‘Thank you,’ Cindy said, bemused. ‘It’s very good of you. We must … pay you.’
‘Nah,’ Lorna said. She shouted at the small crowd gathering outside. ‘Piss off, eh? He’ll be out later.’ She grinned. ‘Must be amazing, having fans, being adored.’
‘I fear you misunderstand. They want to tear me apart. The bogeyman, I am now. Baron Samedi. Kali the Destroyer.’
‘What are you on about?’ Lorna took from the sleeve of her multihued jumper a sizeable spliff and a book of matches. She got the spliff going, inhaled joyously, offered it to Cindy, who declined. ‘Don’t need this stuff, I suppose, when you’re a shaman. That all true, Cindy? The Celtic shaman bit?’
‘I never have denied an interest,’ Cindy said cautiously. ‘Excuse me just a moment.’ He pushed into the tiny rear compartment, where Grayle had left the small case containing her dress for the seance. Flipped open the case. The clothing was still there, neatly folded. Cindy went cold.
‘She hasn’t been back. She hasn’t been back.’
Lorna stood and eyed him blearily through the smoke.
‘That guy, the photographer, he came back.’
‘When?’
‘I dunno. Two, three hours ago. I haven’t got a watch. Maybe longer. Yeah, it was light. He come in and had a cuppa, then some guy was shouting for him and he pissed off.’
‘And you haven’t seen him since? What about the girl?’
‘Nah. Nobody else. I tell you, though, his aura looked like shit.’
‘Bobby?’
‘I told him to go and sleep it off and not talk to anybody.’
‘Lorna, have you any idea where he-?’
Cindy froze over the case. A man had entered the tent behind Lorna.
Blue-black uniform, with silver epaulettes. Cap with black, shiny peak.
He said, ‘In here, Gavin. We got her.’
Suddenly it was real eerie.
The bulb was low wattage, you could look hard at it, see its filament, how spidery and frail it was. Like in the early days of electricity, when technology was a small glow in a big fog. When spiritualism was born.
And Seward, all light and shadow in his evening suit, looked out of that era, too. She was recalling him now from the TV talkshow in the States. Dave! How are ya mate? ‘Ere … brought yer some’ing … Get these dahn yer … jellied eels. You’ll never go back to pizza again, mate.
Leaning back in his chair now, the shotgun on his knee. He couldn’t let that thing off in here; the honoured guests would hear it booming like an earth tremor under their feet.
Sure. And think it was just another sound-effect, courtesy of Mr Daniel Dunglas-Home and the first age of spiritualism.
Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus, I never gave you too much respect, you were never enough fun and I only prayed to you when I was in real deep shit, but please, please …
Her wrist, cuffed to the fat, hairy wrist of the big detective, Foxworth, was beginning to ache. Only way she could move it would be to pull his hand down onto her lap. Maybe not.
How long? How long were they gonna sit here, the four of them? Waiting for the toffee-nosed bitch. Just pray she never came. Pray she called the cops instead.
Bobby said casually, ‘So who did kill Justin Sharpe, Gary?’
Foxworth’s shoulder jerked, dragging the handcuffs, hurting Grayle.
‘Oh, that prat,’ Seward said. ‘Well, he deserved it, didn’t he? He was a pain in the arse. Little big man. Bloody nuisance.’
Bobby said, ‘He gave you Grayle’s name?’
‘Did he? Yeah, could be we had it from him.’
Grayle said hoarsely, ‘Why’d you have to kill him?’
Seward shook his head a little, in non-comprehension. ‘Darlin’, you’re talking like this was an innocent member of the public. He dabbled. He had his fingers in the pie, he lost his fingers. It happens.’
‘Where do you draw the line?’
‘I dunno.’ Seward looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe I ain’t as pragmatic and businesslike as I was. Comes from not needing to do it for a living no more. All them years you spend watching your back and the law and planning everything careful, like a military operation. And then you write a book, do telly, and the money just bleedin’ rolls in. It’s weird — you don’t have to do nothing to nobody for it. Get invited to invest in legit business. And suddenly you’re just bleedin’ loaded — you’re turning over twice, three times what you used to take off the suckers.’
Ron Foxworth sniffed in contempt. ‘Military operation my arse. All you ever were was a grown-up version of the kid that used to take other kids’ dinner money.’
‘Ronald-’
‘Drugs and protection, that was you, Seward. The dregs. The gutter. You never planned a clever job, not ever. You were just this mean, ruthless bastard who never cared who got hurt. That was the whole secret of your success, Gary, you never gave a flying fart who suffered along the way.’
‘Ronald,’ Seward smiled delicately, ‘I rather think, my old friend, that you are beginning to show off to the children. Which cannot be tolerated. I don’t think I’m gonna tell you again not to do that, know wha’ mean?’
Grayle said, to diffuse the horrifying tension, ‘If you’re making so much money, Mr Seward, why are you still-?’
Seward shifted in his chair and she caught the cold eyes in the gloom, and it was like coming face to face with a wolf in the undergrowth.
‘You’re a clever girl. I got to say I never really liked clever women. They ain’t never clever enough to know when to stop.’
Foxworth sighed. ‘I’ll explain this, if Gary doesn’t mind, Miss Underwood. It’s because he’s got everything he ever wanted and he doesn’t feel alive any more. He got addicted to the buzz. And the buzz in having everything you ever wanted … for a man like Gary, it starts to fade on day two.’
‘You mean like when the body’s replete you realize how starved the spirit is.’ Grayle frantically recalling a think-piece she once wrote for the Courier about why so many billionaires and movie stars and rock stars got obsessively into New Age studies.
‘But in that case’, Bobby said, turning this into some kind of crazy, surreal debate, ‘don’t you start to reject your material wealth and remember all the people you misused and try to repay them? Don’t you start trying to put something into the world to replace what you took out before you saw the light?’
‘Yeah. And that’s …’ Grayle sat forward. ‘Like, this one time I had a long discussion with Shirley McLaine, and she-’
‘And it is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of Heaven,’ Seward said.
‘It’s a point of view,’ Grayle said.
And then cowered back in her chair as Seward rose, snarling, tiny jewels of spit popping out.
‘You airy-fairy, nampy-pamby twats! You’re just fucking hippies! You’re like them bleedin’ doped-up crazies we’re fleecing out there! Shirley Fucking McLaine? Listen … do you know why the Victorians got closer than anybody has since to proving life after death? ‘Cause they didn’t fart about wiv peace and love and this shit. The Victorians, the old spiritualists, Crole and Abblow and them … they was scientific. They didn’t make the mistake of thinking life after death had to do with bleedin’ religion. They did what had to be done. Know wha’ mean? Nah, you don’t, do you? None of you bleedin’ know!’
There was a pool of silence.