Mean Spirit Part 34

This has gutted me, I don't mind admitting, like no other incident in my rich and varied life.

Doing it like that is not only the coward's way, it's the only way they'd have got Clarence. Right to the end and he was nearly fifty-eight years old this was a geezer people didn't ever mess with if they could avoid it. You knew where you were with Clarence and if you was on the opposite side, Gawd help you.

However, he was a decent man.

Now I know a lot of moralistic gits out there will be going, What?!!! But I stand by what I just said. There's no denying this business is full of evil double-dealers what would stab you in the back and lift your wallet in a single move. But Clarence was a man of honour, a staunch ally and a faithful friend. Even his enemies, Clarence done right by them if you was going to be 'visited' by Clarence, he would look you in the eyes in the street and tell you to your face, and that was that, because Clarence believed in being fair and upfront at all times. At least one piece of sc.u.m, possessed of this advance information, took the opportunity to top himself first, and you can't say fairer than that.

Sadly, Clarence Judge never had much luck the whole of his life. He was too honest. If the filth accused him of a crime, he would put his hands up straight away usually to damage a couple of them first, but that was Clarence, an angry man sometimes.

As a result, he spent more than half his adult life in prison.

'A stupid man, too, then,' some smirking young talkshow host in a s.h.i.+ny suit remarks to me late one night on BBC 2. I felt like redecorating the set with his face in memory of Clarence, and I would have too if my fellow guests Kurt Campbell and Barry Manilow had not been sat between us in nice clean suits.

Was all the war heroes, the VCs, what went over the top on their own with a rifle, was they stupid men?

Because this is what Clarence was ... a brave foot soldier who would lay down his life for his comrades. He never mugged old ladies for their pension money, nor did he give heroin to eleven-year-old schoolkids. The people what Clarence hurt and yes, all right, he did hurt them, he hurt them grievously, usually was the sc.u.m: the gra.s.ses, the snouts, or the cowards what drove off in the getaway car the minute they seen the filth and left their mates to face the music. Like me, Clarence knew what could and could not be tolerated and he stuck by his principles.

But, in the end, it seems, one of the sc.u.m got at him, in the cowardly way they operate. So far the police have failed to apprehend the guilty party. I do not know how hard they have tried, but as they are unlikely to offer much of a reward for apprehending the murderer of a 'notorious criminal', I shall do so myself. If any reader of this book has information fingering Clarence's killer and would like to write to me, care of my publisher, I personally will pay them the sum of between ten and twenty thousand clean ones, according to the strength of the information. Naturally, as a law-abiding citizen these days, I shall immediately hand over anything of value to the police.

x.x.xV.

CINDY ATE A SMALL BREAKFAST IN THE OTHERWISE EMPTY, WOOD-walled bar, the place as quiet as the morning of a funeral.

The wind had not died with the dawn. Cindy had awoken into cold light and the rocking of the inn sign, with its grim, grey, curly-horned ram.

Amy collected his dishes. She wore one of her little black dresses, very Juliette Greco. Quite s.e.xy, he thought sadly. Too late now for him to appreciate such qualities. The course was set; whichever way he turned would leave him leaning suicidally over the abyss.

'How can they say those things?' Amy said. 'They don't know you. That brother, he've got no brains. Just hit out, they do, without a thought.'

Cindy was silent.

'You mustn't let them get away with this.'

Cindy smiled with a sorrow which, in the gloom of the bar, Amy would be unlikely to discern.

'Not as if they've sacked you, Cindy, is it? The BBC would not be so daft! You're a big star!'

'A big star. Yes.'

The Sun lay folded by his plate. He poured himself a coffee, picked up the paper.

'Don't...' Amy said anxiously. 'Don't torture yourself.'

'A little late for that, my love.'

Cindy spread out the Sun.

THE CURSE OF.

KELVYN KITE.

The enormous front-page headline displayed like an official public warning.

Cindy briefly closed his eyes, opening them to the sub-head: Brother blasts Cindy as horror

blaze kills Lotto family

This angle came from Brendan Sherwin's brother, Greg, who did not, Cindy judged with unusual bitterness from the photograph, look like a man who might qualify for Mensa.

Greg, 34, said: 'My sister in law was very upset when Cindy made that bird come out with all those comments about the new Barrett home and the BMWs.

'Brendan and Sharon were both demoralized. It had got that they were scared to come out of their new house because of the remarks people made.

'One day last week, two little kids were standing at the edge of Brendan's drive flapping their arms like birds' wings and shouting, "It'll all end in tears!"'

Greg added, 'I hate that Cindy now for what he's caused. It's like he's sneering at ordinary people's good luck.

'He tries to blame it all on Kelvyn Kite, but everybody knows it's what he really thinks.

'Cindy is sick. If you ask me, he should quit now.'

Oh, how cleverly it had been done. Perhaps some hungry freelance journalist had initially put the words into Greg's mouth: 'So how do you feel about Cindy now, Greg? I expect you hate him.'

'Er, yeah.'

And the use of the beautifully ambivalent line, I hate Cindy for what he's caused. Causing people to deride Lottery jackpot winners or, in fact, causing their deaths?

n.o.body was suggesting such a nonsense, of course. Nothing so direct.

The piece continued across pages four and five. Page four referred to the plane crash and the heart attack. The National Lottery death toll. The paper had spoken to a consultant psychiatrist, whose portentous comments began, If people are constantly warned to mistrust good fortune achieved without any effort on their part and told that such luck will inevitably bring repercussions, then ...

Page five was all about Cindy.

Oh G.o.d.

He could not read it.

He should leave quietly. What use was he here, having failed Marcus and Grayle, failed Persephone Callard and what was worse damaged her equilibrium, driven her away in fear and despair? No, he was not the world's most popular man this morning. Not at Castle Farm in the parish of St Mary's. Nor, by the looks of the morning papers, anywhere in this impressionable country.

Sydney Mars-Lewis, I am arresting you for complicity in the deaths of Gerry Purviss, Colin Seymour, Brendan Sherwin, Sharon Sherwin ...

But let's not get carried away.

Leave that to the Sun.

Around eight-thirty in the morning, Bobby Maiden had the lights on in the editorial room, formerly a treatment room, now a mess. With no window, you needed all the lights all the time.

He and Grayle had pulled out the jagged gla.s.s from the frame, boarded up the s.p.a.ce as best they could with chipboard panels from the stable Marcus shouting instructions, cursing a good deal to cover up how unnerved he was, while Maiden was thinking, She'll come back. She just wants to drive around for a while, clear her head.

Only she hadn't come back. She'd grabbed most of her stuff in a hurry and taken off, just as she'd apparently done from Barber's party.

Fled from it.

Obviously likes to go out with a bang, Grayle had said laconically before she went home around midnight, leaving Maiden to bed down on the sofa. Marcus had offered him the dairy, but he couldn't bring himself to sleep there. He'd lain awake for a long time, Malcolm sleeping on his feet. Maiden listening for the sound of an engine in the wind.

All right, she was unpredictable, famously unpredictable, and she owed him nothing, perhaps not even an explanation. But this wasn't right. He had to find her. How could he not try to find her?

Marcus came in, still in his dressing gown.

'She hasn't...?'

'No.' Maiden picked up a shard of gla.s.s they'd missed last night.

'No phone call?'

'Nothing.'

'It's not like her, Maiden. People don't change that much, whatever Underhill might say. She wouldn't leave the way she did, leaving us in the b.l.o.o.d.y wreckage, if she hadn't got a good reason.'

'Other than wondering what else she might do to the place if she stuck around?'

'Did you feel anything, Maiden? Did you feel a build up of energy?'

'I don't know. Maybe I wouldn't know what a build up of energy felt like. Not the kind of energy you mean.'

'Last night,' Marcus said, 'before we let the d.a.m.nable Lewis take over, she and I had I mean, you couldn't call it a heart to heart exactly, but she did go on about the trouble she was claiming she'd caused. All this about coming between Underhill and me. Which was nonsense. She said she'd made a mistake coming here.'

'She said that to me. She also said she couldn't stay because she had an appointment to keep.'

'You ask her what it was?'

'Should have, but I didn't.'

'Don't suppose she'd have told you. Went on to me about going to a b.l.o.o.d.y ashram, something of that nature. Bulls.h.i.+t, probably. This has been a total disaster. She was in a state of torment and we probably made it worse. She couldn't stand it any more. b.u.g.g.e.red off.'

'She was going anyway. She was already packed.'

Marcus waved a dismissive hand, went off to get dressed.

Maiden prowled the room, picking up more gla.s.s. He wondered if maybe they hadn't all made the window explode all sitting there nursing their private fears and longings.

Under the computer table, which he and Grayle had pulled back into the centre of the room, he found a writing pad. He froze.

Cindy searched for his phone for a while before remembering that he'd hurled it, in his agony, over the castle wall.

At nine, from the payphone in the hallway of the Tup, he rang Jo's direct line at the BBC. No answer. No point in calling her at home; she'd be on her way to the office. Cindy returned to the bar and his table, bare now. Except for the Sun.

No excuse any more. He looked at page five. Saw a picture of himself wearing a cunning smile and a pointed hat.

Underneath the picture, the caption read: Cindy the sorcerer: 'communes with spirits'.

The smile on the face was real, but the hat was a clever and convincing computer graphic. Perhaps a legitimate liberty, under the circ.u.mstances.

The feature story had it all. Twisted and sensationalized, of course, but, in essence, true. The Sun had even sent someone to confront one of the Fychans, young Sion, at his farm in Snowdonia. Not that this had proved entirely helpful. Sion had invited the reporter in for tea and generously answered all his questions. In Welsh, of course. Only in Welsh. Cindy allowed himself his first and probably final smile of the day.

The sources of the information which did not require translation were given as 'close friends' and anonymous people said to have 'worked with' Cindy.

Only one person was actually named in the piece.

TV hypnotist Kurt Campbell, who recently discovered the hard way that Cindy was no easy subject, said last night, 'I didn't know any of this, but to be honest, it doesn't surprise me.

'You can tell that behind all that camp stuff the guy has iron will-power.

'Sure I could believe he's studied magical techniques. It could explain a lot.'

'Thank you, boy,' Cindy murmured grimly. He returned to the payphone in the hallway, redialled Jo's number.

This time the phone was answered almost immediately. The voice was male and young and cool and a.s.sured.

'I'm sorry, Jo Shepherd isn't coming in today.'

'Unwell, is she?'

Jo was always at work on Monday, planning Wednesday night's show.

'Far as I know, she's absolutely fine. Who's this?'

'That's all right,' Cindy said. 'Call her at home, I will.'

'Ah.' Pause. 'That's Mr Mars-Lewis, isn't it?'