Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

‘I never told you,’ Mrs Willis said in that dreamy way she sometimes had. ‘But I saw a black light.’

‘You saw what? ‘

What remained of the English teacher in him restrained itself from pointing out that you couldn’t actually have a black light. This was no time for bloody semantics.

‘Tell me, old love,’ he said. ‘When was this?’

‘What’s that?’

‘When? When did you see this …?’

‘Last Thursday night, would it be?’

‘You went at night? You shouldn’t be going out at bloody night! I didn’t see you go.’

Mrs Willis smiled the old sweet smile. ‘You’re a sound sleeper, boy.’

‘At night? I don’t understand.’ Bewilderment and panic jostling one another in his chest. ‘What’s going on? Bloody hell , Mrs Willis, that’s why you’ve been off colour, is it?’

‘Not been much of a housekeeper, have I?’

‘Forget that . Jesus Christ-’

‘Marcus!’

‘Sorry. Look. Just tell me. This black light. What d’you mean a “black light”? How can you see a black light at night? What are we talking about here? Was it some premonition about Falconer? Why did you see Fraser-Hale? What did he tell you? What’s going on?’

Mrs Willis just sat there with her back to the matchboard wall and the rickety shelves supporting the old lady’s herbs and potions in jam jars and ancient Marmite pots.

‘Falling apart,’ said Mrs Willis wryly, following his eyes.

‘What did you do for young Fraser-Hale?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Fraser-Hale. Falconer’s lad.’

‘That boy? I said I’d make him some ointment. I advised hot baths in Epsom salts and told him to boil his meat first. It’s only a rash.’

‘Pity you can’t poison his bloody boss.’

‘Never say that,’ Mrs Willis said sternly. ‘It’ll come back on you, boy.’

‘I’d swing for that man.’

She observed him shrewdly through her pebble glasses. ‘You’re saying I shouldn’t treat that boy because he works for a man you don’t like? I would treat Mr Falconer himself, if he was in need.’

‘You’re a bloody saint, Mrs Willis. And unfortunately I’m never going to reach your stage of spiritual development. I’d push the bastard off a cliff I mean, why is he doing this to us? Is it just bloody spite, because I’ve been slagging him off in a little sodding rag nobody ever reads?’

‘Perhaps you should be grateful to him for fencing it off.’

‘What’s that mean? What d’you mean by a black light? A sense of evil? For Christ’s sake, old love, that’s what the Church tried to say when the child had her vision. I’ve spent years trying to knock all that on the head. Is that what you mean?’

‘I’m tired.’ Mrs Willis picked up her People’s Friend . ‘I think I shall finish my story.’

The minute she reached home, Grayle dived at the answering machine, as she did every night, in case there should be a message from Ersula.

God, Grayle, I’m so sorry. Time just goes so fast when you’re absorbed in research. I looked at the calendar and I just couldn’t believe it was six whole weeks since I wrote … Can you forgive me?

This never happened.

The only message tonight was a fax from her sometimes-friend, Rosita, New York’s number one New Age public-relations consultant, scrawled around an invitation to the opening of a new store called The Crystals Cave …

… where our experts will unite you with the mystic gemstone that’s been waiting for YOU, and YOU ALONE, since the beginning of time .

Grayle crumpled it.

There were crystals on the bookshelves, a crystal on the TV, two crystals by the phone. Quartz and amethyst for opening the psychic centres. Tiger’s eye for confidence in health. Onyx for concentration.

There was the tree-of-life wallchart above the sofa, a poster of the Great Pyramid at sunset behind the TV. A small Buddha served as a doorstop. And under the window, a three-foot-tall plaster statue of the Egyptian dog-god Anubis wore a diamante poodle collar.

Hey, just because you believe in this stuff, Grayle would tell visitors, you don’t have to be too serious about it. The principle difference between Grayle and Ersula, five years and several epochs apart.

Tonight the crystals looked dull, there was a chip out of the Buddha she hadn’t noticed before. Also, Anubis looked so resentful in his poodle collar that she took it off.

Detective Olsen. Well screw him .

Grayle finished off half a bottle of Californian sparkling wine which had gone flat in the refrigerator, drinking it from the bottle, like beer. Figuring that, by now, the entire NYPD must have been officially notified that Holy Grayle Underhill was a doped-up neurotic who should be handled with iron tongs.

So the prime theory here, Ms Underhill, is that your sister’s been kidnapped. Do we have any kind of ransom communication? No?

OK, let’s consider the other option. Murder. Do we have a body? Let me, in the first instance, ease your mind on this score. I persuaded my lieutenant to allow me to call up three police forces around the area you say your sister was last seen. I faxed them all a description, plus the photograph you gave us, and none of them appears to have a Jane Doe bearing any physical resemblance whatsoever to this person .

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a highly educated, independent and apparently headstrong twenty-five-year-old woman who, for reasons unknown, has failed to communicate with her family for a period of just over one month. Ms Underhill, do you have any idea how many women in this city have been on the missing persons register for over one year…?

What Grayle, in her desperation, had done next, had been to show Detective Olsen the letter. Even the final pages, which Lyndon had not seen.

Big mistake.

Let me get this right. What we are suggesting now is that your sister has succumbed to an insidious, mind-possessing force emanating from some Stone Age burial chamber. Do I have this right, Ms Underhill? Tell me, have you discussed this with a priest? Have you attempted to contact your sister telepathically? Or, maybe, enlist the assistance of some of the people you’re always writing about and like beam down into her next dream, tell her to come back home at once? Have you tried that, Ms Underhill?

In the refrigerator, Grayle found another bottle quarter full of stale sparkling wine and she drank that too.

On the old wine crate she used as a coffee table lay Ersula’s last letter, creased up and stained with doughnut jam from Guardi’s. Except for the last pages, which Lyndon hadn’t handled. … Grayle, do you have smells in dreams?Perhaps you do. Perhaps the olfactory element is commonplace in the dreams of others. I just know I do not recall ever being aware of a smell before. Certainly nothing so horribly powerful as this stench, this nauseous, all-pervading stench of corruption that made my insides contract until I was sure I was going to throw up. Can you throw up in dreams? Probably. I didn’t. I sure sweated, though…

Grayle sighed. In all fairness, what else was the guy supposed to say about this? In a city drowning in drugs, a homicide every hour on the hour, he has to get the woman who disappeared into a dream. Even if he believed in this stuff, taking it any further would be putting his precinct credibility so far on the line as to seriously damage his career prospects for years to come.

It occurred to her that if she were an ordinary member of the public the next person she would probably turn to for advice would be the city’s premier mystical agony aunt, Holy Grayle Underhill.