Callard giving her the hard stare that said, You want me to tell this to a policeman?
‘There are cops,’ Grayle replied, ‘and there are cops.’
And there was Bobby. Whose past experiences had shifted his whole perspective way beyond the cop-norm. The last time Grayle had seen Bobby he’d been asking her how crystals worked.
So when he was listening to Callard relating the seance stuff, about the cold atmosphere and the foul smell and the three-button grey suit and the long scar, it was without scorn, or veiled mockery. Grayle had noticed a little grey in Bobby’s dark hair. Poor baby; midlife crisis, intimations of mortality.
When Callard’s story was over he’d said, ‘But they can’t harm you, can they?’
‘They can steal your energy,’ Callard said, sliding on to the desk chair. ‘They can keep you awake like a young baby keeps its mother awake. Because they require your energy.’
‘What are we talking about here?’ Bobby asked her. ‘I mean, when the physical body dies, it’s said that what Gurdjieff called the kesdjan body-’
‘The what?’ Callard’s eyes opening wide. Oh God, she just could not believe this was a cop.
‘He means astral,’ Marcus said.
‘That the astral body remains alive for a while,’ Bobby said. ‘Is that what we’re talking about? An astral body kept alive by some earthly obsession?’
‘Hey,’ Grayle said lightly. ‘Technical, or what?’
‘I really don’t know.’ Callard leaning closer to Bobby, the woolly sweater coming open a little more, showing off those flawless brown tits. God-damn. ‘I don’t think the astral body and the spirit are the same, although one may inhabit the other. Certainly I’ve never seen anything quite so clear as this before. So fully defined, such presence. If it wasn’t such a negative presence I’d want to know more. As it is, I just want it out of my life.’
‘So it’s getting its energy from you.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You dream about it?’
‘I’m not sure. When I’m asleep, I can’t…’ she smiled ‘… police my consciousness. I thought at first that, in some perverse way, I was inviting it. Now I think it only comes when I open myself formally. Other essences may come through when I’m not trying, but never this one. But if I go deliberately into trance it’s there. Immediately.’
‘Every time?’
‘I’d say so. Which is why I couldn’t work, even if I wanted to. This is something that’s become attached to me because of what I am. What I do.’
‘Like a computer virus,’ Bobby said.
‘Or a vampire?’ Grayle standing up and crossing to the window. It seemed to have stopped raining. ‘Like the undead? Something that either doesn’t know it’s dead or doesn’t want to be dead.’
‘Does anybody?’ Bobby said.
Marcus said, ‘Maiden had a negative death experience.’
‘Really?’ Callard looking at him with awfully serious interest. ‘I’ve heard of that. But not all that often — most people, when they’re across, seem to wonder why the hell they spent so long trying to put it off.’
Grayle moved away from the window. ‘Anyhow, Seffi and I are going over to Gloucestershire tomorrow to talk to this woman who was at the party. Whose husband fucked the son’s girl.’
Bobby frowned. ‘Is that wise?’
‘What’s wise gotta do with it?’
‘Just that if you find the woman’s husband has a slice out of his face …’
Grayle started to say something, fell silent.
‘Those blokes had an agenda,’ Bobby said. ‘They didn’t complete it. Right now, they don’t know where you are. Either of you. Unless they got Grayle’s name out of Justin before …’ He stiffened. ‘You didn’t give him your address, did you?’
‘Oh. Did I? No … wait … I didn’t. I gave him my name was all. For the bill. I didn’t even write anything down.’
‘Nothing in the car with your address on it?’
‘I don’t think so. Bobby, you think we could be in danger here?’
‘It’s unlikely, but we can’t rule it out.’
At which point Callard had actually said, ‘Aren’t we pushing the bounds of credibility a little here?’ And Grayle had thought, didn’t it ever occur to you that this is the first time tonight we haven’t been doing that?
She’d been drawn back to the window. The uneven castle walls looked like a grey army keeping vigil until dawn. Except the castle walls couldn’t even keep the damn rain out.
‘Look,’ Callard said, ‘I don’t want to put you in danger. I ought to leave.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’ Marcus was half out of his chair.
‘If we go over to Cheltenham tomorrow, that gets both of us out,’ Grayle said.
Bobby shook his head.
‘Two defenceless women, huh?’ Grayle snapped.
Then Callard was turning to Bobby, saying, ‘All right then, if you think there’s a risk, why don’t you go to Cheltenham with me?’
‘And I suppose, Underhill, that you’re glad to get rid of her for a day,’ Marcus said, getting it all ass over tit as usual.
Grayle said tightly, ‘Might freshen up the place a little.’
‘All right,’ Marcus said. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘No problem.’
‘Underhill?’
‘Forget it,’ Grayle said.
XXIII
"Well, they hadn’t been expecting the husband, but it had always been a possibility. It made it harder, but the rewards were potentially greater.
He was a big man in his fifties. Wide chest straining his mauve polo shirt. Wide face.
Unmarked, as it happened.
He was standing, arms hanging loose, under the veranda of the spacious, colonial-style bungalow in a scrappy, semi-rural village five miles outside Cheltenham. He was staring at Persephone Callard as if he just could not believe this.
Seffi was summery today in a cream woollen jacket over a turquoise silk top and off-white jeans. The ensemble said, Whatever you’ve heard, I’m still a woman.
‘Ah, Mr Hole.’ She stood no more than a couple of feet from him and did not back away. ‘I really came to see your wife.’
‘Or maybe you come to see if I’ve still got a wife.’ Mr Hole had a rounded Gloucestershire accent. ‘You got some flaming nerve, lady.’
The bungalow was in a choice spot at the top of a rise. There was a long gravel drive, about half an acre of lawn between the veranda and the road. Security gates seven feet tall at the bottom, but one had been hanging open.
They’d parked the Grand Cherokee on a grass verge about a hundred yards away and sat there a while discussing how to handle this. How angry was the husband? Maiden had asked.
Called me a black slag.
Mr Hole’s face was smoothly shaven. But not, it would appear, with a hedging knife.
‘Like you haven’t caused enough trouble,’ he said.
‘It’s been troubling me, too,’ Seffi Callard said smoothly. ‘Look, sometimes these things just come out, yah? And are not invariably accurate. One can never entirely guarantee that what comes through is going to be the absolute truth.’
‘Oh, can’t one? Then why …?’ His cheeks reddening. ‘Well, we both know why in this case, don’t we, lady?’
Anger there, genuine outrage.
‘Coral does two afternoons a week at a charity shop in Cheltenham,’ he said, ‘which is not a suitable place for you to talk to her. So you can talk to me or you can fuck off.’
He wasn’t being friendly, he wasn’t ready to be talked round. But he was curious, Maiden thought. There were things he wanted to know.
Inside, there were low sofas in bright spacey colours. Potted palms, yellow roller blinds, a Spanish-looking TV cabinet. The picture windows framed flat, scrubby farmland. Mr Hole nodded at one of the sofas but didn’t sit down himself. Maiden wondered where the money had come from.
‘This is Bobby Maiden,’ Seffi said. ‘My fiance.’