The Devil's Moon

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘That figures. Men are always bragging they’re ten miles long but rarely are. But, producer-mine, gotta ask: what’s the Brocken Spectre?’

  ‘It occurs in the high mountain areas of Brocken, Germany. Oddly enough where witches in the Middle Ages used to hold their sabbats on Walpurgis Night – coming up any night now at a spooky place near you.’

  ‘But here it was the shadow of a giant man with the head of a horned goat thrown on to a bank of clouds over the city.’

  ‘That’s right. One legend about the creation of the dyke is that the Devil was in the form of a giant goat when he made it. He was intending to crush the surrounding area. He smelled the tang of salt water in the wind and worried his coat would get damp and spoiled so he ran off, leaving nothing but the hoof-print we now call Devil’s Dyke.’

  ‘Or Big Wuss’s Dyke as I now call it. Running off because of a bit of damp.’

  ‘Last night’s goat was making a hieratic gesture.’

  ‘Filthy beast. What’s one of those when it’s at home? As I boringly was.’

  ‘Arms outstretched.’

  ‘You could have just said that, Kate. No need to rub my nose in your university education.’

  ‘You need to be kept in constant check, Simon.’

  ‘Probably right. Was it some kind of video installation?’

  ‘I don’t think there’s the technology to do that.’

  Simon laughed. ‘These days there’s the technology to do anything.’

  Bob Watts had a restless night. There were no curtains in the chalet and lightning flashed, thunder rolled. Rain hammered on the roof and against the windows and the wind gusted so strongly the hut trembled on its foundations.

  When he did sleep he had vivid, lascivious dreams. They muddled Pearson’s wife with the mystery woman who had come to his parents’ house to see his father so many years before.

  At one point in the night, when he didn’t know for certain whether he was asleep or awake, a lurid flash of lightning lit up Avril, kneeling between his legs, head bobbing. Then she threw back her head, baring those long, vulpine incisors. He struggled to come to consciousness and at the next flash of lightning she was gone.

  When he woke in the morning he still remembered the dream vividly. So vividly, he wondered if it had been a dream at all. He thought to check himself but felt ridiculous.

  The scent of the lilies was even more cloying than the night before.

  ‘Avril’s working on her vegetables,’ Pearson said when Watts walked into the sitting room. Pearson was eating toast and jam on a tray. He waved a buttery knife at the big pot of coffee on the table.

  ‘Coffee there, muesli and fruit on your tray. If you want toast you’ll have to make it yourself.’

  Pearson was listening to the Today programme on a modern-looking radio. When Watts tried to ask a question, Pearson shushed him. ‘Not over breakfast, old man. After.’

  But after breakfast Pearson wanted to show Watts round what he called ‘the estate’.

  ‘Must be pretty unique,’ Watts said.

  ‘There’s no such thing as pretty unique. Unique or not unique.’

  They walked out of the cottage garden past a duck pond and between old buildings. There was a blacksmith’s forge, pens for pigs, a dairy.

  They stopped in front of a tall, relatively narrow wooden structure housing the famous, 400-year-old donkey wheel. There was an ancient bucket on the ground in front of it. Behind the wheel was the well. The donkey used to draw water from it in the bucket by using the wheel as a treadmill. Now the well had a padlocked wooden cover on it.

  ‘Still used?’ Watts said.

  ‘We’re on the mains,’ Pearson said absently, looking up at the Wicker Man planted on the horizon.

  ‘Lovely spot,’ Watts said.

  ‘I’m indifferent to nature,’ Pearson said. ‘I walk along the dyke and never see where I am. There are traces of Roman and Saxon habitation around here apparently. Doesn’t interest me.’

  ‘And the Templars?’

  Pearson gave him an odd look.

  ‘You know about them? The National Trust owns the farm and the land around it. They mention the Templars because they figure after Dan Brown it has a magical effect on people. If they could somehow attach Harry Potter too, they’d be even happier.’

  He gestured with his thumb at the wheel.

  ‘This is the only bit of the Templar tenure that has survived.’

  ‘The donkey wheel?’

  ‘Not this one, though they would have used something similar. But, no, I mean the well itself. They cut a shaft through flint and chalk for a hundred and fifty feet to get to the water table. Now that shows something about strength of character.’

  ‘Although I doubt they did it themselves. Some poor peasants would have done the hard graft.’

  Pearson grinned. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’ He looked back up at the Wicker Man. ‘When we lived at Burling Gap that Harry Potter writer used to come down, you know. Descend from the sky right on the cliff top.’

  Watts suspected a gag. ‘On a broomstick, you mean?’

  Pearson looked at him oddly. ‘Of course not. She’s an author, not a witch. In a bloody helicopter.’

  Watts was no wiser. ‘Why?’

  ‘Speed? Privacy? Because the publisher could afford it?’

  ‘I mean: why was she coming there?’

  ‘Her publisher’s summer party. The main man had a cottage over there. Big summer parties. She came with that English Patient fellow.’

  ‘You were there as an author?’

  ‘My stuff is a bit below the salt for that sort of gathering. Plus I avoid publishers like the plague. Cheapskate profiteering bastards.’

  ‘Your books sell well though.’

  ‘I have a small, dedicated following. Some readers really get me. Most are cranks, frankly. You should witness one of my book signings, Watts, if you want to see all the world’s eccentricities gathered in one place.’

  When Sarah Gilchrist arrived at the office, Donaldson, Heap and Sylvia Wade were already there.

  Bellamy Heap came over to her and shifted his feet.

  ‘Are you going to swear at me again, Constable?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘With respect, ma’am, I wasn’t swearing at you.’

  ‘Call me Sarah, Constable.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Gilchrist looked at him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’ve tracked the picture thieves through the streets on CCTV. We can follow them up past the clock tower but then we lose them. They go into the Imperial Arcade and don’t come out.’

  The Imperial Arcade was a once-glamorous Art Deco arcade with flats above it on the seaward side. The Churchill Square shopping centre had been built opposite, presumably totally blocking what in the twenties would have been a privileged view down to and over the sea.

  ‘Don’t ever come out?’

  ‘Not in the next six hours.’

  Gilchrist thought for a moment. ‘Then maybe we haven’t lost them; maybe we’ve found them. They live in one of those apartments in the front or maybe work in one of the shops. Do we now have a clearer image of them?’

  Heap shook his head. ‘They were savvy about the cameras. They kept their heads down.’

  ‘No face shots at all?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. S-Sarah.’

  Gilchrist looked at him for a moment. ‘No, you’re right.’

  ‘About what, Sarah?’

  ‘About calling me ma’am. Stay with that.’

  ‘Yes, Sarah. Ma’am.’

  Donaldson and Sylvia Wade joined them.

  ‘Knowing how busy Constable Heap here was,’ Donaldson said, ‘Sylvia and I have been finding out about Duck or Fuck or whatever she’s called.’

  ‘Gluck, Detective Sergeant,’ Gilchrist said, unamused.

  ‘Yes,’ Wade said. ‘Or rather Gluckstein – her real name.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Lesbo artist,’ Donaldson sai
d. ‘Usual fuck-up. Big exhibitionist.’

  ‘DS Donaldson,’ Gilchrist said, giving him her hardest stare. She knew it didn’t count for much but she was trying. He played along.

  ‘Sorry. Forgot we were in Lesbo-land.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘We’re in an equal opportunities country. Ma’am.’

  ‘That we are and that we should be,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And just as well you remember it.’

  ‘Ma’am,’ Donaldson said. ‘Gluckstein was a spoiled little rich girl with a private income. Her uncle set up the Lyons teashop chain. Didn’t have to work. Called herself a painter but in any other field of endeavour would be – what are they called, Belly?’

  ‘Dilettantes?’ Heap said.

  ‘That’ll do. She faffed around on her paintings for ages, doing little bits when she felt like it, lazing around when she didn’t.’

  ‘Insisted on just being called Gluck,’ Sylvia said. ‘I mean just the one name. Once resigned from some art committee which had called her Miss Gluck on a letterhead. Loved to startle people by dressing as a man. She went to the best fashion designers to have her clothes tailored but had a tin ear as far as that awful name was concerned.’

  ‘A poser in Brighton, eh?’ Gilchrist said.

  Cheap shot. She knew when she said it she’d get the laughter that followed.

  ‘She was into Devil worship?’ Gilchrist continued.

  ‘Not that we know of,’ Wade said. ‘She lived in Steyning for the second half of her life with her lover and her lover’s sister.’

  ‘Yeah, Devil worship and Steyning don’t quite go together, I agree.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that, ma’am.’

  ‘What’s the meaning of The Devil’s Altar?’

  ‘We’re still trying to determine what it means,’ Wade said. ‘She painted lots of flowers in the thirties under the influence of another lover, a woman called Constance Spry.’

  ‘Constance Spry?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘You knew her?’ Donaldson said.

  ‘I’m not that old. But she’s one of those names like Elizabeth David or Cecil Beaton—’

  Heap coughed. Gilchrist glanced at him.

  ‘I think you might mean Mrs Beeton.’

  ‘Right,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Thank you, Bellamy.’

  ‘Fanny Craddock?’ Donaldson said.

  ‘No, not her,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Too vulgar. But, you know, my grandmother’s generation – these people were who they referenced.’

  ‘Middle-class grand-mums,’ Heap said, but not critically. Even so, Gilchrist flushed.

  ‘Constance Spry was a flower arranger,’ Donaldson said, in the bewildered voice of someone who’d only ever bought flowers on garage forecourts. ‘Cook. Married twice.’

  Heap looked up at that. Gilchrist caught the look.

  ‘Means nothing,’ she said. ‘Most husbands didn’t know how to satisfy their wives back then. Certainly wouldn’t think of doing some of the stuff women do with each other.’

  ‘Women do with each other?’ Donaldson said. ‘That might need some clarification.’

  Everyone but Donaldson flushed. He clearly relished the moment. ‘Anyway,’ he continued. ‘According to Wikipedia, Gluck had a thing with her close friend Constance Spry in the thirties.’

  ‘There’s a biography of Gluck,’ Heap said. ‘I’ve ordered it online. Maybe that will explain The Devil’s Altar title.’

  Gilchrist shook her head. ‘Let’s save time and just ask the biographer.’

  FIFTEEN

  Pearson showed Watts around his cottage. Everything about it was chaotic. Pearson just wasn’t interested in his surroundings. It was clear he actually wanted to show Watts not the house but the books, music and films in it.

  Watts wondered if it was so that he could say: how can people ridicule me when I know so much? For being ridiculed was his main topic of conversation.

  ‘Those fucking reviewers. I used to be able to quote them off by heart but then I thought: what’s the point?’ He wagged a finger. ‘I’ve been hurt. Those things get seared into your mind. But now? Fuck them. They don’t affect me.’

  He was saying this as they were standing in one of the two tiny bedrooms.

  ‘These are the kids’ bedrooms. All flown the coop now, of course.’ He indicated the books. ‘So I use them as library space.’

  Watts looked at the unmade bed in the corner but said nothing. It had probably been like that for a couple of years. There were books everywhere, as there had been in each of the rooms. Books on shelves, books in piles.

  ‘How many children have you got?’ Watts said.

  Pearson seemed to hesitate for a moment before he said: ‘Two.’

  Watts didn’t imagine such a solipsistic man would be a very good father. But who was he to talk?

  Pearson led the way down into the basement. ‘My work room,’ he said.

  More chaos. Books on every wall, a table inside the door piled with books, then a chaise longue covered with layers of open books.

  His computer, an antique by modern standards, was on a stand next to a giant printer behind which, very low, was a reclining chair with a loose cover and cushions on it.

  ‘That’s where I do my thinking,’ he said.

  Watts clasped his hands. ‘Could we talk about my father?’

  ‘Come and look at the sheds first.’

  Pearson led the way out into the back garden. ‘Sleep well?’ he called back over his shoulder.

  ‘Fine, despite the storm.’

  ‘No bad dreams, I hope.’

  Watts looked at Pearson’s back. What was that question about?

  ‘I never remember dreams,’ he said.

  Pearson stopped and turned, a big smile on his face. He had strong teeth, like his wife. ‘Dreams are the Royal Road to the unconscious, according to Freud. One of the few intelligent things he wrote.’

  He pulled open the door of a shed the size of a small branch library.

  ‘Keep all my magazines in here. I never throw anything away. Books or magazines.’

  He led the way from one shed to the next, flinging open each door to reveal shelf after shelf of books. Watts was getting increasingly impatient but even so was intrigued when Pearson headed towards the second chalet then suddenly veered away.

  ‘Let’s go back to the house,’ Pearson said.

  ‘What about that chalet?’

  ‘Just more books. We used to store a boat in there but we got rid of it.’

  ‘You are a bit landlocked,’ Watts said with a smile.

  Pearson pointed at the track leading to Newtimber Hill and the Wicker Man.

  ‘You can see the sea and the tall buildings of Brighton from there.’ Pearson turned. ‘Anyway, Watts, time to look at your father’s books.’

  Back in Pearson’s living room Watts passed him the copy of Magic.

  ‘I earned a hundred thousand pounds for this,’ Pearson said. ‘Bloody good money in those days. I spent it all on books and vintage wines. And countless CDs to add to my already vast vinyl collection.’

  ‘You know it’s still in print,’ Watts said.

  ‘I know I still get royalties.’

  ‘I wondered if you could explain the inscription to my father.’

  Pearson turned to the title page. Frowned at his own handwriting. He rested the book on his knee and looked up at the ceiling. ‘From The Waste Land,’ Pearson said.

  ‘And Baudelaire.’

  Pearson gave him a quick look and nodded. ‘Les Fleurs du Mal.’

  ‘I can’t imagine my father reading Baudelaire. There was no poetry at all on his shelves.’

  ‘Baudelaire was one of us, in his chaotic way.’

  ‘One of us?’

  Pearson spread his hands in front of him and examined them. ‘A man who wanted to escape from the banality of life through more vivid experiences. Your father was like that too.’ He pointed at the inscription. ‘That’s all I meant by it.’

  �
��Were you and my father close?’

  Pearson thought for a moment. Watts was expecting some profound answer. Instead, Pearson seemed to change the subject totally.

  ‘You know my first book – Outsider Looking Out – was assured of success when it got two cracking reviews on the same Sunday by two leading reviewers. Well, the two cunts who praised me to the skies then spent the next ten years trying to bury me. Until this came along.’

  He looked down and tapped the book. ‘Long, thoughtful reviews from the pair of them.’

  ‘Great you got intelligent analysis.’

  ‘Fuck that. Praise that could be used in newspaper adverts and on the back of the paperback editions.’ He shook his head. ‘They were still a pair of cunts. Next time I saw them they cut me dead.’

  ‘Were you and my father close?’

  Pearson pulled on his lower lip. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘What manner? Were you engaged in some esoteric exploration together?’

  Pearson bared his strong teeth again. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  Watts was clearly not going to get any more out of him.

  ‘Aleister Crowley called my father magister in his inscription to Moonchild.’

  Pearson cocked his head. ‘You’ve got a copy of Moonchild?’

  Watts nodded. ‘In good nick too, I’m told. Perfect dust jacket.’

  ‘Crowley was here at Saddlescombe in the twenties and again in the forties. In the main farmhouse. In 1942, the Germans tried to kill him by bombing the farm.’

  Watts frowned. ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘They were frightened of his power. He was fighting them on the astral plane. Casting spells on their leaders.’

  ‘Do you believe in his power?’

  Pearson shrugged. ‘Germany lost the war, didn’t it?’ He handed the open book back to Watts. ‘This inscription: it’s the kind of thing we used to say. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Was my father into magic and the occult?’

  ‘I told you. He was a man of wide intellectual curiosity.’

  ‘Did he take part in rituals and such?’