The Devil's Moon (4 page)

Caspar gave a guttural laugh. ‘John Dee is supposed to have performed scrying in the original Elizabethan house.'

Watts didn't like to ask what scrying was or who John Dee was.

‘Crowley performed black masses. Up on the Downs there's a tumulus where a dozen children's skeletons, bound hand and foot, had been found in the 1880s. Crowley and his gang did sexual magic in an attempt to raise the spirits of those children. There was a black magic chapel just off the library, you know. Jimmy Page had fitted it out with all the clobber. Performed a few ceremonies there back in the day.'

‘You were serious about all that stuff?'

Fi coughed a laugh. ‘It was just his excuse for a lot of kinky sex with the local gels,' she rasped.

Caspar looked hurt. ‘It was a bit more than that.'

‘And now?' Watts said.

‘Kinky sex?' Fi said, cackling.

Watts felt himself flushing. ‘The black magic.'

‘Only academic interest, really.' Caspar turned to the woman. ‘When was the last time we did a human sacrifice, Fi?'

She shook her head and laughed again. ‘Nearest was that goat last summer.'

‘Not sure that counts,' Caspar said.

She shrugged. ‘Got you in trouble with the law though.'

‘True.'

Watts waited for Caspar to say more. The former rock star was holding back a smirk so Watts guessed there was a jokey explanation heading his way.

‘That was more because we had a fire than the goat itself.' He grinned at Watts. ‘Summer barbecue – whole goat on a spit. Bloody delicious. Smoke-free zone though. Local council played bloody hell.'

Watts smiled again and started to move away. ‘I'll let you know if I decide to sell the book.'

‘See that you do,' Caspar said.

Watts glanced back as he left the pub and Caspar gave him a little wave before turning to speak to the man with the asthma inhaler who had just come in from the balcony.

‘G
ood morning from me, Southern Shores Simon. Lots of theories about that hail of fish yesterday. Even as our fine city's residents are fighting off the seagulls gathering like Hitchcock's hordes from
The Birds
for the spoils of yesterday's fish storm, the experts at our local universities are coming up with theories about what caused the inundation.'

‘You're in a lyrical mood, Si,' Kate said from her microphone at her producer's desk next door. ‘We have our own expert on the line in the shape of former mayor, Andy Friend, mainly responsible for setting up our magnificent fishing museum down on the Boardwalk.'

‘A fish expert on the line?' Simon said. There was a short delay that he felt obliged to fill, silence being a radio DJ's biggest fear. ‘See what I did there? Fish . . . expert on the line?' He gave an exaggerated snort. ‘Please yourselves. I'm wasted here, wasted.'

‘You usually are, Simon,' Kate said. ‘Here's Andy.'

‘Morning, Andy the fish expert – tell us your theory about the flying fish. Or rather the falling fish.'

‘They're all fish that are local to Brighton. Most of them would usually be arriving in our waters around now. Most of them make the local shipwrecks their habitat.'

‘So how did they get out of the shipwrecks and into the air?'

‘Water spout.'

‘Water spout?'

‘A tornado over water,' Friend said. ‘We had one in 2006.'

‘I don't remember my fish supper dropping on my head in 2006. Although I was clubbing a lot back then so I might not have noticed.'

‘It depends if the water spout comes ashore as a tornado. In 2006 it didn't.'

‘But this time it did.'

‘I believe so. The city got off lightly actually. If the water spout had come ashore near the West Pier, for instance, it could have finished off what remains of the structure.'

‘People are saying it's an end-of-the-world scenario – something biblical – but you're giving us a relatively natural explanation.'

‘End-of-the-world scenario? Isn't that indicated by a plague of locusts? Aren't frogs involved?'

‘Andy, I can see you have the same grasp of the Bible as I do. If anybody does know, please call in. Andy, thank you. What's the catch of the day?'

‘Whatever you can scoop up off the street – there's not much left in the sea for the moment.'

‘Ha, ha. Indeed. Although, folks, you'll need to fight off the flocks of seagulls roaming the streets of our fair city. Can a seagull roam, Ms Simpson?'

Kate laughed. ‘With an ugly disposition and a beak that size it can do whatever the heck it wants.'

Blake Hornby liked his job at the Brighton Museum and Gallery. Providing reception-cum-security wasn't exactly arduous and there were pretty women to chat with who were serving in the shop along from his counter in the foyer. Not that he had any expectations with them. They were all educated and a bit posh and he'd left school at fifteen and couldn't remember the last time he'd read a book. Nor was he a big fan of art, to tell the truth.

There was some stuff in here he liked but most of it went right over his head. A lot of weird furniture. Good for a laugh but you wouldn't want to sit in it or on it. The so-called ‘Mae West sofa' made to look like a pair of red lips, for instance. An armchair in the shape of a baseball mitt. A big, solid, marble-topped table with some kind of animal paws for feet.

He looked through the window to his left into the downstairs gallery. Somebody was bent over looking at those weird table legs now. The gallery was quiet but he liked the fact there were no kids rushing around. The mornings could be bedlam when the schools came in and the kids had sheets of paper with lists of things to find in the galleries.

Rachel in the shop had come out from behind the till. She looked very trim in her scoop-top T-shirt, short black skirt and black tights. Facing away from him she bent over to rearrange some cards. Very nice. Very nice indeed. If she'd only turn round and bend over again so he could get the other view. As if there was a God and he had heard Hornby, she started to turn. That's it, Rachel. That's it. Thank you very much.

It's definitely true we have a sixth sense, Hornby reminded himself a moment later. For how many times when you're staring at somebody – all right, ogling somebody – do they sense it and turn to look at you? So now Rachel suddenly raised her head and stared straight at him as he was enjoying the sight of her breasts scarcely constrained by that tiny black bra.

He looked away, flustered, as she straightened. Then there was a crash of breaking glass somewhere in the downstairs gallery and the alarm went off.

Afterwards, he rationalized his slow response by the confusion the unusual conjunction of events caused in him. He was focusing on what Rachel would think of him. He was, after all, some twenty years older than her. So, although he heard the glass shatter it wasn't that loud and it didn't immediately impinge. When the alarm went off at pretty much the same time, it jolted him – it made a horrible racket just above his head – but he didn't associate it with the crash in the gallery.

For one thing, that bloody alarm went off at random about twice a month. Usually it was someone opening the door between the gallery and the corridor separating it from the adjacent Dome concert hall.

Hornby risked a look back at Rachel. She was standing with her hands to her ears, her face pained. ‘Probably a false alarm,' he shouted, feeling like a man in command.

‘Then can't you shut it off?' she shouted back.

He reached behind him, fiddled with the key in the alarm control panel and reset a switch. The silence was immediate and almost shocking.

Rachel lowered her hands, gave him a look he couldn't read and retreated behind her till.

Blake set his shoulders and hurried into the gallery. As he strode through he saw some people were standing around near the leather chair that was in the shape of a baseball mitt. Others, further down the long gallery, were looking at the exhibits as if nothing had happened.

‘No need for alarm,' he said to people as he walked by, brushing off a couple of women who tried to waylay him. At the far end of the gallery he turned left and, sure enough, the fire door was open. Before the Dome had been done up in the late nineties the museum had been linked by this door across a corridor to what was then the central library and was now the concert-hall bar.

He walked into the corridor and through the next doorway into the crowded room. There was some sort of pre-festival event going on. He scanned the room but didn't actually have a clue what he was looking for.

He came back into the museum and closed the fire door by its bar. On his way back through the gallery some of the visitors seemed to be giving him odd looks. As he neared the claw-footed table a prissy-looking woman he'd ignored en route to dealing with the problem of the door shook her head and pointed at the large glass case behind the table.

Inside the glass case was a tableau. Another stupid chair – this one in the shape of a purple flower of some sort – the Mae West sofa and an odd-shaped coffee table bearing silver coffee pots and paraphernalia and ceramic stuff.

It all seemed to be there. With something extra, in fact. A brick lying wedged between Mae's lips. And a big hole in the centre of the glass with jagged cracks radiating from it.

Jack Lawrence, the public relations director for the Southern police force, was coming out of the chief constable's office as Sarah Gilchrist walked into the outer room, her raincoat folded inside out over her arm. She was feeling self-conscious in a new trouser suit. Her usual unofficial uniform was white T-shirt, jeans and leather jacket. She felt horribly overdressed.

Lawrence looked as neat as ever in his usual uniform of a lightweight blue suit. He nodded at Gilchrist and smiled tightly. He glanced at her bandaged hand but didn't comment.

‘Sarah.'

‘Jack.'

He looked down at the chief constable's secretary. ‘I think DS Gilchrist can go straight in, Tracy.'

Tracy nodded and smiled at Gilchrist. ‘Hang your coat up over there.'

Gilchrist put her coat on a stand and moved towards the door, nodding her thanks to both of them. She wondered what Lawrence had to do with her meeting with Chief Constable Karen Hewitt.

She took a deep breath and knocked. Her future was about to be decided on the other side of it.

‘Come,' Hewitt called.

Karen Hewitt had not been ageing well since she took over the role of chief constable from the disgraced Bob Watts. The stresses of the job had clearly worn her down. For months she had looked exhausted, her long blonde hair framing a lined, thin face. Gilchrist had always thought long hair on a woman in her late forties was taking a risk anyway.

However, it was a month since Gilchrist had last seen Hewitt and she was startled to see a transformation. Hair bobbed, face fresher. Hewitt gave her a brief smile and scarcely a line creased her face. Gilchrist was thinking major makeover, wondering about Botox.

Hewitt turned as stern as her new face perhaps would allow and invited Gilchrist to sit. ‘What happened to your hand?'

‘Conger eel.'

Hewitt nodded. ‘They're saying it was a tornado.'

‘Explanations are always good.'

Hewitt clasped her hands. ‘Sarah, I'll come directly to the point. You've been on suspension for a month and you've come in here expecting to hear about the disciplinary procedure against you for allegedly importing a volt gun illegally. A stun gun that your friend, Kate Simpson, used to kill a man who was viciously attacking her.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘I'm aware that in the past couple of days, even whilst on suspension, you've been punctilious in reporting two criminal acts. One, the looting of a jewellery shop in the Laines in that hail of fish; the other the desecration of a church.'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘That punctiliousness would doubtless have been in your favour had there been a disciplinary procedure.'

Gilchrist frowned. ‘Ma'am?'

Hewitt seemed to be swallowing something that tasted bad. ‘There will be no disciplinary procedure.'

Gilchrist was too surprised to say anything.

‘Only because of a technicality,' Hewitt added.

‘Ma'am?'

Hewitt unclasped her hands. ‘The volt gun has gone missing. It has either been mislaid or mis-registered in the evidence room. It cannot be located.' Hewitt spread her hands. ‘No evidence, no disciplinary.'

Gilchrist felt herself flushing. ‘I had nothing to do with its disappearance.'

‘Did I say you did? Sadly, our evidence room is as porous as every evidence room I've ever known. And it is as chaotic. I wouldn't be surprised if we had the identity of the Brighton Trunk Murderer misfiled in there somewhere.'

‘I'm relieved to hear that, ma'am.'

‘About the Trunk Murderer's identity?'

‘No, ma'am – though I believe that may recently have been established. I mean about my disciplinary.'

Hewitt remained stern. ‘I'm sure you are. I hope, however, you have learned your lesson and there will be no repeat of such foolishness.'

‘No, ma'am.'

‘No?'

Gilchrist lightly touched her bandaged hand. It had started aching. ‘I mean: yes, I have learned my lesson and no, there will be no repeat of the foolishness. Ma'am.'

Hewitt's smile was terse. ‘With that in mind, I'd like you back on active duty with immediate effect.'

‘Of course, ma'am. Thank you. May I ask what the intention is with regard to the charge against Kate Simpson?'

‘We'll be recommending that because there is insufficient evidence the Crown Prosecution Service does not proceed.'

‘I'm relieved to hear it.'

Hewitt nodded and examined Gilchrist's face. ‘I was very sorry Detective Inspector Reg Williamson made the decision that he did. To end his life – well, it is such a sad waste of a good man. Although the official line, as you know, is that his death was a dreadful accident whilst tussling with a known criminal in a police car.'