Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

‘‘S wrong?’

Marcus stumbled to his feet and approached the stones.

The lantern showed the sleeping Maiden’s visible eyelid behaving like a moth trapped in a jar.

‘Oh. That all?’

During his own shift, Marcus had spent too long leaning over the capstone, persuading Maiden to spill some irrelevant nonsense about a woman under a streetlamp, while Lewis sat on the groundsheet, legs folded under him, meditating or whatever they did. Not even coming out of it when Maiden had begun to weep, Marcus feeling obliged to take off his eyepatch to let the tears out, endless bloody tears, crying himself back to sleep, poor bastard. Marcus fighting tears, too, because all the worst nights of his life had involved females dying: Celia in hospital, Sally at home, Mrs Willis here at the Knoll. His adult life a series of bridges over rivers of death.

‘No. That’s not quite all, Marcus. Thing is … a little resistant, he is now, to awakening.’

‘You can’t wake him? Well, that’s all we bloody need, isn’t it?’

‘And your cassette recorder is malfunctioning.’

The recorder lay on the capstone. Marcus snatched it up and hit it with the side of his hand. The red light wavered on then went out.

Maiden’s face had that frozen effigy look. Still in REM, and thank Christ for that because if his unpatched eye wasn’t moving you could think he was …

‘Don’t like the look of him. Come on, man, snap out of it.’

‘Softly!’

‘Bugger softly . Man’s got bloody brain damage. Could be that stuff you filched out of the Healing Room. I did warn you.’

‘Bobby.’ Lewis shook Maiden’s shoulder. The rug over him moved and Lewis pulled back, holding the candle high when one of Maiden’s arms came out as if he was going to grab it.

‘Bobby? Can you hear me?’

Maiden’s hand went instead to his throat, dragging the rug away. His head started rolling from side to side. He began to cough.

‘Come on now, Bobby.’

A dry, rasping cough. His head still rolling until it dislodged the cushion, which fell off the capstone and then his head was rolling on the bloody stone, you could hear it, and it must be hurting and even that didn’t bring him out of it.

‘Don’t think I like this, Lewis. To put it mildly.’

Chest heaved weakly and the cough softened into a kind of hoarse breathing, as though there was something he wanted to bring up, but he was too weak.

‘What if he bloody dies?’

‘Again?’

‘Yes, again. Except , Lewis, that this time there’ll be no whitecoats, no crash team, no oxygen mask, no Scottish nurse with healing hands. Only a silly old sod who should know better and a lunatic in a bird-suit with a lot of bloody explaining to do. Maiden … wake the fuck up !’

Marcus pulled the rug away. Maiden’s chest was throbbing weakly, like a sparrow’s when it’s been hit by a car and you know it’s only seconds away from expiring.

‘Oh,’ the madman Lewis said. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Oh fucking dear, indeed! He wanted to go to the police station. He begged you to take him to the fucking police station … but you had to be clever.’

‘Because the police — fair play to them — would have been no help at all. Because, if that girl is dead, they’ll never know why.’

‘And you will?’

‘I do , Marcus. I want Bobby to know. It’s important Bobby knows.’

‘It’s more important he bloody lives.’

Maiden was making a sort of whooping noise in the back of his throat, as though there was some ghastly blockage there. He gagged. His fingers clenched. Back arched. Whole body tightened up, clenched, went rigid, his face convulsed in the lanternlight, swimming in sweat and tears.

Dead silence.

A moment of heightened reality. The reality, in fact, was almost searing. Marcus, holding the lantern now, was aware of all these delicate mosses and lichens and tiny plants stubbling the stone.

One of those crystal moments when you realized you were at the heart of a nightmare and you kicked a hole in the dream-membrane and woke up covered in sweat and trembling with relief and went downstairs and made coffee.

He heard himself say, ‘I hope your famous shamanic training included the basics of first aid. Because I think this poor bastard’s run out of air to breathe.’

‘All right!’ Lewis throwing off his stupid bloody feathery cloak, dragging himself up onto the capstone, extending a hand to pull Marcus after him. ‘Help me.’

‘Turn him over,’ Marcus snapped. ‘On his side.’

Both hands underneath Maiden’s back, heaving him over so that one arm was flung out over the edge of the capstone.

‘Marcus, no! Sit him up. That’s it.’

Marcus pulling Maiden’s body forward, taking the weight, and Lewis bunching a fist and striking Maiden sharply in the small of the back, again and again and Marcus was utterly furious.

‘You bloody bastard, Lewis. You knew something like this would happen, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’

‘I thought it might be … rather unpleasant, and … you might make me … stop it before it was over, and … Oh dear. Oh dear . Take the light! Marcus … hold the blasted light … look.’

Maiden’s body twitched violently, a spasm, and the dog let out a terrified yelp, eyes glowing at the foot of the burial chamber.

Something falling out of Maiden’s mouth. Pink and grey in the candlelight. Coming out in lumps.

‘Marcus, don’t … don’t touch it!’

Marcus froze. On the horizon, a thin, grey bar appeared, where the night was lifting like a roller blind.

First light, if you could call this off-white seepage light.

Andy prodded the car into the dull, redbrick street with the derelict furniture warehouse hanging over it like a half-expended curse. Doing the usual slow slalom between parked cars — some families had three or four beat-up wrecks; summer nights, the street would be full of hard-faced kids with spanners trying to make them go faster, sound louder.

Not much better at seven-forty-five on an autumn morning, even the kids at home.

Coming off nightshift, usually, you couldn’t park within a couple of hundred yards of your own house. Today, though, Andy slotted in between a dark Rover and a rusting camper van, as if the space had been reserved for her. The Rover looking suspiciously new: either a visiting doctor, or the police were getting so apathetic the kids were bringing stolen cars home now.

Jesus God, she’d be glad to get out of here for ever.

Her mind almost made up now, just needing one more sign — OK, this was stupid, but it was that kind of decision: intuition over logic.

The air was white and bland and smelled vaguely of gas as she carried her shopping bag to the front door of the middle terrace house. Shoved her key in the Yale, slammed the flat of her left hand against the door where the wood had swollen. Making herself regard the place, however temporarily, as home again, this was the hardest thing. A place where she couldn’t even make a safe phone call, until Bobby Maiden, or whatever passed for him these days, came back to collect his life.