December (61 page)

      
A lamp was burning low in the room behind her.
      
'Tell them ... Can you no' tell
them we're awful tired or something?'

      
She didn't look especially tired. She did look het-up, was
controlling it, like a midwife at a bad birth. She had her sleeves pushed up
over her elbows. There was a light sweat on her forehead.

      
Prof said, 'What would that sound like to you? See, I … I'm
starting to get the hang of this, and the name of the game is, Don't Worry
Tom.'

      
'Yeah, I remember the basic rules. Only Tom's so unpredictable,
you have to keep changing them as you go along.'

      
Prof shuffled about. 'Is Dave OK? I mean, it's nearly two hours
since he was gonna have a bath.'

      
'Yeah, well, all that happened, Prof, is he lay down
afterwards and fell asleep, and when he awoke he was kind of disoriented. I
think he'd ... OD'd on whatever's coming the Skirrid tonight.'

      
Prof was in no mood to go into this. 'I tell you, Moira, two
hours, we've been here, we haven't even seen this Abbey yet and already things
are turning out rather weirder than I anticipated. Even considering the
company.'

      
'Yeah,' Moira said. 'And it will get weirder, I have to say.'

      
'Tom's turned up with a woman looks like she's the madame of
an expensive massage parlour.'
      
'Not Shelley?'

      
'Meryl,' Prof said. 'Her name's Meryl. And as for Simon did
you know he was a flaming church minister now?'

      
Moira's eyes widened briefly, then she gave a secretive kind smile.
'Aw, hey,' she said softly, looking not at all displeased. 'You're kidding.'

      
'Says he can't stay too late tonight on account he's gotta be
up early for Holy Communion at half-eight. Needs to let the wine breathe or
whatever they do.'

      
'Hold on.' Moira's eyes narrowing warily. 'He's a
local
vicar?'

      
'Ustrad Dee? Am I pronouncing it right?'

      
Moira went quiet. From the room behind her came the low, even
rhythm of an acoustic guitar - nail-strummed Martin, no mistaking it. Like a
silken river.

      
Moira said slowly, 'You're telling me Simon St John has got
himself made vicar of Ystrad Ddu? He's got the Abbey in his own backyard?'

      
'Well. Far's I can gather. Yeah.' The unlikeliness of this was
occurring to Prof for the first time. Why would Simon want to spend his life in
such stifling proximity to the ancient fun palace that spawned the Black Album?
      
'Oh hell,' Moira said. 'We are
gonna have to talk about this, at some length.'

      
And then from inside the room came a chiming A-minor chord.
And a tight and acid voice rang out, strident and angry the darkness.

                       
You die
tonight.

                       
Who
has the last laugh?

      
The last word reverberated -
aff, aff, aff
- the full hard, bright vocal of, say, 'Come Together'.
Prof clutched the door jamb; his legs felt weak.

      
Moira said, 'We'll talk later, OK?' And gently closed the door
on him.

      
Shutting herself in with the howling ghost of John Lennon.
      
Prof muttered, 'Get me out of
here.'

In response to a peremptory
phone call, Eddie Edwards went to meet Isabel Pugh in the church.

      
Girl's braver than me, he thought, weaving through the short,
dark alley between the churchyard yews. Since the appearance of the candles
he'd been far from happy in this place.

      
As he turned the iron handle, he could already hear the wheelchair's
whine and the sound of the rubber on the stone floor.

      
By the light of the flickering candles, Isabel Pugh was riding
up and down the short aisle, sending out waves of impatience and anxiety.

      
Eddie stood with his back to the door and waited.

      
Isabel was in her high-powered accountant's suit, no rug over
her knees, a shortish grey skirt revealing her useless legs.
      
The word was that she paid a woman
from Nevill Hall Hospital to come over two nights a week to pummel those legs,
with their wasted muscles; make them at least
look
as if they worked.
      
Passive physiotherapy, it was
called.

      
Well, it's her money; she's entitled to her bit of vanity, God
knows she is.

      
'We have to help him,' she said, by way of greeting. 'You agree?'

      
'Help him?' Eddie said.

      
Or help you, more likely, he thought.

      
She was a bossy girl, liked her own way and was probably used
to getting it - who could refuse to rush to the aid of a weeping woman in a
wheelchair? She was also, of course, very attractive, no denying that.

      
But how much of an impact that would have on Simon St John was
anybody's guess.

      
'How much do you know, Eddie?'

      
'Not enough.' He kept shooting sidelong glances at the candles
to make sure they were still white.
      
'Do you know about his band?'

      
Eddie sighed. It was cold in the church. He sat down on the
edge of a pew and pulled the too-long sleeves of his overcoat over his hands
like mittens.

      
'Tell me about the band,' he said.

By nine-thirty, the bar of
the Castle Inn was so full of noisy locals that nobody noticed the two
strangers sliding in.
      
Simon was busy explaining to Tom
and Meryl how he'd come to join the Church professionally. At the bar, ordering
sandwiches, Prof had murmured to him about steering the conversation away from
Dave and Moira and whatever was going on up there. If it came to it, he said,
he'd have to imply they were making love. What
is
going on up there? Simon had said, and Prof had wiped the air
with open hands - nothing he'd want to talk about even if he understood.
      
'I'd always been drawn to the
Church,' Simon was saying now, hunched over the fire, hands clasped. 'Always
very impressed by the clergy as a boy. Other kids used to laugh at them, in
their stupid robes, but they weren't having the same kind of ... experiences as
me.'
      
Prof saw Meryl pause with a prawn
sandwich half-way to her mouth. 'Experiences?' she said.
      
He thought, this woman's a
supernatural junkie.
      
Simon said, 'Enough to make me less
sure than my peers that religion was something you had to suffer until you grew
up, like school dinners.'

      
'But there's religion,' Meryl said knowingly. 'And religion.
Surely?'

      
Simon looked mildly annoyed, opened his mouth to reply, but
another voice took up the space.
      
'Can we squeeze in, do you think?'
      
Steve Case was the only guy in the
bar whose glass had olives in it. He stood it on their table, pulled out a
stool and handed another over the table to his companion. 'Sorry to disrupt
your evening. Prof. Er, Tom.'

      
'Stone me,' Tom said, ignoring Steve. 'If it ain't Sile
bleeding Copesake. '

      
Prof looked up with a guarded interest. He'd met Sile Copesake
once or twice but never worked with him, which was odd, seeing as both of them
had been around the same scene for maybe thirty years.

      
'How are you, Tom?' Sile said.

      
He's in better nick than me, Prof thought, pulling in his
belly. Sile hadn't got one, to speak of. His hair and his beard were both grey,
both shaven close, so it was like he had designer stubble over half his head.

      
'And Prof Levin, right?' Sile wore a short leather jacket and
jeans and looked fit enough to take the stage with a band half his age. As
indeed, he often did.

      
'Sile.'

      
'Hope we're not intruding,' Steve Case said, planting himself next
to Simon and the coal fire. 'But this seemed an opportune time to get together
and sort a few things out before we go to the Abbey on Monday.'

      
Steve glanced over at Sile. It was clear to Prof that Steve
was not in charge of this operation any more, if he ever had been.

      
Sile said in his soft Yorkshire rasp, 'We all need to be sure
why we're here and that we're on the same side.'

      
Sile had his back to the fire. Prof on one side of him, Meryl
on the other. 'And you are?'

      
'I'm with Tom,' Meryl said. 'I'm his …'

      
'Woman,' Tom said quickly before she could start tactfully
implying he was undergoing therapy. Meryl looked surprised and quite thrilled.

      
'Right,' said Sile uncertainly. He must think Tom was weird,
Prof thought. If the legends were to be believed, Sile was now screwing chicks
a third his age.

      
Sile and Steve had more drinks brought over. Tom sat back in
his chair, didn't eat, didn't drink while Sile talked.

      
Sile talked about the Abbey, which he said he'd known since
was a kid evacuated to Wales during the war. Sile said the Abbey had always
fascinated him, moved him. Did they know how it had been founded, by this monk
running away from his past, all the bad things he'd done, and finding
redemption?

      
Prof hadn't heard about that. It was supposed to matter? They
were talking about a sodding recording studio.

      
Sile said he'd recommended the Abbey to Max Goff when Max was
looking for somewhere remote and interesting where progressive bands could make
adventurous albums. Max had believed that progressive rock music would return
one day, more progressive than ever.

      
'I've got to tell you,' Sile said, 'I didn't know what he had
in mind. I didn't know how he planned to use the Abbey or I'd've been less
enthusiastic. I didn't know it was going to stir up demons.'

      
'Oh, please,' Simon said, looking pained. 'That wasn't quite
how he explained it to us at the time.'

      
'I'm using the word loosely,' Sile said. 'Max Goff wouldn't
have known a demon if it crawled up his trouser leg. He was a New Age guy. He
believed in beautiful spirits.'

      
'Listen,' Tom said, 'There was a geezer called Aelwyn
somefink, turned up outside the Abbey in eleven-whenever, pleading to be let
in. Only when the monks got the door open the only way they could bring him in
was on shovels.'
      
Sile nodded.

      
Tom said, 'Dave Reilly had this loony idea we could free this
Aelwyn's soul wiv a song. It went wrong. Badly, badly, fucking wrong. None of us
wanna talk about that, so if that's the direction you was heading, you better
back off, Sile, OK?'

      
'OK, OK.' Sile made a cutting motion. 'All I want to say is,
it's obvious that neither you guys nor the Abbey benefited a lot in that grim
episode. The album's awesome, but it's unfinished and it's flawed.'
      
'How'd you get hold of them tapes?'
      
'Part of TMM's legacy from
Epidemic. Prof'll tell you all about that. Prof was there when Steve found the
tapes.'

      
Yeah, Prof thought. And maybe Prof was invited along to be a
credible, trustworthy witness. Maybe Prof was set up.

      
He said, 'What you're really saying is you never exactly got
your money's worth out of the Abbey after that business.'

      
'I wouldn't have chosen to put it precisely like that,' Sile said.

      
'Or after the other business. Soup Kitchen.'

      
A babble of silence formed around their table.

      
'Wossat?' Tom demanded. 'What you on about?'

      
Prof deliberately didn't look at Sile, but he felt Sile
looking at him. Daggers.

      
'Epidemic took another new band to the Abbey in '87.' He
paused. Tom was also watching him intently now.