The Devil's Moon (9 page)

‘See what you've started now?' Caspar said. ‘I was always trying to get Fi to try for
Gardeners World
back in the days when that Charlie Whatsername was jiggling her boobs. Good-looking bird but her tits weren't a patch on Fi's.'

Watts smiled. ‘I believe you.' He put the Crowley book on the table beside his chair.

Caspar gestured at it with his chin. ‘Binding is in bloody good nick. I reckon it hasn't been off your dad's bookshelf almost since he got it. Sometimes that means the pages get stuck together but Crowley used expensive paper for his press.'

He looked at Watts.

‘You know the Mandrake Press was Crowley's? The UK version of the press published quite a lot of other stuff – some interesting poetry by avant-garde poets of the time – but essentially it was a vanity publishing outfit. Over the years, he paid for the publication of pretty much every one of his hundred books. Began life a wealthy man but blew through it all.'

Watts nodded at the book. ‘So what do you think?'

‘This is the original short run US version, that's what makes it so valuable. When war broke out he buggered off to America to get out of it. He set up the Mandrake Press again in London when he came back and reissued this some years later.'

‘A bloke made me an offer in that funny occult bookshop in Great Museum Street.'

‘I know the one. They get interesting stuff in there occasionally among all the tat.'

‘They have to stock the tat,' Fi said from a table where she was laying out bowls of food. ‘They're just trying to make a living, like everybody. Everybody who isn't living off their ill-gotten gains like you, that is.'

‘It's true enough,' Caspar said. ‘But I worked bloody hard to get my money.' He leered at Watts. ‘With a lot of fun on the way.'

Watts smiled.

‘This bloke – called Vincent Slattery – offered me ten thousand pounds for it.'

Caspar whistled.

‘Good money – but Vincent has always been over the top.'

‘You know him?'

‘Sure. I've done a lot of business with him down the years. When I bought Westmeston House I bought its library too. Being local he'd done the valuation and I went through the library with him when I took possession.'

‘I didn't know if you'd want to go that high?'

‘As I said: I'll match any offer you get. The money's not a problem but I'm intrigued by Vincent. He usually only buys stuff when he's got a purchaser in mind.'

‘I don't want to part with it quite yet anyway. I'm intrigued by the inscription.'

‘Crowley calling your dad
magister
?'

Watts nodded. ‘That, but more the
mon semblable, mon frère
. He's got some signed Dennis Wheatley and Colin Pearson books with the same phrase in the inscription. I don't suppose you know what it means?'

‘It rings a bell,' Caspar said after a moment. ‘But by my time of life, after all the drugs and the booze, my brain has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese.' Caspar sipped his wine. ‘So you want to find out if your dad was secretly the Wizard of Oz?'

‘Something like that.'

‘Family secrets, Bob. Those skeletons in the closet are usually kept in there for a bloody good reason.'

‘I've already rattled a few.'

‘Have you?' Caspar said, giving him an intrigued look. ‘And your father knew Colin Pearson?'

‘Yes. Do you?'

‘A bit. Know his wife better. They live in a big cottage at the Devil's Dyke.'

‘Appropriate.'

‘It fits, doesn't it, for the author of
Magic
? His cottage is part of a big farming spread. Bits of the main farmhouse go back to the Middle Ages; most of it is around four hundred years old. The Templars owned it for a century or so. The National Trust have it now.'

‘Lots of legends surrounding it, I suppose,' Watts said.

‘Got it in one. But about your dad. If he had been any kind of heavyweight on that occult scene I would have known about it. And he would probably have mentioned it to me on the odd occasions we talked about my well-known past proclivities.'

‘Unless he was part of AA,' Fi said, dropping into the chair beside Watts.

Caspar gave her a nod. ‘True.'

‘My dad liked a drink but—'

‘Not that AA,' Caspar said, tilting his glass at Watts and taking another sip of his wine. ‘This is something else.' He looked into the garden. ‘And here's the very man to tell you about it.'

Watts turned round in his chair. The man in the paint-splattered pullover was walking through the garden, ignoring the rain, cigarette clamped between his teeth, asthma inhaler in his hand.

‘Our lodger, Nick,' Fi said. ‘Lunch can now be served.'

I
n the incident room Gilchrist stood by the window looking up at the gloomy sky. Her hastily assembled team clacked on computer keyboards and worked the phones behind her. There were three constables and three civilian support workers in an office that used to seat two. She'd never run a team before and would have been panicking if she hadn't felt so bloody weird.

She'd read the statements of the four clubbers to see if there was anything there. All heard screams, two claimed to have heard the victim shout out.

Bilson's office had been in touch to say the remains of whoever had burned to death in the Wicker Man were too badly damaged for any normal kind of recognition but the pelvic saddle was more or less intact and from that Bilson was concluding the victim was male. DNA samples had been extracted from the bones and the results were being hurried through.

DS Donald Donaldson came into the room, glad-handing the constables and civilian staff sitting there. He had a cocky, shoulder-rolling walk. Gilchrist nodded and smiled and he joined her at the window. They shook hands.

He was shorter than her but a bear of a man who seemed too big for any space he occupied. He was a fanatical body-builder so always looked as if he was bursting out of his clothes. Gilchrist suspected steroid use but if he wanted to wreck himself, that was his choice.

‘What is it, Don-Don?'

‘Well, first off: what do I call you? I've been calling you Sarah for the past five years. Do I start calling you ma'am now?'

‘Sarah's fine,' she said.

‘OK. So what do you want me to be doing?'

She turned to face him. ‘I'd like you to check the witness statements Constable Heap took on the beach. See if anything stands out.'

‘Heap, eh?'

She caught his tone. ‘What's wrong with Constable Heap?'

‘The pocket policeman? Nothing. A bit too arty-farty for my taste. These university types usually are.'

‘Nevertheless, he's a member of this team.'

‘As you say,' Donaldson said, turning away. Gilchrist craned her neck back out of the window. From here she could just see the smouldering pile of wood and wicker on the beach. The tide was coming in. Within half an hour it would be dispersed. She hoped scenes of crime and forensics hadn't missed anything.

There were still people loitering near the remains. She recalled the wedding she'd been to on the moors above Hebden Bridge. The burning Wicker Man had been quite a sight.

She pondered for a moment. Such a sight that if you were the person who set the Brighton one alight you'd want to stay and watch it go up, surely? Especially if you'd dumped a body inside it.

‘Who's collating the video footage?' she called out to the room.

A young female officer stuck her hand in the air. Sylvia somebody. Gilchrist's mother had been called Sylvia but it wasn't a name you came across much in younger generations. Sylvia Wade.

‘Sylvia, aside from looking to see if there's evidence of who set the Wicker Man alight, we need to try to match everybody watching on the beach with the witness statements Bellamy took. It's possible whoever put the body in there stayed around to watch it burn but not to give a statement.'

‘Ma'am,' Sylvia said to her.

‘Someone else double check the witnesses' addresses – see if we've a wrong one.'

A young, eager-faced constable volunteered for that with a wave of his hand. Gilchrist nodded.

‘Right,' she said. ‘I'm off to see the chief constable.'

Caspar made a phone call to Colin Pearson's wife to arrange a meeting for Watts. When Caspar made the call, Watts was standing with Fi and the artist, whose name was Nick Brunswick. He lived in the basement and used a shed at the bottom of their garden as his studio.

‘You know Pearson too?' Watts said.

Brunswick nodded. ‘Back in the day.'

‘Can you get down there tomorrow?' Caspar said over his shoulder to Watts.

‘The Devil's Dyke?' Bob Watts said. ‘Sure. What time?'

‘He'll be expecting you late afternoon.'

Watts nodded.

‘That's cool, Avril, thanks,' Caspar said, putting the phone down. ‘Avril. Very cute cookie in her day.'

‘I suppose you had a thing with her,' Fi said.

Caspar shrugged.

‘
Everyone
had a thing with her. It was the sixties and seventies and rock 'n' roll.' He winked at Watts. ‘And no HIV plague to worry about.'

‘What's this about AA?' Watts said to Nick Brunswick. ‘Do they call each other
mon semblable, mon frère
?

Brunswick looked at Caspar and Fi.

‘We told him you're the expert,' Fi said.

‘It's a super secret cult set up by Crowley linked to but separate from his Temples of Thelema, which are the churches he founded,' Brunswick said.

‘It's so secret that even its members don't know if it exists,' Fi said.

Watts frowned. ‘I don't get that.'

‘It's more that they don't know how many members there are,' Caspar said.

‘You only know the person above you – your mentor – and the person below you – your mentee,' Brunswick said. ‘So you don't know how high you are in the hierarchy or who the top person is. Every so often someone has proclaimed that they are now in charge but others have contested that so now there could be as many as six AA organizations running side by side.'

‘Essentially, if your mentor dies or leaves you're fucked in terms of your own progress but you control the one below you,' Caspar said.

‘You're all members?' Watts said.

‘Not me,' Fi said with her throaty chuckle. ‘A mere woman.'

‘I was,' Caspar said. ‘Nick here was my mentor.'

‘And your mentor?' he said to Brunswick.

‘Disappeared.'

Watts thought for a moment. ‘That sheep's heart anything to do with this AA?'

Caspar bared his teeth. ‘In a moment of drug-induced madness I declared myself the big cheese a few years ago. It was total bollocks, of course – as Nick was the first to point out. It pissed off more than a few people.'

‘So you have enemies.'

‘Lots. But as long as they keep their violence on the astral plane with a few bloody hearts thrown in I can cope.'

‘The shit through the post isn't so good,' Fi said.

Caspar patted her shoulder. ‘That's what PO boxes were created for.'

Watts looked at Brunswick. ‘Do you know where
mon semblable, mon frère
comes from?'

‘Sure.' Brunswick shrugged. ‘It's from T S Eliot's
The Wasteland
.'

Hewitt's face remained immobile. Gilchrist wondered what she would do if ever she reached Hewitt's career heights. She'd want to be accepted for her achievements but she knew she'd also be judged for her looks – if only as a sign of how she was dealing with the stress.

Tony Blair's haggard face, photographed during the Iraq War, was still being used in the windows of Brighton's many alternative therapy and massage centres to represent the ‘Before' of the treatments they were giving. And there had been no ‘After' for Blair. So Gilchrist didn't judge Hewitt. Well, she tried not to.

‘Pleased you made it in, Sarah,' Hewitt said coldly.

‘Sorry, ma'am. Something I ate last night.'

‘Suppose you were in Plenty too.'

Gilchrist frowned. ‘Too? Have other people eating there been sick?'

‘Six or seven – one man is on life-support. Public Health has been called in.' Hewitt's tone softened. ‘So you really were ill? I must say, you're still looking peaky.'

‘My friend has been ill too.'

‘I've warned you before about all this health food stuff. You know where you are with steak and chips.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘So: the Wicker Man?'

‘We're collating,' Gilchrist said, giving a brief run-down on the investigation.

‘No one has come forward saying they built it or think they know who the victim might be?'

Gilchrist shook her head. ‘But it is early days.'

Hewitt tilted her chair back. ‘This film – the person inside the Wicker Man was a sacrifice, wasn't he?'

‘Yes – because the crops had failed.'

‘Have the crops failed around here?'

Gilchrist paused, then risked it: ‘With respect, ma'am, do I look like Alan Titchmarsh?'

Hewitt laughed. ‘He's gardening, Sarah.'

‘Who's the agriculture man then?' Gilchrist said.

‘With respect right back at you, Detective Inspector, why would I know that? I'm a town girl. However, I've always taken you for a striding-across-the-Downs woman. There's agriculture up there, surely?'

‘The last time I was on the Downs was for an Anish Kapoor thing up at the Indian memorial.'

‘I think it was an installation rather than a thing. I didn't realize you were into art, DI Gilchrist.'

‘I was arresting some scumbags up there – it was my wilderness period, ma'am.'

When Gilchrist had been returned to duty after her first suspension over the infamous Milldean Massacre she had been given all the shitty jobs that were around. That would have been on Hewitt's instructions. The chief constable chose not to comment now. Instead: ‘Did you like the installation? It was a big mirror wasn't it?'