Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

‘Of course not. Solid as a rock, Anderson.’

‘And she was at the hospital?’

‘No, he came to her home. She waited for half an hour or so after he’d gone and then she went to a phone box.’

Maiden moaned.

‘For heaven’s sake, Maiden, they can’t tap every bloody phone box in the town.’

‘No. But what they can do is keep an eye on her. If she’s seen to enter a phone box at, say, nine-fifteen, they obtain from our friends at British Telecom a computer print-out of the numbers dialled from that particular box around that time.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah.’

‘How long before they get this address?’

‘I may not stay for lunch.’

‘Better get the hell out now then, hadn’t you?’

‘But not before we watch the video.’ Cindy picked up the remote control.

‘Video? Are you mad, Lewis? Sorry, bloody stupid question.’

‘It’s a video little Grayle was given. Of Professor Falconer’s programme.’

‘Lewis, I wouldn’t watch that shit if the only alternative was The Generation Game . ‘

‘Sit down, Marcus.’

Maiden looked over at the window and then at the clock. ‘May be advisable to fast-forward where you can.’

‘But, like, hold on … I thought you were buddies … OK, coming at it from different directions, pretending to despise each other’s approach, but it’s all good-natured banter.’

‘That’s just for the punters,’ Adrian said. ‘Roger and I really don’t have much to do with each other. Don’t have much in common.’

‘But you live-’

‘I live in a bedsit over the stables. Roger lives in the house. When he’s here. Which isn’t actually that often. He can only stand so much of the countryside. He likes dinner parties, that sort of thing. Also, he’s very much of his generation. Sometimes smokes marijuana.’

Grayle stifled a laugh; he sounded so disapproving. Hard to believe England was still manufacturing men like this.

We just sort of need each other,’ Adrian said. ‘He needs someone who can get on with people and knows all about earth-mysteries, but isn’t otherwise terribly bright.’

‘Oh, Adrian !’

Well, it’s true. I come from a long line of solid chaps who are not terribly bright, but pretty practical. I’m a useful guy to have around. Turn my hand to most things. I rigged out the Portakabins, laid Rogers’s helicopter pad. Things like that.’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘It’s a way of earning my keep when there’s no course on. You see I need him, too. Who else would employ someone to take parties on outward-bound trips to ancient sites and supervise dreaming experiments, lie in stone circles all night with a tape recorder?’

‘You love it, don’t you?’

‘It’s my whole life,’ Adrian said. ‘I put up with Roger, for as long as it’s necessary.’

‘You said he was a bastard.’

‘He uses people. He’s unscrupulous. I don’t think there’s anyone he wouldn’t use — or anything he wouldn’t do — to put himself ahead of the field. His field. He has to be, you know, pre-eminent in his field.’

‘Archaeology?’

‘Bigger than that now, his field. Embraces anthropology, psychology and the more acceptable areas of para psychology. He’s like one of these wealthy farmers who pulls out ancient hedges to develop this huge, private enclosure.’

‘Sounds almost scary. Megalomania.’

‘It’s OK,’ Adrian said. ‘It helps if you know how you’re being used.’

The wind is blowing Roger Falconer’s hair into his eyes as the camera tracks him to the summit of the small hill, not much more than a bulge in the middle of a green field .

Falconer turns to camera .

‘This Bronze Age round barrow is known, for no satisfactory reason, as Jed Balkin’s Mump. Whoever Jed Balkin was, the farmer who has to plough this field rather wishes he’d stuck his Mump somewhere else. But why did those prehistoric surveyors choose to put it here? Well. If we look to the west …’

The camera, following his pointing finger, goes into a zoom .

‘… we can see the tower of St Anne’s Church. Which, as we noted earlier, appears to have been built on another prehistoric burial mound. And if we look east …’

Falconer, back in the picture, spins round, the same arm outstretched like a signpost .

‘… we can see a small wood. Now …’

Close up on professional smile .

‘If I were some species of spring-heeled sprite … and I were to take a mighty leap in a dead straight line …’

Falconer braces himself .

‘… into the very centre of that wood …’

The screen fills with sky; Falconer’s voice-over .

‘… where do you think …’

A racing blur of greenery .

‘… I would land?’

The picture jolting and then settling on Falconer standing in the centre of a circle of small, stubby stones, enclosed by trees .

‘This is the Ninestones Circle — although, as you can see, there are only seven left. It’s a key feature of what even I have to admit is one of the more credible of thousands of alleged “ley lines” connecting ancient sites all over Britain. Our New Age friends would claim that this invisible line marks a flow of terrestrial energy across the landscape. The life-force of the Earth. If they’re right, I should be getting a stiff shot of the stuff through my system at this very moment.’

Falconer bending down to place his hands over a stone no more than two feet tall, smiling the kind of smile that says precisely what he thinks of this New Age garbage .

Close up .

‘To the New Agers, Stone Age and Bronze Age person was a wise and civilized soul, very much into peace and love and celestial harmony. He or she would probably have sat where I’m sitting now, meditating and being at one with nature.’

Falconer stands up .

‘Sheer nonsense, of course. The New Agers have reinvented the Stone Agers in their own image. In reality, words like “peace” and “love” would have meant nothing to these people. The key word for them would have been … “survival”.’

Falconer stalking through the woods, now, like an explorer .

‘Stone Age man — and perhaps Stone Age woman, too — moved through the landscape like a guerrilla. In tune with the Earth? Well, of course he was. He recognized that the Earth was his provider, that a relationship was crucial to his continued existence. But let’s not beat about the bush. This was a relationship cemented …’

Tight into Falconer’s savage grin .

‘… with blood.’

A rustling in the undergrowth; the camera pans across the flight of a frightened rabbit into a bush. Falconer’s voice-over .

‘If anything sharpened the senses of Neolithic people, raised their perceptions, gave them an instinctive feel for the environment, it was … the hunt.’

Shots of familiar cave paintings showing lumpen, bovine creatures getting speared .

‘Hunting … killing … was a natural, pivotal aspect of a Neolithic lifestyle which would, one suspects, thoroughly disgust our New Age friends.’

Full-length shot of Falconer holding a twelve-bore shotgun .

‘Blood sports — hunting, shooting — are anathema to many supporters of the Green movement. But green and red are opposites which, throughout history, have been linked together. And there’s little doubt that the original Green Man was a hunter, a stalker, who understood that the true, undiluted life-force was a flow … a gush … of lifeblood.’