by Phil Rickman
He looks around. 'All this. All this money, all these wages, canteen staff, admin staff. And at the end of it, they haven't even got an album. Just a decent man dead, after fourteen years of torturing himself. Dead at the appropriate time, in the appropriate place. The smug, bloody Abbey getting its seven-year dues. This is all sick and sad and deeply crazy, Tom.'
'It's rock and roll,' Tom says.
'It's only rock and roll. What we always used to say.'
'Rock and roll ain't as powerful as it used to be. But it can still make you fink you're superhuman. All music can do that - your classical composers, your Beethoven and your Mozart, all those geezers reckoned they was close to summink your average punter couldn't reach in a couple of dozen lifetimes. The Messianic Freshold ... the point where music makes you fink you got God worrying about his future.'
'And drugs,' Prof says. 'Drugs took a lot of people to the threshold of something.'
'Yeah, well, some people uses drugs to get 'em there - to the freshold - and some need the coke and the junk and stuff to live wiv it once they get there. And some can't live wiv it at all … like that geezer Cobain, topped himself. But this is it ... real musicians don't harm nobody but themselves. It's the other bastards, the businessmen and the conmen and the posers and the
hangers-on and the outsiders who want in. The people who, for them, the music comes second.'
'Copesake,' Prof says.
'Copesake, yeah. And guys like Manson - wanted to be a rock star, reckons the music's telling him to kill ... to take sacrifices, right? "Helter Skelter" - overnight, a song about sex wiv fairground images and stuff, becomes evil. Musta scared McCartney, that - finks, Jesus what did I put in that song to inspire this nutter? And this geezer ...'
Lee Gibson has come in.
'... Just another session-drummer, and now he's a superstar, and he don't know why ... except it come frew Sile And he's hooked, even if he don't know it, and he'll keep coming back, and he'll get more and more eaten up and corrupt, and he'll spread it, like a disease.'
Prof shudders. 'You sound like you lost all faith in anything good. Like we can't do anything to stop it. Can we?'
'Not a lot,' Tom admits.
Prof says, 'What happened to all you need is love?'
'Evening gents.' Lee sits down. 'Rough night, eh? Where's the kid?'
'No kids here,' Prof says. 'This seem to you like a suitable place for kids?'
'No, the kid. Tom's kid.'
Tom's cup clatters into its saucer. 'What you on about?'
'Your kid. I found your kid wandering in the trees. She said she was your kid. Little... er... handicapped girl, with thick specs.'
Tom's out of his seat, skin as yellow-white as his hair. Lee's leaning back, making stay-cool gestures with both hands. 'Hey, it's OK man, she's in good hands. She was in here just five minutes ago.'
'Hands? Who's hands? Who brung her here?'
'He's looking for you, man.'
'Who?'
'Sile.'
Tom had him by the front of his suede shirt, hauling him out of his chair. 'Copesake's got my kid?'
Lee, shakes him off, looks annoyed. 'Fuck you, man, what's wrong with that?'
There's actually frost in her hair. Her face is almost blue. Her eyes are almost closed. She's slumped in the chair under a dark- coloured cape, and the cloth is stiffening around her.
'Holy Christ,' Moira whispers.
She doesn't know what to do, how to handle this. She looks around; no one in sight, only the obscenely sentient stones of the Abbey.
No hands are visible; she doesn't know, anyway, where to find the pulse. She starts to rub the woman's cheeks, gently at first and then harder. When she steps back, the eyelids raise a fraction.
The woman mumbles. 'Not flying, am I?'
'Oh, Jesus, you're alive. Let's get you ...'
She pushes at the chair; it won't move.
'Stuck,' the woman says. 'Legs smashed.'
The chair is wedged up against a stone.
'Hold on.' Moira gets behind the chair and tugs, hard as she can, and the chair suddenly jerks free and nearly has her over.
'OK, now, I'm gonna get you into the warm.'
That's a laugh.
'Police.'
'You took your time. Got any ID?"
Gwyn Arthur opens his wallet. The security man opens the gate. 'Just the two of you, is it?'
'That's right. Come on. Sergeant.'
Shelley stares at him. 'Oh. Right.'
'Saves explanations,' Gwyn Arthur tells her. 'Now, Mrs Storey. I take it you haven't been here before.'
'No.'
'Me neither. Don't like these places. Now, before we go any further, a few ground rules. The impression I get is that relations with your husband are not what they might be. If it turns out the little girl is with him, that's where my role in the affair ends. Custody battles are not the police's problem, and if she's his natural daughter, but not yours, you may have to ...'
'I understand,' Shelley almost shouts. Thinking, come on, come on. 'If she's with Tom I'll save my anger until I've got over being relieved.'
The main source of any relief, Shelley is thinking, will be if Tom is not the victim of the accident, the electrocution. Oh please, please ...
'Good girl.' Gwyn pats her arm. 'Very sensible. Now, I do have other enquiries to make. They're not your problem, but if you can bear with me. Now, what's the set-up here?'
'What are those lights.'
'Looks like caravans. Temporary buildings, anyway. Let's check that out first. And don't forget, I don't know what your husband looks like, so as soon as you see him, ID him for me, would you?'
'Yes. Oh ...'
As they reach the Portakabin, they see the door is wide open, warm light softening the mist, and the outline of a man in the entrance.
'This him?'
'No, this is the bastard who brought him here. Case. Stephen Case, works for the record company.'
'Mrs Storey!' Case's face registers first astonishment and then a kind of relief.
'Where is he?'
'Mrs Storey, we've got a problem ...'
'Is he dead?'
'Dead?' Case nearly smiles. 'No, he's fine. I mean he's not dead, he's just gone berserk.'
Not the same place.
Not the same at all, by night.
Simon licks blood from the corner of his mouth. It's been running quite freely from the cut Sile Copesake made in his face, and it's all over his hands now from trying to wipe it away from his cheek, and over the guitar case. Blood all over him and Dave and Aelwyn.
What made him think - this is the stupidest thing - he would be above the mist-line? .
He knows what fooled him into coming up here. It was the image of the other morning, the remembered exultation of a coppery dawn.
It's a different place before the dawn, if the dawn ever comes again. The mist, if anything, is even denser up here, like the sediment rising to the top of the bottle. The mist is soggy and clinging and soot-black and it clogs his thoughts and stifles his prayers.
'Oh God... let me in.'
Simon kneeling on frozen stone, hands clasped together in the time-honoured fashion. Telling himself, think soft lights and white linen, stained glass and the scent of polish. Think cathedral.
A droplet of blood rolls down his lips. His tongue instinctively laps at it. The blood tastes salty and somehow nourishing.
What did Sile mean, that should fetch him, slicing into his face.
As if he doesn't know.
He tries to imagine the sky above the mist, with stars and a sliver of moon, tries to summon clarity.
But close by his ear, something laughs. A grainy, lascivious laugh.
He stalks the misty ruins like an avenging angel.
Well ...
If angels had stubble two days beyond the 'designer' stage. It angels wore T-shirts a couple of sizes too small, revealing their hairy navels and unsightly, sagging paunches ... If angels had accidentally killed
their first wives and lived with fourteen years of guilt and remorse and become reclusive and suspicious ...
... angels would maybe look like this.
'Copesake ...' the angel bawls from inside the blackened medieval ribcage. 'I'm gonna tear your head off...'
Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones is leaning under an archway, lighting his pipe. 'Over to you, I think, Mrs Storey.'
'Yes.' Shelley shakes her blonde hair free of her coat collar. She's thinking of the years of struggle, of convincing Tom it was an accident, that Vanessa is a delightful little girl, with a delicacy and a gentleness and a beauty of her own ... and was not retribution, divine or any other kind. That it doesn't have to be like this for the rest of his life. That if he goes out into the world again, it isn't a foregone conclusion that someone's going to get hurt.
As she walks towards the stricken angel, she's thinking also of charming, kindly Martin Broadbank, who had it all, who thought he could go anywhere with impunity. Seeing the final picture of Martin also stricken, sobbing his heart out into a dying woman's breast.
Tom has his fist drawn back, as if to punch the stone in rage and anguish.
Shelley catches his arm. 'Save it, honey,' she says wearily.
'You're Isabel, aren't you?'
'And who are you?' She feels numb, as if, under cover of the mist, the paralysis has spread up her spine. In panic she turns her head, it does turn, and she sees a low white ceiling, like a crypt.
'I'm Moira. I'm a friend of Simon's.'
Isabel looks back, in sudden misery, into the beautiful woman's tired eyes.
Moira shakes her head and smiles. 'I'm no' that much of a friend.'
'I'm sorry.' Isabel sighs. 'I don't know where I am.' There's wreckage all around the chair, piles of smashed stones, glass and earth.
This Moira, too, has dust in her black hair. She says, 'This is the studio. I know it looks like a building site, but it was the only place I could get you into. That chair of yours is kind of
knackered.'
'Me, too, I suppose. I haven't dared to look.' Isabel finds a weak laugh from somewhere. 'Not that it makes much difference. Just means I'll have to wear one of those rugs across my legs, like a tarpaulin, so people won't be frightened and disgusted.'
Moira picks up the studio phone. 'I'm gonna call the canteen, have some hot tea sent over. You've got nice legs. I bet Simon thinks you've got nice legs.'
Isabel says, 'I don't somehow think you are the kind who patronises cripples, but I really don't have any illusions on that score. I get the feeling that Simon would have liked them better if they'd been hairy and muscular and ended in a jockstrap. Tell me honestly. Is it really a mess down there?'
'Down where? This bloody line's just ringing out. Something's been disconnected.' Moira sighs. 'Maybe we cut ourselves off taking the place apart.'
'My legs! They're totally paralysed, so I didn't feel any pain when I smashed into that stone, just the blood, gallons of it, all over my . .. my ...'
Her hands, pulled from under her cape, are astonishingly clean. No sign of blood. Isabel wrenches the cape aside, starts to scream, 'I don't understand! Moira, what's happening to me?- This is a dream! I'm flying again! Hold me down ... Touch me for Christ's sake!'
'You're not dreaming.' Moira grips her hand. 'I don't know how much you know about this place ...'
'More than is good for me.'
'I can tell. Listen, it wasny your blood. The blood came from the stone. The sense of blood. This place plays tricks with your mind. Did you feel your blood was draining away through your legs? Awful weak, ready to give up? You didn't want to fight any more? Is that how come you let yourself fall asleep in the freezing cold?'
Isabel slumps. 'Simon. Where is he?'
Moira is silent.
'Where is he?'
VIII
The Big Taunt
Tom and Shelley in shadow, holding on to each other. A few yards away, in the canteen doorway, Stephen Case and Prof Levin watching. Gwyn Arthur Jones is in the admin office, examining the body of Dave Reilly.
'She stowed away?' Tom's face looking like it's melting. 'She stowed away in Weasel's van - to find me? Well, where's Weasel, then?'
'Tom, we don't know where Weasel is. That's why we came.'
'We?'
'Martin and me. Martin Broadbank. You went off with his ... with Meryl.' Shelley's voice tails off oddly, which makes Tom bend his head to her, with concern.
'Oh, Tom, she's dead. I'm sorry. Meryl's dead. She was knocked down by ... by a car.'
'Where?'
'Few hundred yards down the road, I don't know how far.'
'Meryl? Meryl's dead?'
'I'm sorry. She just ran out. He ... it was Martin. Martin hit her. I was in the car too. We hit her. Just now. She just appeared from nowhere, ran out in front of the car. It was ...' Shelley bursts into tears, it was really horrible, she was ...'
'She was a good woman. She meant well.'
'Yes.'
'This is wrong. This has got to end.'
'I'm sorry. He couldn't have avoided her.'
Tom says suddenly, 'I wanna know where Weasel is. This little guy is my oldest friend.'
'I know. I know, honey.'
'If Vanessa's here, Weasel's here, 'less Gibson's shitting us.'
'He wasn't.' Steve Case steps forward. He looks very unhappy. 'The child was here. Sile ... Sile asked me to get her something to drink.'
Tom whirls on him. Case puts up his hands.
'She wouldn't have a drink. She kept trying to run out. I stopped her. I thought, with her being ... you know ... I thought maybe she should be ... restrained. I took her to Lee's caravan.'
'She's not a mental patient!' Shelley screams at him. 'Don t you know anything?'
'I'm sorry. I mean, I'm sure it'll be all right. Sile said he'd take her to find you.'
'When was this?' Gwyn Arthur has returned, very silently.
'I don't know ... half an hour ago, three-quarters. Not long before Tom and Prof arrived.'
'And when he said he'd take the little girl to her father, did he imply he knew where to find Mr Storey?'
'Well ...' Case looks awkward, it's not ... I mean, I suppose it's not as if Tom is a particularly difficult man to find.'
'Took us all of half a minute,' says Gwyn Arthur, 'Indicating he didn't search very hard. Right. Copesake. Where's he from?'
'He's my boss,' Steve protests feebly, 'I can't just ...'
'Oh yes, you can, my friend,' Gwyn Arthur assures him grimly. 'And you will.'
'He ... Well, he lives in London most of the time. But he has a farmhouse, the Grange. You go out of the gate here and it's the first turning on the left. Over an old cattle grid.'
'Good. And has he a car?'
'He's got a four-wheel-drive thing. He leaves it at the farm, comes over here on foot; it's only five minutes.'
'Excellent.'
'What are you going to do?'
'I'm going to keep poor Mr Reilly company for a minute or two, while I use your telephone. Meanwhile, perhaps you could be thinking of an answer to two particular questions. Firstly, why would Mr Copesake want to, let's say go off, with Mr Storey's daughter? I'm sure, given time, you can think of a fairly sound reason for that.'
Gwyn Arthur beams savagely at each of them in turn.
'And the other question: where, precisely, is our good friend St John, vicar of Ystrad?'
It's brutally cold on the stone platform. Simon doesn't try to fight it. He hasn't brought a coat or anything to sit on; knows he must not fall asleep. He has no Bible, no cross, no symbol of his 'faith'.
This is not his first vigil between midnight and dawn. He once spent the entire period on his knees, like new knights were supposed to in the age of chivalry, praying for spiritual guidance.
That was the night before his ordination.
The arrangement was this: just one impure thought, one image of Richard Walden removing his coarse, brown robe, and the ordina
tion would have been off.
Richard - he was sure of this now - played along. And when the first red line of dawn appeared in the window, Simon swore his famous oath of celibacy. For as long as he should remain a priest, there would be no sexual distractions.
This was a problem in waking hours, but not (because religious thought could be a more than adequate replacement) an insurmountable one. And when sex, in various forms, not all grotesque, visited his dreams, he began to surround his bed with Bibles, sometimes imagining a ring or a square of golden light connecting them.
It worked. After a fashion. But after some years, Simon began to realise it meant nothing. It was simply a smokescreen for himself. His parishioners automatically assumed he was gay and no one seemed to object as long as the choirboys remained unmolested. One day, in fact, the bishop made a pass at him. It was his personal smokescreen. And behind the smokescreen lay the Abbey. When the living of Ystrad Ddu became available, he made himself apply, desperately hoping (but not daring to pray) that he wouldn't get it.
From that day onwards, tonight's confrontation had been inevitable.
Simon can't feel his nose, is sure his lips are blue. Is gratified to think that, in these conditions, his penis has probably shrunk to the size of an acorn.
Mostly it is dead quiet. Occasionally, in case he should begin to think he's alone, there's a snigger close to his ear, the trickle of warm breath. He doesn't move, doesn't resist it.
But he doesn't respond either.
Tom says, 'Look, about Meryl ...'
'I don't want to know, Tom.'
'It was just ...'
'I don't want to know. And you are never to ask about Martin Broadbank.'
Tom looks hurt. In fact, nothing has happened between Shelley and Martin Broadbank and, one day, she'll probably tell him; just now she doesn't feel that strong, dependable, utterly trustworthy Shelley Love is the person she wants to be. She also wants him to see the common ground between him and Martin. They both killed their women on the road from the Abbey, perhaps even at the same spot. He is not unique. It was not his fault - everybody knew what a mad bitch Debbie was in that Lotus, even when pregnant.
'So where is Simon?' They're standing in the grass, half-way between the Portakabin and the ruins. Shelley doesn't even want to begin thinking about poor Dave Reilly, lying dead back there.