Foxworth looked up. His eyes were pale and bloodshot. He didn’t look at anybody, his focus point seemed to be in a haze about eighteen inches from his face. But, at some stage since he was lifted, Ron had learned about the consequences of failing to answer direct questions.
‘Gary thinks I was once uncivil to Clarence Judge.’
‘Masterly understatement, Ron. What happened was … there was a siege situation yeah? Late Seventies, Ron? Seventy-nine, eighty, around then. Clarence, I think he done a post office for pocket money or alimony, some minor cash-flow thing. Course, Ron looks at Clarence, sees Gary Seward, know wha’ mean? Obsessive. Goes in mob-handed, SAS-style. Absolute overreaction, utterly uncalled for. Poor Clarence thinks he’s for the jump, killed trying to escape, some’ing like that. Thinks he’s fighting for his life. Well you would, wouldn’t you?’
Ron rallied. ‘He had a copper’s ear between his teeth. DS Earnshaw. Took four men to tear his bloody face away. Had half the ear in his mouth and if they hadn’t made him cough it up he’d have eaten it.’
Seward ignored him. ‘So, back at the station, what does Ron do but invite three of DS Earnshaw’s colleagues to pay their respects to Clarence in his cell.’
‘He was smashing up his cell,’ Ron said to his chest. ‘He was also in danger of injuring himself. Judge had no pain threshold.’
Seward half-turned, pointed the finger. ‘You, Ron, are a lying toerag. What are you?’
Maiden closed his eyes. Don’t make him say it.
‘Nah,’ Seward said. ‘He knows what he is. He humiliated Clarence that day. He stood and watched while those pigs hurt my poor friend in all the places what didn’t show. But, worst of all, they hurt his pride, and that’s the severest thing you can do to a man like Clarence, and it cannot be tolerated long term. I says, leave it, Clarence, don’t do nothing. ‘Cause he never had no finesse, see, the poor love. You leave it, I says. But one day I will see to Ron for you, I promise. And Gary Seward keeps his promises, and this is that day and Clarence is going to be here to see it. Matthew …?’
Ballantyne closed the oak door.
Oh God, Maiden thought.
‘Let’s make ourselves comfortable.’ Seward bent down the side of his chair, came up nursing black metal. ‘We’re gonna get cosy. There will be no resistance, otherwise the inevitable gets brought forward, know wha’ mean?’
Shotgun. Sawn-off. Maiden estimated that if Seward let that thing off in here he could kill one of them, maim the others with a single shot.
‘Stand up, Miss Underwood.’
Seward ambled over, placed the twin barrels against Grayle’s temple. ‘Oh God.’ Her voice was like a startled bird taking flight from a branch. Maiden began to breathe hard.
‘You too, Ron, Bobby. Up. Now, what we do, we close our eyes and we keep the fuckers closed.’
‘I can’t,’ Grayle said.
‘Oh, you can, darlin’. Just consider the alternatives.’
‘Oh God. Oh God.’
‘Thank you.’
Maiden stared into the blackness, telling himself that if Seward was going to execute them he wouldn’t use a sawn-off shotgun.
Would he?
A fumbling behind him. For a moment his hands were free. His heart leapt, his body tensed, he wanted to lash out, go for it.
‘Stay still, cock!’ Seward, hard-voiced. ‘No resistance.’
Maiden’s right hand hung by his side. His left was jerked up. Handcuffs snapped.
‘You can all open your eyes now,’ Seward said.
Maiden opened his into a grotto-like gloom. The strip light was off, the cellar was now feebly lit by the hanging bulb. Seward was hunched on the hard chair, he and the shotgun fused into the same bulky shadow.
‘And you can leave us now, lads,’ he said to Ballantyne and his mate. ‘Go and find Kurt. Tell him I want that toffee-nosed bitch down here asap.’
A tug on the left wrist told Maiden he was handcuffed to Ron Foxworth. He saw that Ron was handcuffed on the other side to Grayle.
Foxworth glared angrily at Maiden. ‘You know why else I came down here, you tosser?’ Like them being bound at the wrist had unblocked him. ‘Because a lad called Scott Ferris was telling us how a bloke with copper’s ID was asking after Justin Sharpe. Described you to a T.’
‘You had me in the frame for Justin?’
‘I had you in the frame for a lying bastard. Had you in the frame for pissing up my leg.’
‘Ron, I tried to call you …’
‘Stop bleedin’ whingeing, Ron,’ Seward said. ‘I never took to you, you know that? You was always such a miserable git.’
Maiden said, ‘Why the chain gang, Gary?’
‘It’s a circle, Bobby. Or it will be. Put your hands on the table, palms down, little fingers touching. It’s incomplete, but that’ll be rectified.’
‘It’s a seance,’ Grayle said softly. ‘He wants to hold a seance.’
‘Give the little girl a coconut,’ Seward said.
Cindy stopped at the edge of the parapet and looked back at the golden light in the tall, Gothic windows, and didn’t know how he was going to get back into the house now. Little Grayle was in there alone. He had to find Bobby.
He hurried down into the festival site, lit up below him like a fairground, strings of coloured bulbs between the bare trees. The punters were thinning out, drifting away. Soon the stalls would close, the stallholders returning to their hotels and guesthouses in Great Malvern, some to their camper-vans on a site near the road.
There was an arc of applause from the main marquee, where a writer on alien abduction was concluding her lecture. Or was it the demonstration of pendulum dowsing?
While, inside Overcross Castle … two spiritualist gatherings: the mock seance in the banqueting hall, some actor-magician performing the stunts of Daniel Dunglas-Home, as he would tomorrow and the rest of the week for paying audiences. And, somewhere in the heart of the house, the secret ceremony over which Persephone Callard was being pressed to preside — to preserve foolish Kurt from the wrath of the vicious Seward. Poor Kurt, who lived in such fear of this man. Awakening one morning with the horrific realization that he was in partnership with a still-active dangerous criminal.
Crap. Kurt was a liar. He was very deeply into this. He needed Persephone Callard here as much as Seward did but, because she would have knowledge of at least one murder, he would be obliged to build up Seward as the dangerously unbalanced instigator.
As he hurried through the lights, Cindy became aware of a few people staring at him, pointing. His blond wig was gone, his glasses were gone. And even New Age followers watched television.
By the time he reached The Vision stall, it was more than just a few people. He remembered the jokes with Vera about a tabloid reward.
‘It’ll all end in tears, you mark my words!’ a man yelled, and there was laughter. Images battered Cindy: the car siege in Malvern Link, the jeering, the taunts, the anger, Marcus slumped under a lamp post.
‘Please! Leave me alone!’ he yelled helplessly. Bobby, Bobby, where are you?
Flinging himself into the tent, where he stood gasping, appalled at his loss of control. But he couldn’t cope with this now. Let them all tear each other to pieces in the race to the phone, to be the first to finger the fugitive Cindy Mars-Lewis and claim their blood money.
‘Well, well,’ a woman said dryly. ‘I thought it was, all along.’
‘What are you doing here?’
It was the woman from the next tent, the etheric masseuse, Lorna something.
‘Lorna Crane.’ She was standing, hands on trim hips, under the photos of High Knoll, spotlit now. ‘And what I am doing here, Mr Cindy Mars-Lewis, is helping you out. I’ve sold a hundred and three copies of The Vision, between clients. Also seven subscriptions. And taken the addresses of two women who would like to correspond privately with Marcus Bacton. One left a photo of herself. Taken fifteen years ago, if I’m any judge. Money’s in a cashbox under my treatment couch, it’s all quite safe.’