The Devil's Moon (18 page)

Gilchrist was bemused. The teenage girls who read these and swooned over all the vampire TV shows and films – were they the same ones mugging each other and creating chaos on the buses? Presumably not.

She looked at the tall, blonde girl who was watching her response to the display. As far as Gilchrist was concerned these young Christians were just as bonkers as the girls obsessed with vampires. She nodded at Heap. ‘You move them; I'll go ahead to the arcade.'

She crossed the road and walked up to the Imperial Arcade. She rarely went into it. In its time it must have been quite something. What remained now in these lovely old shops were hairdressers and cafés and pop-up shops.

Gilchrist went into each outlet, showing the picture of the people captured on CCTV. A New Age shop called Crystal had a sign on the door saying ‘back in ten minutes'. It didn't say when the ten minutes had started.

Gilchrist stood in the exit to the arcade looking across at the people going in and out of Churchill Square shopping centre. The day looked so ordinary, so banal. She checked the sky. No flying kippers today. Actually, the sun had come out for the first time in what seemed an age.

The Christian group had gone. Heap was crossing the road. She looked back into the arcade, the sun slanting down through the glass canopy. A slender young woman with tumbling red hair was unlocking Crystal's door, a beaker of coffee in her other hand.

Gilchrist gave her a moment then followed her in. The shop was heavy on incense. Some music that seemed primarily to involve chimes tinkled in the air. Angel cards and crystals and New Age mumbo-jumbo was scattered around. She'd concluded some time ago that all the New Age shops in Brighton were just selling another sort of tourist tat and she wished them good luck if they could find people dumb enough to buy it.

Gilchrist flashed the photo. The girl didn't seem surprised. She waited for Gilchrist to speak. ‘Do you recognize these people from around the arcade?'

‘Are they men or women?'

‘I was hoping you might tell me that. We think probably at least one is a woman. Do you recognize the clothes?'

The girl scrutinized the picture.

‘Did you see them yesterday, for instance?' Gilchrist went on. ‘CCTV footage shows them crossing the road from the clock tower and heading into this arcade.'

‘To shop?'

‘Or perhaps they live here. In one of the flats upstairs?'

The girl shrugged, still examining the photograph. ‘People come and go in those flats all the time.' She looked at Gilchrist and handed the photograph back. ‘I don't recall seeing these people before.'

Gilchrist started to leave.

‘You've got a good aura,' the girl said.

Gilchrist half-turned. ‘What?'

‘Bright. Clear. You're a good person.'

Gilchrist couldn't think what to say. ‘Thanks very much.' She waved her arm around the shop. ‘All this stuff – you believe in it?'

The girl looked puzzled. ‘Don't you?'

‘Sorry,' Gilchrist said. ‘That came out wrong. I didn't mean to be rude.' She turned back to the door. ‘Thanks for your help.'

The girl called after her. ‘Do you believe in all this
stuff
?'

Gilchrist didn't turn this time. Or speak. She wasn't even sure, as she left the shop, whether she shook her head.

W
hen Watts left Slattery he walked up the cobbled lane past the bowling green on his right. A former jousting field, according to the sign on the flint wall that edged it.

Slattery had arranged for him to talk further in twenty minutes about the magical importance of Saddlescombe Farm to an archaeologist at the Archaeology Museum next to his shop.

Watts walked on to a viewing deck. The folds of the Downs were spread before him, an unearthly green beneath the lowering clouds.

A stainless steel plaque noted that the Battle of Lewes had been fought on the portion of the Downs laid out before him in 1264. Simon de Montfort, the creator of the modern parliament, had defeated King Henry III and taken him captive.

Looking out over the Downs, Watts phoned his father's agent, Oliver Daubney. ‘I'm not sure you were entirely straight with me over lunch at the British Museum.'

‘My dear fellow, I'm shocked you would think that,' Daubney said, chuckling. ‘I'm an agent. I'm always straight – albeit in a devious sort of way.'

‘What's this about my father with Crowley, Wheatley and Ian Fleming at Saddlescombe Farm, during the war?'

A momentary silence, then: ‘Bit before my time, old man.'

‘Come on, Oliver, you know where all the bodies are buried going back to the Year Dot.'

‘Robert, in a discussion linked to the occult the fact they are buried means nothing.'

‘Saddlescombe Farm?'

‘I'm sorry. Where you are standing is a little windy. I'm not hearing you clearly.'

‘Saddlescombe?' Watts bellowed. A man nearby glanced over.

‘Your father might have mentioned something about it,' Daubney said after another moment's hesitation. ‘Fleming was always coming up with off-the-wall ideas in his role in military intelligence. He proposed that idea to drop a dead pilot into occupied territory with fake dispatches in his pocket to mislead the enemy. That worked rather well, I believe.'

All Watts really knew about Fleming was that he was the author of the James Bond novels.

‘So this Saddlescombe Farm jaunt might have been his idea. But did my father know Fleming so early in the war? I didn't think they'd met until near the end.'

‘I can confirm that your father knew Fleming from around 1942.'

Watts laughed. ‘I'm not sure I wanted to hear that. How do you know?'

The steel plaque had a map etched on it that showed the disposal of the opposing forces across the Downs at the battle of Lewes. Watts looked from hillock to slope as Daubney spoke. A streak of lightning zipped behind the clouds.

‘Fleming, in his role in naval intelligence, formed a unit of commandos,' Daubney said. ‘Thirty Assault Unit or ThirtyAU? He got the men from other commando units. Fleming, in his proprietorial way, called these men his Red Indians. Apparently they hated that – most of them weren't that fond of his arrogance.'

‘And my father was in this ThirtyAU?' Watts said.

‘He was indeed.'

Watts thought he knew all about his father's commando experience but this was news.

‘What was ThirtyAU exactly?'

‘It was an intelligence-gathering troop. Aside from the usual unarmed combat and weapons expertise these men were taught safe-cracking and lock-picking. I believe it came in very useful for a couple of them who turned bad after the war. They were usually ahead of the front line. Their job was to seize enemy documents from German HQs.'

‘Fleming actually fought alongside my father?'

‘I don't think Fleming fought,' Daubney said. ‘He selected the targets and directed operations from the rear. Before the Normandy landing they were operating mostly in Sicily and Italy. Your father did a big job in a place called Chiusi.'

Watts knew about his father in Chiusi but not about intelligence gathering there. ‘I thought he was in Chiusi to protect an Italian count from the partisans when the Germans withdrew,' he said.

‘That was part of it,' Daubney said. ‘But there were other things going on. You know Hitler got increasingly preoccupied with the occult and secret powers?'

‘Here we go again. I've read about it.'

‘The count had an ancient library and there were, apparently, some valuable manuscripts. I think one of your father's jobs was to secure them.'

As usual with any new disclosure about his father, Watts was both despairing and astonished. ‘Did he succeed?' he said.

‘That I don't know,' Daubney said.

‘Were these manuscripts to do with the occult?'

‘I believe so.'

None of the residents of the flats above the Imperial Arcade answered their bells.

‘So what are your thoughts on this?' Gilchrist said as she and Heap walked back into town.

She was aware she was turning increasingly to Heap. He might only be a constable but underneath his blushing nervousness there was an acute brain. He was brighter than she was – though she knew that wasn't saying much. He was also a good lateral thinker, coming up with things that wouldn't have occurred to her.

‘You're asking me, ma'am?' he said.

‘Unless the Invisible Man is walking with us and I'm asking him.'

‘In that case I think everything is connected. The missing vicar, the Wicker Man, the desecration in Saint Michael's and the theft of
The Devil's Altar
.'

‘All done by the same person?'

‘Not necessarily but all linked.'

‘A painting of lilies though . . .'

‘In Victorian times lilies were linked with death. They were scattered over Queen Victoria's coffin.'

‘But lilies and the Devil?'

‘That's a bit more abstruse.'

‘Abstruse?'

‘Sorry, ma'am. It means—'

‘I know what it means. Once you joined my squad I bought a dictionary specially.'

Heap ducked his head, a smile at the corner of his mouth, cheeks red.

‘You were going to explain the abstruse link between the Devil and lilies.'

Heap paused to let Gilchrist go ahead of him down a narrow alley into the Laines.

‘Not quite the Devil. Lilies are a symbol of chastity and piety in Christianity. In early Christian art the white lily symbolizes the Madonna as the flower is associated with the Virgin Mary. The angel Gabriel is often holding it. Then they are used at Easter to symbolize the death and the resurrection of Christ. But Jesus wasn't the first god to die and be reborn – it's a constant in ancient myths. And lilies have always been associated with those dead and then reborn gods.'

‘Go on.'

‘But you also get lilies on Tarot cards: on the Magician, Temperance and the Ace of Pentacles.'

‘Pentacles? The vicar had chalked a pentacle on the floor of his flat. No lilies though. So what do they mean?'

‘There are different interpretations, no single one – you know, it's the sequence in which the cards appear that gives the meaning. If you believe there is a meaning.'

‘The usual bollocks, I suppose,' Gilchrist said sourly.

Heap glanced at her. ‘As best I can understand it each of those cards represents, in some way, making the most of your inner power. The Ace of Pentacles stands for new beginnings so the lilies fit in with the idea of rebirth. The Magician is about making use of all the powers you have. Beginnings are involved again.'

‘And the other one: Temperance, was it? Some non-drinking thing?'

‘Not exactly. It stands for harmonizing opposites. It's about balance. The androgynous figure, neither one nor the other, is weighing up what's in her left and right hands. The main thing is where it's situated in the pack – you know each card is numbered? Temperance has Death on one side and The Devil on the other.'

‘So whoever stole
The Devil's Altar
is into some kind of power thing. Do you think that could be the case with the Wicker Man?'

Heap shook his head. ‘That's a different order of things.'

They paused at traffic lights.

‘I don't understand why all this is happening here,' Gilchrist said.

‘Ma'am, historically Sussex was cut off from the rest of the country for centuries by poor roads. It was a lawless place and that made it a superstitious place. Way after, in the 1960s, you had an influx of hippies at the university and in nearby villages. The occult was fashionable in the counter culture. Aleister Crowley – the Great Beast – was one of the icons The Beatles put on the cover of
Sergeant Pepper
in 1967. And then when New Age spirituality came in the occult came in with it through the back door.'

‘And Brighton is the California of England. No trend too weird.'

On the other side of the road they passed a flower shop. Heap pointed at the lilies in a metal vase.

‘Lilies are hermaphrodites, you know. They've got staminates – those are the male, pollen-producing things there – and carpellates – those female, ovule-producing things.'

‘You are indeed a fount of knowledge.'

‘Font, ma'am. My preference is for “font of knowledge”.'

Gilchrist flashed him a look. ‘That's because you're a churchgoer. Either way you're full of it.'

Heap faced straight ahead, the smallest of smiles returning to the edges of his mouth.

Watts came back down the cobbled slope to the Archaeological Museum beside Slattery's bookshop. Slattery was waiting for him inside a small, flagged foyer. He was with a tall, grey-bearded, bald-headed man with rheumy eyes. The man's name was Philip Perkins.

‘You want to know about Saddlescombe Farm,' he said.

‘What was special about it? Why was Aleister Crowley doing rituals there in the Second World War? Because of the Devil's Dyke – the association with the Devil?'

Perkins waved at the display cabinets on the wall behind him.

‘Which particular pack of lies do you want? About the Devil? About the ley lines conjoining there? About the Druid stone circles and the Druids worshipping there centuries ago? About the Templar treasure buried there?'

‘Just the truth,' Watts said.

‘Just the truth,' Perkins repeated, rubbing his beard. ‘Whose truth?'

Watts waited.

‘Archaeologists are not unlike police detectives,' Perkins continued. ‘They make deductions from evidence. They also use inductive logic, which is to say that if a thing has been proven in one place that conclusion may be applied in another place. But that doesn't mean we get it right. Our conclusions are provisional and affected by what is fashionable at any particular time.'