A Stanley knife was waved in front of the camera.
‘I’m going to cut your eyelids off,’ the woman said.
The camera pulled back to show a figure leaning over Callaghan, almost obscuring him. The elbow of the right arm moved as the figure presumably started to work with the knife.
The woman started to talk again. ‘Did I just nick your eyeball? Sorry. I don’t know how to do this really. Who does? I know it’s important you keep still so I’ve made sure of that. Ugh – that stuff coming out of your eye doesn’t look good.’
There was a muffled voice from somewhere else in the room.
‘Is that so? It’s your vitreous humour apparently. Sounds quite alchemical, doesn’t it? It’s the gunk between the lens and the retina.’
She got to work again.
‘Did you ever see that Salvador Dali film? He made it with Luis Buñuel. Starts with a moon and then someone holding a woman’s eye open and then a razor and then – ugh. Horrible. Of course, it wasn’t really her eye. They used a cow’s eye. Or did they? Maybe the cow’s eye substitution was just a story they put around to cover what really happened. Maybe the woman was never seen again. Maybe they killed her and disposed of her body. She might have been the woman in that trunk at Brighton station. Well, no. That was years later, I think.’
The woman held up to the light something papery and thin between long fingers and thumb. She put it in her pocket. ‘Just so you know: I probably will dice your eyeballs anyway. I don’t believe it will hurt. I’m told eyes feel no sensation. But even if they did there’s nothing you could do about it. “Dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon.” That’s Milton. Samson Agonistes. “Eyeless in Gaza” and all that. Listen to me – the literary allusions just keep flowing. A bit like all this blood going into your eyes. Who knew eyelids bled so much?’
The other voice came from somewhere in the room again.
‘No, not like Oedipus,’ she said. ‘Oedipus put out his own eyes. Samson had it done to him. Philistines with swords or hot pokers or hot coals did it.’
The video ended there.
‘Samson – you know he pulled down the Temple on the heads of the Philistines?’ Heap said.
‘We’re back in the Temple of Solomon, are we?’
‘Who are they, do you think, ma’am?’
‘I assume the other voice in the room was the camera person,’ Gilchrist said.
Heap shook his head. ‘That voice would have been the clearest because it was nearest the phone.’
‘So you think three people?’
Heap nodded.
‘Lesley Henderson, her mother Avril and Colin Pearson?’
‘Maybe,’ he said, as the car pulled into Saddlescombe Farm.
‘Look at that moon, Bob,’ Travis said. ‘A true Devil’s Moon. There’ll be some dark deeds tonight under that cold light, for sure. Here’s a trivia question: from what stage and film show does the song “Old Devil Moon” originally come?’
‘Musicals aren’t my thing,’ he said.
‘Finian’s Rainbow. Fred Astaire is in the film. Don’t usually associate him with the Devil, do we? Well, I don’t. He’s associated with Brighton too. In The Gay Divorcee he comes to Brighton for a quickie divorce, you know. The film was released in 1934, same year as the Trunk Murders.’
Travis was standing when she started to sing. She had a pretty good voice. She did a twirl or two on tiptoe, giving him exaggeratedly arch looks.
‘Something in your eyes I see . . .’
She leaned in.
‘. . . wanna laugh like a loon.’
She touched his cheek with her finger.
‘. . . that old devil moon in your eyes.’
She stopped in front of Watts and shook her head.
‘Oh, Bobby, Bobby. Your beautiful eyes.’
Watts shifted in his seat again. Or tried to.
Tabby McGrath answered the door.
‘Is Lesley Henderson here?’ Gilchrist said without preamble.
‘We haven’t seen him for a couple of days.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us Lesley Henderson’s mother lived nearby?’
McGrath bridled. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said indignantly. ‘Who is his mother?’
‘Avril Pearson,’ Heap said.
McGrath looked surprised. ‘None of us know that. But then we don’t know Lesley well.’
‘Do you know him as a man or a woman?’ Gilchrist said.
‘As a person.’ McGrath was smug now. ‘We don’t judge people here.’
‘We’re not judging anyone either,’ Gilchrist said. ‘We’re trying to solve a crime.’
‘We also respect each other’s privacy.’
‘So you never noticed anything unusual about Lesley?’ Heap said.
McGrath chewed her lip. ‘Sometimes Lesley dressed as a woman; sometimes as a man. Either way was cool with us.’
‘How well do you know Avril Pearson?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Avril cultivates a lot of the particularly unusual produce we provide local restaurants with.’
‘Produce that goes to Plenty?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Among other restaurants.’ McGrath was defensive now.
‘The produce that got the restaurant closed?’
‘That was a mix-up. We thought we were supplying lilies but we took something else by mistake.’
‘Datura, wasn’t it? What was that batch for?’
‘You’d need to ask Avril about that.’
‘But you know,’ Heap said.
McGrath looked cagey.
‘Was it to do with Avril’s cancer?’ Heap said.
Gilchrist kept her face expressionless.
McGrath nodded. ‘She was trying to cure herself using datura.’
Gilchrist was remembering the shit smeared on Callaghan’s walls and dropped on her. ‘Is she with you?’ she said.
McGrath shook her head. ‘She never comes in here. Try the gardens or her house.’ McGrath pointed. ‘It’s that one there. If she’s not there, try her daughter.’
‘Who is where?’ Heap said.
‘Who is who?’ Gilchrist said.
McGrath shrugged. ‘I don’t know the answer to either of those questions.’
Gilchrist and Heap thanked her and turned to leave as she shut the door pretty much in their faces.
‘How the hell did you know about the cancer?’ Gilchrist said.
‘Educated guess,’ Heap said. ‘I figured Avril Henderson would be anti-conventional medicine.’
He opened the gate to Avril Henderson’s cottage. There was no answer at the front door. Heap got out his torch and they walked down the side of the house into the back garden. The torchlight caught a clump of tall white flowers.
‘What are they?’ Gilchrist said. ‘They’re beautiful.’
‘Bell lilies or trumpet lilies.’
‘And Avril Henderson grows them.’
‘As well as the datura that features in the painting.’
The kitchen door was locked and there was no reply to their knocking. Heap swept his torchlight around and beyond the garden.
‘Ma’am.’
The beam of light had landed on a chalet out towards the end of the garden with light spilling from the window.
They made their way between half-a-dozen garden sheds to the chalet. Heap knocked on the door. No answer. No sign of movement. Gilchrist tried the handle and was a little surprised when the door opened.
‘Hello?’ she called, then stepped inside.
The room was sparsely furnished. A single bed in one corner; a Welsh dresser against the wall. There were candles in abundance on each of the shelves of the dresser. Leaning against the wall beside the dresser was The Devil’s Altar.
Heap pointed at a wax disc and a black object laid out on the dresser. ‘John Dee’s paraphernalia, I would guess,’ he said.
Gilchrist picked up a book. ‘And the Key of Solomon.’
‘Lesley Henderson or his mother stole these th
ings, do you think?’
‘Both,’ Heap said. He was peering out of the window towards Newtimber Hill. ‘Ma’am? I think the Wicker Man is on fire.’
THIRTY-THREE
Watts seemed to be stuck in the chair. His limbs didn’t obey his brain’s instruction. In fact, he couldn’t remember how he had ever been able to move his limbs. His brain felt disconnected from his body.
Nicola walked over to him. She tilted his head back to look into his eyes, kissed him slowly on the lips, breathed into his open mouth.
‘The Native Americans of the desert regions used Sacred Datura as a medicine. They’d make a paste to use it as anaesthetic for bone-setting or toothache. You’re experiencing the numbing effects in a rather different form now. Of course, ingesting it can be a bit kill or cure. If you get the dose wrong people can go psychotic, suffer permanent physical disability or have a lethal heart attack.’
She walked behind him.
‘But you looked sturdy enough to ingest datura stramonium. That’s what I’ve given you. Your sturdiness is what attracted me to you all that time ago. A lifetime, really. If you only knew the journey I’ve been on since then.’
She reappeared in front of him.
‘Datura stramonium is popular in Haiti. I wonder if you can guess what for?’
Watts could guess. He believed he said it but didn’t know if any sound had emerged from his lips.
‘Zombies!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Isn’t that great? All those wonderful Hammer horror films with coffins in graveyards breaking open, spewing out the dead – and the undead. Well, of course, they’ve been doing that here lately because of the floods. The dead, at least. The colloquial name for datura stramonium over there is concombre zombi. Bit of a giveaway, really.
‘So voodoo practitioners use datura to put people into the zombie state. The part I don’t get is how you get from paralysing someone to getting that person to do your bidding. I’d love you to do my bidding but if I commanded you to get up out of that chair to serve me – or do I mean service me? – I don’t see how you could, since I’ve paralysed you.’ She chewed her lip. ‘Difficult one.’ Then looked up. ‘Lot of stars out tonight. Beautiful sky. I love the night.’
Something moved in the little peripheral vision Watts had. Another person was in the garden.
As Gilchrist and Heap crunched up the path to Newtimber Hill they could see the legs of the Wicker Man ablaze. In front of the figure a circle formed of hundreds of candles cast a softer light. In the middle of the circle, silhouetted against the flames, stood the Goat of Mendes with erect penis and full breasts.
‘Jesus,’ Gilchrist muttered as she approached the circle. Heap moved off at an angle to come up beside the circle of light.
Feeling foolish, Gilchrist called: ‘Lesley Henderson?’
The Goat of Mendes put its hands to either side of its head and pulled the head off. It had concealed a bearded person with long flowing hair. Gilchrist looked from beard to breasts to penis. She was sure there would be a vagina beneath the penis.
‘Are you Lesley Henderson?’
‘He is Dionysus.’
A woman with long grey hair was standing near the Wicker Man, a wheelbarrow in front of her. A body was slumped in the wheelbarrow.
Gilchrist sighed. Here we go.
‘I wasn’t aware Dionysus had a goat’s head,’ Heap said.
Henderson put the head on the ground and straightened.
‘That was for revelry,’ the woman said. ‘You know the Dionysian rites have been carried out on this site for centuries?’
‘Are you Avril Pearson?’ Gilchrist said.
‘And if so, who is this person?’ Heap called. Gilchrist saw Heap take possession of the wheelbarrow and roll it a few yards away from the woman.
‘The rites are sacred frenzy,’ Avril Pearson said to Gilchrist.
Gilchrist looked at the goat’s head then back at Lesley Henderson. She echoed Heap’s question: ‘Who is that person in the barrow?’
‘His name is Colin Pearson,’ Avril said.
‘Your husband?’ Heap was down on one knee now, feeling for a pulse in the neck. ‘You were trying to set fire to your husband?’
‘Is that Lesley Henderson?’ Gilchrist persisted.
‘I gave him that name, yes. But the name has nothing to do with what he really is.’ Avril Pearson pointed at her husband. ‘And that man is nothing to do with him.’
‘Because his father is a god?’ Heap said, stepping towards Henderson and shaking his head at Gilchrist. Pearson was dead.
Gilchrist looked from the mother to the son, wondering exactly what to do.
‘Mum knows a lot more about datura than I do, of course,’ Travis said. ‘We use it to hex and to break hexes. You can commune with birds.’
She leaned forward and kissed Watts on both cheeks.
‘We use it to produce sleep and induce dreams. Did that happen to you, darling, when you stayed at my mother’s that night? Did you dream?’
Her mother? Avril Pearson was her mother? Was that why the car outside had seemed familiar? Was she the other person in the garden now?
‘My mother is putting things to rights because she’s dying. She hates Colin, my stepfather. He’s in his own world. Or was. He’s probably in the next world by now.’
Watts remembered the soup Colin Pearson had drunk earlier in the day that Avril had tried to press upon him.
‘Colin is antediluvian. She went along with that at first – all women of her generation did. Then she got resentful. Then she got angry. Then she got ill and then she got vengeful.
‘He’s not my dad so I don’t care,’ Travis said. ‘He tried it on with me once but I slapped him down and he didn’t pester me after that. But it changed things between us, of course. He didn’t try it with Lesley. Didn’t go anywhere near Lesley when he found out. Mum had Lesley during a bit of a muddled period of her life.’
All very interesting but Watts was mostly thinking: what are you going to do to me?
‘Have you read Middlesex?’ Travis asked. ‘A hermaphrodite grows up thinking she’s a girl until puberty hits and he realizes he’s a boy. Lesley chose to remain both. It gives her power. Sometimes he grows a beard. A beard, breasts and a penis: it’s quite disorienting.’
She stroked his cheek.
‘I’m blessed too. I have two personalities. They would have worshipped me in the past but today they try to control me with drugs.’
Henderson spread his arms. Gilchrist couldn’t help but notice his penis had drooped.
‘There is no one on earth like him,’ Avril said. ‘So where does he come from? His existence must have some other meaning.’
‘Meaning that you tried to access through magic ritual?’ Heap said, now only a couple of yards from Henderson’s flank.
Henderson lowered his arms.
‘He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’ Avril said.
Gilchrist nodded. In a way she didn’t want to explore just at that moment, she did find Lesley oddly beautiful. No, not oddly – just beautiful.
‘The vicar found him disgusting. He told him he must be born of the seed of the Devil and I should have destroyed him at birth.’
‘So you burned him to death in the Wicker Man on the beach,’ Gilchrist said. She pointed at Colin Pearson. ‘And you were about to do the same with that man. Why did you kill him?’
Henderson had crossed his arms across his breasts.
‘He killed neither man,’ Avril said. ‘He is a bringer of life not death.’
‘Then who?’ Heap said, stepping into the circle of candles.
Henderson spoke for the first time. ‘Kali has always protected me.’
‘Who?’ Gilchrist said, also stepping into the circle.
‘Do you mean the Indian goddess?’ Heap said. ‘Getting your mythologies mixed up, aren’t you?’
Avril nodded towards Pearson’s body. ‘That man convinced me that all myths are one myth.’
‘And he told yo
u about Kali, the Hindu goddess of Destruction?’ Heap said.
Before Avril could reply, Henderson said, though with some uncertainty: ‘I am the god died and reborn in every culture.’
Gilchrist said, ‘Did you carry out some kind of ritual with John Dee’s equipment using the Key of Solomon?’
‘Was there some secret here at the farm that you made use of?’ Heap said.
There was a sudden whoosh of fire and the flames from the legs of the Wicker Man rushed up the torso. Gilchrist could feel the heat.
‘He made himself a god,’ Avril said. ‘He is Dionysus, the secret and the mystery.’
‘A dying and reborn god,’ Heap said. ‘Yes, you told us.’
The whole of the Wicker Man was now ablaze. Gilchrist took a step back. ‘Bellamy, let’s move them away.’
She moved out of the circle and over to Avril Pearson. She took her arms. Avril resisted but Gilchrist started to drag her away from the blaze.
Heap stepped behind Henderson. ‘Put your arms behind your back,’ he said.
Henderson looked puzzled.
‘You think you can chain a god?’ Avril called.
‘We seem to be doing a lot of that this evening,’ Heap called back.
Henderson didn’t move.
Gilchrist pulled Avril Pearson away to one side as one of the legs of the Wicker Man gave way at the knee. The figure tilted.
‘Bellamy!’ Gilchrist called.
Heap grasped Henderson’s arm. ‘Let’s get away from here, sir.’
Henderson shrugged him off. ‘I am to be reborn through fire.’
He turned to face the blazing, crackling Wicker Man. Flames were now leaping high into the sky, smoke blotting out the Devil’s Moon.
The other person in the garden stepped in front of Watts. A man. He wore a paint-splattered jumper and held an asthma inhaler in one hand and a roll-up cigarette in the other. Watts remembered now where he’d seen the car outside before. It was regularly parked near his father’s house in Barnes.
‘You know Nick,’ Travis said.
Nick Brunswick nodded at Watts and took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Your daughter has Nicola’s phone. That’s unfortunate. We have something on that phone that is private.’ He picked up Watts’ phone from the table. ‘Your daughter’s name isn’t Sarah Gilchrist, is it? She’s the only one who’s been phoning you. Several times. No message though.’ He put the phone down and puffed on his inhaler. ‘What to do with you?’
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