‘This is Britain!’
She felt him smile.
‘Doesn’t even have to be very secret any more. Several security companies are operating close to the edge. Riggs is quite bitter. He liked being a policeman.’
‘He hires out a Forcefield team to Seward?’
‘No, to Campbell. It’s probably a hand-picked unit consisting of those particular employees he knows are open to a sub-contract, under the table — that’s from Seward. Riggs also gets a rake-off. Or favours in kind, I don’t know.’
‘So, like the Forcefield guy Seward brought over to Mysleton …’
‘Seward?’
‘It was Seward with the dead guy. He came himself, didn’t I say? I forgot what I told you and what I told Cindy. Bobby, why would he do that? Why would he come himself, with all that money?’
‘Because he loves it,’ Bobby said. ‘He needs that old thrill.’
‘Jesus. What an unbelievable monster.’
‘Or maybe just a sad old bugger,’ Bobby said wearily. ‘On reflection, though, I do think you carved up the wrong man.’
‘Did you see him? Did you see Seward?’
‘No. They just kicked me about a bit, tossed me in the back of a van, bag over the head, like you. I’d guess this came from Riggs, rather than Seward. He saw me … or somebody else saw me. Some of them will be disenchanted ex-coppers.’
‘Bobby, do you wanna try and stand up?’
‘I think I’ll just lie here for a while,’ Bobby said. ‘If that’s OK.’
Incredibly, Grayle slept.
Incredibly, she had a warm, fuzzy dream in which they were at home in the cottage in St Mary’s, with a big log fire, the flames reflected by the crystals and the paste gems in the poodle collar around the neck of Anubis, the tame Egyptian god of the dead.
And this metamorphosed into a lucid kind of dream — a dream of what she knew was a near-death experience. Not the awful kind which Bobby had, but the traditional light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel kind. The one where you didn’t want to go back.
It was wonderful, and when she awoke she awoke into light.
‘Both of you,’ the Forcefield voice said. ‘Get away from each other. Stand up.’
L
The renovation of Overcross Castle was like a half-finished portrait, Cindy thought, the central features blocked in and coloured, the rest little more than a scribble. On the first-floor landing, the paint faded off with the lighting, into greyness, shadows and dust-cloth ghosts.
Vera indicated to Cindy the alcove concealing Room Three, then pointed up at her stiff Victorian waitress’s cap and down towards the kitchens to signify she would be needed soon to serve dinner to the visiting nobs. From below, Cindy could hear the sounds of polite laughter, clinking glasses.
When Vera was gone, he moved quietly into the alcove — quietly because the door was ajar and there were voices from within.
A problem. He needed to see Persephone Callard alone.
But, in the end, he didn’t.
Standing in the shadow of the alcove, becoming still as a monolith, his breathing as light as a bird’s, he heard,
‘… even have to stay the night. I’ll have a car waiting. We’ll get you out of here before midnight, I swear.’
Kurt Campbell. In a state.
‘… can’t believe it,’ Miss Callard saying. ‘Can’t believe you or anybody could be so utterly, insanely …’
‘Look … yes … all right … call me nai-’
‘Naive? It’s not the word, is it, Kurt?’
‘Greedy. Power-hungry. Hey, call me what you fucking like, I’m at the stage I don’t really care. All I’m saying … if you finish this you’ll never hear from me again, you’ll never hear from Seward and you’ll never … be troubled by …’
‘Him?’
‘You can unload it. Now you know what it’s about, you can unload it just like …’
‘Oh, it’s so easy, Kurt, isn’t it?’
‘I’ll help you.’
‘Think I’ve rather had enough of your help. I just … the utter fucking duplicity …’
Kurt collecting himself into his voice, the mesmerist’s velvet purr.
‘Seffi, you can’t possibly imagine how quickly this happens. You meet on live, late-night telly, you’re both high on it, he says why don’t we go on to a club … and then another club and you’re with all these cool, dangerous people, and you’re pissed and you’re telling him your life story and your ambitions, and you think …’
‘What a great guy. Yah, I’ve been there, Kurt. I was there when I was seventeen.’
‘Yeah, well, when I was seventeen I was a sad kid at tech college doing a correspondence course on hypnotism at night and working bloody hard at it, so call it delayed adolescence, but … he was just taking me over!’
‘You’re a bloody hypnotist and he’s taking you over?’
‘Things just happening, Seffi, like by magic. Obstacles getting moved, difficult people no longer difficult. Contracts, money, meetings, parties — and that’s how you get drawn in, it’s like drugs. And then one day you realize some of the things he’s been doing for you are monumentally illegal — people getting bought, threatened, beaten up and …’
‘And what?’
‘And worse.’
An indrawing of breath by Miss Callard.
‘And it’s when you realize innocent people are getting … damaged to boost your career and get you into his pocket or to satisfy his warped sense of natural justice. Look, there’s a story in his book — he’s been very clever, he’s changed the names and the circumstances so it can’t be traced back, but it’s essentially true — and it’s about a man he’s called Billy Spindler, a grass, who they fitted up for rape by actually having a woman raped. By Clarence Judge himself, I suspect. And he’s done worse than that. People … OK, people’ve died, innocent people, but that’s never how he sees it. If somebody gets hurt they usually deserve it because they’re not as innocent as they look, or they’re stupid … or they’re just there to serve a higher purpose, which is Gary’s purpose. He’s a psychopath, Seffi, remorse is an abstract concept to Gary. You’ve just got to help get him off my back before another innocent …’
Cindy thought, Billy Spindler? The name was set in ice, what it represented.
‘Kurt, if we do it, as planned, in a large public room, in front of the Mayor of bloody Malvern and Lord Ledbury and whoever, I’ll go with that. Squalid, back-room stuff, you can forget.’
‘You don’t know this guy, Seffi.’
‘I know you, and I know you’re full of shit.’
Billy Spindler, Cindy thought. The expendability of innocent but stupid people.
‘He’s lost it. It’s gone well beyond obsession. We have all kinds of rules now, set up because of signs and omens. Like it has to be tonight because this is the day when Crole and Abblow did what they did. And it has to be in exactly the same place. And there have to be the right number of people and there has to be … please, Seffi. You have to trust me.’
Behind Cindy there was a sudden fusilade of clipped, impatient footsteps. He took a breath, prepared to escape into the spectral netherland of dust sheets and abandoned paint cans.
Too late. He emerged from the alcove facing the woman identified to him as Francine Burnell-Brown, Kurt Campbell’s PA and graceful toehold in society. Looking furious; she’d been left on her own to entertain minor aristocracy, tedious dignitaries and the local press, while the famous Kurt bargained and wheedled and lied through his white, white smile.
‘Who the hell …?’
‘Sssh.’ Cindy brought a finger to his lips, assumed Imelda’s tone. ‘It’s a delicate moment. Give them a few minutes.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Two minutes, my dear.’ Cindy took Francine by the shoulders and pushed her firmly into the passage and then walked calmly down the stairs, through the entrance hall and out into the night.