He would stand alone in the stiff, wiry, sheep-munched grass and give thanks to the elements, to the forces of earth and air, sea and sky which, together, became something approximating to God.
And pray. In his fashion.
Avoiding the horrors of the M25, Cindy found his way to the M4, the motorway of the west. Before the junction, as usual, he put on the radio to catch the ten o’clock news on ‘Five Live’.
And with that shamanic flair for pinpointing the moment which, in more pleasant circumstances, would be termed serendipitous, the switch clicked on this:
‘… and it’s just been confirmed that the pilot who died when his two-seater aircraft overshot a runway and smashed into a barn in Shropshire has been named as Lottery jackpot winner, Colin Seymour.
‘42-year-old Mr Seymour was headmaster of a special school for children with learning difficulties, and earlier tonight millions of viewers of the BBC’s National Lottery Live saw him showing pupils the plane he’d bought with his one point seven million pound win …’
Cindy drove numbly into the mesh of lights at the M4 junction.
He was tasting the bitter tang from the sea.
XXV
Ron was waiting for them in a layby above stroud, AS arranged. Seffi flashed the headlights and Ron lumbered across from his Rover, a bulky bloke in an old anorak. Maiden got into the back of the Jeep so he could stretch his legs in the passenger seat and appraise Seffi by the interior lights.
‘They were right about you having exotic friends these days, Bobby. I’m sorry, love, you don’t mind exotic, do you? Ron Foxworth, my name.’
‘Hello.’ Seffi a touch guarded.
‘You’re the one I been reading about. The one who’s disappeared.’
‘Psychic Seffi,’ she said with distaste.
‘Better watch what I’m thinking then, hadn’t I?’ Ron said.
‘It doesn’t work like that, Mr Foxworth.’
‘Oh, really? A little limited, my knowledge of these things. Nuts and bolts rationalist, me, I’m afraid. Where we going then, Bobby? I don’t think I feel like a drink, and I’m sure our famous friend here doesn’t want to be seen in a pub with a battered old bugger like me. Can we just drive around? Cotswolds by night?’
Maiden had almost forgotten what a tricky bastard Ron could be. He started frisking for holes the story he and Seffi Callard had concocted in the harsh light of the discovery of a second body, with a hacked face and few doubts this time about the origin of the wounds.
‘So you and Miss Callard, Bobby …’
‘Friends,’ Maiden said.
‘Quite close friends.’ Seffi pulled out of the layby.
‘I see. Well …’
‘We met when Bobby was gathering background information in connection with the Green Man murders. I was able to explain a little about the psychology of people who believe they’re being influenced by elemental forces. Working together on something essentially frightening can be curiously … intimate, as I’m sure …’
Seffi let the sentence hang. Maiden sensed her smile.
How fluently she lies.
‘So when I was feeling rather threatened recently, I asked Bobby for advice.’
Telling Ron how, in this line of work, one received endless crank mail. Mostly from fundamentalist Christians warning that the fires of hell were already being stoked in readiness for one’s arrival. A very few implied that physical retribution might be exacted on the earthly plane.
Seffi sounding loony enough for Ron to take it all less than seriously, but looking alluring enough for him to see why Maiden had stuck around.
Below them, the lights of Stroud formed a glowing bowl.
She told the story of the party, but only as far as the Kieran Hole incident. When they were into the countryside again, Ron said, ‘Yeah, I can see how that would offend Les Hole. This was a message you had … on the, er …?’
‘A spirit message.’
‘Ri-ight.’ Ron nodding sceptically. ‘From the boy, Kieran, you say?’
‘He did hang himself, then,’ Maiden said.
‘Oh indeed, Bobby. No note, no clothes on. We had it down as a wanking job.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Seffi said.
‘Sexual hanging. Auto-erotic strangulation. “Come Dancing” on the end of a rope. Commonplace enough, but occasionally a bit difficult to prove medically, so coroners often tend to be merciful and put it down as suicide. It affected Coral very deeply, as you obviously realize. And Les, of course. So you’re saying Les blamed the, er, messenger.’
‘There was a letter’, Maiden said, ‘from the wife. Trying to set up another meeting with Seffi. But it was the phone calls …’ Lying now. ‘Late at night, nobody there. And this sense of being …’
‘Stalked,’ Seffi said. ‘Although I never got a good look at him.’
Ron leaned back against the side-window, getting a good look at her. ‘So all these stories about you packing it in …?’
‘This was just a part of it. I’ve been feeling generally vulnerable. No-one likes to be on the receiving end of scorn and hostility.’
‘It seemed to me we ought to go and see Mrs Hole,’ Maiden said. ‘She wasn’t there, but he was. He didn’t know I was a copper. He was aggressive. He seemed to think someone might have set him up and he wasn’t looking at Barber. He mentioned the name Gary.’
‘Oh, did he?’ Ron’s voice thickening with satisfaction.
‘That means something to you, Ron?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Should I? I got the feeling he was a little scared of Gary.’
‘Well, of course he is, Bobby, of course he is. Everybody’s a little bit scared of Gary.’
‘I feel I should know who we’re talking about here, but I don’t.’
‘Bloody right you should,’ Ron said. ‘Oh, yes.’
Cindy pulled into the Severn Bridge services and went in for a coffee. Sat in the restaurant, unrecognized in his blazer and slacks, gazing across the dark water to the Welsh side. His mobile phone, switched off, felt like a housebrick in the inside pocket of his blazer. So many people attempting to contact him in the past hour; he could always feel the weight of them.
Back at the car, he sighed and switched on the phone, sat back, closed his eyes and waited.
The first call came through within four minutes.
‘Oh, Cindy, hi, this is Simon Tremain at BBC Radio News in London. Really sorry to bother you at this hour, but I was told you always drove through the night after the show. I hope that’s right, and I haven’t disturbed you during-’
‘No problem, Simon, bach.’
‘Great. Well, look, it’s about this poor guy, Colin Seymour, who crashed his plane tonight. Obviously, we’ll be running clips from the Lottery Show on all the morning bulletins, and I’m putting a package together for “Five Live”.’
‘What is it you want then, lovely?’
‘Well, I was asked to see if you could go into our Haverfordwest unattended studio, but obviously you’re going to be a bit knackered, so maybe we could record a short interview on the phone?’
‘Fire away, boy.’
‘Right … can you hold, or should I get plugged in and whatnot and give you a call in a couple of minutes?’
‘I’ll hold.’ Knowing that if he cut the line there would be another call.
Presently, Simon Tremain said, ‘OK, I’m rolling. Cindy, if we can start with the obvious … this must have been a shock.’
‘A terrible, terrible shock. I was driving home when I heard the news, and I had to stop. You know, when you’re doing the show you feel you come to know the winners personally … and, though I never met Colin, it was clear that this was a man who would put his good fortune to good use. He wasn’t going to retire to the south of France, he wanted to continue working with these children and use the money to bring some excitement into their lives. An utter tragedy, it is.’