield tragedy. There was also a sidebar: CINDY'S KITE

QUIP FALLS.

FLAT...

'Fortunate for him that they didn't know of his ... precognitive powers,' Marcus said heavily.

'Aw, Marcus, he doesn't claim to have precognitive powers. Read it. Look, it was just an off-the-cuff one-liner. It's all a piece of c.r.a.p.'

'If they knew the creature's history,' Marcus said, 'they'd be making rather more of it.'

'Aw, he never actually hides his interests. Anyhow, what kind of big deal is that any more? If you're famous, you're expected to have off-the-wall beliefs. Like s.h.i.+rley McLaine and her spooks, Travolta's Scientology ... I used to write about that stuff all the time, n.o.body was shocked.'

But, yeah, maybe it was a little odd that nothing so far seemed to have been written about Cindy's Celtic wizardry. Maybe this was what was meant by the shaman's cloak of invisibility.

'Well,' Grayle said, 'who can say?' Keen to get off the subject of Cindy lest, when he showed up right out the blue, Marcus might suspect collusion. It was gonna be real perilous anyway. And at this rate there'd be no Callard around when Cindy showed. It was just too bad of Bobby Maiden not to have called. Also unlike him.

She had this awful image: a naked, post-coital Bobby, all doe-eyed and compliant, his brain turned to gloop by the witchy woman.

Marcus was looking at her, his face still pouchy after the flu.

'What?' she said warily.

'Hmm,' Marcus murmured, as though he'd read her thoughts, which like, no way, not in a million years ...

'What?' she snapped. 'What?'

She was standing in the doorway. She wore a pale-blue robe, like a sari, and the small glimmering was a pendant around her neck, a tiny golden cross he hadn't noticed before.

Maiden swung his legs down from the Victorian sofa, sat up. The orange sun came out of the diamond-paned window and into Seffi Callard's amber eyes.

'I think ...' She looked half-asleep and vaguely unsatisfied. 'Susan, would it be?' She wrinkled her nose. 'Not quite right, is it?'

Something slid heavily to the floor over his feet. A yellow and red striped duvet. He didn't remember there being one last night. He sat on the edge of the sofa, naked apart from his briefs feeling exposed now, but still bathed in strangeness.

'To be quite honest, Bobby, she was becoming rather irritating.' Seffi smiled at his unease. 'Made her first moves within an hour of us meeting. You and I. Tiresome. How on earth is one supposed to compete with a pale, fragile little hand reaching delicately through the veil?'

She made a weaving motion with her left hand, and the memory came back like a silver thread winding up his spine. She came and sat next to him on the sofa.

'I do tend to forget. Sometimes it can be even better than s.e.x. The afterglow. Ah ...' She glanced up. 'What about Suzanne?'

Bobby Maiden almost leapt from the sofa.

'Good.' She clapped her hands lightly. 'Good.'

'Oh G.o.d,' Maiden said. 'What are you doing?'

Seffi did a small, rueful smile, touched his cheek with a forefinger. 'Suzanne, yah? And she made you cry. I tell you, Bobby, that was a h.e.l.l of an aphrodisiac, but it ...' she smiled wryly '... it might've ruined everything. Not worth taking the chance.'

He remembered reaching for her, and she was gone. He remembered her waving goodnight, a small wiggle of the fingers at the doorway. Sometime in the night she must have come down and put the duvet over him.

'And, to be honest, it kind of gives me the creeps. Wouldn't have been ... me, would it? And I'm such a proud b.i.t.c.h.'

'Oh G.o.d,' Maiden said.

'Come on, guv,' Seffi said softly. 'It's only f.u.c.king spiritualism. Tell me.'

He blinked, shook his head. 'Her name was Em. Emma. But the first time I met her she was calling herself ... Suzanne.'

She nodded.

'She liked to put on this c.o.c.kney persona ... TV cop-talk. Guv. What's happening, guv? You know?'

'Sure.'

'We met ... erm ... in the course of the job. Kind of.' Maiden closed his eyes, his throat tightening. 'Nothing happened. But it was going to. About to. That night. We booked into this hotel in South Wales and-'

'No.' The tips of her fingers on his lips. 'Don't. Don't talk about that.'

He wanted her to know about the sweet trolley. How, in the hotel dining room, he and Em had agreed to dispense with the sweet trolley, the last thing before ...

Him coming back into the room. Too late. Coming back to blood-soaked sheets.

Seffi said, 'All right. Let it go.'

'Where ...?'

He wanted to ask, Where is she? Where is she now? Powerfully aware, for the first time, of why people went back to mediums, kept on going back, in a delirium of longing.

'I felt it was all right. For the first time, I felt she ...'

Wasn't blaming me.

'Slept like ...' Without dreams about her.

'You mustn't want her,' Seffi Callard said. 'You mustn't want her back.'

'No. I mean ... I know.'

He wanted Em to go on, to fly, never to look down at him floundering.

'Thank you,' he said. Half-amazed at himself.

Seffi stood up.

'By the way,' she said, 'there never was a Mrs Dronfield.'

XXIX.

'YOU ALONE, BOBBY? I MEAN, REALLY ALONE?'

To try and improve the signal to the mobile, Maiden moved out from the wall towards the Jeep, which had been parked all night, half-concealed, on the edge of the wood.

Nine-fifteen. Seffi upstairs, bathing and changing.

'I'm alone.'

'You all right, Bobby?' Ron suspicious.

'Mmm,' Maiden said uncertainly. 'Sure.'

Was he alone? Was Em gone? Was he no longer carrying her death? Did he believe that?

Or had his need for her been transferred ... to someone else?

A slippery slope. More things in heaven and earth. Oh G.o.d.

'I'm sorry, Ron. Not been up long.'

'I bet. f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, Bobby, you picked up a package there, my son. Everybody was saying you got religion or something, into weird beliefs, but, this ...'

'Seffi Callard,' Maiden said.

Who, for wild, incandescent moments, had been ... someone else.

Ron said, 'See, you hanging out with a notorious voodoo lady who takes money off people for another chat with Uncle Horace who's pa.s.sed on, that's a potentially difficult situation. The Archangel, bless him, is very much on your side right now. You don't want to blow it.'

The Archangel: Alan Gabriel, noted lay-preacher and Chief Constable of West Mercia. Who, as head of CID, had gathered his whole team for prayer before a major drugs raid, in order to imbue the troops with the spirit of the crusaders of old.

'After your remarkable recovery from death, Bobby, and then the Green Man result, closely followed by the discreet departure of Riggs who everybody says they spotted was a wrong-un even though n.o.body did well, you were up there and gliding. Plus, Bradbury likes you. And when word floats up to Mr Gabriel that you're religious am I telling you something new here, Bobby?'

Maiden groaned.

'Mr Gabriel takes it as a sign from the Almighty. A holy vision ... All right, I exaggerate, but he says to Bradbury, "I want that man bundled into the lift without delay. To the roof".'

'The roof.'

'Unless the cable gets cut. I'm just flas.h.i.+ng danger signals, Bobby. On two counts. One, Mr Gabriel is a team manager and so takes an extremely dim view of a player breaking formation. Two, Mr Gabriel's definition of religious observance is unlikely to include sticking it into a notorious pagan G.o.ddess. So, a question. As you are out of your playground and well into mine, is there anything you want to tell me you couldn't tell me last night?'

'About what?'

'About anything. All right, never mind, I'll tell you something. It appears Sir Richard Barber leases his nice new apartment from Bright Horizon Developments. Bright Horizon is Gary Seward and an otherwise reputable builder called Stuart Etchison, who purchased this rundown block in Cheltenham last year, turned it into quality, no expense spared.'