The Devil's Moon (33 page)

She leaned forward and kissed Watts on both cheeks.

‘We use it to produce sleep and induce dreams. Did that happen to you, darling, when you stayed at my mother's that night? Did you dream?'

Her mother? Avril Pearson was her mother? Was that why the car outside had seemed familiar? Was she the other person in the garden now?

‘My mother is putting things to rights because she's dying. She hates Colin, my stepfather. He's in his own world. Or was. He's probably in the next world by now.'

Watts remembered the soup Colin Pearson had drunk earlier in the day that Avril had tried to press upon him.

‘Colin is antediluvian. She went along with that at first – all women of her generation did. Then she got resentful. Then she got angry. Then she got ill and then she got vengeful.

‘He's not my dad so I don't care,' Travis said. ‘He tried it on with me once but I slapped him down and he didn't pester me after that. But it changed things between us, of course. He didn't try it with Lesley. Didn't go anywhere near Lesley when he found out. Mum had Lesley during a bit of a muddled period of her life.'

All very interesting but Watts was mostly thinking:
what are you going to do to me?

‘Have you read
Middlesex
?' Travis asked. ‘A hermaphrodite grows up thinking she's a girl until puberty hits and he realizes he's a boy. Lesley chose to remain both. It gives her power. Sometimes he grows a beard. A beard, breasts and a penis: it's quite disorienting.'

She stroked his cheek.

‘I'm blessed too. I have two personalities. They would have worshipped me in the past but today they try to control me with drugs.'

Henderson spread his arms. Gilchrist couldn't help but notice his penis had drooped.

‘There is no one on earth like him,' Avril said. ‘So where does he come from? His existence must have some other meaning.'

‘Meaning that you tried to access through magic ritual?' Heap said, now only a couple of yards from Henderson's flank.

Henderson lowered his arms.

‘He's beautiful, isn't he?' Avril said.

Gilchrist nodded. In a way she didn't want to explore just at that moment, she did find Lesley oddly beautiful. No, not oddly – just beautiful.

‘The vicar found him disgusting. He told him he must be born of the seed of the Devil and I should have destroyed him at birth.'

‘So you burned him to death in the Wicker Man on the beach,' Gilchrist said. She pointed at Colin Pearson. ‘And you were about to do the same with that man. Why did you kill him?'

Henderson had crossed his arms across his breasts.

‘He killed neither man,' Avril said. ‘He is a bringer of life not death.'

‘Then who?' Heap said, stepping into the circle of candles.

Henderson spoke for the first time. ‘Kali has always protected me.'

‘Who?' Gilchrist said, also stepping into the circle.

‘Do you mean the Indian goddess?' Heap said. ‘Getting your mythologies mixed up, aren't you?'

Avril nodded towards Pearson's body. ‘That man convinced me that all myths are one myth.'

‘And he told you about Kali, the Hindu goddess of Destruction?' Heap said.

Before Avril could reply, Henderson said, though with some uncertainty: ‘I am the god died and reborn in every culture.'

Gilchrist said, ‘Did you carry out some kind of ritual with John Dee's equipment using the
Key of Solomon
?'

‘Was there some secret here at the farm that you made use of?' Heap said.

There was a sudden whoosh of fire and the flames from the legs of the Wicker Man rushed up the torso. Gilchrist could feel the heat.

‘He made himself a god,' Avril said. ‘He is Dionysus, the secret and the mystery.'

‘A dying and reborn god,' Heap said. ‘Yes, you told us.'

The whole of the Wicker Man was now ablaze. Gilchrist took a step back. ‘Bellamy, let's move them away.'

She moved out of the circle and over to Avril Pearson. She took her arms. Avril resisted but Gilchrist started to drag her away from the blaze.

Heap stepped behind Henderson. ‘Put your arms behind your back,' he said.

Henderson looked puzzled.

‘You think you can chain a god?' Avril called.

‘We seem to be doing a lot of that this evening,' Heap called back.

Henderson didn't move.

Gilchrist pulled Avril Pearson away to one side as one of the legs of the Wicker Man gave way at the knee. The figure tilted.

‘Bellamy!' Gilchrist called.

Heap grasped Henderson's arm. ‘Let's get away from here, sir.'

Henderson shrugged him off. ‘I am to be reborn through fire.'

He turned to face the blazing, crackling Wicker Man. Flames were now leaping high into the sky, smoke blotting out the Devil's Moon.

The other person in the garden stepped in front of Watts. A man. He wore a paint-splattered jumper and held an asthma inhaler in one hand and a roll-up cigarette in the other. Watts remembered now where he'd seen the car outside before. It was regularly parked near his father's house in Barnes.

‘You know Nick,' Travis said.

Nick Brunswick nodded at Watts and took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Your daughter has Nicola's phone. That's unfortunate. We have something on that phone that is private.' He picked up Watts' phone from the table. ‘Your daughter's name isn't Sarah Gilchrist, is it? She's the only one who's been phoning you. Several times. No message though.' He put the phone down and puffed on his inhaler. ‘What to do with you?'

Brunswick looked at Travis. ‘Have you heard from your mother?'

Travis shook her head. Brunswick nodded.

‘Nicola and Avril and I tormented the man who had tormented Lesley. We filmed it. I put him in the Wicker Man. I set it alight. And later tonight, we will set the rest of the world alight. Lesley will be reborn.'

Brunswick dropped the cigarette and trod on it. ‘You were asking about the AA. I lied to you at Caspar's house. I lied to him. My mentor did not disappear. My mentor died and willed to me the AA. Why me? Because I have His blood flowing through me.'

Watts didn't know who Brunswick meant by He. Brunswick was eager to tell him.

‘Aleister Crowley was my grandfather. He had a number of children – some he knew about, some he didn't. The promiscuity during sex rituals made it difficult to keep track of paternity. His mistress, Ninette, bore my father and three other children.' He puffed on his inhaler again. ‘I have created Crowley's moonchild for a great mission.'

Heap grabbed Henderson's arm again but Henderson half-turned and, showing surprising strength, hurled Heap bodily out of the circle of candles.

Heap fell almost at Gilchrist's feet.

‘Get out of there,' Gilchrist cried. ‘You're going to be burned alive.'

Gilchrist bent to help Heap up, her eyes on Henderson. Henderson took a step back as the other leg of the Wicker Man gave way and the whole fiery edifice started to topple. Avril cried out something Gilchrist couldn't make out.

Henderson raised his arms to the heavens and looked up to the moon, his face exalted in the flickering light from the flames. Then the Wicker Man engulfed him.

‘I thought Lesley beautiful the first time I set eyes on him and her,' Brunswick said. ‘I didn't want to change anything. The most perfect creation. We thought we had made him but couldn't be certain. Avril was going through a troubled time.

‘Neither Avril nor I suffer from a hormonal imbalance so there was no natural reason for us to create someone so special. Unless it was meant to be. She was urged to assign gender but I encouraged her to wait. It seemed like dithering to Avril but I persuaded her.'

‘Mum wants to make Lesley a god now,' Travis said. ‘That's why I stole the John Dee things from the British Museum and the
Key of Solomon
from the library. The theft of the painting was a little more whimsical.'

She stroked Watts' face again. Was he imagining it or could he feel her fingers this time? Was the drug wearing off?

Gilchrist and Heap watched in horror as the fire roared and surged around Lesley Henderson. Gilchrist started forward but Heap grabbed her arm.

Henderson made no sound from within the fire but nor did he rise up, reborn. Avril sank to her knees and covered her face with her hands. Heap phoned the emergency services. Gilchrist's own phone rang. It was Donaldson.

‘Sylvia has tracked down an address in Lewes for that phone and we're on our way.'

‘Give it to me,' Gilchrist said. She repeated it aloud for Heap's benefit. ‘Who does it belong to?' she said.

‘One Nicola Travis.'

‘Who is she?' Gilchrist said.

‘We're trying to find out.'

Gilchrist and Heap turned to Avril Pearson, kneeling at their feet.

‘Let's go, Mrs Pearson,' Gilchrist said.

‘Nick here was the only man who treated my mother kindly,' Travis said. ‘The pill was meant to liberate women of my mother's generation but it meant they weren't allowed to say no to men. Free love and all that. And then all the other stuff followed. “Don't be square, Avril. You've got to open yourself to all experiences, Avril. Just turn over, Avril.”'

Travis spat full in Watts' face. ‘You don't know what you're doing when you're that age,' she said. ‘What damage you're doing to yourself. That men are doing to you.'

Brunswick took her arm and moved her away. He squatted in front of Watts, examining his face. ‘What are we to do with you, mon semblable, mon frère?'

Watts felt his left hand twitch.

Brunswick stood, his knees creaking, and went into a huddle with Travis. Then they moved out of Watts' vision and into the house. Watts tried to figure out how to make his limbs respond to his brain. What was it Pearson had said about perception being like a javelin?

A barrel-chested man appeared in front of him. He glanced at Watts and walked out of his line of vision.

DS Donaldson sat hunched on a straight-back chair in the corner of Watts' cramped, low-ceilinged cottage beside the sorting office. Gilchrist, Heap and Kate Simpson were all crammed in there too.

‘Crikey, Bob, how do you function in here?' Gilchrist said.

He shrugged. ‘Badly.'

‘Is your daughter joining us, sir?' Heap said.

Watts shook his head. ‘Not this time.'

‘So what's happening?' Donaldson said, to no one in particular. ‘Case concluded, isn't it?'

Donaldson had been accompanied by half-a-dozen beefy policemen when he'd arrived at Travis's house. The arrests had been boringly anticlimactic. An ambulance had collected Watts. He still felt a bit spaced out but, a day later, at least he was more or less functioning normally.

‘Pretty much,' Gilchrist said. ‘Everybody and his dog seemed to be trying to find a way to fulfil his or her potential.'

‘Maybe not the dog,' Kate said. Then: ‘What did Avril Pearson have to say about killing her husband?'

‘She said: “Because he killed me”,' Gilchrist said. ‘Her colon cancer is well-advanced.'

‘It's the same thing that killed Farrah Fawcett,' Kate remarked.

After a moment Watts said: ‘The one loose end is what the secret of Saddlescombe is or was,' Watts said. ‘It didn't seem to figure in what Avril and her family were up to.'

Gilchrist gestured to Heap. ‘Bellamy's your man. He knows everything.'

‘I do know that Travis misled you, sir,' Heap said to Watts. ‘With regard to the zombie thing. Although datura did paralyse you, in Haiti the agent used is actually tetrodotoxin. It doesn't come from a plant but from the pufferfish.' Heap flushed as he saw all eyes on him. ‘Just saying.'

‘Detective Sergeant Donaldson,' Watts said, ‘I'm not saying you're a Freemason but if you were to be you might be able to shed light on what the Templars might have guarded at Saddlescombe.'

‘How so?' Donaldson said. ‘If I were a Mason.'

‘I went through all the things that might have been there and came up with nothing.'

‘There is the Ring of Aandaleeb.'

‘Sounds like something from a computer game for teenage boys,' Donaldson said scornfully. ‘Wizards and Sorcerers?'

‘The ring is also known as the Seal of Solomon,' Heap said. ‘It has magical powers.'

‘We
are
back to a teenage computer game,' Gilchrist said.

‘No, no,' Heap said. ‘It's what the Templars took from Solomon's tomb in the Temple. Except there's little proof of Solomon's existence and less of the Temple's.'

‘Tell that to the Freemasons,' Donaldson said. He spread his hands. ‘Not that I can help you with this ring.'

‘I think all this is rubbish,' Gilchrist said. ‘There was no secret at Saddlescombe, just a lot of coincidences.'

‘It's not necessarily rubbish just because it's weird,' Watts said. ‘A fish fell on your head, didn't it?'

Gilchrist laughed.

‘Didn't it?'

‘Conger eel,' she said.

‘That's still a fish.'

‘What's your point?' Gilchrist said.

Watts shrugged. ‘No point really. I guess we're fated never to know the true story about Saddlescombe.' He looked around. ‘It's only in fiction that it all has to make sense at the end.'

‘I
t's someone for you, Dad,' fifteen-year-old Bobby Watts said, coming into the garden from the family house.

Victor Tempest glanced at his wife and heaved himself out of his chair. She carried on reading her book. He looked up at the woman's face at the window of the sitting room. ‘I'll take care of it,' he said, patting his son on the shoulder as he walked past him.

She was still standing by the window when Tempest came into the sitting room.