The Devil's Moon

by Peter Guttridge

  He looked back at the picture and the blurb alongside it. The artist Engers Kennedy had joined Crowley’s cult in 1912. Crowley moved in with him in New York in 1917 and they both tried painting. According to the blurb this painting showed Crowley’s mystical and transcendental aspects. Watts just saw a ridiculous poser. He glanced at his watch.

  He was sitting at the corner of the bar in the top floor restaurant when Nicola Travis came in. He’d been admiring the view across rooftops past the National Gallery and down Whitehall.

  Travis was dressed demurely in trousers and jacket but her smile was mischievous. She took her jacket off and draped it over one stool before sliding on to the next one and leaning over to kiss him on the cheek. As she settled herself on the stool she glanced down at his glass of wine.

  ‘You want the same?’ he said, gesturing the barman over.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, addressing both Watts and the barman, ‘I’d like a negroni.’

  Watts didn’t know what that was but the barman smiled at her choice.

  Travis pointed at the postcard beside the wine glass. ‘I was looking at that, not your drink, by the way.’

  ‘I bought it in the shop,’ he said, then felt foolish for stating the obvious.

  ‘Aleister Crowley, eh? You’re really getting into researching your father’s books.’

  ‘Just curious,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed you know who he is.’

  ‘I know the portraits in the gallery pretty well. I was here before I came down to Brighton. You should take a look at the half-dozen images of Elias Ashmole if you really want to pursue all this magic stuff.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘His private collection was the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. A lawyer by training but when the civil war broke out in the mid-seventeenth century he moved to Oxford and got interested in astrology, then anatomy, medicine and alchemy. Collected ancient manuscripts on the subjects then donated them to Oxford University as long as they built something to put them in. At least three of the copies of the Key of Solomon in the Ashmolean came from him.’

  Watts nodded sagely then felt he should fess up.

  ‘What’s the Key of Solomon?’

  She laughed.

  ‘A grimoire: a book of spells and magic. This one was attributed to King Solomon. The Solomon and Sheba bloke? Wisdom of Solomon?’

  ‘The one in the Bible who sorted out the real mother from the false by suggesting they cut the baby in two and have half each?’

  ‘The very one. But I only know about the Key because I know one of the people who run the Rare Books Collection at the Jubilee Library in Brighton.’

  ‘Aren’t all books rare in libraries these days?’

  She acknowledged his pathetic joke with a little smile. ‘It’s really a fabulous collection. Fifty thousand books.’

  ‘And they’ve got a copy of this book of magic?’

  ‘Had – it was stolen a couple of weeks ago.’ She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oops – not sure anyone is supposed to know that.’

  He leaned in and lowered his voice. ‘I assume the police know so as I’m ex-police it’s kind of all right.’

  ‘I’m not sure the police do know,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s still safe with me,’ he said, leaning back. ‘But are you certain all this magic stuff isn’t a hobby of yours – you being a resident of the city of all things wacky.’

  She laughed. The barman put her drink down before her.

  ‘I’m a witch really – especially after a couple of these.’

  Watts looked at her drink.

  ‘Campari and brandy and gin and vermouth,’ she said. ‘I think.’

  They chinked glasses and Watts noticed the patch on her arm. She caught him looking.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Watts said. ‘Nicotine’s a tough drug to quit.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not for smoking; it’s for travel. Did I tell you I get terrible motion sickness?’

  ‘A commuter who gets sick travelling. I didn’t know you could get patches for that.’

  ‘You can probably get patches for anything these days. I’ve got whatever is on the patch in more concentrated form if I need it.’

  ‘But why don’t you move back to London?’

  ‘And abandon my allotment? I could never do that. Besides, I’m only up here three days a week at the most.’

  ‘You grow your own veg?’

  ‘A lot of flowers too. Gardening is my passion. I even did a part-time gardening course at the Royal Horticultural College. It took me so long to qualify that by the end of the course I’d forgotten all I’d learned at the start.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You like gardening?’ she said.

  ‘I like gardens. I like lying in a garden in a hammock with a glass of wine and the newspapers.’ He looked away. ‘My wife was the gardener.’

  ‘I bet you did the lawn and the heavy digging. Men always do that.’

  He looked back. ‘I paid for someone else to do that.’ He gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘I wasn’t around very much.’

  ‘Damn, I was hoping to get you to help me move an oak tree.’

  She saw his startled look.

  ‘Joke! God, you really don’t know much about gardening, do you?’

  ‘Guilty.’

  ‘In more ways than that, I can see,’ she said.

  He dropped his eyes. ‘As charged,’ he said.

  ‘And there I was flirting with you shamelessly that night and you a married man. What a scarlet woman you must think me.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Although in my own defence you were far more interesting than Bernard Rafferty banging on about the beauty of the churchyards of Sussex.’

  Watts laughed and looked up. Travis was staring at him and the pressure around them changed in that indefinable but instantly recognizable way. She had certainly recognized it, judging by what she said next.

  ‘Get your coat, ex-Chief Constable. You’ve pulled.’

  TEN

  Sarah Gilchrist was thinking about sending everyone home for what remained of the day when Bellamy Heap came over.

  ‘Ma’am, the case I was on when you brought me into this investigation . . .’

  ‘Somebody stole a painting from the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, didn’t they?’ she said. ‘What about it?’

  ‘I wonder if it might somehow be linked.’

  ‘Because?’

  Donaldson was listening in from the next desk. He leaned forward, his meaty shoulders bulging against his tight shirt. Gilchrist thought a big breath from Donaldson would blow Heap over.

  ‘I’ve always thought security was a bit loose there,’ Donaldson said. ‘There’s a lot of silver in those cabinets. Did they not get the person?’

  Heap looked down at him. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘But what’s it got to do with our case?’ Donaldson said.

  ‘Sorry, sir. It’s the name of the painting.’

  ‘Which is?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘The Devil’s Altar. By an artist called Gluck.’

  ‘Gluck?’ Donaldson barked a laugh and Gilchrist thought the buttons of his shirt might pop. ‘Sounds like someone with catarrh.’

  Gilchrist looked around the room. ‘The Devil’s Altar. Is it just me or is something spooky going on in Brighton?’

  There was a ripple of laughter from the others.

  ‘So what happened?’ she said to Heap.

  Heap filled her in.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘The security man didn’t notice the picture had been stolen?’

  ‘Not until I pointed it out to him and Mr Rafferty, the museum director.’

  ‘That weirdo,’ Donaldson muttered.

  Gilchrist ignored him. ‘Go on, Bellamy.’

  ‘The glass was possibly broken to get at the silver but more likely as a diversion – a diversion that worked. Anyway, we interviewed some people who were there but others had gone by the time we arrived. Th
e security guard has no powers to detain people en masse and, in any case, assumed the people had gone out of an emergency exit.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘I think there were two, ma’am. The picture is pretty big and I see one person throwing the brick into the glass case whilst the other takes the picture off the wall.’

  ‘CCTV?’

  ‘I’d started on it but I handed it over to someone else to analyse when I was transferred here.’

  ‘The Devil’s Altar title fits with the desecration in the church,’ Gilchrist mused. ‘What does the painting look like?’

  Heap frowned. ‘That’s the odd thing. It’s two flowers in a vase.’

  ‘Called The Devil’s Altar? Are they some horribly poisonous flower?’

  Sylvia Wade had been tapping at her keyboard. She peered at her computer screen and called out. ‘Look like lilies.’ She angled her screen to the eager young constable next to her. He nodded.

  ‘So why the title?’ Gilchrist looked around the room. ‘Anyone know what lilies represent in the occult?’

  Blank faces. Sylvia was tapping away again but frowning.

  ‘OK. Somebody figure out why the artist, whoever this Gluck is, called a bunch of flowers something spooky and what wider significance that might have for the loopy occult brigade.’

  Donaldson leaned forward, muscles bunched. ‘Know the artist, know the painting,’ he said, all but cracking his knuckles. ‘Let’s find out about her.’

  Gilchrist gave him a sideward glance. ‘Thanks, Detective Sergeant.’

  ‘I’ll do it, ma’am,’ Sylvia Ward said.

  Gilchrist nodded.

  ‘If I may suggest, ma’am . . .’ Heap said.

  ‘Suggest away, Heap.’

  ‘We must keep clear in our minds that the paganism the Wicker Man represents and the occult are miles apart.’

  ‘Thanks for the reminder. OK, gang, it might seem unlikely that this is not somehow linked to the Wicker Man but Bellamy is right – let’s not get too carried away.’

  ‘Although, ma’am . . .’ Heap continued.

  Donaldson gave an exaggerated sigh.

  ‘Lilies are used in Catholic iconography – paintings and such – to represent Mary and purity. But at Easter they represent Christ’s death and rebirth. May Day is about rebirth – spring and everything. So there is a kind of link to neo-pagan beliefs.’

  Gilchrist stood. She looked down on Heap. He really wasn’t very tall.

  ‘Thanks for muddying the waters again, Bellamy.’

  ‘My pleasure, ma’am.’

  His face was deadpan as she gave him a second look. She looked across at Sylvia Wade. ‘Sylvia, you chase up the CCTV. See if we’re lucky enough to find someone who was in the gallery and on the beach. To use DS Donaldson’s technical term: some weirdo.’

  The others smiled at that but smirked at Sylvia, knowing what a tedious job was before her.

  ‘Will do, ma’am,’ she said flatly.

  Kate Simpson was a good researcher – one of the few things she recognized she was good at. Perhaps the only thing she accepted she was good at. She’d been researching extreme churches on and off for weeks. At eight in the evening she put her phone down, rubbed her eyes and logged off her computer.

  She gathered up her papers and her laptop and left the office. It was raining again; stinging rain. She walked down the busy street from the station and turned left to splosh through puddles down the back end of the North Laines. She cut along the narrow alley that had the sorting office’s wall on one side and a terrace of old flint and cob cottages behind shallow gardens on the other.

  She glanced in Bob Watts’ front window but there was no sign of his presence. She didn’t understand why he wanted to live here. The cottages were tiny and he was a big man. Orderly and organized but sprawling too.

  And looking out on to a blank wall was just weird. Especially as she knew he used to have a fabulous view of the Downs when he lived on the other side of them. Then again, she wasn’t even sure he still did live here. She hadn’t seen him for weeks.

  She cut diagonally across Church Street and through a little dog-leg path next to the multi-storey car park into Bond Street, almost opposite the Theatre Royal’s narrow stage door. The theatre was showing a touring stage adaptation of the sixties horror film Rosemary’s Baby. She’d seen the original on late-night telly once and it had been kind of creepy.

  A wet, simpering actress called Mia Farrow had almost wrecked it though. Kate, perhaps because she had always needed to work at keeping her weight down, had no patience with grown women who flirted with anorexia as this actress with the whiny voice clearly had. She’d known too many lovely teenage girls when she was growing up who’d suffered terribly and genuinely from the illness.

  Kate was vaguely aware of the actress and associated her with nepotism. She’d read somewhere she was the daughter of Hollywood royalty, had been the wife of decades-older Frank Sinatra (what was that about?) then partner of Woody Allen who, later in her life, gave her the only acting gigs she got. How easy do you want it?

  Kate knew that her visceral dislike of such nepotism was because that was entirely the world in which her parents operated and she had rejected it. Hence Southern Shores Radio and not Broadcasting House.

  She cut across North Street and up into the Laines. The fish were pretty much gone now but she could see the occasional tail or fish head sticking out of guttering. Seagulls were still strutting along the alleys looking for fishy remains. She had to walk round them to pass through the tiny square that was leading her to the Druid’s Head pub.

  Her parents. She had to deal with them sometime but maybe that was why she was throwing herself into work. Specifically, she was avoiding dealing with the fact that her father, the government adviser William Simpson, had been implicated in the Milldean Massacre and involved with the gangster Charlie Laker. The gangster who had tried to have Kate raped and beaten as a warning to her father.

  She wondered what Laker had threatened her mother with. She was guessing that something like that – or perhaps the fact that her father seemed to be getting drawn deeper and deeper into a criminal morass – had prompted her mother to leave her father after so many years.

  Her mother was now ensconced in the flat in Kemp Town for which Kate had been paying her parents a peppercorn rent. It was one of the reasons Kate was still living with Sarah Gilchrist. Live with her mother? No, thanks very much.

  Kate came out on Brighton Place, opposite Brighton’s old jail house, and turned into the Druid’s Head.

  As usual it was full of Goths: black-garbed, white-faced, tattooed, pierced men and women in clumpy boots. Given how she felt, she would fit right in. She ordered a cranberry juice and took it over to an empty sofa just inside the door.

  She liked this pub. Its name was cheesy – invented sometime in the past few decades – but a pub had been on this site for centuries. It had thick flint walls and a high ceiling. Angst was the music of choice but sometimes that was OK.

  She opened her laptop and looked at her notes.

  She’d found an odd link between a black magician called Aleister Crowley and the Church of Scientology, whose UK headquarters were just up the road in East Grinstead.

  She didn’t intend to go into them for her programme – her bosses would have a fit if she tried investigating such a wealthy, powerful and touchy organization. Even the threat of a massive lawsuit would probably close the station down.

  Nevertheless, Aleister Crowley had been an influence on L. Ron Hubbard, the science-fiction writer who had founded Scientology. In a lecture in 1952 Hubbard had called Crowley ‘my very good friend’. There were similarities between their teachings. Crowley had said that the sole object of all ‘true’ magical training was to become ‘free of all limitations’. Hubbard, in a clip from a 1952 lecture she’d listened to online, said: ‘Our whole activity tends to make an individual completely independent of any limitation.’

  In 1945,
before he founded Scientology, Hubbard had been involved with Crowley’s Church of Thelema, although how he’d been involved was debatable. A man called Wilfred Smith had founded a lodge of Crowley’s church – the Ordo Templi Orientis – in Pasadena.

  Another man called Jack Parsons had taken over as boss of that lodge at the start of the 1940s. He was a rocket engineer – he’d founded Cal Tech so was a man of some stature. But he was a believer in Crowley’s mystical mumbo-jumbo.

  At the time Hubbard was a Captain in the US Navy stationed nearby. He moved in with Parsons in Pasadena. There was a letter still in existence from Parsons to Crowley saying something about Hubbard being quite knowledgeable about esoteric matters and in perfect accord with their own principles. Through a magic ceremony Parsons aimed to create a moonchild – mightier than all the kings of the earth – whose birth Crowley had prophesied in The Book of The Law and in a novel of the same name.

  To create this child Parsons and Hubbard did eleven days of rituals and early in 1946 found a girl prepared to become the mother of this moonchild. The three days of rituals at the start of March involved Parsons as High Priest having sex with the girl whilst Hubbard looked on and acted as scryer, describing what was happening on the astral plane.

  Hubbard told a different story and Kate had no means of knowing whether to believe or disbelieve him. He agreed that he did move in to Parsons’ house, that Parsons was leader of a black magic group and that a girl was used in a sex ritual. But he insisted he was sent in by Naval Intelligence to make friends with Parsons then break up this evil black magic group and rescue the girl. All of which he said he did.

  Kate didn’t know why Naval Intelligence would be bothered. She also noted that Hubbard stole Parsons’ mistress, Sara Northrup – or perhaps he would have said that he rescued her. They married, but bigamously as Hubbard already had a wife.