The Devil's Moon (10 page)

‘A big curved mirror that made you and the landscape look weird. Before Arts Council grants came along the Hall of Mirrors on the seafront did pretty much the same job.'

Watts met Nicola Travis for a drink after work. He hadn't expected it to be so soon after they'd bumped into each other but it was her proposal. She suggested the bar on the top floor of the National Portrait Gallery.

He went up on the Piccadilly line from Hammersmith to Leicester Square and got there far too early. He walked down Charing Cross Road in yet another deluge and on a whim ducked on to Cecil Court. He loved the feel of the Victorian thoroughfare with its antique bookshops and poster and print shops. He'd read somewhere that the aristocratic freeholders kept the rents affordable to allow for the shops that gave it a unique character.

He'd visited the second-hand crime fiction bookshop a couple of weeks earlier to discuss selling his father's crime fiction collection. Next door there was an esoteric bookshop. Now he spent ten minutes browsing the shelves. There was a lot of Colin Pearson, including several of his notoriously unreadable didactic novels. There was a whole section devoted to Aleister Crowley, of course.

Watts picked up a second-hand biography of Crowley by John Symonds. The cover was a different image from the fat, bullet-headed Crowley that Watts was used to. This was a portrait of a younger man, looking vaguely Roman in profile and wearing what looked at first like a scarlet toga.

Watts looked at the picture credit on the dust jacket. It was a painting by Leon Engers Kennedy in the National Portrait Gallery. Painted in 1917 in New York. The year
Moonchild
was first published in a limited edition.

Watts stepped back out into the rain and made his way past the Garrick Theatre. A new production of
The Devil Rides Out
was on. In the Portrait Gallery he went into the shop and bought a postcard of the portrait of Crowley. At the till he asked where the painting itself was.

A long escalator in a kind of middle foyer took him up to the first floor. The room where Crowley's portrait hung was deserted.

He couldn't explain why he was so curious about Crowley and his father's relationship with him. Then again, he couldn't really say why he'd invited Nicola Travis out for a drink. He didn't feel a need for any kind of commitment to a woman and, a single occasion with Sarah Gilchrist notwithstanding, he'd never been interested in one-night stands. Maybe it was all part of the feeling he had of being in limbo.

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.'

S
arah 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. The 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.