The Devil's Moon (17 page)

‘Oh, I get you,' Gilchrist said. ‘An unhealthy interest in the poetry of William Blake or the rantings of some medieval self-flagellant.'

Hewitt looked sharply at her. ‘Self-flagellant?'

Gilchrist felt awkward. ‘Although in Brighton there's probably a club for them.'

Kate Simpson phoned Plenty. A recorded message stated that the restaurant was closed for a week but then she was given options. She got through to administration and introduced herself.

‘I wondered what the news was on the food poisoning?' she said.

‘We still don't know what caused it. Our produce is being tested.'

‘Where do you source your ingredients?'

‘Local organic farms, usually. As you know we look always for the unusual ingredient.'

Kate told her what she had chosen from the menu. ‘Anything unusual in there?'

‘Lily bulbs, maybe, although they're not that unusual.'

Kate remembered each table in the restaurant had a lily on it. ‘Eating dandelions I know about – but lilies?'

‘The bulbs are essentially a root vegetable. Some can be bitter but the non-bitter ones – especially
lilium pumilum
– are used in cooking. They're like potatoes – equally starchy, although much smaller. If you're in China you can't get away from them. Often sold in a dry form. You reconstitute for stir fry or to thicken soup.'

‘Are they poisonous if cooked badly?'

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. ‘They're like potatoes – eat them raw and they can upset your stomach. But otherwise they're fine. Unless you're a cat.'

‘What have lilies got against cats?'

‘Lilies are toxic to them – especially the Easter lily. Causes acute renal failure.'

‘But cats know this, right?'

Another pause. ‘I would know that how?'

Kate laughed. ‘Where do you get the bulbs from?'

‘An organic farm near Poynings. Saddlescombe Organics. You can buy them yourself at the Brighton Farm Market up on North Road. On Wednesdays and Saturdays Saddlescombe Farm has a stall there.'

B
ob Watts was drinking coffee in the café on the balcony at the rear of the Brighton Gallery and Museum. He liked to drop in from time to time. There was something peaceful about the place, notwithstanding the racket of schoolchildren rising from below to the iron rafters as they clattered around the ground-floor gallery in search of the objects listed on their teaching sheets.

He could see, just below him, Bernard Rafferty in conversation with a much younger, androgynously good-looking man. God, Rafferty irritated him. So self-regarding. In Watts' past life as a high-flying chief constable they had shared many a television and radio studio. Somewhere, Watts had a signed copy of one of Rafferty's books that the pompous man had pressed upon him. He was some sort of expert on Sussex churches, which interested Watts not in the least. He couldn't remember even opening the book.

Rafferty was standing beside yellow and black police tape that protected a small area at the edge of the gallery. He was pointing at the wall and speaking earnestly. The androgynous man was nodding slowly. Watts didn't know what that was about.

He called Sarah Gilchrist. He knew she was back on duty. He had read about the Wicker Man on the beach and seen her name as officer in charge. He thought she'd be interested to know about the other construction on the Devil's Dyke.

He and Sarah had briefly been an item – the cause of his break-up with his wife – and he felt their story wasn't yet over. But he was drawn to Nicola Travis, no doubt about it.

Travis had invited him down to Glyndebourne opera house this coming weekend. She said she had a spare ticket as a friend had bailed. He was excited at the prospect of seeing her again.

Gilchrist's mobile rang when she was standing with Donaldson and Heap. Bob Watts. She excused herself and took the call. He wanted to meet.

‘I thought you were pretty much in Barnes these days until your father's house sells.'

He explained he was trying to find out more about some books on the occult his father owned.

‘Especially one by Aleister Crowley. The Great Beast?'

‘I've heard of him vaguely,' Gilchrist said. ‘But the occult – not you as well.'

Watts laughed and picked up the leaflet from his table. ‘There's definitely something in the air,' Watts said. ‘I'm looking at a flyer for a vampire club in the Laines. They were advertising a screening of a film about Abraham Lincoln as a vampire killer on telly the other day.'

Gilchrist laughed too. ‘I think Jane Austen characters now hunt zombies.'

‘You know there's a Wicker Man up on Newtimber Hill near Devil's Dyke?' Watts said.

‘I didn't.'

‘Local hippy commune put it there.'

‘How local?'

‘Saddlescombe – they run the organic farm there.'

‘Thanks for that, Bob.'

Donaldson had gone when Gilchrist put the phone down. She glanced at her watch. Probably gone for his lunchtime workout. She was restless. There would be little progress until the forensics results came in and the beach footage was fully examined. She called Heap over.

‘Any joy with the Imperial Arcade trace?'

‘I was going up there in a minute.'

‘I'll come with you. Then we need to arrange a visit to Saddlescombe Organics out on the Devil's Dyke.'

Bob Watts walked through the North Laines to the station and took a ten-minute train journey to Lewes through flooded fields. It hadn't rained all morning but black clouds tumbled together in the sky and the light was leaden.

The antiquarian bookseller, Vincent Slattery, had his shop just beside the Archaeological Museum in a cobbled courtyard opposite the old castle keep.

It was like something out of Dickens. Sagging shelves packed with large books. Creaking floorboards pitched at all kinds of odd angles because of dips and declivities. Soft light coming through small, square-paned Georgian windows, augmented by lamps in the corners and on the long, heavily varnished desk at which Slattery sat. And the smell – that musty, leathery smell of old books.

‘You're here to sell the Crowley?' Slattery said without looking up.

‘I'm afraid not but I hoped you might be able to give me some information.'

‘About Crowley? What would you want to know?'

‘Just about the book really. Is it for you or one of your customers?'

Slattery looked surprised. ‘That's actually none of your business but it's for an American client.'

Watts nodded. ‘It was the price offered made me ask. Sorry. What do you know about Crowley?'

Slattery laughed. ‘How long have you got? He was the son of a rich Midlands brewer. He went to Cambridge in the 1880s. He had a reputation as a mountaineer. Climbed in the Alps. Walked across the Sahara, he claimed. He paid to have his never-ending poetry published. Probably paid to get into Cambridge.'

‘You don't sound too much of an admirer.'

Slattery tugged at his ear absently. ‘When Crowley got interested in magic that's when I get interested in him.'

‘You're interested in the occult?'

‘An academic interest only. Crowley's own interest led him to the Golden Dawn, the quasi-spiritual, quasi-occult society of which W B Yeats was a member. The members were trying to access the power of the Other Side. Crowley tried to take it over so they threw him out. He developed his own magic centred round
Thelema
– his posh word for willpower
.
If you willed it, it would happen. Another credo of his was: “Do what you want is the whole of the Law”, which essentially means do whatever you want.'

‘I read that. So it was a philosophy of absolute self-indulgence?'

‘In some ways. But his magical practices were designed to raise demons and spirits. His usual practice was sex magic with a succession of Scarlet Women – usually drug addicts or prostitutes or the mentally unbalanced. At the same time – and sometimes literally at the same time – he liked being sodomized. In Cefalu in Sicily he started a community in 1920 where he had sex with men and women and tried to force his then Scarlet Woman to have sex with a goat.'

‘All in the name of revealing hidden knowledge?' Watts said.

Slattery nodded. ‘And he must have been on to something because the Germans tried to kill him in 1942.'

Watts spread his hands. ‘I've heard that mentioned but it makes no sense to me.'

Slattery smiled. ‘In the early part of the Second World War Crowley performed secret rituals in Sussex to cast spells on the leaders of Nazi Germany. The same magic John Dee used to raise the storm that blew the Spanish Armada off course.'

Watts laughed. ‘You're going to have to run that last bit by me again.'

‘John Dee – the Elizabethan magus? Damon Albarn did an opera about him not so long ago?'

‘I know who he is,' Watts said. ‘He seems to be cropping up in every conversation I have lately. But Dee did
what
at the time of the Spanish Armada?'

‘You know there was nothing to stop Philip of Spain conquering England in 1588? Our nobles were resigned to it even if Queen Elizabeth wasn't. The rest of us knew bugger all outside of our own villages – probably didn't even know what year it was. The Spanish Armada dwarfed our puny navy. Spain was the greatest sea power in the world. Our ships were out-gunned and out-classed.

‘And then a storm blew up in the Channel. Sent most of the Spanish fleet to the bottom of the sea or wrecked it on the British coast.' Slattery raised an eyebrow. ‘What were the chances of a storm starting up at just that moment of England's greatest need? That's the kind of coincidence you pray for – or conjure up demons for.'

Watts was sceptical but nodded politely. ‘And that's what John Dee did?'

‘So they say.'

‘And here they were doing something similar in World War Two to defend our shores.'

‘It would appear so. But not Crowley's usual sex magic, as far as we know. Crowley did battle on the astral plane. The details of the rituals are sketchy but the occasion we know about seems to have involved dressing up a dummy as a Nazi sitting on a throne. Among the people attending this particular ritual were Ian Fleming, Dennis Wheatley and Victor Tempest.'

Watts looked sharply at Slattery, whose grin had turned to a sly smile.

‘You didn't know your father was there?' Slattery said.

Watts didn't know. For a moment he couldn't think what to say because he was thinking through the idea his father had been part of this. It just didn't compute. He didn't think Victor Tempest had known Fleming and Wheatley until later in the war. And his father had been fighting in Europe and then been a prisoner of war – in 1942 was he even in the country?

‘They tried to blow Crowley up at Saddlescombe Farm, didn't they?' Watts finally said.

‘That's right.'

‘Where did they get a throne?' he said. ‘Not that easy to come by, I would have thought.'

Slattery laughed. ‘Exactly. These things are a lot of speculation. But it's certain there were bombs dropped on Saddlescombe when Crowley was staying there. The official line was that this was a German plane returning from a bombing raid on London with a few bombs left that the pilot decided to jettison over the South Downs.'

‘Was Crowley hurt?'

‘Apparently not. Nobody was. Some windows of one of the farm cottages were blown out. The farm worker who lived in it was cheesed off because he'd only just cleaned them. He said if he'd left them another day he needn't have bothered.'

‘The ritual was at Saddlescombe Farm?' Watts said.

Slattery nodded. ‘Where else?' He glanced at his watch. ‘Listen – there's an archaeologist I'd like you to meet. Expert on Saddlescombe and a lot more round here.'

Gilchrist had always had her feet on the ground. When she was a teenager most of her friends went to fortune-tellers and read their stars and went in for all of that but she just thought it was rubbish. As far as she was concerned, what happens, happens – and what happened to her was pretty shitty when she was a kid.

She walked with Heap up to the clock tower in the centre of town. ‘So how religious are you?' she said to Heap.

‘It soothes the soul,' Heap said.

‘What soul?' she said. ‘Who can genuinely believe we have a soul?'

Heap glanced at her. ‘Well, religion soothes something in us,' he said.

‘Listen,' Gilchrist said. ‘God is absence. Either that or he's deaf.'

‘But even if God doesn't exist I really want him to,' Heap said. ‘And so do most people.'

Their way was blocked on the pavement outside the chain bookstore by a group of some twenty young men and women in white sweatshirts. Written on front and back of each sweatshirt was the slogan ‘For Christ's sake – give God a chance'. One of them had a guitar and they were singing, though what they were singing wasn't exactly clear.

A pretty, long-haired blonde girl gave Gilchrist a flyer. Gilchrist glanced at it. ‘What's going on?' she said to the girl.

The girl looked at her and said earnestly: ‘We're against Satan and all his works.'

Gilchrist tried not to smile. ‘Good for you.' She gestured at the shop. ‘Why are you congregating here to tell people that?'

Heap pointed at the window display. ‘Ma'am.'

It was a display for Young Adult fiction. She looked more closely. Young Adult vampire fiction to be precise. Stephanie Meyer's
Twilight
series. A pile of books from a series called
The Vampire Diaries
by L J Smith. Stills from the TV show. And from the TV series
True Blood
.

Vampire Kisses
was propped next to
Vampire Cheerleaders
. There was a series called
Vampire Princess of St Paul
, another called
Confessions of a Teenage Vampire
and a collection of short stories called
Sexy Teenage Vampires.