He started to walk back along the decking then turned around. ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’
Grayle fought for control as the bottle blonde in the tweed suit glared at this hapless kid through plain-glass spectacles.
‘Bacton,’ Cindy snarled. ‘Imelda. Miss.’
A short while later Grayle went back to the cold comfort of the truck and called the infirmary in Worcester on Bobby’s mobile.
‘Are you a relative?’ the staff nurse demanded.
The snow had stopped. It was never going to stick, but it was so bitter that Grayle’s hand was numb around the cellphone.
‘Well, I … Yeah, I’m … I’m his niece. Alice Thornborough.’
‘Well, all I can tell you, Miss Thornborough,’ the nurse’s voice was unexpectedly clipped and frigid, ‘is that he’s as comfortable as can be expected.’
‘And in plain English, that means?’
‘It means’, the sister said, ‘that everything about him is weak except his language.’
‘Uh, yeah, that figures. He kind of hates hospitals and doctors. Doesn’t even have a thing about nurses in uniform.’
‘He wanted to discharge himself this morning, but when he found out how much pain was involved in getting out of bed, I think he finally understood that he needed us rather more than we need him.’
‘But he is gonna be OK? Isn’t he?’
‘If he accepts this as a severe warning.’
‘Yeah,’ Grayle said pessimistically. How was this woman supposed to understand that if there was anything to which Marcus Bacton reacted badly, it was a severe warning?
‘Can I see him?’
‘Tonight, if you like, but only for a short time. We’ve had to put him in a side ward, for the sake of the other patients, so if you ask the nurse who-’
‘Tonight could be a problem,’ Grayle said quickly. ‘But if you could tell him not to worry, that everything’s being looked after this end?’
And his sister sends her best wishes?
Maybe not.
‘He wanted to be here. Cindy sat on the counter, hitched up his tweed skirt, lit a cigarette. ‘And so he is. The shamanic solution, I suppose you might call it.’
‘Nothing to do with you not wanting to be recognized, then,’ Bobby said, patting the masterless Malcolm, poor confused creature.
‘Well, that too, naturally.’ Cindy blew a spontaneous smoke ring into the cold air. Cindy didn’t smoke, but Imelda Bacton apparently did.
Subtle padding made him stocky. His blond wig was shoulder-length. His foundation cream was a deep bronze, his lipstick scarlet, his glasses black-rimmed and businesslike. He was sitting on one of the packing cases they’d fetched from the truck. It contained a couple of thousand copies of The Vision and, for display purposes, a set of atmospheric colour photos of High Knoll taken by a woman called Magda Ring, who’d been Bobby’s girlfriend for a — mercifully, in Grayle’s view — short time. In one of the pictures, blown up big, a formation of white clouds resembled two praying hands. The picture had been taken just after the Green Man killings had ended.
‘You saw it coming, didn’t you?’ Bobby said.
‘I don’t …’ Tears threatened Cindy’s make-up. ‘I felt something coming. I didn’t realize it was going to be Marcus. Marcus was … invulnerable.’
‘A force of nature,’ Grayle said.
‘It was one of the absolute worst moments of my life. About to try mouth to mouth, I was, until I saw the look in his eyes.’
Cindy found a smile. Last night he’d been a mess. Prowling the windy ruins, a ragged spectre of despair. He’d killed Marcus, just like he’d killed the BMW family and the plane guy and the guy who’d married a gold-digger less than half his age. Killed them all. Cindy, the walking curse.
After talking it over with Bobby, Grayle had called the hospital at midnight, learned that Marcus was sleeping. She’d told Cindy that Marcus had whispered to a nurse to tell Lewis that it wasn’t his fault, that he had to pull himself together, see it through. A necessary lie.
This morning they’d had a call from Amy at the pub to say Cindy had left for Overcross before six a.m.
‘We’re gonna have trouble with him, though, Cindy.’
‘Marcus? Yes. Taking it easy, obeying doctor’s orders … not his way. Mind, I didn’t even know he had a heart problem.’
‘Nor did he,’ said Grayle. ‘He hadn’t seen a doctor in twenty years. He just saw Mrs Willis. Like, if he did have a heart problem, maybe it didn’t matter with her around.’
Bobby looked at Cindy, who really didn’t look at all like Cindy. ‘Does he have a sister?’
‘I have no idea, Bobby.’ Cindy pulled up a wrinkle in his tights, flexed a leg. ‘But if he did, this is what she would be like, and if she doesn’t achieve a fifty per cent reduction in Marcus’s stall rental, she won’t consider herself worthy of the family name. Now, listen to me, children — close those tent flaps — there are things you need to know.’
Arriving early was always useful, Cindy said. It was barely light when he got here and freezing cold and the restaurant marquee wasn’t open. So Imelda Bacton had gone up to the house, where the woman who cleaned the kitchens had taken pity on her.
This cleaner was one of the temporary staff hired for the festival, a big, cheerful cockney lady called Vera, who made coffee for Cindy and herself in the vault-like kitchen where dinner was to be prepared each night by a catering company from Worcester. And, of course, they’d gotten talking and Imelda had said she was only managing the stall for her brother, who’d had a heart attack, and Vera said she’d been forced to take this miserable job because her husband had died recently, leaving her short.
Like old friends, the two of them, in no time at all. Vera was cynical about the Festival of the Spirit and appalled at the amount being paid by the house guests attending the Victorian seance.
And the thing was, she said, it was all going to be a complete con. She’d taken Cindy up to the baronial dining hall where, behind screens and false bookcases, all was revealed.
‘Projection equipment,’ Cindy said, ‘for the creation of ghosts. Hidden spotlights to illuminate the muslin and chiffon gauze used to simulate ectoplasm. Tables with mechanical rapping devices built into the legs, a platform with a floorboard that rises when a foot pedal is pressed, thus causing the table to rock. Need one go on?’
Grayle’s eyes widened. ‘A scam? The whole thing’s gonna be a scam?’
‘And a rather obvious one, it seemed to me. Obvious to us, today, that is, but convincing enough, evidently, to the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and other believers in the early part of last century.’
‘But — hold on — how does this equate with all the bullshit Campbell’s giving us about seeking the scientific solution?’
‘Perhaps he wishes to demonstrate how those early researchers were frequently fooled, which they undoubtedly were. Such was the craving for mystical experience that there was considerable money to be made in those days.’
‘In New York’, Grayle said, ‘there was a woman had a hole in the front of her dress, used to pull this glowing ribbon from a roll she kept up her snatch. Sure. All kinds of scams. But why would Campbell wanna bother with this garbage?’
Cindy moved to the tent flap, peered out to ensure they were alone. He took a small notebook from his fitted tweed jacket, opened it.
‘A look at tonight’s guest list — which the delightful Vera showed to me with a certain contempt — offers a possible explanation. I copied down a few names. For instance, we have the Chairperson of the Heart of England Tourist Board, the MP for Worcester, officials of the Malvern Chamber of Trade, the Elgar Society, the Chief Executive of Forcefield Security. Also, Lord …’
Bobby looked up, like a bird just took a shit in his lap.
‘… and Lady Colwall. I don’t think I need go on. It’s a collection of local dignitaries and notables to launch the event. None of them will be paying, of course, they’re here to bestow upon it Establishment credibility. And, because attitudes have changed considerably since Victorian times, one can’t imagine any of these people accepting the invitation if they thought it was to be a real seance.’