The temperature dropped sharply in the basement. It had been years since she’d been down here and all the old memories were bad ones. Billi rubbed her arms, not sure why she was shivering, because of the cold or the ghost that might still be lingering here.
She still thought about Kay, the first boy she’d ever loved. The first person she’d ever killed. It felt so long ago, but it had only been two years. Time moved differently in your heart.
But instead of shelves of occult lore and chests of ancient treasures, there was a smart glass desk with a computer upon it, a red folder and a couple of history books. But against the far wall was a large, black cabinet.
It had been years since she’d seen it, but it still radiated a malevolence, of secret, dark dreams and wishes. The bronze hinges had been polished as good as new and the ornate inlay of demons and monsters made of precious metals and mother of pearl shone with iridescence. There was a copper disc centred where the two cabinet door panels met, marked by the six-pointed star, the seal of Solomon.
Lionel sat down at the computer and dragged up a spare stool for Billi. “This is what I found on your Lawrence. Most of this is common enough, what you can dig up yourself if you know where to look, but then I dug a little deeper and found some nice pieces. Not enough for a complete picture, but you can see its shape.” He tapped the folder. “Have a look at that.”
Billi opened the folder and found photocopies of old shipping manifests and what looked like diaries and personal correspondence. One name sprang out. “Lawrence. He wrote these?”
“Check out the dates.”
She gasped. Lawrence was older than she’d thought. “1602. That’s unbelievable.”
“Have a look at the picture. It’s a portrait of the merchants that founded the East India Company back in 1625. Check out the guy seated on the far right.”
The blazing blue eyes were unmistakable, but all else was changed. There, seated in an ornate room of gilt and marble was a robust young man, pink cheeked, straight-backed and muscular with shoulder length blonde hair. “The years have not been kind, have they?”
“A century later he pops up in the Hellfire Club, along with Dashwood and the other more famous members. You must know all about the rumours. The Templars of the day clashed with them more than once.”
Billi nodded as she inspected a copy of another painting. There was Lawrence again, older, but only by a decade or two. The wish he’d made clearly slowed down his aging. “The usual occult activities. Most of it useless, and harmless, but one New Year’s Eve they accidently summoned a demon. It ate half the members before the Templars arrived and destroyed it.”
Lionel chuckled. “The guy’s been a trader since the very beginning. Spices, opium, treasures from faraway places. But as the years and centuries passed he specialized more and more in what you might call esoteric items. Items with legends attached. And there is no better place for that business than the Middle East. Again, something you Templars have a special interest in.” Lionel gestured to the glowing screen. “Now we move into the modern age. He was in the Middle East during World War I, working behind the scenes with Allenby. That’s when, I think, he made contact with this guy. Take a look at Colonel Reginald FitzRoy.”
“FitzRoy?” said Billi. “That family’s been involved with Lawrence before?”
Lionel blew up the old photo to fill the screen. A young man, bare-chested and in khaki shorts stood amongst some ruins out in the middle of the desert, his arm was slung over a local Arab and there were more workers in the background, diggers taking part in an excavation judging by the piles of sand and rock. He had one foot resting on a broken statue. Judging by the scales it had to be a snake, or dragon.
“The first FitzRoy came over with William the Conqueror. FitzRoy was originally FitzRoi, which means son of the king.”
“So he was the bastard of William the Bastard?”
“That’s one way of putting it. Anyway, the family still have a castle up in East Anglia, a place called Hollburgh though it’s a ruin now. The FitzRoys have fought in pretty much every battle ever since. They have war in the blood.”
Billi peered at the photo, and spotted a figure sitting in the shade of a wall. “Is that Lawrence?”
“Yes. Hardly recognise him now, eh?”
He wore typical Bedouin garb, the flowing robes and the keffiyeh headscarf, but his frame was bent now and the hands clutching the cane were thin and bony. He was much more like the man she’d met last night. Withered.
Lionel clicked the mouse and brought up another page. “Then we have the Iraq War of 2003 and the name FitzRoy appears once more. Major Simon FitzRoy, grandson of Reginald, was in charge of protecting the Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad. It was his job to remove the most valuable artefacts for safe-keeping. But one night the place was hit by the Republican Guard. FitzRoy survived, surprisingly unscathed, but the convoy he was meant to be protecting was destroyed. Lost everything.”
“That was convenient.” So that was how he covered up the robbery, by pretending it had been destroyed by the enemy. Billi looked closer at the major. Simon FitzRoy sat on the top of a fallen-down statue of the old Iraqi dictator. He was waving a captured Iraqi flag, grinning like a victor.
“Very. He leaves the army a few years later and comes into a very large inheritance. Some distant relative, according to my contacts in the Royal College of Arms. But he doesn’t live to enjoy his windfall.” The next pop-up was a Daily Mail newspaper headline from ten years ago. “War hero commits suicide.”
“Any explanation why he did it?” asked Billi.
“The story is he suffered severe PTSD following the war. But what’s interesting is his own father, Edward FitzRoy, spent several years in a psychiatric hospital himself before an apparent boating accident.” Lionel shook his head. “The coroner reported an open verdict, cause of death not firmly established. Most thought that it was suicide. And his grand-dad, Reggie, he died pretty young too, out in the Middle East.” Lionel tapped the books on the desk. “Here. I want you to take these.”
Billi picked up the top one. “Myths of Mesopotamia?”
“Yeah, that and a few history books dealing with that area. You never know what you might find.”
“So what did this Reggie die of?”
“It wasn’t reported, but he was only in his mid-forties and the body was buried out there. I don’t need to remind you that Islamic countries tend to get their deceased in the ground within twenty-four hours, do I? The family suffers a strange malaise, Billi.”
Or a curse, if you believed that sort of thing. “How did Simon die, exactly?” asked Billi. “Fall off a boat too?”
“Not at all. Set fire to his house then blew his brains out, dressed in his old uniform, medals included. His wife and young daughter were out at the time. The wife drank herself to death a few years later, the girl was adopted by her aunt, on her mother’s side. She inherits everything when she’s twenty-one. Here.”
It was a society photo of a glamorous teen girl with her arms around some drunken mates as they stumbled out of a nightclub, the sort of photo the paparazzi made their bread and butter on. “Meet Lady Erin FitzRoy.”
“I guess those jewels are real?” She was almost sparkling as much as her diamond earrings.
“Very. Some of them should be in museums. That necklace she’s wearing is over two thousand years old. Said to have belonged to Cleopatra herself.”
It was stunning. The necklace was a snake, its scales pure gold and eyes brilliant rubies. It was holding its tail in its mouth.
Hadn’t Lawrence been wearing a ring with that exact same design?
Billi pointed at the girl. “You able to tell me more about her necklace? It looks familiar.”
“The ouroboros. The eternal snake. It’s a fairly common motif from the Middle East. Ancient Egyptian in origin, I think.”
What did it mean, that the girl and Lawrence both had the same design? Yo
u believed in fate, or coincidence. Billi didn’t believe in coincidence. Lawrence and Reggie Fitzroy had worked together in the early twentieth century. Was the ring and the necklace all part of the same find? Or was there another connection? “You got anything else?”
Lionel nodded. “Saved the most peculiar till last. This is from a year ago. A couple of kids broke into the now derelict house that had once belonged to Reginald FitzRoy, the same one his grandson Simon had tried to burn down. They were nabbed by a passing policeman. They were hysterical. Said they’d seen something, it had scared them half to death.”
“The Haunting of Knight’s Hill? How long did it take the editor to come up with that headline?” But she read the article, her interest piqued. The kids had broken in on a dare, there’d been scary stories about the abandoned house ever since the death, but that wasn’t odd. What was odd was the regularity of those stories. Face at the window. Strange noises, sobbing coming from... the study. A man in a uniform walking the hallway.
“Could be nothing,” said Lionel as he pushed himself away from the table and stretched. “That’s all I’ve got for you, I’m afraid. Some of the major’s army buddies may know more but that’s more your field than mine. Your dad was in the army, wasn’t he?”
“Royal Marines, but that was a long time ago.” Was it legit? This haunting? There were plenty of ghosts in London, most harmless and most just faint, vague and pitiful memories of longing. She’d fought one in her Ordeal, the test she needed to pass to qualify as a Templar. The ghost of six-year-old Alex Weeks. She still remembered seeing the sad spirit sitting on a swing in an empty playground at the dead of night. That had been a close run thing, even with her dad backing her up. Exorcisms were a messy business.
There were too many links between the FitzRoys and Lawrence to be mere coincidence. Something deeper was going on. So, messy or not, an exorcism was the only option she had.
It was time to talk to the dead. But first she needed someone who could speak their language.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Who would have though there were any squats left in London? There were plenty of abandoned buildings in the city that, unless they were closely watched, might be taken over and inhabited by a community unwilling or unable to pay London rent prices. Most squats were in rundown, impoverished parts of the city, and most were derelict and dilapidated but sometimes a lucky squatter would strike gold.
Who owned this place? Some wealthy Russian who’d bought it back in the boom as an investment then just forgotten about it? Or some lesser Royal keeping it in the family for their grandchildrens’ grandchildren? It was a nice street, lined with old oaks and four storey Georgian houses and not far from Clapham Common. Maybe she should think about moving there herself?
Most of the ground-floor windows were boarded up and the front door stood open where a couple sat on the steps sharing a bowl of pasta. Some of the upper windows were broken and repaired with plastic or sheets. A Cuban flag fluttered from a balcony.
Billi slung her leather satchel over her shoulder and went through the gate into an overgrown front garden. A grey-bearded guy wearing a green Army jacket and tatty straw hat looked up from his deckchair. “Nice bike. Norton Commando, isn’t it?”
“Thanks. Took us six months to get it running.”
“You did a good job. Makes you want to go far, far away and never look back.” He shaded his eyes as he looked up at her. It was midday in early September and the sun was high and bright. “A noble steed to take you off on a great quest.”
She dangled her keys off her finger, the keyring was a piece of metal with the Templar seal hammered into it. “You may be more right than you know.”
“You looking for a place to crash? First night’s free.”
“After that?”
He grinned. “You know how to cook? I mean something other than pasta? Bloody sick to death of bloody pasta.”
“I do a mean chickpea curry.”
“Yum. You can stay.” He adjusted his hat and leaned back into the deckchair.
There was no electricity, no gas and no water. The utilities had been cut off a while back. They’d managed without. Large plastic containers of water lined the hallway, and a woman was rolling a gas canister into the makeshift kitchen. The doors were gone and replaced with flags, tie-dyed bedsheets, even carpets had been hung across each entrance. The floorboards creaked and the banister had been removed making the journey up... cautious.
Each room was a mini-apartment with mattress or camp bed, plenty of cushions and whatever furniture that could be found out of dumpsters and cheap junkshops. Plenty had been reassembled out of mismatching legs, padding and boards. There was a bookcase on the landing, the shelves stacked with books, cans and packets of... pasta. There was a sign. “Take and replace. No more pasta!”
Billi stopped beside a young woman reading on the top stair. “Hi. I’m looking for someone. A boy —”
The woman looked her up and down and raised an eyebrow. “That’s a shame.”
“His name’s —”
She shook her head. “No names here, sweetie. They’re tools of the patriarchy.”
“Riiight.” She needed another angle. “You know anyone who does Tarot?”
“Top floor. First one on the right. The boy’s a true seer.”
Billi nodded and continued up till she reached the third floor and saw, first on the right, a doorway covered with a black sheet painted with the All-Seeing Eye.
Alright. Here we go. Be prepared. He’s gonna say something stupid. He’s looking to get a reaction, don’t let him. You gave him his chance and he threw it away. He owes you, but he won’t see it like that. So take a deep breath…
She took a deep breath.
… unclench those fists...
She unclenched her fists.
… and promise yourself you won’t punch him in his stupid face.
“I… promise.” And with that she pulled the door-sheet open. “Faustus?”
He lay face down on a mattress upon the bare wooden floor, snoring despite the sunlight blazing through the cracked window. It gave his bare skin a golden sheen, from his shoulders down to his hips below which, thankfully, he’d covered himself in a sheet, just his feet dangled out from the bottom.
He’d grown his hair since she’d last seen him. Now long black ringlets curled over his shoulders when once it had been a short crop. And his left arm bore more tattoos. Last time there’d been two bands around his bicep, one decorated with Nordic runes, the other with Celtic Ogham. He now had three more bands around his forearm: Arabic, Sanskrit and one made of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
The rest of the room? A dump that even a university student would be ashamed of. Clothes littered the floor, there was a TV in the corner and a pile of books up against the wall. Someone had decorated with a potted plant to give the room some life but no one had watered it and now it sagged, dressed in curled-up, yellowing leaves. A mouse looked up from the plate of half-finished spaghetti sauce. It carried on nibbling. As least someone here wasn’t tired of pasta.
Billi nudged Faustus’s bare foot. “Oi. Wake up.”
“Go away.”
“It’s me, Billi. SanGreal.”
He tensed. Now that wasn’t a good sign. Sure, they’d ended on bad terms, the worst, but that was over a year ago. Some people just weren’t cut out to be Templars. She’d forgiven, she’d forgotten. Why hadn’t he?
“Piss off,” he muttered. “I’m not interested.”
Billi pushed a pile of clothes off a stool and sat down. “How do you know? Mind-reading ain’t one of your gifts. And nor is prophecy, if I remember correctly. You gone back to swindling people with your Tarot deck?”
“I give them what they want. A happy ending.”
“Happy endings? Do they really exist?” She pulled out the folder she’d been given by Lionel out of her satchel. “This is just your thing. A spooky.”
Now he sat up, glar
ing at her. “I said piss off! I’m not interested!”
“Glad you’re finally paying attention. Here, take a look.” She tossed the folder on the bed. “A suicide. Happened ten years ago and there have been eye-witnesses to seeing a —”
“Enough.” Faustus rubbed his face vigorously, then shook his loose locks aside and glared at her with his deep brown eyes framed by the thickest, blackest eyelashes that made it look like he wore permanent kohl. “I don’t take your orders anymore, SanGreal.”
Joe Faustus. The one that got away. The Templars were warriors, but they were always on the lookout for those with more… peculiar talents. The fight against the Unholy wasn’t always physical. Some battles were fought on the psychic, or spiritual, plane. For that the Order needed soldiers who were ‘gifted’. The Oracles.
Mind-reading, prophecies, astral projection, ESP, and more. Each Oracle had a specialism and a smattering of ability in other talents, and Faustus was the best at dealing with restless spirits. He was a medium.
It would have got him burnt at the stake once upon a time. The Templars would have hunted him down themselves, just like the Bible told them to.
Thou shalt not suffer the witch to live.
But now the Templars recruited them …or tried to. You had to make best use of all the weapons available.
Faustus had been living on the streets when they first found him, running con games in the West End. He’d had the worst of it too, straying onto another gang’s patch and fleecing tourists who didn’t know better. Arthur had brought him home, bloody and bruised from a beating that had left him unconscious behind the restaurants of Chinatown.
They’d patched him up, given him a bed to sleep on, and regular meals. He’d devoured her dad’s curries, scooping up bowls of aloo gobi, plates of spinach and lamb and stacks of rotis. Arthur’s Pakistani wife, Billi’s mum, had taught him how to cook real food. Faustus had taken to the training and shown extraordinary potential. Then had come the Ordeal, the test to bring him into the order…
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