by Phil Rickman
Gwyn Arthur brought up another bookmarked site dominated by a larger circle, a more angular swastika and the line, DEFINING A NEW BRITAIN.
‘Could be the Liberal Democrats,’ he said, ‘until you read about the, ah, cosmic reservoir of untapped dark power left behind after the war. Which, it says here, may be drawn upon to facilitate, at an appropriate time, the opening of an era of what they touchingly describe as a necessary cruelty.’
‘And I bet they all got a full set of Iron Maiden albums,’ Robin said. ‘You ever arrest any of these assholes?’
‘Ha. The sad and slightly risible truth is that, while we knew some names and my colleagues occasionally had them under observation, none has ever been convicted of so much as a parking offence.’
‘But this Jerry Brace was a member, right?’
‘If he went to the trouble of installing its symbol in his wall… ’ Gwyn Arthur turned to Merrily. ‘It now seems that symbol may be masking something else. In the wall. Or, rather, the wall beyond the wall. Which is the castle wall.’
‘Quite a way in,’ Robin said. ‘I guess an archaeologist would want to take a small trowel to it and about two weeks sifting the dirt, but…’
He lifted the spade.
‘… the hell with that.’
A square of reddening sky lit the upstairs room, where a rug had been rolled back and a pile of rubble made a pyramid on the boarded floor. Merrily peered into a hole in the back of the fireplace that became a shaft.
‘How do you know it’s not just part of the wall that’s been repaired at some time?’
‘No mortar,’ Kapoor said. ‘And we’ve found two modern bricks on end, like pillars to take the weight, make a space. I’m trying not to dislodge them.’
Robin propped his stick against the wall.
‘Can I do something? Getting kinda antsy here.’
‘Nah, mate. You been pushing it enough.’
‘In fact,’ Gwyn Arthur said, ‘if I can ask a favour, Robin… there is something you could do. Would there be any way we might find out if the Order of the Sun in Shadow does still exist? I suspect you have contacts on the… occult fringe.’
‘Conceivable the Pagan Federation would have them on a list, even if it was only a blacklist. There’s also a guy of my acquaintance, up in Manchester, who knows everybody ever swished a wand. You want me to call him?’
‘If you can do it without explaining why.’
‘Gwyn, with all respect, I wouldn’t know why. A swastika in the chimney, a hole in the wall, a guy who died from bad smack… interesting and a tad disturbing… for us. But I’m sensing you’re on a different path here.’
You could understand his perplexity, his need for a handle on this.
‘Three missing persons,’ Gwyn Arthur said. ‘I have to do what I can. Humour me, Robin. Now I’m no longer in the modern, bureaucratized police, I am allowed to follow my feelings with impunity.’
Betty had beckoned Merrily down to one of those kitchens which needed a mini-fridge and a micro-oven. It had no window and must, for many years, have served no wider purpose than making tea during working hours.
‘Are you… really planning to live here, Betty?’
‘Until we’re making enough money to rent somewhere better and turn all this into shop, I suppose we are.’
‘Things are that bad?’
‘Have been.’ Betty plugged in the kettle. ‘For most of a year, Robin could hardly walk at all. Couldn’t sit to paint, couldn’t stand to paint. Very depressed. Then he – we – had the idea of moving to Hay and starting a bookshop. Thinking we could flog our magnificent collection of pagan, magic and earth-mysteries books to kickstart it.’
‘Good idea. Maybe not the best time to do it, mind.’
‘No. But we’ve happened upon this place, right under the castle and Robin’s all lit up. The castle, wow! Suddenly, the old Robin’s back. Love of ruins – castles, abbeys, cromlechs, everything they don’t have in America. Even their negative aspects he sees as inspirational. Just moods. Merrily, all I want is to make it work for him. What would you have done?’
‘Gone along with it, I suppose. We do, don’t we?’ She looked around the cell-like kitchen. ‘How long have you felt something was wrong here?’
‘You felt it?’
‘Betty, I don’t profess to feel anything. I just do received wisdom.’
‘I don’t believe that. And when what I’m getting is plain evil I don’t want to mess around. I mean, I don’t want you to feel compromised or—’
‘Plain evil?’
‘Got it the first time I came in. Wasn’t the smell of a putrefying body, nothing so obvious. Not even that damp sensation of human misery, which is the most common thing you pick up in a run-down house. It was active, bad energy. Aggressive. Sort of thing dowsers pick up sometimes. So half of me’s saying, get out, don’t touch this dump. But how can I say that to Robin?’
‘Did you say anything to him?’
‘Hinted there was a slight problem. Would’ve been stupid to say nothing. But I said, whatever it is we can handle it. We can fix it. And sure, there are some things I can fix. Or convince myself I’ve fixed, which is pretty much the same thing. In the world I was a part of.’
‘OK… what’s actually happened?’
‘Not much. First time I walk in here, I don’t like the feel of it, particularly upstairs. Well, big deal. And Robin spending last night here and it’s not a very good night – lights coming on, which could be loose wiring or something. And then we find out that a junkie snuffed it on the premises – well, so what? Hardly Amityville, is it? Nobody’s ever seen Brace walking past in the night with a spectral syringe in his arm. And yet…’
‘I’m not dissing this, Betty.’
‘We can dismiss everything as pure imagination, can’t we? And then something happens, and it’s too late. And I say I can fix it… but I haven’t done this stuff in quite a while, and if you don’t work at it day and night you lose it. You need to meditate for hours every day. Visualize, focus, induce trance states, levi-tate. But a heavy inner life doesn’t leave you much of an outer life. And if you have problems like, say, a disabled husband… hopeless. So when Gwyn mentioned you were around…’
‘You want me to try and cleanse the place, best I can?’
The kettle hissed in derision.
‘You’re carrying two thousand years of tradition,’ Betty said. ‘Older than what passes for paganism, which actually got cobbled together in the nineteen fifties. Which I’m not denigrating. Not saying it doesn’t work, or that it hasn’t given me a lot of electric moments over the years, but… I’ll do whatever you want. Go down to Father Richard’s church on bended knees and confess my… heathen sins.’
‘Actually… I should really go down and clear it with him, too. As it’s not my patch.’
‘I think he’s on holiday. It’s that time of year, isn’t it? ’
‘In which case I suppose I can get away with squaring it with the Swansea and Brecon Deliverance minister.’
Huw.
‘And assuming it’s OK…’ Betty poured boiling water into the pot. ‘What would you be able to do?’
‘Depends very much on what we’re looking at. If this is just Mr Brace still around, we’d be looking to help him on his way. If, as we suspect, Mr Brace was involved with an occult-based sect which is borderline satanic, it may not be only Mr Brace and that’s a whole different—’
‘And what if it’s well over the borderline? What if it’s bigger than the shop?’
‘You mean involving the castle. As there’s nobody living in the castle and it’s not my patch, I think I leave it alone. Just make sure that hole’s blocked up before we try anything here.’
‘Richard Booth never quite got the measure of the castle, either,’ Betty said. ‘He had a disastrous fire. Now he’s finally had to sell it.’
‘Let’s try and avoid the implications of that… at this stage. I can go so far – minor exorcism, exor
cism of place – without an official nod. Beyond that, I’d really need to talk to the Bishop.’
‘Which one?’
Betty looked disconsolate. Merrily thought about it.
Of course. Protocol.
‘You’re right. I’d have to talk to my bishop, who’s probably still in London, and he’d have to talk to the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon and… bugger. Let’s just—’
The mobile chimed in her bag.
‘—play it by ear.’
The light wasn’t strong enough in here to make out the number. A tiny room filling up with steam. She stabbed the keyboard.
‘Merrily,’ she said.
Bliss said, ‘I think I need you to come out again, if you would.’
‘Where?’
‘Did I tell you about Claudia Cornwell, the barrister?’
‘The woman in the red car.’
‘She’s coming out to meet me. At Rector’s place at Cusop. We’ve arranged to be there in about half an hour, when it’s dark. Any chance you can come over?’
‘What, as a chaperone?’
‘Yeh, to chaperone me. I need somebody who understands what the hell she’s on about.’
‘In connection with what?’’
‘In connection with what they found in the river this afternoon.’
‘You mean the—?’
‘Maybe not a joke.’
‘And you’re saying she knows about me? Or are you?’
‘Yeh. She’s not unhappy. She’s already checked you out online.’
Merrily could hear footsteps on the stairs, raised voices.
‘The important thing is you’re not a cop,’ Bliss said. ‘Not an official witness. Important for me, too. I’m stepping outside the box. Several boxes, now I think about it.’
‘When did you last sleep?’
‘Why do people keep asking me that? Until half an hour ago, actually. In the car. Gorra grab it when you can. Merrily, I’m gonna be a bit out of me depth, that’s the thing.’
‘How long will it take? I’m in the middle of… something else.’
She could hear Robin calling urgently for Betty.
‘Couldn’t say,’ Bliss said. ‘It’s only an interpreter’s job, and if it’s nothing to worry about, less than hour. Yes?’
‘OK, I’ll do what I—’
He’d gone. Betty was backing off.
‘Whatever it is, just go ahead. Seriously, just put me in the queue. As long as I know you’re there and you’re prepared to help…’
‘I’ll only be at Cusop. But let me do a quick… something before I go.’
Fuse wire, Huw called it. Never leave without applying it.
The kitchen door opened.
Robin, Kapoor and the spade.
On its blade a wooden box, the size of an old-fashioned cigar box, encrusted with rubble dust.
‘Maybe it isn’t ours,’ Robin said. ‘We’re just the tenants here.’
‘I don’t think that should hold you back, necessarily.’ Gwyn Arthur Jones examining the box, a cop again. ‘Do you?’
Merrily watched from the doorway. Could hardly leave here until they’d opened it. If they were going to.
It went quiet. Kapoor looked from face to face.
Gwyn Arthur Jones nodded.
Kapoor fitted the blade of the chisel under the lip of the lid and the box sprang apart, Merrily instinctively taking a step back. Well, who knew what abomination Jerrold Adrian Brace had buried deep in the castle wall?
Robin looked inside.
‘Oh.’
‘Come on, then, mate,’ Kapoor said. ‘Ancient stash of smack?’
Robin turned the wooden box upside down over the console table and another slim box fell out, cardboard this time. The word Maxell on it, in big lettering.
Kapoor looked up at the ceiling.
‘He buried a videotape?’ Robin said. ‘That a let-down for you, Gwyn?’
‘I think not.’ Gwyn Arthur Jones bent over it. ‘Brace sold videos. Gareth Nunne mentioned it. Hitler’s rallies. He copied them.’
‘He buried Hitler in the castle wall?’
‘I don’t think this is Hitler, do you?’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I suspect something more contemporary.’
‘And it won’t wait till tomorrow?’ Kapoor said.
‘I would not wait half an hour if it could be avoided.’
‘Yeah, me neither,’ Robin said. ‘We need an old-fashioned VCR.’
Kapoor took a look.
‘Extremely old-fashioned.’
Gotta be a few still around.’
Kapoor shook his head.
‘Wouldn’t bet on it, mate.’ He turned the tape box around with a forefinger. ‘This is Betamax. Big in the nineteen eighties, then VHS swallowed the market. By the mid-nineties they’d vanished completely. I can still sell VHS test-match tapes, or transfer them to DVD, but I won’t touch these. We’ll be bloody lucky to find anybody who’s still got a Betamax player tonight.’
Silence.
‘Shit,’ Robin said.
Merrily slipped upstairs with the airline bag. When she did the prayer, standing beside the heap of rubble in the lowering, flesh-coloured light, it felt like talking into a pillow pressed over your face.
Or maybe she was just impressionable.
Whatever, she brought out the flask of water.
PART FIVE
Chaos magicians… only get together to work on specific projects.
Prof. Ronald Hutton, in
The Book of English Magic,
by Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard
Heygate (2009)
52
The last redemptive project
THE WIND WAS rising. A smoky cloud-mass shaped like a rabbit made a forward bound in slow motion and then came apart over Hay Castle, a mile away on the horizon.
Rector’s gate was open and Merrily drove through. She was early, but there was already another car here. A small car, and her heart jumped like the rabbit in the sky.
But, no. Tamsin’s car was green, a Clio. What was she thinking?
Nerves.
She got down from the Freelander, and saw a woman standing at the top of a paddock next to the house. The other car was a Mini Cooper, black and grey, no sign of a red Audi.
The woman turned, black against a deep red sun frizzling the day’s embers. Merrily unzipped the black hoodie to expose her second-smallest pectoral cross. She scowled, slipped it over her head and into a pocket of her jeans. Opened the wooden five-barred gate and they met somewhere in the middle of the paddock.
‘Mrs Watkins.’ A hand came out. Blue-varnished nails. ‘Claudia.’
‘You came early then.’
‘Worried I might have bothered Bliss for nothing, I suppose.’
‘Oh?’
‘Actually just worried.’
Claudia was nearly a head taller, a big-boned woman in a sheepskin gilet, pink jeans pushed into soft leather boots. The kind of woman you saw picking up her kids in a Toyota Land Cruiser on the nanny’s day off. Merrily followed her back to the gate, and they stood with their backs to it watching the sun set over Hay.
‘I read what I could find about you on the Net,’ Claudia said. ‘And then I rang Athena White.’
‘And you still came?’
‘She particularly asked me not to tell you what she’d said about you. But, let’s say I think you might be quite surprised if I did.’
A rabbit – no, a hare – lolloped out of the farthest hedge, actually towards them, and stopped, becoming a silhouette that might have been a small standing stone, in the centre of the field. Claudia watched it, smiling faintly.
‘I’m not going to say anything as obvious as that’s Peter, come to see what we’re doing.’
The hare didn’t move.
Merrily said, ‘You think something’s happened here?’
‘I think there might have been a burglary.’
‘In the house?’
&nbs
p; ‘Not exactly. I’ve had a bit of a dilemma, bit of conscience-searching. I’ve obviously not been very careful. ’
‘Letting yourself be seen.’
I’m hoping Bliss will be discreet.’
‘He can be. When he has to.’
‘In return for which I told him I’m prepared to be less than discreet and talk about what was happening here. He wants me to talk about it to you, as someone who might be able to process it. And maybe so he can legitimately deny all knowledge of it if things get difficult for him.’
‘Blimey. Have you really only known him a couple of days?’
‘I’ve known other detectives. Ask me what you think he needs to know.’
‘You were close,’ Merrily said, ‘to Peter Rector?’
‘Thought I was. When he turned ninety, I offered him an apartment in my far-too-big house, with the use of a large reception room and an outbuilding for his temple. Seemed such a perfect solution to his increasing fear of infirmity that I was quite offended, at first, when he refused. I didn’t realize, then, why he couldn’t leave here. There were things I didn’t know about him for a long time. Things I probably still don’t know. More like a revered great-uncle, shall we say, than a grandfather.’
Merrily watched the sun fall behind Hay, which, viewed across empty fields, at this time, in this light, looked like some impossibly romantic medieval settlement.
‘And is this about his… last redemptive project?’
‘If you know about that,’ Claudia said, ‘you didn’t get it from Athena.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Merrily – can I call you that?’ Claudia bit her lower lip. ‘I think we’re walking around one another, probably unnecessarily. But feel free to take out that cross again and wave it in my face.’
‘All right, I don’t know what the project is.’
‘Thank you. Athena’s in a difficult situation. She’s charged with making sure it doesn’t collapse. That’s what Peter wants. How discreet are you, Merrily? Are you bound to report to your Bishop?’
‘I’m on holiday.’ Merrily looked over her shoulder towards the castle mound and the church of St Mary, Cusop. ‘And I’m guessing we have a few minutes before Bliss gets here.’
