The Magus of Hay(140)

Robin heard the door getting scuffed open.

‘… and he atoned for it by building and repairing several churches,’ Connie said. ‘Certainly, the medieval historian Giraldus Cambrensis wrote highly of him.’

‘Always two sides to everybody. ’Cept maybe Hitler. Someone told me there are these creeps think he was some kind of avatar and he’s still out there? They, like, worship Hitler?’

‘Millions of people worshipped him,’ Gwenda said. ‘Not so long ago.’

‘Yeah, but, Gwenda, that was like mass-psychosis. See, maybe there’s something I’m missing here, but Hitler, he was into this fantasy about big, blond guys with six-packs, right? And he’s like this puny little bastard with flat, dark hair and a stupid moustache who stands on his podium to look big and screams at people, and they’re all like, “Hey, Adolf, you’re the man!”’

Robin took a big drink, rolled the cold glass tankard around on his forehead.

‘That’s mass psychosis, guys.’

Clunked his tankard on the farmhouse table. Blinked a little, like he was fishing something from his memory.

‘They say he has a son?’

‘Who?’ Gwenda said.

‘Brace. Brace and a girl quaintly called Mephista, they had a son. And Brace’s old man, the rich fascist, he adopted the kid? Had him raised as a Nazi, goosestepping from age five. They say he came back here. Possibly to claim what his old man saw as their heritage. The de Braose legacy?’

Gwenda said, ‘Where on earth did you get that from?’

‘Ah, forget it.’ Robin wiped the air. ‘Probably crap. Urban myth. My natural romanticism tends to wane when it comes to fascism. I would honestly rather Jerrold Brace had neither lived nor died in the place where we’re trying to revive our fortunes. And if we have to exorcize his sorry, smack-addled ass, that’s what we’ll do.’

He realized he’d snarled at Gwenda, and he saw she’d realized it, too. He saw her expression change, darkening, and he was like, Oh, shit, shit, shit… as Gareth Nunne came in, his arms full of VCR. He laid it on the bar and Robin brought out the tape box and placed it on top, and Gareth Nunne stood collecting his breath, the wine stain hardly distinguishable from the rest of his face.

‘They’ve found her,’ he said. ‘Tamsin.’

The bar noise dwindled into a hush. Like on Armistice Day.

Then the silence was broken all at once, like a signal had been given, everybody moving, chairs getting pushed back. A crush began forming around the bar and the TV on the wall, tuned to the 24-hour news channel, but it was screening something involving sand and tanks. They didn’t know yet at the TV station. Only Hay knew.

Robin saw the yellow globes swinging on their wires, heard Nunne repeatedly saying murdered and I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

He stumbled and felt his hip screaming, as he was pushed into the corner by several people heading up the book-lined passage for the door as there was a flash and then the lights went out.





64

Physical things


BETTY HAD HER Alice band back in. Her face shone, scrubbed, cold water darkening the neck of her dress.

Merrily lowered the bag to the dust. The bag with the salt and water and the Bible. Her head was full of liturgy she was unlikely to be using. She felt tension pouring out of her, like sweat after flu.

‘You said you’d felt evil here, and you were right. We saw it. We saw it happening.’

In this drab building devoted to violent death. From animal slaughter to the savage ritual killing of a part-time prostitute.

Thirty years ago. There weren’t prostitutes any more, they were sex workers. The parameters of civilized society were being expanded daily so that no one should feel marginalized any more. No right, no wrong. No black, no white. No good, no evil. And incest was simply a preference.

‘You said you called them out,’ Merrily said. ‘What’s that mean, Betty?’

‘It was after we saw the video,’ Betty said, ‘I realized that whatever was here left physical things. A swastika in the chimney, a secret hole in the wall.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Robin had a bad night here, but he was drunk and he slept in the bath which, if wasn’t the same bath, was certainly in the same place where Cherry Banks’s body was butchered. He had bad dreams. Who wouldn’t? Now I know what happened, I’m inclined to think we’re getting something from the victim rather than the aggressor.’

‘To which there’s an answer, which doesn’t involve exorcism,’ Merrily said.

‘What did you do here when you came up earlier?’