Witchmoor Edge (23 page)

"Oh yes," Cooke said, "Tony Walker called
from Bradford. They have some evidence that Koswinski dealt with
Danny Stone over a couple of years, so he may well go down. They're
pretty pleased all round."

"It's time I followed the troops and grabbed
myself some lunch," said Millicent. "I was thinking of a pub lunch
at the George and Dragon down in the Market Square. Have you eaten
or do you feel like joining me?"

"Sounds like a good idea," Cooke said and
they left together, going down the stairs and out into the August
sunshine.

Chapter 15: Saturday 18th August (pm)

Julia lay back in the heather and sighed
contentedly.

"What a glorious evening," she said. "It was
a great idea to picnic up here."

"Beats the Bull Ring in Birmingham, anyway,"
Lucy Turner answered lazily in her noticeably Birmingham accent.
"That's some view," she added.

It was early evening and they were on the
moors, above the Cow and Calf Rocks at Ilkley. Lucy was sitting,
arms round her knees, gazing out over Wharfedale and the moors
beyond, dividing Wharfedale from Nidderdale. The air was warm and
heavy, the skyline crystal clear and the moors across the dale
fading into the purple distance.

"You know," Lucy said suddenly, "She's all
right."

"Who is?"

"Our Millie. She drives herself too hard and
she's a bit of a loner, but she seems to care about everybody
else."

"Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle
with yourself..."

"Eh?"

"A bit of the Desiderata."

"Oh, yeah. Everybody brought up in the
sixties had a copy hanging in their loo a few years ago. Some
probably still do. Still, it's a good thought really. Millie has
quite a temper when she's roused, but apart from that she's easier
on the discipline towards everybody else than she is to herself. A
bit unwholesome really. She let me go early today but she was going
to stay on herself to wait for Shirley Hunter to finish her
shift."

"Don't knock it," Julia said. "A lot of
bosses would have it organised the other way round. And some of
them wouldn't have waited until the end of her shift to charge
Shirley Hunter either, hospital or not"

"That's what I said," Lucy agreed. "She's all
right really. And Tommy Hammond's not bad for a bloke."

"Who's Tommy Hammond?"

"A detective constable in the department,"
Lucy said. "He's a cop with a conscience."

"What d'you mean," Julia asked.

"He really seems to care about what he's
doing. Do you know, he wouldn't even press an old lady for
Koswinski's name, because she was scared of retaliation if she
told."

Lucy was silent for a time, gazing out over
the stupendous view, then added, "He's too nice to be a cop really.
He'd make a good partner for some girl who's into men." She paused
again, and then added. "But I'm not. I prefer you, Jules."

* * *

Millicent, Tobias NDibe and Judith Easterman
sat in the still calm of Millicent's small garden, sipping at long
drinks. It was a warm evening, just right for relaxing in garden
chairs. Tobias and Judith were drinking Pimms gin slings, but
Millicent was drinking a mixture of red wine and lemonade - what
the Spanish call tinto de verano or summer red wine. Baildon was
quiet. Many people were away on holiday and this was a quiet
neighbourhood anyway.

"Well," Millicent said, stretching
luxuriously. "It's nice to unwind after a major investigation, but
it wasn't a very satisfactory end."

"On the contrary," N'Dibe said. "In terms of
the universe as a whole, I think the conclusion was entirely
satisfactory."

Millicent started to protest, but N'Dibe
continued. "This Hunter individual was a highly undesirable person.
He will have to be born again and again as he seeks union with his
God, and he really does have a long way to go. The only option his
immortal soul can have, when it sets itself lessons to learn in the
next life, is to find something a little more challenging than a
middle class male with no real handicaps in life."

"Are you suggesting that we set ourselves
challenges in our lives?" Millicent asked

"Oh, indeed so." N'Dibe was listening sharply
and got to his feet. "A moment," he said, and hurried down the path
and out of the gate.

"What's wrong?" Millicent asked Judith, who
was laughing.

"Listen!"

Millicent listened, but she could hear
nothing beyond the faint tune of an ice cream van bell, playing a
couple of bars of Greensleeves.

"I can't hear anything," Millicent said.
"Only the ice cream van."

"That's it. Our great leader, the famous
Tobias, has a great weakness for ice cream. He's like a kid with
it."

As Millicent took another sip from her glass,
thinking about the meal in the restaurant in Manningham Lane and
the night of the Remote Viewing. N'Dibe came back into view. He was
holding three large cornets each with a milk chocolate flake stuck
into the ice cream, one dripping with chocolate sauce.

"Here we are, ladies," he said as he turned
into the gate. "I didn't ask for sauce on yours because I didn't
know your tastes."

N'Dibe handed a cornet each to Millicent and
Judith, and took an enormous lick at the other cone, to prevent it
dripping down the side, then licked the chocolate from his
hand.

"Ahh," he said, nodding. "Not bad. Not bad at
all for a van."

"Toby is a connoisseur of ice cream," Judith
remarked. "Aren't you Toby?"

"I know what I like," N'dibe agreed, taking
the flake bar from the cornet and biting into the chocolate. "And I
know a good ice cream when I eat one. Very pleasant taste, this
particular brand - a little sweet but otherwise very
acceptable."

He had licked down to the edge of the biscuit
and took a bite from the cornet itself. "Yes, indeed," he added,
and said again, "I know what I like." He finished the flake and
returned to the ice cream.

"I thought we were going to talk about
tomorrow night," Millicent said, between licks at her own ice
cream, "but the esoteric doesn't seem to mix with ice cream."

"No reason why not," Judith answered. "Ritual
and ice cream don't mix, possibly, but ..."

"Ritual and ice cream do not mix,
definitely," N'Dibe corrected pedantically. "But this evening we
are only talking. As I understand it, you are uncertain about the
probity of the step you are about to take?"

"I'm very uncertain," Millicent said.
"Pentacles and things."

"Ahh. Very interesting, the origin of the
pentacle," N'Dibe remarked. "Both the Pentagram - the five point
star - and the hexagram - the six point star made up of
interlocking triangles, like the Israeli flag - are very ancient
symbols. Nobody is quite certain how old, but many centuries BC. I
will put to you how I think they arose and give you a conundrum to
consider."

"Venus orbits the sun at about the same speed
as the earth, but it is nearer to the sun than the earth, so it
gradually pulls ahead, like an athlete on the inside track in a
race. If you take a starting point when the Earth, Venus and the
Sun are in line - a conjunction is the proper name for it, both
astronomically and astrologically - it actually takes eight earth
years until the two planets arrive back at the same starting point
together. In that time, Venus has completed ten orbits. You follow
me so far?"

Millicent nodded. "It's fairly clear so far",
she said.

"I'll draw it I think," said NDibe. He took
out a small pocket book from the inside pocket of his jacket,
hanging on the back of his garden chair, and drew something like
this:

"It follows that in ten orbits there are five times
when Venus the Sun and the Earth are in Line with Venus between the
Earth and the sun. There must also be five occasions when the three
are in line with Venus on the far side of the sun like this
drawing. You are following me?"

"So far," Millicent said.

"You're doing better than I did when he first
explained it to me," Judith remarked.

N'Dibe frowned ever so slightly and
continued, "If you can imagine a circle and you draw on that circle
where the five lesser conjunctions occur, and the order in which
they occur, and then take another circle and do the same for the
superior conjunctions, then join up the points in the order in
which they occur - one to two, two to three, three to four, four to
five, and five back to the starting point, six, you have a perfect
pentagram each time. Like this. He drew another diagram in his
pocket book."

Millicent sucked in a breath as she took in
the implications of N'Dibe's explanation, but she said nothing.

"There is, however, more," N'Dibe said.
"Mercury is much nearer to the sun than earth, so it orbits much
more quickly. Three times in a little less than a year, in fact. If
you were to mark your circle with the six conjunctions - three
inferior and three superior and, again, the order in which they
appear. Then for each of the sets of three you join the points one
to two, two to three, three to one, and you have two exactly
interlocking triangles like the Israeli flag, the Star of David or
the Seal of Solomon."

N'Dibe finished his ice cream with a flourish
and wiped his mouth and hands on a large hanky. He took a sip of
Pimms and continued, "It seems to me that there are four possible
explanations for the phenomena I am describing," he said. "Firstly,
there is the scientific solution that it is mere chance that a
modern discovery should discover that these ancient symbols
illustrate something entirely real."

"I don't know the odds against chance of
ancient symbols being the same as conjunctions of Mercury and
Venus," Judith said, "but I should think the odds must be
astronomical, if you'll pardon the expression."

"I should think so too," Millicent agreed,
laughing.

"In deference to science, however, that must
remain the first possibility," N'Dibe said. "The second possibility
is that this is the last remnant of the learning and wisdom of an
earlier civilisation now lost. Even the Bible tells the Noah story
in such a way that it seems that much learning was lost. That,
interestingly, is the old medieval Masonic belief too, in some of
grades of the Scottish rite. There are many other such stories
too."

"For example?" Millicent asked.

"The story of Utnapishtim in the Epic of
Gilgamesh for one. Then there are references in the Vedas of Manu
being warned about the flood and climbing high into the Himalayas
to avoid it. The Vedas tell that Manu came down from the Himalayas
to restart the human race."

"And there's always Plato's Atlantis," Judith
added. "And the Mayas believed that civilisation had been destroyed
not once but four times. They called the current age the 'fifth
sun'."

"I've heard the expression El quinto sol,"
said Millicent. "What's the third alternative explanation?"

"Thirdly", N’Dibe began, "I would draw your
attention the idea Carl Jung had of meaningful coincidence -
synchronicity he called it. The traditional scientific view is that
events are linked by cause and effect or they are not linked. It
seems possible to me," he continued, taking another sip of his
drink and wafting away a fly, "that these symbols reflect something
about the nature of reality. Jung speculated that events could be
connected by something other than cause and effect. The interesting
thing is that some modern quantum physicists - David Bohme for
example - are thinking along similar lines. Thus, the third
possibility is that these symbols reflect a synchronistic view of
reality."

"I think you're losing me," Millicent
said.

"No matter at this stage," NDibe said
equably.

"And the fourth explanation?"