The Cold Calling cc-1

by Phil Rickman

  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 grass, 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 glass 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 God,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Cindy Mars-Lewis.’

  ‘Oh God. 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 nobody at home and bugger 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 brass studs.

  There was no creeping about; they walked in as if they owned the bloody place. Marcus was furious.

  ‘Whassis? Fucking 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 fucking castle.’

  ‘He said Castle Farm, you twat!’

  ‘So? We lived in Castle Close, but there weren’t no fucking castle there. And the next street up was called Palace Place, but there weren’t …’

  ‘Are yow gonna shut the fuck up? It’s only a fucking ruin. Be no fucking men at arms up there with fucking crossbows.’

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

  ‘Yer scared, yow, en’t yer? Yer fucking scared. Yer spooked. ‘

  ‘Fuck 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?’

  The squat one walked out into the middle of the yard. ‘I said ‘s there any fucker in?’ Turned back. ‘Deserted. What y’wanna do, Bez?’

  ‘Not going back without. No way. We fucked up once. Fuck up twice, you get a reputation. We’ll wait. I’m not staying out here, neither.’ Bez looked up. ‘Gonna rain. Yow go’n do a door, I’ll just check the outbuildings. In case. And the castle, case Dracula’s in. Eh? Gallow?’

  ‘Fuck off.’ The squat one, Gallow, jerked up a forefinger and walked off towards the house.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘’s up?’

  ‘Just in case …’ The red-haired one, Bez, took his hand out from inside his jacket. Something gleamed. ‘Which one you want?’

  ‘Gimme the sawn-off then. Might be a few of ‘em in there, keeping quiet sorta thing.’

  A gun? A sawn-off bloody shotgun? Marcus’s whole face seemed to explode with sweat. They were assassins. They were here to kill. When you thought about professional killers, you somehow imagined serious, sinister, taciturn individuals. Not mindless young cretins, egging each other on, taking the piss. What was happening to the world?

  Bez turned away and looked up and around and Marcus saw his face between the stones, through the branches, saw that Bez was old beyond his years, his face hard and flat, his smile stamped on, his eyes small and bright and compassionless.

  Marcus cursed Maiden. Clutched the jagged stone that stood up like a single battlement and wished that Maiden might never have a night’s sleep for the rest of his miserable second life.

  When Gallow reached the front door, Malcolm barked.

  ‘Shit. Fucking dog in there, Bez. I hate it, me, when there’s a fucking dog. En’t scared, dogs en’t. Can’t threaten a dog. Gotta shoot it, then y’gotta fuck off case it made too much fucking noise and some fucker phones the filth.’

  ‘Get fucking real, willya, man. No problem, place like this. No neighbours, shotguns going off the whole time, rabbits and things, nobody gives a shit. Nobody even notices. Now, go on. Do a door, do a window. Any problem, shout.’

  ‘I hate the fucking country. Everything’s too big.’ Gallow began to kick the front door, looking for weak points. In the kitchen, Malcolm barked and barked.

  Marcus hugged his jagged stone for support. The bastard would get in. Start kicking open door after door, until he reached the kitchen, and then, when the door was open, Malcolm would go silent. Observe the newcomer through his unbalanced eyes, wondering if there might be a chocolate biscuit in this. Come waddling towards him, a dog that wouldn’t go in his basket at night without his teddy bear, but unfortunately looked like a complete psycho, an animal you wouldn’t ever argue with. Especially if you happened to be tooled-up and nervous.

  Meanwhile, Bez, the one with no fear of spooky old buildings, would probably be unable to resist investigating the one stone, spiral staircase in the ruins.

  Bez was prowling the buildings and he was tooled-up.

  He was supposed to do … what? Stand up on the battlements, boom out, You, boy! Threaten them with five nights’ detention?

&nbs
p; Could’ve been out of here two hours ago, the dog too. And why hadn’t he gone? Because he didn’t really believe it? Not precisely. It was because Maiden and Cindy had buggered off to face up the delightful Falconer with evidence that his ideas had inspired a madman. Leaving old man Bacton to hold the fort, make the tea, attend to a few senior citizen’s chores.

  Marcus looked round for his eroded pitchfork.

  ‘OK, we had a breakdown,’ Grayle said. ‘Adrian organized a ride for me into Chipping Norton, and he said he’d call up the AA and wait for them and then he’d bring the car later. Why do you need to know this?’

  They were standing out in the lane, across from a big, twirly-shaped outlying stone surrounded by railings. Cindy — looking even more bizarre, somehow, in men’s clothes — had with him Bobby Maiden, sans eyepatch and grilling her like a cop.

  ‘What’s the car?’

  ‘It’s a Rover. A small, red Rover something.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen him since you left him at the roadside, with the car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re sure he’s not here?’

  ‘He’s not here. Where could he be? Hiding out behind the pines?’

  Still suspicious of these guys. All this shamanic stuff, the way Cindy found a supernatural dimension to everything. She hadn’t needed it last night after her experience at the stones; it had surely caused that awful dream of Ersula. And she sure as hell didn’t need it at the Rollright Stones on the edge of a thunderstorm.

  Except that Bobby’s questions were clipped and urgent and entirely prosaic.

  ‘When you picked him up, he have anything with him?’

  ‘Change of clothes was all.’

  ‘In what? A case? A bag?’

  ‘Yeah, he had … he called it a cricket bag.’

  ‘Big, long, leather bag, two handles?’

  ‘We couldn’t fit it in the trunk, had to stash it across the back seat.’

  ‘Did you feel there was anything in it, apart from clothes? Did it seem heavy when he picked it up? Was it bulging out anywhere?’

  ‘I don’t know! What else could be in there?’

  Cindy said, ‘Perhaps a crossbow?’

  ‘Jesus, what’s all this about?’

  ‘When you broke down,’ Bobby said, ‘what do you think was wrong? What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know cars. We started losing power, the engine kind of whined.’

  ‘Fan belt? Could it have been that?’

  Grayle shrugged. Cindy said, ‘What would be the significance of that?’

  ‘Was there any time Adrian was with the car and you weren’t there?’

  ‘Not really. I was driving. Oh. After we ate, I, uh, went to the bathroom and when I came out he was waiting in the parking lot. At the car.’

  ‘And you were in, what, five minutes?’

  ‘Jeez, you wanna know what I did in there? Well, I took a pee, I washed my hands, tried to make my hair look normal …’

  ‘And how long after the pub did the car start playing up?’

  ‘Not long. Half a mile?’

  ‘Right. See, while you were in the bog, he could’ve slashed the fan belt, so it’d snap soon after you drove away.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Most likely to get you out of the way and get himself some wheels. We should all be bloody glad it worked. He might have done something more drastic.’

  Cindy said, ‘He would never do that unless it was a sacrifice. Where killing is concerned, he has his rules.’

  Grayle said, voice faltering, ‘What is this? Just what is this about?’

  ‘All right,’ Cindy said. He held her shoulders, looked into her eyes. ‘You remember when we spoke the other night, in my room at the inn, of the contrasting aspects of the Knoll, male and female? And the male element linked to blood, slaughter …’

  Grayle shook herself away. ‘Before you go any further, what’s your angle? Who are you?’

  Bobby brought out his wallet. Grayle had never seen British police ID, but it looked straight. Also, he sounded right. He looked all wrong, but an undercover cop, the whole point was he should look all wrong.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me?’ Cindy said. ‘A concerned member of the public.’

  ‘And Adrian?’

  ‘Someone who kills people,’ Bobby said.

  It was kind of a hollow moment, the words repeating themselves in her head.

  ‘And why?’ Grayle asked, her head somewhere up there in the curdling sky but her voice down here and surprisingly calm. ‘Why is he killing people?’

  ‘Because he believes that’s how we should be living,’ Bobby said. ‘Hunting and hunted and feeding the earth with blood. We think he’s killed about half a dozen people.’

  ‘Including my sister, Ersula, right?’ That scarily calm voice giving verbal substance to what she’d instinctively known before she even left New York, that Ersula was dead and had been dead for weeks.

  ‘We think that’s possible. I’m sorry.’

  ‘How did he kill her?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ Cindy said. Too quickly.

  ‘We think …’ Bobby said ‘… we think he may be planning to do something today.’

  ‘Here?’ Her voice still calm, still grounded. How was she doing this?

  ‘Here seems the obvious place.’

  ‘Why would he want to take my car? Why not just stick along with me?’

  ‘We don’t know. Maybe he needed the car for something and he didn’t want you around. He’d replace the fan belt, no problem …’

  ‘Practical guy,’ Grayle said bitterly. ‘Comes from a long line of solid chaps who are not terribly bright, but good with their hands. Rigged up the Portakabins, laid down the helicopter pad.’

  She saw Cindy wince. Ersula’s death hung in the air between them. Either she could haul it down and go some place to weep or she could leave it suspended there until this was over. If it would ever be over.

  ‘I think … maybe …’ Something dawning on her. ‘… he didn’t want to be seen to be here. Didn’t want to come in his own truck. Made some excuse that it wasn’t road-worthy. I thought he was just grabbing at the chance to be with me. I thought maybe he, uh …’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Early morning. I’d just checked out of the inn, he pulled up in the street. Seemed … surprised. Yeah. Real surprised to see me there.’

  ‘He would be,’ Bobby said. ‘He thought he’d killed you last night.’

  Grayle drew breath, felt a weakness behind her knees. Fifteen, twenty yards away, a metallic blue Jaguar melted into the side of the road and a guy in a dark suit climbed out the driver’s side, came round and opened the passenger door. Performed a theatrical bow, extended an arm … and Janny Oates stepped out in a long, plain white dress, a golden circlet in her hair. She saw Grayle and waved, all flushed and excited, looking about sixteen, and Grayle waved back and forced an encouraging smile.

  ‘He followed someone last night,’ Bobby said. ‘We’re sure he thought it was you.’

  ‘And he … he killed her?’ Janny was luminous against the sky.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OhmyGod.’

  ‘I’m sorry to unload all this on you, Grayle.’

  ‘We have to find him, don’t we? We have to find him right now.’

  ‘We do,’ Bobby said.

  ‘Just tell me. Who else did he kill?’

  ‘Just people. You wouldn’t know them. He didn’t know them.’

  ‘Except for Ersula.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A friend,’ Grayle said. ‘She was his friend. Listen, he talked about sacrifices. He said people would be horrified if they actually knew what it was like here in the old days. He said … sacrifice … he said it was cruel but it was necessary.’

  ‘He said that to you?’

  ‘On the way here. He said the best sacrifice, the only real sacrifice was if you did it to someone who hadn’t done you
any harm. He said the ultimate sacrifice was to take the life of a friend. And … and …’

  ‘Go on,’ Cindy whispered. ‘And?’

  ‘He doesn’t like New Age stuff. It’s like they’re wimps. He said they’d done real damage to the traditions.’

  The wedding march was being played on a violin, ragged and a little out of tune, with guitar backing. Some people were cheering.

  ‘And I said — a couple times I think I said this — I said Janny and Matthew — because those guys are real New Agers, as you can see — I said, you know, what about them? Like, how come, if you hate all these people, you’re going to their wedding? And he goes, he just goes …’

  Through the trees, she could see that Charlie had lit the candles on his altar. It was close to dark.

  ‘… they’re my friends.’

  Marcus coughed.

  It had taken him a while to build up the cough, and now it was out there wasn’t much to it. But it was quiet in the castle precincts now that Gallow and Bez had split up. Malcolm had given up barking. There was just the sound of Bez kicking open the barn door, the more distant thrust and rattle of Gallow unsubtly forcing the rear door of the house.

  So the cough was distinct.

  It brought Bez out of the barn into the darkening yard.

  A splintering sound from behind the house meant Gallow was in. Gallow … loose … in the house.

  Malcolm barked once.

  Bez said, ‘Gallow?’

  He stood in the yard looking over towards the castle walls. His hand went inside his jacket, came out with a pistol, a big one, automatic. They were completely bloody mad, Marcus thought. Drove halfway across England with an automatic pistol and a sawn-off shotgun in the van? What would they do if they were stopped?

  Well, they probably never had been and so it wouldn’t happen, and if it did they could always shoot it out. The mad, brutal arrogance of young men. No animal more dangerous.

  Bez said, ‘Gallow? That yow?’