The Devil's Moon (22 page)

‘We're wiccans. And the last thing we'd want to do is harm anyone. We're committed to celebrating life, not destroying it.'

‘So how did the body get inside your Wicker Man?'

Tabby McGrath had been looking sullen, staring at the table, her fingers going to her spots then away again. She said now: ‘Isn't it your job to answer that question?'

‘That's what we're trying to do, Tabitha,' Gilchrist said. ‘Why did you erect it in the middle of the night?'

‘For effect. We wanted it to be there for the rising of the sun. And my name's Tabby.'

‘Very feline. Was that day a significant date?'

‘That evening,' Johnson said. ‘Walpurgisnacht.'

Gilchrist glanced at Heap.

‘Walpurgis Night, ma'am. Thirtieth of April – the night before May Day. Traditionally in Germany the night the witches met on the Brocken mountain for a sabbat. And the night the Wild Hunt can be heard but best not be seen across the Downs.'

‘Best not seen?' Gilchrist said.

‘If you look at it,' Heap said, ‘it will take you along with it to Hell.'

Gilchrist saw Tabitha McGrath curl her lip.

‘Typical male establishment distortion of a life-giving pagan ritual.'

‘What's your view?' Gilchrist said.

‘Paganism is a brotherhood of white magic. We believe in the light, not the dark. We believe in the spirits of the trees and the streams. We don't worship Satan; we worship pre-Christian gods.'

‘And what does the thirtieth of April mean to your group?'

‘Our group includes a Druid priest and a shamaness but for all of us it's the start of the celebration of spring,' McGrath said. ‘May the first is a cross-quarter day coming between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice.'

‘I'm no wiser,' Gilchrist said. ‘But you're talking about May Day? Dancing round the maypole?'

‘Dancing round the male phallus, you mean,' Ev Johnson said. ‘A transgressive time, of course.'

Gilchrist looked at Heap again.

‘Transgressive means men dressed in women's clothes, women in men's,' he said. ‘A peasant a king for a day and vice versa. Boundaries are crossed – everything gets turned upside down.' He looked at the couple. ‘Right?'

Ev Johnson gave a reluctant nod. ‘More or less.'

‘I understand May Day is a celebration,
transgressive
or not,' Gilchrist said. ‘They make a big fuss of it over in Ditchling. But where does the Wicker Man fit in?'

‘Traditionally,' Johnson said in a bored drawl, ‘the celebration begins the night before with huge bonfires and ritual dancing around them.'

‘So the plan was to set fire to the Wicker Man as if it were a bonfire on the evening of the thirtieth of April?' Gilchrist said.

‘As the sun went down,' Johnson said. ‘At the same time as we set the one here on fire. Correct.'

‘So why did you set fire to it in the morning?'

Johnson shook his head wearily. ‘We didn't. Why would we? The morning had no significance. Plus, we were going to do stuff around it through the day then set it alight at dusk on the thirtieth of April.'

‘You haven't set the one here alight.'

‘We intended to do both together. It didn't seem worth doing one without the other.'

Gilchrist was inclined to believe him but there was still the matter of the dead person.

‘I repeat: how did the body get inside the structure?'

‘And I repeat: we don't know. We didn't put it there.'

Gilchrist clasped her hands on the table in front of her. ‘OK. How would some person or persons unknown get a body in there?'

‘There was a ladder at the back leading up to the performance space we'd created in the chest of the Wicker Man.'

‘Performance space?'

‘We were going to do shows from in there. It was like a stage – like the staging for a giant Punch and Judy show? We were going to do readings and stuff like that.'

Gilchrist and Bellamy Heap exchanged glances.

‘Go on,' Gilchrist said.

‘A couple of people could have lugged a body up the ladder, I suppose.'

‘What time did you finish erecting it?' Gilchrist said.

‘About four in the morning.'

‘How many of you?'

‘Six of us.'

‘What did you do then?'

‘Went home. Tabby and me were going back around nine to keep a watch on it until we started doing stuff at noon.'

‘Who knew you were putting it up?' she said.

‘Just our group. Maybe eight people in total. Why?'

‘Well, we have two possibilities. Either somebody just happened to be passing with a spare unconscious body and they took advantage of the fortuitous appearance of a Wicker Man – oh, and had fuel with them to set the structure alight. Unlikely, wouldn't you say? Or, the murderer or murderers knew it was going up and planned accordingly.'

‘None of our group would do such a thing.' Tabitha McGrath was indignant.

‘Then word got out from one or more of you,' Gilchrist said. ‘We're going to need the names and addresses of all the people in your group. Did you tell anyone outside the group?'

‘Certainly not,' Johnson said. ‘We wanted to create the sense of awe such a figure brings and then double it by lighting the one here too. If word leaked out we would lose impact. That's why we didn't ask for permission from the council.'

‘Now months of preparation have gone up in smoke,' McGrath said, her voice shaking. ‘It's a tragedy.'

‘I'm sure the murder victim who also went up in smoke agrees,' Heap said.

Gilchrist darted a look at him. He looked down, flushing. She looked at Everard Johnson. She was inclined to believe him. Even so.

‘All right, Everard, this farmhouse is now a crime scene.'

‘The name is Ev. What do you mean?'

‘We need to examine the house for any signs that the man in the Wicker Man was here.'

‘He wasn't!' Tabby said.

‘We just want to be sure,' Gilchrist said. ‘How do we get hold of other members of your group?'

‘They all live here. We're a commune.'

‘Are any of them around now?'

‘Three more of us. Ellie is hard to pin down – she's gone travelling. Roger Newell is also away but you can get him at the Jurassic Museum tomorrow.'

Gilchrist had no idea what the Jurassic Museum was. She glanced at Heap. He was nodding.

‘And the third person?'

‘Lesley is the one who should have been guarding it. Lesley Henderson. It's Lesley's turn to do the Brighton Farm Market tomorrow.'

‘You left someone guarding it? Why didn't you mention that earlier? I'd like to have a word with the person guarding it as a priority.'

Everard and Tabitha exchanged glances.

‘So would we,' Ev murmured, then looked down at the table.

‘You haven't spoken to Lesley?'

‘Lesley has disappeared.'

‘H
ow do you reach those perfect notes?' Watts said.

‘Faith,' his daughter said without hesitation. ‘To take a breath and hope a perfect sound will emerge is always an act of faith. And prayer. I say to God: “Lord, help me find that place as a performer where your visitation passes through me and out of my mouth.”' Then, awkwardly, she added: ‘Hello, Father.'

‘Since when did you go God Squad?' Watts said.

‘God Squad?' she said, her facial expression as exaggerated as the exclamation marks she used in her occasional text messages to him.

‘It's what we used to call people like you . . .'

She laughed, eyebrows still high, face fixed in that overdone look of surprise. ‘People like me? You mean freaks?'

Watts was out of his depth with teenagers. More specifically, with his own daughter.

‘You're not a freak,' he said.

‘Well, I have a moral compass so for you I must be a freak.'

‘Now just hang on, will you?'

God, her expression was so
intense
. Now she was doing serious.

‘Dad. We know what you did. OK?'

‘I'm not getting this. I had a one-night stand – which is, I admit, a dreadful thing to do. But your mother had a secret affair for fifteen years with some guy in Canada – and I'm the bad person?'

His daughter looked down. ‘She had cause.'

‘What cause?'

She turned away, playing with her hair. ‘You were a rotten husband and a rotten father.'

‘I don't want to go into the whole “I was making a life for my family” spiel but, Jesus, Catherine . . .'

Her voice trembled. ‘Don't use his name in vain.'

Watts resisted the urge to raise his eyes to heaven – or rather the ceiling – but it was difficult. Having seen the horrors inflicted on innocent people in the different names of God in the Balkans and elsewhere, he had nothing but contempt for any of it. And this kind of service about ‘Let's Make Religion Relevant to Youth' sickened him.

Aside from anything else, Christian rock music offended his sensibilities. It was a bit like alcohol-free beer or vegetarian chicken burgers. He hated when something pretended to be something but without its essential ingredient.

A thing was what it was and rock music was about sex. Christian rock and roll was a contradiction in terms. It was about pretending. Rock and roll dancing was dirty dancing, from the hips and pelvis, and Christians couldn't dance like that and mean it.

Watts looked at his daughter. Looked at the ring on her finger. She saw him looking.

‘Yes, I'm married.'

He frowned.

‘To Christ.' She pointed at her ring. ‘That's my chastity ring.'

Jesus H. Christ seemed an inappropriate thing to say but that was Watts' immediate response. It could be nobody but his own and his wife's fault that their twenty-year-old daughter was one of about six twenty-year-old virgins in the whole of the UK. Aaaagh.

Then he had a paranoid, Dennis Wheatley-inspired thought. That made her a valuable commodity for the kind of black magicians who seemed to be spreading their evil around Brighton. He immediately dismissed it. Almost immediately.

‘How long are you in Brighton?' he said.

‘Just the weekend.'

‘Were you going to let me know?'

‘We're on a pretty hectic schedule, Dad.'

‘Have you time for me to buy you dinner?'

She shook her head. ‘We're having dinner as a group and then we're going to a prayer party with Vicar Dave.'

Watts nodded.

‘But why are you here, Dad?'

‘I wanted to see you.'

‘How did you know I was here?'

Watts looked sheepish. ‘I saw it on your Facebook page.'

He'd realized months earlier that the only sure way of knowing vaguely what his children were up to was via social networking sites, though he drew the line at attempting to follow them on Twitter.

‘Why did you want to see me?'

‘You're my daughter.'

‘OK, well.' She shrugged. ‘You have. I've got to go, Dad.'

‘Sure.'

‘You should talk to Vicar Dave. He's great.'

Watts glanced over at the vicar, who was standing by the pulpit observing them.

‘I'm sure he is.'

‘He wrote a couple of our songs. He's really talented.'

‘Clearly.'

Watts leaned forward to embrace her but the guitar got in the way.

She touched his face. ‘God loves you, Dad.'

‘I love you,' he stumbled, ‘though I've not always been good at showing it.'

She stepped past him. ‘Don't sweat it.'

She hurried after her friends, half-turning to shout back: ‘God bless.'

‘You'd think they might have mentioned Lesley Henderson's disappearance earlier,' Gilchrist fumed, stomping down the pathway back to the car, Heap hurrying to keep up.

She lowered her voice when a good-looking older woman with long grey hair and a trim figure appeared below them on the path, shopping bags in each hand.

‘What do you think, Bellamy?'

The woman gave them a quick glance and a nod as she passed them. Heap glanced back at her and watched her go for a moment.

‘Too old for you, Bellamy,' Gilchrist said, also glancing back.

The woman headed towards the front door of the farmhouse. Heap glanced at Gilchrist.

‘I can't see her being one of the absent three,' Gilchrist said. ‘Can you?'

Heap turned and shook his head. ‘I think Lesley Henderson is crucial as a potential victim, killer or witness,' he said.

‘I agree,' Gilchrist said as they climbed into the car. ‘But I still can't see how to link the Wicker Man with a painting of lilies.'

‘I'm still looking, ma'am.'

‘So what do you know about that farm?'

Heap waited until they were driving up the road before he answered. ‘It was listed as a working farm in the Domesday Book. The Knights Templar were granted the land around 1228.'

Gilchrist stared at the side of Heap's face.

‘When the Templars were wound up in 1308, Saddlescombe was one hundred and sixty-three acres of arable land, a windmill, two barns, an ox shed, a stable and a chapel. It was valued at twenty pounds. The rest at seventy-five pounds. The rest included farming utensils, twelve oxen for ploughing, six hundred sheep and a horse.'

‘One horse doesn't sound much if they were knights.'

Heap didn't respond.

‘Your research – you know you freak me out when you quote stuff off by heart.'

‘Photographic memory, ma'am. I read something once and remember it forever. A blessing and a curse.'

‘I can imagine – well, actually, I can't. And I suppose you got all this off the Internet.'

‘Victoria County History, ma'am. Wonderful resource.'

They were nearing the Dyke Golf Club but Heap was behind a slow-moving car.