Omega (6 page)

With these thoughts, as ever, hovering about the threshold of his mind, Harley said: 'I'm sure I don't have to tell you that a scapegoat may at any moment become an urgent necessity.'

'You lost one of your men on Bell Beacon, didn't you?' General Mullard asked.

'Yes, that was unfortunate. One doesn't like identifiable bodies
getting into the hands of unbrie
fed authorities. So was the death of the Hassell woman. We don't want to provide the witches with any martyrs, especially young and beautiful ones. But I think something can be made of Andrea Sutton, by way of compensation.'

'The leader of the banner lot?'

'Yes. I've seen the autopsy report. Multiple injuries -the burning motor-cycle ran over her and so did another that went out of control. But those injuries would be compatible with her already having been dead, considering how quickly it all happened.'

'I don't follow you.'

'Quite simple. There will be two witnesses at the inquest who will insist they saw a group of witches stab her in the heart, catch some of the blood in a bowl and run with it to their Great Altar.'

'Duty outweighing perjury,' Jennings murmured. Harley chose not to hear him.

'But the autopsy showed no stab wound?' the General asked.

'The rib-cage was crushed by the motor-cycle.'

'Any competent pathologist would still know.'

'Of course, but that doesn't matter. The suggestion will have been made and I can see to it that it is headlined. The pathologist's denial will be accepted by the coroner but ignored by the rumour-mongers. The blood-sacrifice theory will very quickly become "fact" - all the more effectively because it will be believed to have been officially suppressed. And fortunately, Andrea Sutton was President of the Anti-Pagan Crusade - a non-denominational group which has had little impact so far. . . . She wasn't
an
agent of ours, by the way, though she was manoeuvred into this demonstration by - er - appropriate influences.' He gave his thin smile. 'And further appropriate influences have arranged that her Vice-President and successor will be the main attraction on BBC
1
'
s
"Paul Grant Hour" the day after the inquest. He is Ben Stoddart, a quick-witted speaker of considerable personal magnetism. Grant himself has been briefed.
...
I think, gentlemen, that a sacrificed Andrea Sutton will prove a much more effective martyr than a mere naked blonde.'

It was not easy to return to normal but they did their best, for Diana's sake in particular. Mercifully, the child had not seen Joy's murdered body; her face had been buried in Dan's shoulder and he had managed to keep it there. But the uproar, the violence, the thunderous motor-cycles, inexplicably shattering a treat which she had been promised for weeks, had terrified her. She had been sick twice on the way home to Staines, and had whimpered herself to sleep in Moira's arms. Moira had knelt by the small bed, cradling and soothing her, till her knees ached.

When Diana had finally dozed off through sheer exhaustion, Moira had joined the other three downstairs. They had talked for a while, disjointedly, and then had set up an altar in the living room and cast a Circle. The familiar ritual had calmed them a little, and when they were ready they had sat facing inwards, instinctively drawing closer to each other, linking hands, woman, man, woman, man, striving to harmonize and activate the group mind which they had spent the past three years building up. (They missed old Sally, but all her lights had been out when they reached home and they had decided against
waking her up with their terrible news.) When Moira had felt the power rising in them, she had begun to speak quietly, invoking an image of peace, conquering and transcending all disaster; then projecting it outwards, to the child upstairs, to bereaved John whose torment they could fee! as though he were in the room with them, to Joy's astral consciousness brutally and prematurely torn from its lovely, and loved, physical vessel. . . . They had all felt drained but at least, for an hour, enfolded by the peace which they had invoked.

Moira had banished the Circle and they put on their clothes again, speaking little and softly. With the habitual exchange of kisses, Rosemary and Greg had bid them 'blessed be' and gone to their own home next door.

Moira had pressed herself close against Dan in their bed, needing the contact, clasping his hand to her breasts with her own. They had lain like that for a while, drawing on each other's strength; then her need for him had pervaded all her levels and she had turned in his arms, fondling him and moaning. She had been ready for him and he for her, and foreplay was, for once, forgotten; they had merged compulsively, with a swift and urgent climax, and had flung their arms wide as though to push away the terror with their passion.

As the tide ebbed, a half-remembered couplet had slipped unbidden into Moira's mind:

And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war.

Dan had felt the tears suddenly on her checks and had held her close, murmuring to her wordlessly till they both slept.

Next morning, breakfast had been dominated unexpectedly by the eight o'clock radio news. Moira and Dan had listened to the headlines, wide-ey
ed; almost
at once Rosemary and Greg, their coffee-mugs still in their hands, had run through the gap in the fence between their gardens, calling to them to switch on if they hadn't already. The four of them had stood round the set, stunned by the list of large and small disasters that had spanned Europe during the night. When it was over, Dan had switched off and they had stared at each other.

It had been Rosemary who fi
nally broke the silence. 'For
God's sake! Do you know - I'd
forgotten
that bloody earthquake! It was so much part of the whole thing that I'd
forgotten
it!'

So, it seemed, had they all. Now reminded and abruptly aware of the scale of it, they had all talked at once, trying to take it in, till Dan had noticed the clock. He had hurried off to his estate agency partnership, Greg to his motor repair shop, Rosemary to'her till in the supermarket. Moira had been left suddenly alone; Diana was still asleep upstairs (let her sleep, poor mite) and Sally next door was not yet about.

On an impulse, she had gone to her Tarot pack, shuffled and cut the major arcana and the four aces, and dealt them in a Tree of Life layout:

The Hanged Man

Ace of Pentacles reversed

The Hermit reversed

Death

Justice reversed

The Tower

The Moon reversed

The Devil

The Wheel of Fortune reversed

The Lovers

She had stared sombrely at the layout for a full ten minutes. If that's how our world stands, she had told herself, last night was only a beginning.

She had hardly dared to deal out the three qualifying cards, but knowing that she must not baulk at them, she had turned them face upwards firmly.

The High Priestess - the Chariot - the Star.

Moira had drawn a deep breath and then said out loud: 'So it's up to me, Lady, isn't it?'

Since then, a week had passed; a week of unnatural and uneasy calm throughout Europe. There were riots in Brussels, Athens, and Turin but in each of these places there had already been some explosive local controversy which natural disaster had merely detonated.

Where there had been damage, people were busy repairing it; where there had been none, they were busy discussing it. Opinions were bandied about and prophecies made, from ostrich-like to apocalyptic. But in fact there was nothing for the prophets to get their teeth into and everyone knew it. If there was real information available, the authorities were keeping it to themselves.

The Prime Minister appeared on television and said nothing with artfully homely eloquence.

In the Mackenzie household, Diana seemed to have forgotten Bell Beacon, though Moira and Dan watched her carefully for any recurrence of distress. Sally next door was splendid; she seemed to absorb the double shock of the earthquake news and the Bell Beacon shambles like a soldier to whom catastrophe was commonplace and concentrated on keeping Diana amused and on seeing that Moira was left alone as little as possible when Dan was at work.

'Don't brood, pet,' she had told Moira firmly on the first day. 'Gets you nowhere. Joy's dead, may the Goddess rest her, and you can't bring her back. Out of our hands. Our job's the living. Damn it, I'm out of tea. Make me a pot, there's a good girl.'

Moira had laughed, helplessly, for the first time in many hours. Sally had smiled, with a shrewd eye on her - for signs of hysteria, Moira knew; and the knowledge helped her to keep a grip on herself.

As the days went by, their life appeared to regain its normal rhythms. But Moira had a strong sense of foreboding which she could not shake off; nor could she be certain in her own mind how much of that foreboding was personal, on behalf of her family and her coven, and how much of it was on a larger scale altogether.

One anxiety was already personal; Dan's business became suddenly slack. Two years earlier, Dan and his friend Steve Gilchrist had bought up a near-moribund estate agency, with its few clients and tenuous goodwill, and had set about reviving it. Steve had put up two-thirds of the capital, but Dan had been the one with the drive and the ability to get on with clients. They had done well so far and the office on the High Street had become bright and busy. But after the tremors, day by day more of the country properties on their lists were withdrawn from the market. In most cases only vague reasons or none were given, but one client at least was frank.

'If we get more quakes I'll feel a dam' sight safer out there in the woods,' he told Dan. 'And if things break down and there's violence, who the hell wants to be in London?' Dan, who for all his energy was perhaps too honest to be a tycoon-class salesman, admitted that he had a point.

The partners knew that the trend was two-edged; prices of the country places which did remain on offer would rocket. But any benefit to them would be transient, because if the alarm continued the market would soon dry up altogether.

Moira thought about asking for her old job back, to bring more money into the house if Dan's business met with prolonged difficulties. She had been a fashion buyer at Debenhams, the big department store in Staines, and only recently they had asked her if she would return, but she and Dan were agreed that she should stay at home till Diana started school. They might have to reconsider this attitude if things got worse. She kept the thought in reserve for the moment, however; only extreme pessimism would make Dan accept it and she did not want to disturb him until she felt it was absolutely necessary. Besides, her intuition nagged at her with another thought: if things
really
got worse, would their problems in fact be one of money?

The implications of that disturbed her even more than the state of Dan's business but she could not dismiss it.

In contrast to Dan, Greg was working overtime. He was head mechanic in the workshop attached to a big filling-station on the Kingston Road.

'You wouldn't believe it,' he told them on the Sunday afternoon as they all sunbathed on the Bayneses' lawn. (In the near-communal life that had evolved between them,, Greg and Rosemary had the bigger lawn, and Dan and Moira the bigger vegetable garden, both families making use of both.) 'All of a sudden everyone wants to be road-worthy. You know how it is - not many people really get their periodic maintenance done when the ten thousand comes up, or whatever. Now they're bringing 'em in
ahead
of time. They're queuing up for decokes and God knows what, even old bangers with holes in their coachwork, as long as the mechanics are sound. We can't get new tyres fast enough - or light bulbs, everyone wants a spare set. Petrol cans, too. And on the forecourt they've sold more road maps in a week than they usually do all year.'

'Road maps of where, as a matter of interest?' Dan asked.

"Yes, I'd wondered that, too -
I
checked up. East Anglia, the Pennines, central Wales, the Highlands - all the least populated areas, the ones people usually buy only to go on holiday. The town ones too, of course - lots of people just buy complete sets and be done with it. But the country ones are the hot cakes.'

'That figures,' Rosemary said. 'I was in Debenhams yesterday and you couldn't get near the camping department. I doubt if they've got a tent or a camp cooker left in the place.'

'I'm glad
we
have,' Moira said suddenly.

He
r remarked seemed to hang challe
ngingly in the air, but for now, at least, nobody commented on it.