Lucifer's Abbey

by Smith, Michael James

  By that time we knew we had drawn a blank unless there was something in the Safe and I'd already dispatched Graeme Dee to the Museum to get started there.

  Juliet, who'd remained in the car, went with him. She'd elected not to enter Joplin's premises. We had not talked at any length about how she felt regarding shooting him. At some point we'd have to do that but I thought it best to let her choose the moment.

  It took thirty minutes but our legal safecracker knew what he was doing. It was a new safe and it was made to be difficult but he was obviously up to date and it yielded to his ministrations. I slapped him on the shoulder and told him what a clever chap he was and he was cheeky enough to ask if he would be getting an escort back through the traffic! I told him to buzz off. His call out charges on a job like this would probably be more than my week’s salary!

  The safe yielded what would have been a treasure trove if we'd been through it earlier; a map of the tunnels beneath Hainsley-Sihl's mansion. I studied it with Leon but we couldn't learn anything from it. As far as we could gather it showed only new tunnels. There was no reference to older tunnels or caves at all. I dispatched it back to the mansion and asked the team there to verify we had checked them all.

  There were some very nasty pictures of satanic rites that would have helped put him in prison had he been still alive but were useless now that he was deceased. They would add to the overall evidence but they weren't any help at all in finding Cherie Leclerc.

  The safe also contained a set of Tarot cards, obviously antique and possibly very old indeed. They were wrapped in a piece of black silk. The top card when I opened it was Ill Diavolo. I would have been surprised had it been anything else.

  On the bottom shelf we found his Passport and some cheque books. We'd drawn a complete blank; par for the course in this investigation.

  Leon was suffering more as the hours ticked by. The responsibility was bearing down on him more and more heavily.

  We walked around the apartment one last time and as we passed through the bathroom Leon lifted the lid off the clothes basket which stood behind the door. “Maybe the dogs could use some of these in Kents Cavern? At least they'd have a fresh scent to trace.”

  It was a worthwhile thought and we put some articles into a carrier bag from the kitchen and carried them back out to the car. As we were about to climb in another good thought struck me.

  “Where's his car? Where does he park?” There was no garage in the two storey block.

  Leon looked around us and a neighbour was out in her garden retrieving her washing. He walked across to the fence and used his charm on her.

  He almost ran back to the three of us. “He owns that big house opposite too. He keeps two cars there!”

  We were across the road in a hurry and the house was soon open. It was a very nice character four bedroomed property with well-established gardens as befitted the area and I guessed that it had been built during the Georgian period.

  We didn't need to know why he owned a house and was living in an apartment opposite to it, that question could wait until later.

  The hallway was dark as the door came open and it led along between six closed doors, directly onto a visible rear door at the other end; a simple configuration.

  Leon opened the first door to reveal a nice sitting room that was well furnished with what I guessed to be exclusively Marks and Spencer's furniture. It worked, it was a really comfortable modern room arranged to take advantage of a lovely view along Cockington Lane and the fields that form one side of it. The room contained two wall units that held a fine collection of artefacts that could have been in Torquay Museum.

  We examined them and found that they were mostly of Egyptian or Middle Eastern origin and I wasn't at all surprised to find several items that were adorned with the fivefold cross of the Crusaders.

  “I think Hainsley-Sihl used Joplin to do his research.” Leon said to me. He was holding a fine small model of a sailing ship with the white Cross of the Crusaders upon its sails. It was a lovely thing.

  “You’re probably right.” I said as we left the room and crossed the hallway to find an identically sized room that was obviously used as a dining room. Joplin had bent his Mark's and Spencer's card here too. I recognised the dining table and chairs, I'd been thinking of buying the same thing but it was a lot of money to spend on an apartment that no one but me ever ate in.

  The cabinets contained nothing but crockery, cutlery and a wide variety of good quality glasses. The only other thing in the room was a small fully stocked bar.

  A door at the end of the room revealed a well equipped kitchen. Either Joplin liked to cook or the previous owner had. The cupboards and refrigerator were all empty. No one was currently planning to cook anything in the house. It was very modern and spotlessly clean. I was getting the Impression of a man that liked orderliness and cleanliness as much as I did. He was fastidious and I guessed careful. We wouldn't find anything without a good search. He would have made certain of that. This wasn't the home of a careless man.

  Another door towards the rear of the house led us to a utility room, well equipped and clean and tidy. There was nothing to indicate that it had been in use recently.

  The two remaining rooms on the opposite side of the hallway were actually one very large single room with two doors. It was arranged as a library and it was packed wall after wall with books.

  A long polished table filled the middle; there were four wooden chairs either side of it. On it many books were open as though he had been using them to study something. This was the spacious hobby room of a very wealthy man. The pictures on the walls were all original oil paintings and they all bore reference to biblical scenes. They would have fetched a very high price at auction. One of them was a fine print of an old map of Jerusalem which was from the National Library of The Netherlands. It was obviously from the time of the Crusades as there were two mounted Templar Knights on the bottom of it.

  Ann stayed to study them as Leon and I went upstairs.

  “Why two homes? Doesn't make any sense to me.” Leon asked as we walked up the stairs.

  My mobile, which I’d finally recharged sounded before I could answer him. It was Graeme Dee calling from the Museum.

  “We rounded up an assistant Curator with the help of the Council and he reluctantly opened the place up for us. It's stuffed wall to wall with half the antiques in the known world. I started in the offices but even there it's a kilometre deep. It's going to take a lot of people and more time than we've got Mike. There's nothing obvious here at all.”

  “Get the assistant curator to identify anything that Joplin was currently working on. Anything he kept to himself.” I said. Trying to help.

  “I did that as soon as we got in here Boss. He isn't exactly the helpful kind.”

  “Well he isn't going home until we find something. Tell him I said that and make his life miserable, see if you can shake something out of him.”

  “Hold the line while I go outside Chief Inspector.” Graeme said and I wondered why he was suddenly formal.

  It was only half a minute before he spoke again. “He is wearing one of those rings you said Joplin had. Bloody great thing it is, I should have seen it before.”

  “Hold up Graeme, let me think a minute.” I turned and told Leon and he was across the room in a couple of strides.

  “He will be at this ceremony for sure. Let him and go and put a tail on him and we have a way in!” Leon was quicker than I to voice it but I was thinking along the same lines. I nodded to him in agreement.

  “Graeme whatever happens this guy doesn’t leave until I ring you back. We're going to put surveillance on him.”

  “Count on it.” Graeme said, and rang off.

  I saw the look on Leon's face and pre-empted his words.

  “Graeme will hold him until I have him stitched up. We're good at this so don't worry.” He nodded. I could see the strain that he was managing as the light faded from the day and his niece remained i
n danger.

  I called the Station and made sure that Graeme Dee got the support he would need very rapidly. We were committing more and more resources to the chase for Cherie Leclerc but we still needed that one piece of luck that would give us an edge.

  “We watch this man until eight O’clock and if he doesn't lead us where we want to go by then you can take him apart Leon.”

  “I will look forward to it,” he said simply and turned to go back down the stairs.

  We searched the garage which was empty bar some tools and then from a door at its rear found ourselves in the back gardens that abutted onto the lower edge of Cockington wood. They were large and well laid out including a very attractive ornamental pond.

  At one end a large rock outcrop taller than either of us was thrust up incongruously through the ground and the face of it had been partly hallowed out to form a canopy over an old well. There was an ornamental metal grill door sealed across it, to prevent children from falling into it I assumed. The enclosed area was large enough to allow someone to walk right around the raised well. It was an attractive feature in good condition.

  We walked across to peer into the well and I turned and looked at the house. It was a good half a million pounds worth of property but nobody lived in it. There were no personal items in it whatsoever, just a very valuable collection of artworks and books and the signs of someone studying either the Crusades or Jerusalem.

  Ann Taylor joined us in the garden and I told her about the call from Graeme Dee. She was holding a photograph which she gave to me. “That was amongst the prints on the library table. It's the Tomb that Juliet described to us, I'm sure.”

  Leon caught hold of one side of the picture and we both examined it. She was right. Two lines of sarcophagi and along the wall a series of alcoves containing statues of Monks holding fivefold crosses.

  “He has been there” Leon said. “He was studying those Monks and the Knights we cannot see in the picture. Whatever this is about, it started in Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades.” Ann and I waited as he obviously wasn't finished.

  “It's beginning to look as though The Ark of The Covenant is here in Torquay despite our reservations. What other possible explanation is there?”

  I walked back and looked through the grill work at the well, thinking furiously but getting nowhere. I didn't even know how knowing about where The Ark of The Covenant had been buried for a thousand years helped us. We didn't know exactly where it was, just as we didn't know exactly where Cherie Leclerc was. It was just another turning in the maze that Hainsley-Sihl had constructed for us.

  “We don't know where all this business of the Tarot fits either Boss.” Ann said beside me.

  I looked at her wondering why that was in her mind and she pointed at the stonework of the well.

  Just below the lip of the well a small area had been smoothed over with cement and into it someone had carefully etched the symbol of Hainsley-Sihl's Coven: Pan with Lucifer upon his back.

  The phone rang again. I saw Graeme's name on it as I answered. “Everything is in place Mike. We're pulling out to let him make a move. I'm sending Juliet back to you but I'll stay with this end if that's OK with you. I want to feel this bugger's collar myself - horrible man, slimy little git if ever I met one.”

  “Don't lose him whatever you do Graeme. He is the only hope we have I think.”

  “The Chief Constable is involved Boss, I've got a big team, all pro's and I will be on his backside until he produces the goods.”

  I thanked him and as we walked back into the house. I told them what was happening. We stood in the library with the expensively decorated walls and waited for Juliet.

  When she arrived, I took them all along to Leon's hotel. None of us had eaten since the croissants at Buckfast Abbey and there was nothing we could do but wait for the results of the efforts of other people.

  Derek Smith was somewhere in the closed sections of Kents Cavern trying to find Hainsley-Sihl's lair, David Cooper was leading another team through the tunnels that had been exposed by Harold's arrival at Ilsham Chapel. Graeme had a member of Hainsley-Sihl's Coven under the closest surveillance. We needed one of them to produce a result.

  The Grand Hotel was busy but we managed to get a table with a lovely view across the sea front illuminations to the Imperial Hotel on the other side of the harbour. The two mast sail training vessel was moored to the outside of Princess Pier, lovely in the gathering gloom of the evening.

  My patch, every inch of it known to me since childhood and someone had found a way to hide from me in it. I didn't have much of an appetite.

  Leon Henry made a valiant attempt to entertain our ladies. His charm was to the fore and I watched him putting them at their ease despite what must have been the churning emotions inside him. From time to time our eyes met and the minutes ticked by, increasing the pressure.

  We had finished our meal, although no one had done the fine food justice, when Graeme rang again to tell us that the assistant Curator had removed a box of goods from the Museum and transported them to Torre Abbey of all places.

  “He was met at the Spanish Barn by a small blonde woman who matches Juliet's description of Hainsley-Sihl's assistant to the letter. That's not all Mike. I'm watching from the gated entrance on King's Drive and there's an advertising board here that says there is a meeting of Spiritualists and Mediums here at the abbey this evening.”

  “That will be the covens!” I almost cried out!

  Leon was sitting bolt upright in his chair. I gave him a look that told him we had our breakthrough.

  “Put a ring around the Abbey Graeme but don't frighten them off! Do it from a real distance and make sure they don't draw any attention to themselves. We'll be with you in a few minutes.”

  “Don't come here Boss! We'd stand out like a sore thumb. I'll meet you in the front car park of the Riviera Leisure Centre.”

  We were away in few minutes having delayed whilst I had explained the situation and given Leon some details about the Abbey's history. “It's the perfect place for them. All we need is for them to gather there and then move on to wherever the ceremony is taking place. We should be able to follow them now.”

  The car park was almost empty when we got there. The swimming pool had closed half an hour previously and there was nothing taking place within the centre itself which was a blessing. I commandeered it at once. We had everything we needed to set up a control for the work ahead. It's a lovely centre and the restaurant provided an ideal place for us to get organised. The pendulum felt as though it were swinging our way at last.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  TORRE ABBEY

  At the rear of the Riviera Centre there is a second restaurant with a fine broad terrace overlooking Torre Abbey Meadows and I led Leon across it until we could see over the bushes and through the trees across to the front of Torre Abbey.

  “It's been there since the end of the twelfth century, around the time of the first Crusade. It was built by Premonstratensian Monks from Welbeck Abbey. The part you can see on the side facing us was formerly the Chapter House. The older ruins were the Cloisters that formed a part of the original monastery. It was amongst the wealthiest Abbeys in Europe for a long time, wealthy enough to build the first harbour in Torquay and found the town of Newton Abbot that we drove through on our way to Juliet's as a market place. It was Monks from here that built Ilsham Chapel.”

  Seeing he was genuinely interested I pointed along the front of the Abbey.

  “A lot of people have a completely false picture of these old Abbeys Leon, they imagine dozens of Monks scurrying about plotting against one another in semi darkness but the reality is that there were never very many Monks. Here it was sixteen at the height of its power and fewer for most of the time but they were commercially very powerful indeed. They controlled hundreds of square miles of commercial enterprise from this building. Most of the people here were servants and tradesmen employed by the Abbey.”

  Leon looked
at me seriously. “You can dig a lot of tunnels with that sort of financial muscle.”

  I nodded and declined one of his cigarettes and he told me to go on.

  “The modern Georgian Manor house along the front was built after the Dissolution when Henry eighth fell out with Rome and had most of our Abbeys reduced to ruins. It was the home of a famous local family who pretty much founded Torquay. The Cary's. It's mostly an art gallery today but there are some splendid rooms inside with a few twelfth century bits and pieces dotted around. It's just been restored at a cost of millions but they made a really fine job of it. The Tower you can see on the far end and the tunnels and arches are part of the old Gate House. On the other side the building you can see the end of is a tithe barn that became the Spanish Barn. Prisoners from the Spanish Armada were held there. There's said to be a ghost of a woman who disguised herself as a seaman to stay with her lover and died in there. She is supposed to roam around through the tree's here seeking him.”