by Phil Rickman
‘Terribly sad, Grayle.’ Cindy pulled in under the sign of the Ram’s Head. ‘Get a good night’s sleep. Enjoy your wedding, regardless. And afterwards … perhaps don’t come back. Marcus will look out for Ersula. Leave your telephone number and your address with Amy. We’ll keep you fully informed. Get on with your life.’
Grayle put a foot out to the kerbside. ‘Aren’t you coming in?’
‘I’m going back. I need to talk to Marcus while Bobby’s out. Some things I haven’t been told. This is no night for secrets.’
‘Just in time, sir.’ The night porter’s keys swinging from a thumb. ‘About to lock up, I was.’
‘Sorry,’ Maiden said. ‘Left something in the car.’
‘Should keep them in your wallet, sir.’ The night porter eyed his bare feet, gravel between the toes, and winked.
‘Right.’ Maiden shuffled a smile.
‘Very good, sir. Good night.’
‘Good night.’
Bobby Maiden set off up the stairs. The thought of warm, firm Em in the bed set off the old stirring, but that was how it had been before. It meant nothing.
All the artificial candle-lanterns had been switched off, except for one at the top of the stairs. Into his thoughts fluttered the image of a woman standing under it, like the woman standing under the streetlamp. Before he died.
He shook his head.
Opened the fire door to the first landing. Perhaps she’d locked him out. Liz, now, Liz, his wife, would have locked the door, attached the security chain and thrown all his clothes out of the window, everything except possibly the car keys.
Stood for a moment outside the door of room five, the honeymoon suite. The light was out. Ran fingers down the jamb; the door was half an inch ajar and a wave of something broke over him and it was something more than gratitude, and he knew that Emma Curtis wasn’t going to be asleep. Felt her grin through the darkness. Life gets complicated, don’t it?
Maiden padded into the room.
You didn’t give in. You didn’t ever bloody well give in. You came back. Whatever you left behind, you had to get that back too. You didn’t let the grave win. You turned a deaf ear to the cold calling. In the end, love wins.
Love wins. In the darkness, he kicked away his jeans.
A wafer of moonlight lit Em’s hair on the pillow as he slid between the posts and into the bed.
All right. This is a bed. It isn’t a tomb. The mattress is soft. The four posts are not stones. The carpet is not earth. The smell is in your head; ignore it. You can love her, you can do it.
He slipped a hand under the nightdress, around a breast. Slid it down over a thigh, where she was wet.
‘Em? Can I talk to you?’
She didn’t reply.
‘Em?’
Where she was too wet.
And cold.
He leapt out of bed and across the room and slapped on all the lights.
Smears on the switch as the lights came on.
And on his hands: dark wine-red.
On his chest, his arms. A trail of blotchy footprints from the bed to the switch.
The bed itself … like a waterbed which had burst.
Dark water.
XXXI
The Morris Minor took a bend on what felt like two wheels, Cindy grinding the arthritic gearbox to get out onto the main road ahead of a container lorry.
Marcus closed his eyes. ‘Do you want to kill us both, Lewis?’
Cindy said. ‘Do you want to tell me the truth about our friend Bobby?’
As Cindy was coming through the door, the phone had rung and Marcus had said, ‘Maiden? Maiden, is that you?’ a couple of times, before shaking his head and handing over to Cindy. ‘Can’t make make out what the hell he’s saying.’ And Cindy had listened gravely, for a long time, to a man sounding like someone teetering on the very edge of the abyss.
Asked Bobby precisely where he was, which sounded from his garbled description like Glangrwynne, between Abergavenny and Crickhowell. There was a bridge there, over the river, and Cindy had very calmly told Bobby to wait there, by the pub, and they would come and pick him up.
‘All right,’ Marcus said, resigned, as they crossed the Welsh border. ‘Name’s Maiden. Police detective. Got knocked down by a car in Elham. Died in hospital. Dragged back into the picture by a friend of mine. Anderson. Nursing sister.’
‘Friend?’
‘And, ah, spiritual healer. Initiated, as it were, by Mrs Willis.’
‘Really?’
‘At the Knoll,’ Marcus said reluctantly. ‘Anderson says she used the holy light to raise the boy’s, ah, dormant spirit. They had one of those crash things going on Maiden’s chest. Anderson threw the light into him at the same time.’
‘Fusion of science and the Holy Spirit. Also the shamanic art of soul-retrieval, where the shaman takes a trip to-’
‘Yes, yes!’
‘Marcus, how experienced is she?’
‘She’s a nurse.’
‘I didn’t mean professionally. Could she have let something else in?’
‘I don’t know. How would I know that?’
‘See, what we have here is a young man left with a terrible fear of death and prey to images which leave him — and me — feeling extremely cold. Fair play to the boy, he’s only a copper, not going to give us a dissertation on site-specific negative atmosphere, is he? But he’s sensitive. He’s been telling us, pure and simple, what he feels. Been telling people ever since, I’d guess.’
‘First time I met him,’ Marcus said, ‘was at the Knoll. As Mrs Willis lay dying. Kept urging us to take her down from the stone. I asked him why. Said he didn’t know why.’
‘Well, of course he didn’t. Had a very negative death experience. Not wonderful for everyone, as you know. The nice ones are the only ones people like to talk about, feeling the others tend to reflect badly on what kind of life they must have led thus far.’
‘Hieronymus Bosch demons clinging to their toes. Examined it in The Phenomenologist, couple of years ago. Several biddies complained.’
‘No wonder he was in a state. He’d never been to the Knoll in his life before, but some part of him knew the place … intimately. And it was a place without happy memories.’
‘You could be right,’ Marcus said grudgingly. ‘Had a head injury. Perceptions dulled ever since.’
‘Plus, whatever he encountered during the minutes of his death was so traumatizing that he’s blocking it. His subconscious erected a barrier. Made even more dense, as you say, by the effects of the head injury … which is also filtering ordinary, everyday sensory input to his brain. His whole experience of life is diminished. Like looking down a telescope from the wrong end. He feels he’s in a murky dream. Desperate to wake up, he behaves … erratically.’
There was a short silence, apart from the choking noises emitted by the car.
‘Erratically?’ Marcus said warily.
Cindy sighed. ‘Perhaps our friend Grayle’s outburst was closer to the truth than she imagined. The virus in the stone seems to inflame dark emotions. I should tell you …’
‘Yes. Perhaps you could tell me why we’re picking them up.’
‘Not them. He’s alone. I wish I had known what he was doing. What he was proposing for tonight.’
‘Merely proposing to get his end away, far as I could see.’
‘Because the situation, I am afraid, is that Bobby seems to think he may have murdered the girl.’
In this dismal room in the Ram’s Head, even in the dark, Grayle was finding it hard to relax, drift off. Too much had happened. All of it scary. And the worst thing kept rearing.
Ersula dead.
She’d never let herself even contemplate it.
Outside the window, in a village out of time, the wooden pub sign creaked on its pole. Grayle rolled over on the mattress which was surely no more comfortable than the top of some frigging burial chamber.
You never like to think of yourself as a religiou
s person — spiritual, maybe, sensitive, sure — but religion, in the end, is what it came down to: I’m religous; I need something to lean on. I come over here to lose Holy Grayle and who do I find but Holy fucking Grayle?
She realized she was lying here in the dark, mentally cutting up fragments of Ersula’s letter and fabricating that long conversation she’d been planning to have with her when they met up here in England. This made her feel even more lonely.
Believe it, Grayle.
I told you. I do believe it. I’m a half-ass, gullible, New Age goofball, I …
I mean, take it seriously, for the sake of all that’s holy …
Ersula throwing back the hood of her dark parka and putting her face right up to Grayle’s, her eyes burning with urgency.
‘Jesus!’
Grayle’s whole body lurched. She blinked in terror. The inn sign crashed back in a gust of nightwind.
… all that’s holy … Ersula’s voice echoing in the room.
Ersula, who didn’t believe in holy. Who didn’t believe in ghosts.
Who hadn’t written, in her letter, half of the stuff Grayle just heard her say.
Eyes stretched wide, Grayle gathered the sheets and the eiderdown around her and shivered herself into dream-sodden sleep.
They found him, as arranged, a few miles north of Abergavenny, where the road narrowed into a clutter of white and stone cottages and a pub that was closed. He came shambling up from the darkness of the riverbank, head bowed, unsteady, looking like a man who’d been dragged by muggers into some alleyway and had the stuffing kicked out of him.
‘All right.’ Cindy throwing open the passenger door. ‘Get in the back, Marcus. Bobby and I have to talk.’
Cindy plucked at a sleeve of Bobby’s jacket as he got in, then inspected his fingers.
‘Blood.’
Bobby did not respond; he sat silently, wrists crossed over his knees, as though they were already in handcuffs. He looked like a man who could imagine no future.
Cindy flung the Morris into gear, accelerated away in first, Marcus howling that he was going the wrong way, should have turned round on the pub forecourt.
‘Scene of the crime,’ Cindy said softly. ‘I would like to see the scene of the crime.’
Bobby’s shoulders jerked at this, but he said nothing. The old car made it to fifty mph with a horrible metallic shriek. Two minutes later, Cindy slowed at a sign which said Hotel/Gwesty.
‘This the place, is it, lovely?’
‘Look.’ Bobby’s voice parched as a ditch in August. ‘I’m sorry about this. I panicked. Should’ve driven the BMW to the police station in Abergavenny. If you go back that way, you could drop me outside.’
Marcus leaned over from the back seat. ‘Makes sense, Lewis.’
Cindy stopped the car just inside the hotel gates but didn’t switch off the engine, which juddered, shaking the whole car. He reached up to turn on the feeble interior light.
‘That way neither of you are involved,’ Bobby said, pale as death. ‘I’ll just tell them I thumbed a lift into town. Drop me at the station, drive away, no risk of anyone-’
‘All of life …’ Cindy lowered the handbrake and the car lumbered a little further up the drive. ‘… is one delectable risk after another.’
An old house came into view, more stately, less rambling than, say, Cefn-y-bedd. Security floodlights shot emerald rays across the bowling-green lawns.
‘You realize,’ Marcus said, ‘that if this engine cuts out, as it seems in imminent danger of doing, you’ll never get it going again, and then we’ll all be …’
‘Sixteenth century at least,’ Cindy mused. ‘Probably older. Possibly much older.’
‘Look, if you want to come on like Nicholas bloody Pevsner, let’s make it some other time, shall we? Just turn this heap of scrap round and get your dainty little fucking foot down.’
The front door of the hotel opened. A man peered out towards them, shading his eyes against the floodlights.
‘Night porter,’ Bobby said. ‘He’ll get your number.’
‘In that case, I hope you paid your bill, lovely.’ Cindy put on the headlights, full beam, and you could see that the night porter’s jacket was green and Marcus grabbed Cindy’s shoulder from behind.
‘Are you completely bloody mad?’
‘Abergavenny police station,’ Bobby said. ‘Ten minutes.’
‘So that you can confess to murder? Because, see, I really think you ought to confess to me first. I’m your fairy godmother. Talk to me, lovely.’
‘Go, Cindy.’
‘Turn the engine off, then, I will, if you want time to think about it.’ Cindy leaned back and reached for the keys.
‘At your fucking peril …’ Marcus snarled.
The night porter was strolling across the grass towards them.
‘Did I kill her? You want to know?’
‘All the time in the world, lovely.’
The night porter took what appeared to be a notepad from his top pocket.
‘No,’ Bobby said. ‘For what it’s worth.’
‘Worth the Earth, it is.’ Cindy cut the headlights, slammed into gear, let out the clutch with a bang and reversed her in a long, orgasmic scream.
Bobby breaking down into dry sobs, poor dab.
XXXII
They’d walked up by the light of the stars and the cold, cynical moon. Cindy up front, carrying the canvas suitcase, followed by Marcus in an old naval duffel coat with a hiker’s backback and Malcolm on a lead and Bobby Maiden, wearing a lumpy old tweed jacket of Marcus’s over a white T-shirt and sweatpants.
Cindy bent to set down the candle-lantern at the end of the big stone, and the light shone out, as if from the prow of some fossilized sailing ship.
Maiden was unsure why they were here. He remembered going back to Castle Farm. Marcus throwing logs on the stove. Cindy giving him some herbal drink to calm him.
He did feel calmer. Calmer than he’d any right to feel.
‘Why?’
Cindy straightened up, face gaunt and hollowed like eroded stone in the lonely light, and there was something about Cindy Maiden couldn’t fathom.
‘To sleep, Bobby. And perchance — as I was never considered suitable to confide to an audience in even the meanest repertory outfit — perchance to dream. You, that is. Not us. All right?’
‘What was in the drink?’
He didn’t remember changing. He didn’t know what had happened to his bloodied clothes, but it was Em’s blood and he wanted them back. To be stained with Em’s blood for ever.
She thought it was me. She must have died thinking it was me.
‘What was in the drink?’
‘Nothing a doctor wouldn’t prescribe, and with fewer side-effects. Relax, Bobby, you won’t be seeing pink tigers. Right, then, children …’ Cindy pulled from his case some kind of plastic sheet. ‘Let’s examine our situation.’
Cindy and Marcus laid the sheet on the grass and weighed it down with a couple of small stones and the suitcase. Cindy made them sit down, their backs to one of the huge supporting stones of the burial chamber, which looked bigger at night and less like a ruin. Maiden remembered Grayle Underhill and her ghost and that seemed a very long time ago.
‘Been talking about you, we have, Bobby.’ Cindy gazed beyond the small circle of light. ‘On the basis that you know more than you have been able to tell us. More than you know you know, if I am making myself clear.’
Maiden hadn’t realized until he sat down how tired he was. His head nodded, although he knew there was some reason he shouldn’t sleep.
‘Bobby!’ Cindy’s hands clapping his face. ‘Not yet, lovely. Listen. Listen to me. We’re going to take a leaf out of Professor Falconer’s book.’
‘Bastard borrowed the bloody book, anyway,’ Marcus said.
‘Sister Anderson told you, did she not, how she brought into play the light of High Knoll in the moments before your heart was restarted, yes? We believe that you wer
e exposed, in those moments, to what we might call the night side of these stones. And something lodged in what, to avoid a more contentious word, I will call your subconscious mind. What I want to do now is take you back, using the dream techniques employed by the professor and his people. Are you familiar?’
Maiden shook his head.
Cindy explained simply.
‘Whatever,’ Maiden said, long past caring. ‘Whatever.’
Cindy nodded, stood up, grabbed the suitcase from the plastic sheet and strode off into the darkness.
After a while, Malcolm howled suddenly, once, his wedge-shaped head inclined to the starry sky.
Marcus patted him. ‘Settle down, old son. He’s just a bloody old ham.’
‘Where’s he gone?’ Maiden wondered.
‘Fuck knows.’
Behind them, the chamber was a primeval altar on fat legs. It had cracks and fissures, filled with black shadow now, where the wan candlelight could not penetrate. Maiden put out a hand and touched the stone for the first time and recoiled. It really wasn’t that cold. As though blood was pumping through it.
‘Maiden, you-’
‘Sorry, Marcus?’
‘You couldn’t have hallucinated the whole thing, could you? I mean, this woman. This … butchery.’
‘Due to brain damage? And lack of sleep? And she’s really still alive?’
Marcus said nothing.
‘And the blood?’
‘Sorry.’ Marcus rubbed his eyes. ‘Never had anything to do with anything like this before. Who do you think …?’
‘It was a kind of accident, Marcus. It was supposed to be me.’
In the blackness of his heart of hearts, even he wants you popped now … Killed, then. Killed. All right?
‘Not this bent-copper nonsense?’
‘Right,’ Maiden said. ‘The bent-copper nonsense.’
Some contract-psycho. Maybe the same inept out-of-town hardmen he and Vic encounted in the flat. In which case they’d better be well out of town when the news got back to Tony Parker. One way or another, they were going down, all the way down. There’d be another bloodbath.
And Riggs?
The trail of blood would make a big circle all around Mr Riggs, and he’d stand there in the centre, perfectly still and perfectly dry. As ever.