by Phil Rickman
‘Certainly explain why he freaks when you ask him what happens in his head when he’s having an attack,’ Jeavons said. ‘He have any counselling at the time?’
‘Not as common then as it is now, was it? Especially not for offenders.’
‘And he’s working in a garage now.’
‘Tyre depot. But still working with cars, yes. Hasn’t committed any criminal offences since, according to my friend. As far as health goes, he might always have been prone to respiratory problems, but the serious asthma attacks seem to have started within a year of the incident. So…’ Merrily closed the pad, stared at the flat, pastel mosaic of the Paul Klee print. ‘Can I help him?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think I know what you might suggest. While the thought of it leaves me feeling exhausted already, the logic of it’s almost too perfect.’
‘Yes,’ Jeavons said.
‘Would you do it?’
‘What? Say it.’
‘The healing of the living and the healing of the dead. A formal Requiem Eucharist to bring peace to the soul of a nine-year-old boy who died seventeen years ago. And to his cousin, who has it all stored up inside him like some old video nasty that keeps replaying itself in his head… until it constricts his lungs.’
‘Textbook,’ Jeavons said. ‘Unless maybe they already had a Requiem?’
‘They didn’t. I tracked down the minister who conducted the funeral. It was at Hereford Crematorium, they weren’t practising Christians and it didn’t take long. That’s how I found out about the row during the service. Which didn’t end there. When Dexter’s dad bought a new car it was vandalized — tyres ripped, bodywork scored. Their house was also broken into twice — damage rather than theft. They suspected Darrin.’
Not without reason. Bliss had said Darrin had burgled his way through half the houses in south Hereford. The family blamed Dexter for Darrin turning bad.
‘A few months ago, according to my colleague, Darrin’s mother encountered Dexter’s mother in the car park at Safeway… spat in her face.’
‘The healing capabilities of time are often overrated,’ Jeavons said.
‘So there’s a good deal more to heal here than a case of asthma.’
‘You think she wanted you to find out about all this, the aunt?’
‘I don’t know.’ Merrily lit a cigarette. ‘Alice seems to be the eldest sister. She and her husband opened a chip shop in Ledwardine about twenty years ago. He died a while back. She must be well into her seventies now but still works there part-time. And does most of the cleaning in the church. And her niece in Solihull recently went on an Alpha course, which seems to have inspired Alice to come to one of our Sunday evenings.’
Felt the Holy Spirit was in her heart like a big white bird, and you could feel its wings fluttering. As if this big bird was trying to escape from her breast and fill the whole world with love and healing.
‘You got yourself an enormously interesting case, Merrilee,’ Lew Jeavons said. ‘Why you trying to avoid it?’
‘Am I?’
‘Reach out! Embrace!’
He laughed hugely, the bastard.
The White Company: cool name, but…
Well, come on, what did you expect?
Jane stood by the stairs with Ben, watching them bunched in the hall under the blown bulb, and thinking that at least they blended with the decor. Of the three of them, Elizabeth Pollen was the most animated. There was a youngish guy with limp hair and Harry Potter glasses who had, like, anorak stamped across his shallow forehead, and if he didn’t have spots it was only because the Clearasil was working this week.
Which meant that Alistair Hardy, the medium, the main man, had to be the heavy-set sixtyish person with pewtery hair and an intermittent scowl and a briefcase. A man clearly aware of his professional standing, like a small-town bank manager. It was laughable.
‘Right,’ Ben said. ‘If we’re all in agreement, I’d like to record some of Alistair’s testing of the individual rooms. Antony Largo would have been here himself, but he’s tied up on another project at the present. And so—’
And then, what Ben did, he plucked the Sony 150 out of Jane’s hands, just blatantly lifted it.
‘—I’ll have to shoot this myself.’ Moving away with the camcorder, he tossed her a brief, faintly rueful smile over his shoulder. ‘Jane, you might like to watch how I do this. Give you a few basic ideas.’
Son of a bitch!
Jane was boiling with embarrassment. She thought she could see the Harry Potter guy smirking. She turned to look for Amber, but Amber had gone, maybe to barricade the kitchen. Natalie appeared in the lounge doorway, met Jane’s eyes and shrugged, sympathetic but helpless.
18
Shock of the Proof
In the dining room, Alistair Hardy said he could see a spirit.
It was all quite repulsive, Jane thought, like he was feigning a stroke. Hardy was wearing a dark grey suit and a black tie, maybe to suggest respect for the dead, and it was as though one side of him had gone numb. An arm was sticking out from his body, fingers curled, as if he was holding another hand.
He’d moved to the area where Jane had stood with her tray while serving breakfast to Ben and Antony and absorbing their edgy banter. The stained glass in the window, with only the night behind it, looked as dense as lead. The concertina radiators were silent; Ben and Amber had no heat to waste.
Ben was into a crouch, no more than a yard away from Hardy, aiming the camera upwards, probably to make the guy look more majestic; also close enough, according to Eirion’s rules, to pick up usable sound through the built-in mike.
‘There’s an elderly lady, with a stick… no… it’s a walking… Oh, what do you call it?’ Hardy’s metallic voice was pitched up, like a priest in church. If he was supposed to be from Edinburgh, why didn’t he have a Scottish accent? Sounded faintly West Midlands to Jane. ‘A Zimmer frame! An elderly lady with a Zimmer frame!’
Jane, standing over by the door with Natalie, murmured, ‘Well, that sounds suitably Victorian.’
It was freezing in here. She zipped up her fleece. She hadn’t yet decided if Hardy was a phoney or merely self-deluded, but the fact that the filming had been literally taken out of her hands allowed her to be as cynical and acidic as she liked.
‘I believe this place actually used to be an old people’s home, Alistair,’ the Harry Potter guy said.
‘Yes,’ Hardy said. ‘Thank you, Matthew.’
Jane thought, He must have known that anyway. It was strange, really; she had this fairly liberal acceptance of the paranormal, based on a couple of meaningful experiences of her own, but spiritualism just didn’t light her candle. It was fusty and sad; it was rooms full of lumbering furniture and old ladies smelling of camphor.
‘I would say the poor old dear had dementia,’ Hardy said. ‘She still doesn’t seem to be fully aware of her own passing. And so she walks this room, around and around. I expect I can probably help her get to where she should be. When I have a little more time.’
‘Meanwhile, we’ll just leave her to hobble around for a few more weeks,’ Jane murmured. ‘This guy should be working for the NHS.’
Natalie shook her head, a little smile on her perfect, ironic lips. What, precisely, did Natalie believe in? Jane realized she had no idea. And somewhere, the incurious Clancy was quietly getting on with her homework. Jane didn’t understand that, either.
Ben said, from behind the camera, ‘Just the one, ah, spirit, Alistair?’ His voice was conversational. You could hear it on TV already, the out-of-shot director’s diffident prompt.
‘I’m fairly sure this room is not the one we’re looking for, Ben.’ Hardy’s arm relaxed, his fingers uncurling. ‘Not to worry.’
‘You didn’t get much in the lounge, either.’
‘No. Let’s go back into the hall. Perhaps upstairs?’
Jane looked at Ben. Ben said nothing. She wondered how Amber would react if he showed Hardy t
he ‘secret’ passageway under the stairs. Or if he took them up to Hattie Chancery’s room. She and Nat let the four of them go through and waited. Ben had hurried ahead to get a shot of them vacating the dining room; he wouldn’t want the staff in the picture.
‘This is moderately naff,’ Jane murmured to Natalie.
‘Perhaps it’s not for us to say.’
Nat was demure tonight, in a black woollen dress, the kind Mum might wear. Of course, she was responsible for this, setting it up, because it would be good for the hotel. But would it? If Stanner developed a reputation as the haunt of saddoes, where was the future in that?
‘I mean, do you believe that guy can see anything at all?’
‘I don’t know, Jane — what do you think?’
‘I think maybe he does — or did have — some psychic ability. But if it’s not happening for him, he’ll just make something up. That’s where it all goes wrong. Nobody gets it all the time, but if you’re a so-called professional medium, with an audience expecting fireworks, you’re going to make sure they get what they want, aren’t you? Like, if you know this place was once an old people’s home, you invent an old girl on a zimmer.’
‘And what does your mother think?’
‘You been talking to Amber?’
‘Ben told me about her.’
‘That guy is so discreet. Amber would like it if Mum came in and scattered some holy water before the White Company gets into it.’
‘And would she do that?’
‘Probably. But the point is that I would rather she didn’t get involved. Because I like it here, you know? I like this job.’
When they decided it was safe to leave the dining room, they saw Alistair Hardy moving upstairs, up the red carpet and — oh hell — Amber was alone at the top of the kitchen steps. Her face was blank, but you could sense the tension in the way she was standing, both hands pressing on her apron with the design of a cottage on a hill.
There was a subdued tension everywhere, the air drab with negative emotion, and it was like the fabric of Stanner Hall was moulding itself around this. Like bad vibes were part of its heritage.
If Ben was aware of this, he was pretending he wasn’t, crouching at the bottom of the stairs shooting Alistair Hardy. He loves it, for the drama. He doesn’t believe in it for one minute. Hardy had got halfway to the first landing when he abruptly turned and came down again.
‘Ben, I’m being pulled the other way.’
Ben carried on recording: digital video was dirt-cheap, according to Eirion, and went on for ever. Hardy came quietly down, standing at the foot of the stairs with one arm out at an unnatural angle, his eyes not quite shut, so that you could see the whites, like the light under a closed door. Maybe he was simply telepathic and had picked up what was threshing around in Amber’s head.
Slowly, like a soldier patrolling a boundary, Hardy walked away into the dimmer part of the hall, where the blown bulb was. He looked across at Amber, who looked away. Then he turned back, Beth Pollen and the others watching him in silence. Mrs Pollen had on a short grey cape, like nurses used to wear, over a long viridian skirt. Would have made better video, Jane thought, if she was the medium.
‘You’re not alone, are you?’
Jane twisted round. Alistair Hardy was standing next to her. She could smell his aftershave; it seemed wrong, somehow, for a medium to be wearing aftershave; shouldn’t they project a neutral ambience? Jane stiffened. It was like the way cats always chose to rub up against the one person in the room who was allergic to cat hair. She tried to move away and bumped into Harry Potter, who didn’t move.
Hardy was looking at her, as if he was noticing her for the first time. She met his eyes: flat and grey and somehow leaden, like the stained glass in the dining room with no light behind it. She glanced away, found herself gazing directly into the dark lens of the camcorder — Ben on his knees on the worn rug in the centre of the hall, poised and steady and relaxed. She found they were all grouped around her now, like a coven. What? Jane spun, looking for a way out of this. The hall seemed suddenly full of people and shadows.
‘Rather distinguished woman,’ Hardy said. ‘Elderly, but not at all like the poor dear in the dining room. Has your—? I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’
Jane said nothing, reluctant to give anything away to this creep. She’d been fitted up. She wanted to kick the camera out of Ben’s hands. Then again, she wanted to go on working here. Possibly.
‘Jane,’ she said sullenly.
‘Ah yes.’ As if he’d known that all along and was just making sure that she knew who she was. ‘Jane, have you a granny who’s passed?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
Hardy smiled his bank manager’s smile. He had a gold filling. ‘She’s definitely with you, my dear.’
‘And you’re sure she hasn’t got Alzheimer’s?’
He kept on smiling, which was unnerving. He was supposed to lose his temper with her; spiritualists had no sense of humour, everybody knew that.
‘Property,’ Alistair Hardy said. ‘She has a message for you relating to property.’ His right hand seemed to be vibrating, fingers clawed.
‘I don’t deal much in property these days.’
‘She says… tell them not to give up on the house.’
Jane shrugged. Usual banal crap.
‘She’s taller than you,’ Alistair Hardy said. ‘As tall as me. Formidable, I think would be the word. She has… rather sharp features — strong would be a better word. Not someone to trifle with, certainly. And she’s wearing… a shawl? Quite a large, thick shawl.’
‘Don’t know anyone with a shawl. Well, my mum has an old black one that she—’ Jane shut her mouth. It was like with fortune tellers: you never went along with it, never fed them information they could build on. She looked beyond Alistair Hardy into the sepia shadow-stain around the bulb that had blown.
‘It’s not quite a shawl, it’s — help me here, somebody — what do you call one of those garments that became very popular for a while back in the seventies? South American origins.’ He lifted his good arm, started to snap his fingers in the air. ‘Somebody… what’s the word? Come on, this is quite significant.’
‘Oh,’ Beth Pollen said. ‘You mean…’
The word had burst in Jane’s brain before it was uttered. She kept on staring into the blown bulb, like her consciousness was being drawn into its fog, and the broken filament inside the bulb was the size of a dead tree, her hands going numb around it. She felt insubstantial, grey and vague, barely feeling her legs give way.
‘You mean a poncho,’ Mrs Pollen said.
Over the clanking of the van, Gomer said, ‘It don’t sound right to me, boy. Sounds like he was handing you a barrow-load of ole bullshit.’
‘He was always full of it,’ Danny admitted.
‘ “Bands of brigands roaming by night”?’ Gomer and Danny were both staring through the windscreen at the lightless fields beyond Walton, sloping up to Radnor Forest. They were going to pick up young Jane Watkins at Stanner before Gomer dropped Danny off at home, else she’d think Gomer had forgotten about her.
‘That’s what he said. He d’reckon it’s the only way the farmers gonner keep the fox population under control when the Government bans huntin’ with hounds.’
‘Ah well,’ Gomer said, ‘I can understand Sebbie comin’ out with that ole wallop when he’s got the MP round his place for cocktails — put the frighteners on the politicians kind of thing. But not to the likes of we.’
‘So what was them bloody Welshies doin’ in Jeremy’s yard, then? They had his barn all staked out, Gomer, like they’d got the fox trapped up in there. All it was was Jeremy’s ole sheepdog. They’d’ve bloody shot that dog if the kiddie hadn’t run in. Shot the dog out of sheer spite, I reckon.’
‘Should’ve called in the law, boy. Let them sort it out.’
‘He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do it, Gomer.’
‘Then you oughter be asking why h
e wouldn’t.’
‘That was what Sebbie said. That we oughter be asking why Jeremy didn’t want the cops round. And then the bastard was asking me if I was still doin’ dope. Like as if Jeremy didn’t want no cops round for the same reason I never did.’
‘You en’t still—?’
Danny coughed. ‘Bit of home-grown. Strickly for personal use. And only a bit.’ Giving Gomer a nervous glance on account of, to Gomer’s generation, a twist of wacky baccy could put you on the down-escalator into hell and blacken the name of Gomer Parry Plant Hire for ever. ‘Pigs don’t do you for that n’more, see, long as you en’t dealin’.’ He was being a bit careful, though, since Dacre had dropped the little phrase ‘Drug Squad’. He might be full of bullshit, but he did have contacts.
Gomer drove on steadily, said nothing. Good ole boy.
‘So this woman,’ Danny said. ‘Miz Natalie Craven. Two ways of lookin’ at that, Gomer. On the one hand, blokes is like, Lucky devil, what’s he got we en’t? Whereas women’s sayin’ she’s bewitched him, the slag.’
‘And Sebbie Dacre?’ Gomer wondered. ‘What’s Sebbie think about her?’
‘Sebbie’s had his share,’ Danny said.
‘Zelda Morgan, ennit, now?’
‘Zelda, aye. Off the boil a bit, what I yeard. Zelda mabbe fig-urin’ it wasn’t worth the candle — Sebbie’s moods.’
‘Or mabbe Sebbie’s thinkin’ he can do better than Zelda,’ Gomer said. ‘Mabbe lookin’ for a woman of means, way he got fleeced by the missus in the divorce court.’
‘Have you…’ Danny hesitating, as they rattled out onto the Kington Road. ‘You yeard anythin’ about Sebbie goin’ strange, Gomer?’
‘What way?’
‘Well… the Welsh shooters. Settin’ ’em on Jeremy. Like he’s got an obsession with Jeremy, now Jeremy’s got hisself a serious woman. Anything, really.’
‘You reckon it’s to do with the woman?’
‘Dunno.’
They drove on in silence for a while, then Danny said, ‘Sometimes, it feels like everything’s filled up with some’ing, and it’s only a matter of time ’fore it bursts. I thought it was the snow — you know that feeling you get when there’s snow on the way. But it en’t just snow.’