The Cold Calling Part 52

'Oh gosh, I'm so sorry. But there are loads of people here who might've run into her.'

'I already asked around,' Grayle told him. 'A little.'

'No luck?'

'Uh huh.'

'Suppose I get Charlie to make a special appeal after the service. How about that?'

'That would be kind. You haven't seen Janny today?'

'No, that's another compromise. We wanted to spend the night here in the circle ... in a chaste sort of way. In spiritual preparation. And to see what our dreams might tell us about our future together. But Janny's mother ...'

'May be better not to know,' Grayle said. 'Maybe marriage should be an adventure.'

'That's one way of looking at it. Could be quite an adventure today, actually. Just look at that sky.'

'It'll hold off, Matthew. After all the favours you did for Mother Earth, it's the least She can do.'

It is nearly two a.m. when he carries the woman to the organic tomb. She falls to sleep in his arms and still slumbers as he brings her, perspiring freely and smelling disgustingly of drink, to the place.

A cloudy night, but sufficient moon. It glitters in the fluted tin roof of the helicopter shed, which screens the place from the house.

His night-vision is pretty remarkable by now and he can see the egg-shaped hole from twenty yards away, on the edge of the freshly concreted base. Soon after dark, he lined the hole three and half feet deep and oriented east to west with alternate layers of moss and gravel, and then added a bed of soft gra.s.s-cuttings, warmly mulching. Beside the hole lies the mound of excavated soil and a heap of local gravel. Between them, a spade.

The Green Man places the woman in the hole, on her side. She awakes and giggles and reaches out for him and he forces himself to caress her and she moans and drifts back into sleep. She needs to be awake, but not yet.

It came to him, as always now, in a dream. He dreamed of a green land of mounds and standing stones and gaily dressed people horse-trading, racing, making merry.

While, in the Earth, not far below the merrymaking, a woman screamed for all eternity.

Next day, in the university library, he found an account of a burial at a place called the Curragh, in County Kildare, where gypsies and tinkers traditionally gather for their fairs. In a henge there, about fifty years earlier, an oval grave was found, less than four feet deep and packed with gravel. In this grave was the skeleton of a young woman, on her back, facing towards the rising sun, the skull pressed hard down upon the chest and the arms tight against the sides of the grave. The bones were in a contorted and unnatural posture, suggestive of writhing.

In the hole, the woman whimpers, rolls onto her back and wiggles her fingers, in the throes of some hallucinatory semi-dream.

She seems to be beckoning.

It is the sign.

The Green Man loads his spade with good, red border soil, the flesh of Her body. The woman chokes as the soil enters her mouth and her eyes open fear pus.h.i.+ng through the psychic membrane of the drugs to meet the second spadeful...

Cindy had to slam on the brakes and pull over onto the verge, and Bobby Maiden almost fell out of the car, rolled over in the gra.s.s, producing enormous dry heaves, mouth open fishlike and hands at his gut.

He'd be fine. Cindy watched him through the windscreen and the tape played on, the unbearable details only half registered. What did register was the tone of voice. On top of everything the Green Man remained the most insufferable prig.

After a minute, Bobby rolled over onto his back below the car's weak, yellow headlights, and Cindy got out under a spreading fungus of dark brown clouds. It was a dull country lane, open fields and hedges, not a house nor a steeple in sight.

Cindy stood where Bobby had been. Nothing but dented gra.s.s. No evacuation. It had all come out last night. It was in an envelope. Nothing left other than what remained in Bobby's head. And now it was in the manageable part of his mind, no longer buried deep.

Why then, bearing in mind the circ.u.mstances of its entry there, had his subconscious mind not seen it from Fraser-Hale's side of things, letting him experience the perverse ecstasy of unspeakable, self-righteous cruelty? Because of what he was. He had experienced it only from the side of the victim.

Bobby held on to a signpost to pull himself to his feet. The sign pointed left to Long Compton and straight ahead to Great Rollright: two miles.

Which meant they were less than half a mile from the Rollright Stones.

Cindy thought of the day when, back home in the caravan in Pembrokes.h.i.+re, he'd let the pendulum dangle over the map and asked the question: Where will it happen next? The pendulum had gone into a violent anti-clockwise spin not where it was expected to go, among the Black Mountains, but over the area where Oxfords.h.i.+re met Gloucesters.h.i.+re and Warwicks.h.i.+re, and Cindy, hoping for the Welsh border, had dismissed it.

'Sorry.' Bobby produced a smile which contrived to be both bashful and bitter. 'Something went down the wrong way.'

'When we see Grayle,' Cindy said, 'don't tell her, will you?'

'You're joking.' Bobby brushed gra.s.s from his jacket.

'For what it's worth,' Cindy said, as dispa.s.sionately as he could make it, 'it was another of his failures. She was supposed to have been buried alive, like the woman in prehistoric Kildare. But when the soil went into her eyes, she came out of it and began to scream. At which, our man felt obliged to finish her off. With the spade. In her throat.'

'He can't get anything right, can he?'

Bobby's face as rigid as a mask, his bad eye livid in the last, unhealthy light. Dealing with it now. He said, 'I remember, in one dream, I saw his face shadowed by the spade. That is, the Green Man face. Twigs sprouting. And again, in a wreath in the front of a funeral parlour. And yet we don't know what he looks like, do we? Except he's a big lad with corn-coloured hair. Harmless-looking. And we don't know if he has anything in mind for today. He can't do much in front of an entire wedding party. Crowds aren't his style, unless-'

'Surely, Bobby, that's the problem. Doesn't have a style, does he? He responds to the location and the prevailing conditions. And he watches for a sign. Which could be anything. He's pretty free with his interpretations.'

Bobby was looking up into the east, where the sky was darkest.

'What is it, boy?'

He shook his head.

'Tell me.'

Bobby shrugged, and Cindy listened without interruption as he described a painting by Turner, showing Stonehenge lit by a vivid storm.

'Maybe another of your archetypal images,' Bobby said. 'But I just had the feeling that was the bolt that hit me. When I was dead. They've got a print of it at Cefn-y-bedd. Knocked me back, seeing it. Magda said that was his favourite painting. I a.s.sumed she meant Falconer.'

'But that was Stonehenge?'

'But the public isn't allowed into Stonehenge any more. Security guards and everything. It's the one place he can't get to.'

'No, indeed.'

'There're dead lambs in the picture,' Bobby said. 'And a dead shepherd. It's like the storm's been drawn to the circle. This break in the clouds, like the eye of the storm's just opened over Stonehenge. It's a scene of violent death and there's a sense of inevitability about it. See, if I was him, and that was my favourite painting and I just happened to be in a stone circle during a thunderstorm, even I might see that as some kind of sign. You know?'

Cindy said, 'Know much about meteorology, do you? How long, for instance, before this one arrives?'

'Surprised we haven't heard it already.'

Cindy looked into the hard, tight sky. 'And how many dead lambs?'

XLVI.

Marcus knew it was them by the speed the van was travelling.

You'd think the drivers who would race along these lanes would be those who knew them best, had negotiated them all their motoring lives, could antic.i.p.ate the angle of every treacherous bend.

Not so. The locals knew, from bitter experience, that if they crashed it would be into a neighbour. Or a neighbour's wife. Or a neighbour's second cousin who was pregnant. Or the midwife on her way to deliver the second cousin's child.

The locals knew that if they crashed and it was their fault and someone died, then the crash would live with them, even unto the third and fourth generation. No, the locals took it easy, pulled into the verge for oncoming tractors, exchanged polite waves.

So Marcus could tell by its reckless speed in the dusk and because it was an anonymous white van and because it drove past the castle entrance and then returned the same way within a couple of minutes that it was them.

He discovered that he had wedged himself against the highest, most concealing part of what now const.i.tuted the battlements of the tower. He found himself hunched up, his hands gripping his knees.

He recognized what fell onto the left sleeve of his tweed jacket as a droplet of sweat. Truth was, he hadn't really expected anyone to come at all.

It had occurred to him that in not leaving the farmhouse after Anderson's call, he had been spectacularly stupid. If Maiden and Cindy the b.l.o.o.d.y Shaman had returned, he'd have told them about Anderson's message and they'd have urged him to go with them; he'd have refused, naturally, at first, but might conceivably have backed down.

It occurred to him, as he noticed how rapidly the sky was darkening and curdling, that he might actually be rather frightened.

Some of the families, Grayle saw, were dubious about going inside the circle. They hung around on the fringes, a couple of feet behind the stones. Grayle moved back, too, hearing their whispers.

'... must be drab enough on a nice day.'

'... ought at least to have the union blessed in a proper church.'

'... and I'm sorry, Chris, but if it starts raining I shall have to go back to the car. Not going to get much shelter from those pines, are we?'

Sure won't, Grayle thought. The pines stood tall and ravaged, strung out behind the circle, even more witchy, somehow, than the stones.

The people inside the stones, making another circle, were mostly young and casually dressed, though with a flourish, most of the women in long skirts like Grayle's. A couple of guys wore sixties-style caftans and there were bright gypsy scarves and vests New Age, earth-mysteries chic.

Charlie had brought his altar out over a bald patch in the gra.s.s, close to the centre of the circle. He was talking to Matthew. Apparently there wasn't going to be a best man; Matthew said there should be just the three of them at the heart of it all, himself, his bride and the priest.

She wondered where Adrian would stand when he arrived, which group he would feel he belonged to, the New Agers or the establishment. Strange guy. Not what you first thought he was. She wondered how he was getting on with the car.

There was a ragged cheer from the New Age contingent as three men and a woman arrived with a couple of guitars and one of those Irish hand drums and set up under a tall, thrusting stone in the eastern part of the circle.

'I can see we won't be having hymns, then,' a relative observed sourly.

Charlie had placed two candles on his altar, with gla.s.s funnels round them to prevent the wind blowing them out. There was no wind. Looking at the sky, they'd need all the light they could get.

'Grayle?'

She turned. It was a voice she knew, a face she didn't, not at first. Grey-haired guy in a jacket and tie.

'Thank G.o.d,' he said.

'I'm sorry?'

'Cindy Mars-Lewis.'

'Oh G.o.d. What are you-'

'A word, Grayle.'

He wasn't smiling. He walked away, not a single bangle jangling, into the wood between the circle and the road, and she followed, with a sense of dumb foreboding. Behind, on the edge of the circle, the band had started playing an English folksong about its being pleasant and delightful on a midsummer morn, and that sounded about as wrong as everything else here this evening.

Two of them. One was thickset, almost chubby, his head shaved close; he wore jeans and a short denim jacket. The other had a longer, looser jacket, one hand inside it. He was a longer, looser man all round; he had spiky red hair and a seemingly permanent smile.

They must have left their van in the lane. Marcus hadn't heard it stop. He kept very quiet at the top of his broken tower. It was dark enough for there to be lights in the house and there were none. They'd surely reason it out that there was n.o.body at home and b.u.g.g.e.r off.

Or perhaps go back to their van and wait for someone to return.

When they had a slight struggle opening the five-barred gate, he saw they both wore short leather gloves and the squat man had a leather wristband with bra.s.s studs.

There was no creeping about; they walked in as if they owned the b.l.o.o.d.y place. Marcus was furious.

'Wha.s.sis? f.u.c.king castle?'

'Think of it as a new experience, Bez. Life's rich tapestry. We never done a castle.'

Birmingham accents.

'All I'm saying, he never said nothing about a f.u.c.king castle.'

'He said Castle Farm, you t.w.a.t!'

'So? We lived in Castle Close, but there weren't no f.u.c.king castle there. And the next street up was called Palace Place, but there weren't ...'

'Are yow gonna shut the f.u.c.k up? It's only a f.u.c.king ruin. Be no f.u.c.king men at arms up there with f.u.c.king crossbows.'

'Just f.u.c.king hate old places. Got rooms where they shouldn't've got no rooms. Bits of wall sticking out, f.u.c.king slits yer can't see what's the other side. What's the f.u.c.king use of it? Knock 'em down, I would.'

'Yer scared, yow, en't yer? Yer f.u.c.king scared. Yer spooked. '

'f.u.c.k off.'

They were standing now directly under the tower where Marcus sat. They were perhaps mid-twenties. Kind of youths he used to teach, used to have for breakfast. Ten years on. Marcus felt a sense of outrage.

The squat, shaven-headed one cupped his hands around his mouth and bawled out. 'Anybody in?'

'Anybody comes out,' the other one said, 'tell 'em we broke down up the road and can we use the phone, right?'