The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [20]
‘What was odd about that?’
‘Apart from the radio switching itself on?’
Seaton shrugged.
‘Before Hereford and the regiment, I was in the paras. Anyway this particular night three of us were manning a road checkpoint in a wood at Crossmaglen. We had no specific intel concerning Provo activity. It was just routine. I’d just finished my watch, was listening to my Walkman, drinking a brew, when they hit us with a mortar shell. Both my men were killed, blown right out of their kit and pasted in bits in the trees. I wasn’t even scratched. I’ve never been able to listen to that song since. And it was the one playing when the radio decided to come alive.’
‘What was it?’ But Seaton knew.
‘John Lennon. “Imagine”.’ Mason stood and pushed a hand into his pocket. ‘I haven’t even offered you a drink, Paul. You’ll drink something?’
‘You said there were two things. You said two strange things happened last night.’
‘They did. I’d switched the radio off and was climbing the stairs and I thought I heard a bell toll. It tolled only once. But it tolled louder than any bell has a right to in Whitstable.’
‘I’ll take a whisky off you,’ Seaton said. Mason went to the bar and he put his head in his hands. It was his belief that whatever lurked in the Fischer house waxed and waned in its power. They must have gone there at a time when it was very powerful, the ethics professor and his hapless band of undergraduates.
Mason returned, carrying a double. Seaton sipped it. It was Bushmills whisky, and it tasted like the twelve-year-old.
‘Who’s Covey?’
‘He didn’t tell you?’
‘Told me some bollocks about an institute for psychic research.’
‘It isn’t bollocks.’
‘Maybe not. For all I know, he qualifies for lottery funding. But you’re not who you say you are.’
‘No,’ Seaton said. He sipped whisky. It tasted good, seductive. It tasted of home.
‘There’s something else I should tell you,’ Mason said. ‘I said I heard “Imagine” on the radio. And I did. Or I thought I did. Because it didn’t really sound like Lennon. But it didn’t really sound like a cover version, either. What it actually sounded like, was a pastiche.’ He shrugged. It was an easy song, after all, to mock. ‘This is probably nothing.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
Rain howled in the wind around the pub and the sea in its waves was a ragged chorus. The overhead lamps, deliberately dim, flickered. Seaton thought he could smell tar from the timber planking lining the walls. He thought, Jesus. This close to the sea. And there was a tremor in his hand he could not conceal when he raised his whisky glass to his lips.
‘It didn’t sound like Lennon playing the piano,’ Mason said. He drew on his cigarette. ‘When I was a boy, my dad had a real thing for primitive jazz. He liked the classic, early-twentieth-century stuff. King Oliver. Louis Armstrong. He was crazy about Fats Waller. He drove us mad, playing all these rags and romps from New Orleans. That’s what Lennon’s playing sounded like, last night. Black, barrelhouse music. Stride piano. It had the lilt and echo of the whorehouse.’
Seaton downed the remainder of his drink. This time the tremor left him alone. The Bushmills had accomplished its task. He endured the heartfelt fantasy then of reaching into his pocket for Covey’s money and buying the bottle from the landlord. The remainder of the bottle. Or a fresh bottle. Ah, Christ, why not the balance of the bottle opened and a fresh one, too? Why not a grand night over a full case of Bushmills? He had plenty of cash now. Twelve burnished amber bottles, filled to their necks with peaty oblivion. It was a powerfully seductive thought, as filled with foreboding and self-pity as he’d allowed himself to become, as thirsty for escape as he was, and solace. Instead, he got to his feet and said to Mason, ‘I’d like to see your sister now. If I may.’
A fire of pine logs burned in the grate in the girl’s room. The room was on the top of the three floors of the house. The resin from the burning logs gave the room a sweet scent. Out of the window, the havoc