The Devil's Moon (11 page)

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.

Crowley ended up living in Hastings, a tired and drug-addicted old man. He died there two years later. Until his death this Pasadena sect paid his rent.

Sarah Gilchrist plumped down beside Kate with a bottle of lager at around nine.

‘How's it going?' Kate said.

‘Not great,' Gilchrist said. ‘Bad things coming up.'

Sarah was really stressed, that was obvious. The policewoman jiggled her foot and ran her hand continually through her hair.

‘I've found out something you might not know about,' Kate said. ‘In passing, when talking to church authorities and vicars, I've discovered that in recent months there have been a dozen cases of sacrilegious behaviour in churches around Brighton.'

‘I saw an example of it.'

Gilchrist described what she'd seen at St Michael's.

‘I've just heard the heart is that of a pig. It looks almost identical to that of a human.' She grimaced. ‘I don't mind telling you I'm starting to get seriously freaked.'

Gilchrist looked at her bottle of beer, seemingly surprised she had already finished it.

‘You don't believe in magic though?' Kate said.

‘Everything can be explained, I know that,' Gilchrist said. ‘It isn't the thing, it's the bloody people. Who knew there were so many nutters around? Is this what the world is turning into – a bunch of loony people believing in absolute garbage?'

‘You're describing Brighton then.'

Gilchrist gave Kate a look.

‘When has it ever been different?' Kate laughed. ‘Wait until you meet the man with the hole in his head.'

Gilchrist sighed. ‘You think he'll be the first man I've met with a hole in his head? Remind me to give you the history of my love life.'

Kate laughed again. ‘No, really. He's been trepanned – a hole drilled into his head to release, well, something or other in his mind. There's a church for it. There's a church for everything in Brighton.'

‘A church of – what did you call it – trepanning? Not Christian, I assume.'

‘Not so you'd notice. There are some fundamentalist, happy-clappy Christian churches where they exorcize demons and fall into ecstatic fits and sometimes just sing really bad Christian pop songs. The most extreme – which I'm visiting on Saturday – is supposed to be the Church of Holy Blood.'

‘How come you're doing that? You're planning a programme?'

‘Yes. I was partway through when the fish fell out of the sky – do you think I should have taken that as a sign?'

Gilchrist smiled, her face relaxing for the first time since she'd joined Kate. ‘You going to drink something stronger than cranberry juice?'

When she came back with two beers, Kate said: ‘We need to talk.'

‘About what?'

Kate lowered her voice. ‘About what happened last night.'

Gilchrist paused for a moment. ‘I don't know what happened last night,' she said, ‘except that Plenty poisoned us. Whatever happened, happened because of that.'

A man came in with a girl of about sixteen. A father getting his access, Simpson guessed. They sat down a couple of tables away.

Gilchrist looked down, then at Kate. ‘I'm not really sure how that happened,' she said. ‘I woke up this morning and there we were.'

‘And there we were,' Kate murmured.

‘I'm not . . . you know . . . that way,' Gilchrist said.

Kate took a breath and leaned forward. ‘I am.'

Gilchrist tilted her head. ‘I didn't know.'

‘Sort of. Brad Pitt comes along, it's “
sayonara
missy”.'

Gilchrist laughed. ‘I'm a Clooney gal myself.'

Kate nodded. ‘That's a generation thing. If you were for Robert Pattinson I'd be worried.'

‘Who he?'

‘Vampire guy.
Twilight
?'

Gilchrist did a mock groan. ‘Don't go back to that.'

Kate laughed.

While this conversation had been going on both of them had been aware of the loud voice of the man with the young girl a couple of tables away. Now they both tuned in, Gilchrist absently gnawing at a fingernail.

‘I tell you what,' the man said. ‘You're heavier than you used to be. Too much lasagne.'

Gilchrist glanced at Kate.

A couple of minutes later the girl got up to go to the bathroom.

‘Hang on a minute,' Gilchrist said.

Kate watched her walk across to the man. He was wearing a neat grey suit but terrible pointed black shoes with purple soles. Yuck.

‘Excuse me,' Gilchrist said, flashing her warrant card.

The man looked bemused.

‘Nothing heavy – just a moment.'

The man stood and they moved away a couple of yards, the man giving an expressive shrug to nobody in particular.

Gilchrist tried to get the guy to focus on her eyes. His eyes were looking from side to side. She jabbed him in the chest.

‘Hey . . .' She eyeballed him. ‘Never,
ever
, tell a young girl she's overweight.'

He was befuddled but he tried for indignant. ‘I didn't – I said . . .'

‘You said she was heavy and it was too much lasagne.
Big
mistake.'

‘I'm not getting you,' he said, temper showing. ‘And what's it got to do with you anyway?'

‘What you said to her is going to resonate for the rest of her life.'

‘Whoa,' he said, rearing back from her vehemence.

Gilchrist, head down, took a moment. She leaned in next to his ear. ‘Reassure her. She's a beautiful kid. Tell her that. Again and again. Never
ever
tell her she is overweight.' She pushed him in the chest again. ‘Got it?'

He nodded, mumbling.

Gilchrist turned, picked up her bag and left the pub. Kate grabbed her own bag and followed.

‘T
here's a flaw in
The Wicker Man
.'

‘I'm sure there are many flaws,' Southern Shores Simon said. ‘That's part of its charm. As it is of mine.'

Kate snorted a laugh.

‘Ignore Miss Piggy and carry on, sir,' Simon said.

The caller had a nasal voice.

‘Do you remember the scene where Britt Ekland, the publican's daughter, is offering herself to the copper – Edward Woodward – by dancing naked in the room next door to him and driving him mad with lust?'

‘Who could forget? She's tempting him for sure – although I believe they used a body double for some of that dance.'

‘But why?'

‘Maybe Britt was shy about showing her bum.'

‘I mean why was she trying to seduce him? Christopher Lee had gone to a lot of trouble to get a virgin copper to the island. They'd built this Wicker Man to burn a virgin copper. For the plan to work the copper
had
to be
a virgin. What if Woodward had opened his door and spent the night with Britt – the film would have ended right there. No virgin, no Wicker Man sacrifice, no crops.'

Kate Simpson laughed. She'd seen the film a couple of times at the Duke of York's and on telly. The caller was right.

Sarah Gilchrist was kicking herself for losing her rag the night before. A private person, even with a friend such as Kate, she also felt she had revealed herself and that annoyed her even more.

Kate had followed her out of the pub and they'd walked back to the flat in near silence. Neither of them mentioned the waking up in bed together incident and Kate had resumed the sofa bed in the corner of the lounge.

Gilchrist had slept like a log and Kate had already left for work when she got up. After a hasty shower she hurried in to the office, her head buzzing with the things she needed to achieve today.