Phil Rickman - Crybbe

With a stab of shame. Fay found herself thinking then about her father.

'And there's one thing,' the vet said. 'He won't be considered much of a danger to sheep now. I can't see this particular farmer coming after him again.'

'Most unlikely,' Powys agreed.

There must have been twenty or thirty people around the Court this afternoon, pulling things down, turning out buildings like drawers. And this was a Sunday; every one of them, no doubt, on double-time. Money- no object.

The Crybbe project seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Everything was happening unbelievably quickly, three or four months' work done inside a week. As if Max knew he had to seize the place, stage a coup before bureaucracy could be cranked into action against him.

And it was happening all around Rachel, as if she wasn't there. Had Max ordered her to stay behind here just to make this point?

Max's own energy seemed to be pumped entirely into his project, as if he didn't have an empire to run. Even from London, directing people and money to Crybbe.

Because, unknown to its hundreds of employees, this was now the spiritual centre of the Epidemic Group. Crybbe. The Court.

The Tump.

She'd caught sight of a specimen of his proposed new logo: a big green mound with trees on it. In Max's vision, all the power of Epidemic – the recording companies, the publishing houses, the high-street shops – would emanate from the Tump.

On a wall in the stable there was a map of the town with every building marked. The ones owned by Epidemic and now inhabited – or soon to be – by alternative people had been shaded red. She'd counted them; there were thirty-five properties, far more than Max was publicly admitting. Far more than even she had known about.

She tried to imagine the town as the alternative capital of Britain, with thousands of people flooding in to take part in seminars, follow the ley-lines with picnic lunches, consult mystics and healers. People in search of a spiritual recharge or a miracle cure.

A kind of New Age Lourdes.

Crybbe?

Rachel shook her head and wandered across the courtyard, head down, hands deep in the pockets of her Barbour. Couldn't wait to get rid of this greasy bloody Barbour for good.

She arrived at the burgeoning rubbish pile, which would soon consist of the entire non-Tudor contents of the Court. Leftovers from four centuries. Reminders of the times when the Court's other incarnations had been a private school (failed), a hotel (failed), even a billet, she'd been told, for American servicemen during World War II.

It was a shame; a lot of the stuff they were throwing out would be quite useful to some people and some of it valuable. A darkwood table, scratched but serviceable. A wardrobe which was probably Victorian and would sell, cleaned up, for several hundred quid in any antique shop. Peanuts to Max.

Money to burn. Hardly New Age What happened to recycling?

The pile was over twelve feet high. Filthy carpets which, unrolled, would probably turn out to be Indian. A rocking-chair. A couple of chests, one thick with varnish, the other newer, bound with green-painted metal strips, black lettering across its lid; you couldn't make out what it said.

Rachel looked hard at the second chest. Where had she seen it before?

Good Lord! She ran to the chest and pulled up its lid. They couldn't do this…

But they had.

Exposed to full daylight, Tiddles, the mummified cat, looked forlorn, a wisp of a thing, his eye-sockets full of dust, one of his sabre-teeth broken, probably in transit to the heap.

Tiddles, the guardian. Evicted.

She looked up at the Court, its lower windows mainly boarded up, the upper ones too small to give any indication of what was going on inside.

One thing she knew. Tiddles might not be Tudor – seventeenth century, somebody had suggested – but he was part of that place. He would have to go back.

Goes round FOUR times.

The earth force (assume it exists) rising up through the soles of your feet, a kind of liquid light. Up into your legs and then, into the body itself, the solar plexus, the first major energy centre. Feel it forming into a pulsing ball of warm, white light, while the chant goes on, the rhythmic clapping…

And he goes round FIVE times.

'Powys. I need to tell you…'

'Sorry?'

'Are you OK, Powys?'

'Yes, sorry, I was…'

Powys driving Fay's Fiesta through a delirium of damp trees, their foliage burgeoning over the road. Fay sitting in the passenger seat with Arnold on the blanket on her knee, fondling the dog's disproportionately large ears.

'Powys, I need to tell you why I went berserk in church.'

He said nothing. She seemed a good deal more relaxed now; something had obviously resolved itself.

'Have you ever seen a ghost?'

He shook his head. 'Terrible admission, isn't it? My belief in ghosts is founded entirely on hearsay.'

'Who exactly is Jean Wendle?'

'She's a spiritual healer. One of the more convincing ones. Nice woman. Used to be a lawyer. Barrister. Or an advocate, as they say in Scotland. Very high-octane. Then she found she could heal people, so she gave up the law to devote her life to it. They were about to make her a judge at the time. It caused… uproar in legal circles.'

'Oh!'

'You remember now?'

'Yes. It was in the papers, wasn't it? How long's she been in Crybbe?'

'As I understand it,' he said, 'she was one of the first of Goff's big-name signings. Rachel says Max wanted to put her into this old rectory he's bought, a couple of miles outside town. But she insisted on being at the heart of things, so she's living in a town house on the square.'

'I didn't know she knew my father.'

'Jean gets to know everybody. Unobtrusively.'

'She was sitting so still,' Fay said. 'In church. So very still.'

'She slows her breathing sometimes. She's a bit uncanny. She. .. intuits things. Absorbs atmospheres and interprets what's really going on. I'm impressed by Jean, Scares me a bit too, I must admit.'

'Scared me,' Fay said, 'in church. I thought I was seeing Dad's late wife.' She paused. 'Again,' she said.

They were coming into Crybbe. Powys slowed for the 10 m.p.h. speed limit.

'You said… late wife?'

'She was called Grace Legge The house we live in was hers. She died last year. I saw her last week.'

'Bloody hell, Fay."

'I'd never seen one before. You know how it is – you've read about ghosts, you've seen the films, you've interviewed people who swear they've seen one. But you don't… quite… believe they exist.'

'Except in people's minds,' he said.

'Yes.' Fay ran her fingers deep into Arnold's warm fur. 'I don't recommend the experience. You know what they say – about the flesh creeping? The spine feeling chilled? Grace was ghastly, dead. What's the time?'

'Ten past five.'

'We haven't eaten,' Fay remembered. 'No wonder I'm shooting my mouth off. Light-headed. You coming in for something, Powys? Omelette? Sandwich? I'm afraid Dad'll be there', so forget everything I said about Grace.'

'Thanks, but I ought to find Rachel.'

Powys pulled up at the bottom of Bell Street, took out the keys and passed them to Fay.

Arnold tried to stand up on Fay's knee. 'Hang on,' Powys said. He went round to open Fay's door and she handed Arnold to him while she got out and shook off the dog hairs.

As Powys handed Arnold back, as gently as he could, Fay looked him hard in the eyes. Serious, almost severe.

'If you've got any sense, Joe Powys,' she said, 'you'll piss off out of Crybbe pronto and take Rachel with you. She's gold. She's the only person I know around here who's got her act together. Come on, Arnie, I'm afraid we're home.'

'What about you? Strikes me you need to get out more urgently than any of us.'