Mean Spirit Part 9

Calm down. Go back upstairs, find the cellphone and call the cops. Right. That makes sense. That makes sense.

Unless, of course, there is a reasonable explanation for all this and you just had a bad dream after an uncomfortable night following a stressful day.

f.u.c.k it. Check it out.

Vague scufflings from downstairs, but no more screams. Grayle went down one step.

Clack.

No carpet; she'd forgotten that. She sat down on the topmost stair, pulled off her shoes. From below, she heard, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, and what sounded like the skidding of a chair across a hard floor. Grayle stood up slowly and began to edge down the stairs, her back to the wall. Wis.h.i.+ng there was some kind of weapon to hand, but all she had was her shoes with two-inch wooden heels. She gripped one by its toe, raising it over her shoulder like an axe.

The stairs came out directly into the parlour with its low ceiling, its blue window curtains pulled back now and its sour aroma of old alcohol.

There was no movement in here. No glimmer from the remains of the fire. What she ought to have done was bring the phone with her d.a.m.n all use plugged into the wall up in the bedroom.

Grayle stepped into the room.

Noises to the right. A closed door. The kitchen. A line of yellow light appeared underneath the door. Behind it, a man said, 'I don't want to hurt you. Can you hear me? Are you listening to me, you slag?'

Grayle froze up. Oh ... my ... G.o.d!

It was not Justin's voice.

Which drained away the anger, leaving the fear. Grayle felt a trembling in her bowels. Justin was scary and repulsive, but at least he was a known danger. She sucked in a lot of air, went back hard against the wall ...

... the one with all the rustic implements on it, and her shoulder hit the bowsaw, pus.h.i.+ng it into the wall with oh no, oh no ... this loud s.h.i.+vering tw.a.n.g.

And another of the tools was dislodged and it fell against the bowsaw and she tried to catch it and failed, and then there was, in the silence of the lodge, this huge, strident clash of collapsing metal.

No place to go. Grayle just shrank into the wall.

In dreams, in nightmares, there was usually an inevitability about a situation. It would descend into ultimate blackness and then you would wake up. Some part of your subconscious knew there was a fail-safe, a trip mechanism, and so you'd find yourself kind of beckoning the blackness: come on, come on, let's get this over.

In reality, you knew there would be no awakening, so you always held out that hope, right up to the end, that it was going to be all right. That there was something you didn't know like, in this case, that Callard had an ex-husband or an estranged partner, and what was happening here was some overblown domestic incident, loud and emotional but just between the two of them, and that when they saw you standing there they'd just be embarra.s.sed as h.e.l.l.

The kitchen door was opened. Not flung open; it was done without hurry, real casual.

Two men came in with the yellow light.

For a moment, they were standing together in the doorway, looking at her in silence. And these two men, they were wearing kind of army camouflage trousers and dark green army jerseys and their hands were in these tight, black leather gloves and their heads in these dark woollen hoods with eyeholes.

Grayle was frozen to the wall, the final hope shrivelling like a burst balloon in her stomach. She couldn't speak.

When one of the men moved into the parlour, she could see Persephone Callard on her knees, on the kitchen floor, and she was bleeding, great gouts of bright red blood splashed all over her long white nightdress.

'Oh G.o.d,' Grayle finally said, the words gulped out, up and down on the breath, like vomit.

Callard's hands were taped up behind her back. A strip of black, s.h.i.+ny tape across her mouth reminded Grayle of Justin's big black moustache.

'What ...' Grayle's jaw trembling. 'What have you ...?'

And stopped. The big red blotches were not blood, just the pattern on the nightdress.

But the tape was still tape, Callard still trussed and gagged.

'Jus ... Justin?'

Because, one of these guys, she hadn't heard him talk, and so the final, final hope it might still be him. Might be Justin. That is, one of them might be basically human.

Neither of them spoke. Callard stared up at Grayle, her eyes hot and wild.

Why?

Why were they here? There was nothing of value to take, anybody could see that. Maybe in the big house there was plenty, but they hadn't broken into the big house. These were not small-time local felons come to steal your TV and your VCR for drug money. These were men with no faces. Men with no fingerprints. Fit-looking men in army clothes. Serious men.

They didn't even ask who she was.

Because it didn't matter. She was here and she'd walked into what they were doing, and that was enough.

'OK,' Grayle said, 'you get out of here. You get ...' her voice rising higher and higher '... the f.u.c.k out of here. You hear me?'

They glanced at one another just once and then they both looked back at Grayle and began to move slowly towards her, their arms hanging away from their bodies. One of them ... his fingers in the black, tight gloves ... his fingers were beginning to flex.

The thing was, she had no recollection of taking it down, only finding it was there in her right hand: the hedging tool that was like a butcher's knife. The hacker.

It was even heavier than it looked. Finally she had to lift it with both hands, stepping away from the rural museum wall, the rustic armoury wall, and swinging it hard back.

And it must still have been real sharp because when it went into the guy's face it was like slicing a green pepper. Until it made it through to the bone.

Part Two.

From Bang to Wrongs: A Bad Boy's Book.

by GARY SEWARD.

The night my mum died I went out and trashed a church.

Some schoolmates and I, we done a newsagent's that day and had to hurt the geezer when he was stupid enough to 'have a go'.

But my mum, she was a Christian her whole life and never really hurt n.o.body, and He let this happen. It even happened almost in front of a church, St Mark's. The driver was p.i.s.sed and so it was his fault, obviously, and I heard he himself had an unfortunate accident some years later, but that was nothing to do with me as I was fifty miles away at the time, which I was able to prove to the police. But it was the Big Geezer I was after that night because He had let it happen and that was inexcusable, so I took a Stanley knife to His altar cloth and then I carved some choice words on the side of His pulpit and smashed some other stuff; I was in a real bitter frenzy.

I realize now that what happened to my mum was a profound lesson for me, in relation to the meek inheriting the earth and all that old toffee, but I was too young for philosophy then. I just did not want to believe my old mum was truly gone, and that was when I started to see spiritualists and mediums and such. I did not see why G.o.d should be able to get away with taking people out so that you lose contact for good. It was a liberty I could not tolerate.

IX.

HE WAS DRIVING DOWN THROUGH DARKENED CHEs.h.i.+RE IN A STATE verging on real fear. The genetic code, Bobby Maiden thought. What if there's no breaking the genetic code?

He drove along the old A49, over the river or was it the ca.n.a.l? with all those iron bridges, towards the southern suburbs of Warrington, which went on for ever.

It was as if the old man was still in the car. Sitting up in the pa.s.senger seat, straight as a lamp post, glaring out suspiciously at the desultory night traffic. Noting the speeders and the ones with a brake light not working. Eyeing sullen youths outside an off-licence. Little toerags. Anybody under sixteen out past nine p.m. should be pulled in and banged up for the night. See that woman under the streetlamp, end of that wall? With the red hair? On her own? b.l.o.o.d.y bra.s.s, tell 'em a mile off. Warn her off now, I would. Respectable people live in them houses.

Yes, Dad.

In the mornings Maiden had taken to looking carefully in the bathroom mirror for signs of his eyes hardening and growing closer together, his lips tightening between deep, disciplinary radials.

Couldn't see it. Could he?

Every six weeks or so, usually on a Wednesday night if he wasn't working, Maiden would drive north and take his dad for a meal. Tonight they'd been to this new Beefeater, out towards Irlam.

'I like a good steak, me,' Norman Plod had declared, as he always did. 'Nowt beats a good steak, done rare, for keeping your eyes sharp and your gut tight.'

Then he was staring at his son's plate with a look of blatant dismay not dissimilar to the one which had bloomed on his hard face that night, many years ago, when Bobby had expressed a wish to go to some nancyfied art college.

'What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l's that? Turning into a b.l.o.o.d.y rabbit are we, lad?'

'I had a big lunch, Dad.'

'Watching our weight, are we? By Christ, policemen eating rabbit food. No wonder it's not safe to walk the b.l.o.o.d.y streets.'

'Stomach's a bit off, actually,' Maiden had murmured.

Ashamed at the deceit, but this was not a good time to explain to Norman Plod about becoming a vegetarian.

In fact, there never was going to be a good time, was there?

'Too much ale, eh?' Norman looked up, lips wet with bloodied gravy. He winked. 'I know what it's like when the lads get together after a fine result, a grand collar.'

Maiden had been telling Norman about the neat smack circuit which Elham CID had broken after two weeks of freezing nights with a video camera on a church tower overlooking the Redbarn estate.

'Excellent stuff. It's just a b.l.o.o.d.y shame Mr Riggs weren't there to see it,' Norman said.

Meaning Superintendent Martin Riggs, now early retired.

'Mmm,' Maiden said, non-committally.

Norman had met Riggs just once, while visiting his son in hospital. But he'd followed the newspaper reports, read between the lines, knew Riggs was Old Force and his lad'd had the best boss he could wish for in these slack times.

'Because', Norman said, stoking his mouth with steak, the Brylcreem s.h.i.+ning on his fuse-wire hair, 'whichever way you look at it, busting them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds that were a direct result of the Riggs regime. Tight as a drum. Zero b.l.o.o.d.y tolerance. No little toerag s.h.i.+fted a bag of pills without Mr Riggs knew about it.'

'Mmm,' Bobby Maiden said.

How very true that was.

He's gone. All right? He got out. You dropped him off at his bungalow half an hour ago.

But the smell of Brylcreem remained, half-manifesting the ghost of Norman Plod. Once a copper, always a copper. I'll be seeing you, lad Norman's familiar finger-wagging warning to the toerags. Maiden almost s.n.a.t.c.hed a glance in the driving mirror just to make sure that it wasn't Norman's eyes glaring back.

Norman Maiden: still very much alive, but his glowering ghost was following Bobby Maiden around. And getting closer? Bobby was thirty-eight years old; at what age did you start turning into your father?

While they were parked in front of the bungalow, Norman had asked his son, 'They told you who's replacing him yet? Mr Riggs? Likely one of them s.h.i.+ny-a.r.s.ed, university fast-trackers, am I right?'

Maiden had told him how, in the light of Riggs's sudden retirement, there'd been some reorganization in Elham Division. From now on, there wouldn't be a Superintendent based at Elham; there'd be a Chief Inspector over the uniforms and for the first time an experiment an acting DCI in charge of CID.

On the way up here, he'd thought he might discuss this in greater depth with his dad. In the end he couldn't face it.

It took him just over an hour to drive back to Elham. A diversion, due to the laying of new water pipes under the ring road, brought him into town past the General Hospital.

He found himself turning in between the two white lamps.

Just like ...

... the old days.

The sprog coppers hanging round, drinking Sister Anderson's strong coffee these wee cops often smelling of vomit, arising from that first severed head on the hard shoulder or the fried child on the burnt-out back seat.

Casualty: where young coppers and young nurses met at moments of high stress, a great aphrodisiac. Casualty was a government-funded dating agency.

Wasn't quite the same these days, mind, now that man-hours were rationed and the police had their own counselling service which, of course, took a whole lot more out of the police budget than Sister Andy's coffee cost the Health Service.

She closed the door against the warm blast of Accident and Emergency, sat down at her desk and motioned Bobby Maiden to the spare plastic-backed chair. Looked him over for signs of damage.

'And there was me thinking it was all coming together for you, Bobby.'

'And me thinking you were leaving to become an alternative pract.i.tioner down at St Mary's,' Bobby Maiden said.

He sipped at the coffee and winced. Andy smiled. Still killer stuff, eh?

'It'll happen,' she said. '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.'

Bobby shook his head. 'You hate this place far too much ever to leave.'

'Jesus G.o.d,' Andy said. 'This is what the psychological profiler course did for you, is it?'

He smiled ruefully. 'What the psychological profiler course did is far worse than that.'

'Oh?' Andy peered into his eyes. The boy had been looking so much better lately, too, the brain-stem problem maybe causing less numbness. She could tell he still had some pain over the eye, though.

'It put me in direct line for promotion.'

'Oh aye?'