And and and and . . .
Cat was fielding all the names in a blur, confident that, with her wearied and malfunctioning memory, she would later remember not one of them. She was distracted by the increasingly unpleasant odour. And, as knotty hand after knotty hand slid into her own, disconcerted by the suspicion, bordering on conviction, that none of this was as innocent as Agnes had led her to believe.
‘ . . . Alice Kyteler from County Westmeath in Ireland . . . and Absalón Salazar from Cuernavaca in Mexico . . . and Zara Mashasha from Harare . . . and Elspeth Ross from Derbyshire . . . and Melvin Rose, the famous magician from America . . .’
‘The Great Sheldrake’, corrected the magician, who had an Easter Island head, eyebrows like aggravated porcupines, and a multitude of rings cluttering his gnarled fingers. ‘You may not recognise me,’ he suggested grandly, ‘out of black hat and tails.’
‘No,’ said Cat, not recognising him anyway.
‘I hear you’re one of ours,’ he went on, ‘from America. From the Sunshine State, no less.’
‘From Miami, that’s right.’
‘I played in Miami just last year. At Stage 305. Were you there?’
‘Um, no.’
‘In August I performed at the Edinburgh Festival. Perhaps you caught my show?’
‘Nope.’
‘But you must have seen the posters around town?’
‘I’ve been a bit . . . preoccupied lately.’
‘I understand, Catriona.’ Rising to his full height, the Great Sheldrake enclosed her hands between his own spidery pair. ‘I understand.’ His eyes vibrated as though trying to mesmerise her. ‘And you’ve made a very brave decision indeed. Let no one tell you otherwise. And let no one—’
‘Some tea, dear?’ It was Maggie, insinuating herself between them.
‘Tea?’ Cat felt herself being tugged away from Sheldrake. ‘No, I’m good.’
‘You must be thirsty though?’
‘Now that I think of it, do you have anything cold?’
‘Irn-Bru?’
‘That’s some sort of orangeade drink, right?’
Agnes answered from the side. ‘More like cream soda.’
‘Cream soda? Yeah, sure – that’d be great.’
‘And treat yerself to a wee biscuit or two, dear, while you wait,’ Maggie added. ‘You’re thin as a reed.’
‘I think I’ve lost weight,’ Cat admitted.
‘It’s all that stress you’ve been under, dear. All that stress.’
At the sideboard Agnes held out a silver platter covered with soft cubes of tablet and slices of black bun. ‘This’ll fatten you up,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t be more Scottish if they were deep-fried Mars Bars.’
Cat took a cube of tablet but was surprised by the flavour. ‘I thought this stuff was supposed to be sweet?’
‘Depends on your taste.’
‘I think it’s got whisky in it.’
‘I told you it was Scottish.’
Maggie returned with a goblet filled with Irn-Bru. ‘Drink up, dear, it’ll cool you doon.’
Cat took a sip and grimaced again. ‘Whoa,’ she said to Agnes, when Maggie retreated. ‘I swear this has got whisky in it too.’
‘It’s the Laird of Howgate. He owns some distilleries up north. One in Edinburgh, too. Ever smelled that malty stench in the air?’
‘Sometimes – I think.’
‘I rather like it myself,’ said Agnes. ‘Anyway, his distillery is one of the places it comes from.’
‘Is he brewing something right now?’
‘Huh?’
‘There’s a terrible odour in the air,’ Cat said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t smell it?’
‘That’s just the cats. The Laird loves cats.’
‘I love cats. But not if they stink.’
‘You’ll get used to it.’
‘Hmm,’ said Cat, looking around. ‘Is he here now?’
‘The Laird? Who knows? But that’s a picture of his great-grandfather on the wall.’
Above the fireplace was a majestic gilt-framed painting of a hawk-faced man in a green felt jacket and dark kilt, his right arm bracing a rifle, his left hand resting on the head of a hunting dog. Black cats were curling around his ankles; stags were fleeing in the background.
‘Looks about two hundred years old.’
‘The painting or the Laird?’
‘Both,’ said Cat, and it was true – the man’s face suggested the wisdom of the ages. ‘I think he’s looking at me.’
‘The Laird of Howgate is always looking at you.’
Discomfited, Cat turned to see the others in the room – Sheldrake and Lévi and Salazar and Mashasha and so on – also staring at her.
‘Why do I get the feeling I’m the centre of attention here?’
‘Relax,’ said Agnes. ‘You are the centre of attention. It’s not often we get a gorgeous young cheese toastie at one of our conclaves.’
‘Conclaves?’
‘That’s what we call our get-togethers.’
‘Why?’ asked Cat. ‘Are we electing a pope? Or antipope?’
‘Listen to yourself.’
‘I’m not gonna be offered up as a human sacrifice, am I?’
‘I told you that was stuff and nonsense. Just remember why you’re here.’
‘I’ve forgotten why I’m here, to be honest.’
‘You know that’s not true. Anyway, this isn’t remotely what you think it is.’
‘Is that supposed to reassure me?’
‘Just relax,’ said Agnes, looking terribly uneasy. ‘You’ll be home in bed before you know it.’
‘Very well then!’ Maggie, who seemed to be the emcee, was clapping her hands together. ‘Time noo to get proceedings under way, don’t you think? Anyone who feels like another nip just wave and I’ll fill yer cup for you. Anyone who needs a tinkle, there’s a bathroom just around the corner. I ask only that you turn off yer phones and other devices, to make as few distractions as possible. Are we all happy with that noo?’
General nodding and grumblings of approval.
‘Very well – let’s make our way doonstairs to the banquet room.’
Maggie proceeded to lead them through a panelled corridor to another oak-beamed door. Then down a spiral stairway, not unlike the one in Cat’s own building. They went round and round, deep into the castle proper, the warmth and the sulphurous stench all the time intensifying. Finally they came to a huge chamber that looked like it had survived a terrible inferno. The walls were blackened with soot. The ceiling beams were charred. The ash-grey furniture looked as though it might crumble at a touch. The back half of the room, despite a raging fire in the hearth, was eerily, supernaturally dark, as though separated from the rest of the chamber by a series of black mosquito nets. Another clutch of cats was evident.
Oh well, Cat thought, it could be worse. There was no Satanic statuary, no upside-down crucifixes, no black candles, no arcane inscriptions. There was only a large round table under a tasselled lamp. And, painted around the rim of the table, Roman numerals from one to twelve in the manner of an oversized clockface.
‘Take yer seats, all. Take yer seats,’ ordered a fussy Maggie, guiding Cat by the elbow. ‘And young Catriona, you come here to the midnight seat, and I’ll put yer wee friend Agnes next to you at one o’clock, just to make sure you don’t feel oot of place. Noo, would you like another Irn-Bru?’
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Cat would later remember the increasing heat (she had her back to the fireplace), her mounting thirst (she gladly accepted more and more of the orange soda pop) and the troubling stench (which she was convinced didn’t emanate exclusively from the cats). The ritual itself, as Agnes had predicted, proved more subdued – at least initially – than she expected.
A flat white box was placed in the middle of the table and the Great Sheldrake, sitting at nine o’clock, deftly extracted a large deck, thatched on the back like playing cards.
For a moment Cat wondered if he was going to deal a hand.
‘Are we ready to begin?’ he asked, in a most theatrical tone.
When everyone nodded he gave a lupine smile and peeled off the first card, holding it in front of his eyes for a few pointed seconds before proceeding.
‘You are walking through the woods with your dog,’ he intoned. ‘The dog stops to dig behind a tree. You try hauling the hound away, but in so doing notice that it has unearthed an old suitcase. Intrigued, you open the case and discover gold pieces, cut diamonds and thick wads of cash.’
The Great Sheldrake now looked around the table, not even reading from the card – he seemed to have committed the remainder to memory.
‘Do you (a) put the suitcase back in the ground and kick dirt over it; (b) take the suitcase to the police and hope for a reward; or (c) spirit the suitcase home and keep the riches for yourself?’
Cat almost laughed at the banality: it sounded like the old board game Scruples.
‘Alice?’ the Great Sheldrake asked the old crone to his right.
‘I’d take the money for myself, of course,’ said the Irish-accented Alice. ‘If it’s buried in the woods there’s some criminal act involved, surely, and you can’t steal from a thief.’
The Great Sheldrake smiled indulgently and turned to the lady at seven o’clock. ‘Petra?’
‘I concur,’ the grey-haired Slovakian replied.
‘George?’
The Cornishman at six o’clock chuckled. ‘No need for debate. The system is as crooked as the Mafia in most parts of the world, so handing the case over to the authorities would only see the treasure disappear into the vortex of corruption. Under the circumstances, you’d be daft not to take the money for yourself.’
The Great Sheldrake’s smile looked painted on.
‘Johannes?’
‘The guilt reflex is an artificial construct for remotely controlling the masses,’ said the well-spoken Austrian. ‘And a central tenet of Satanism is to liberate us from such mind-shackles. Only a fool would hand over a windfall or put it back in the ground for someone else to discover.’
And on it went, anti-clockwise around the table, everyone agreeing that the only proper response was to take the money and make the most of it. Some of the answers were as clipped as Petra’s; others seemed too eloquent not to have been rehearsed.
But Cat herself was rarely one to compromise her opinions for social harmony. Her conviction, borne from experience, that the world is a whole lot more complex than people generally care to admit, was a cornerstone of her personal philosophy. So by the time the question had reached Agnes at one o’clock – ‘If you’d seen my bank balance, you’d know this was a no-brainer for me’ – she had resolved to unleash her full argumentative self.
‘Look, I don’t want to come across as difficult,’ she said, when her turn came, ‘but I really have to take issue with the imprecise nature of the question. Because in circumstances like this there are always lots of possibilities to take into consideration. Maybe, for instance, the woods where the suitcase is buried is a known hiding spot for criminal gangs. Maybe that’d make you less inclined to get involved, or maybe it’d make it easier for you to take the money. Maybe there’ve been a series of home burglaries in the area, making you suspect that the riches are not stolen at all, just hidden by someone who doesn’t want to keep them under the floorboards. Maybe the police are in league with criminal gangs, as someone else suggested, but maybe you know at least one policeman you can trust completely. And in all cases you have to think about your own financial state at the time. Because – if you have enough to live comfortably, with no pressing debts, no family obligations, no desperate need for cash – then the satisfaction you’d get from turning the suitcase over would surely outweigh the risks you’d take in smuggling the thing home. Remembering, too, that riches don’t always buy happiness. A cliché, sure, but no less true for all that.’
Cat heard her own voice echoing around the chamber.
‘So, I really don’t think there’s any easy answer,’ she went on. ‘Nothing that wouldn’t be glib, anyway. The truth is, I don’t know if I’d take that money, or hand it over, or put it back in the ground. It’d depend on my bank balance, my sense of well-being, and my familiarity with the neighbourhood. But I’m not trying to be difficult or evasive either. So, considering I’m new to Scotland, I’d have to say I’d rub my fingerprints from the case, kick dirt back over it, then inform the cops that my dog had dug up something unusual in the woods. In that way I could keep myself out of trouble while still leaving open the possibility that I’d get a reward if the police proved as honest as I hope they are in this country.’
The comprehensive nature of the response surprised even Cat herself. But such things, as a fraud investigator steeped in the study of ethics, came so naturally to her that she could not resist.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Hope that doesn’t make me sound like a jerk?’
No one laughed. No one sneered. No one coughed. But everyone was still smiling. Looking at her serenely, with an air of rapt approval.
It was the Great Sheldrake who ruptured the silence. ‘Not at all, Catriona. That was most enlightening.’
‘Well done,’ whispered Agnes, nudging her under the table.
There were further, ambiguous responses – Cat wasn’t really concentrating – and then the Great Sheldrake laid the first card down and plucked another one from the deck. Cat meanwhile looked around, seeing four or five figures – Maggie Balfour, Absalón Salazar and some of the other witches – watching her from the side of the room. All of them seemed to be grinning approvingly as well.
‘Second dilemma,’ Sheldrake announced, milking the suspense again. ‘The person you most desire ends up marrying someone else, a person for whom you have a very little regard. One weekend, while staying with the couple at their summer retreat, the two of them have a spiteful argument and the partner – the one you dislike – storms off. Shortly afterwards, over intimate drinks, the one you most desire invites you to bed for the evening. Do you (a) refuse outright; (b) suggest that you might be interested at a later date; or (c) fulfil your life’s desires?’
Sheldrake rotated to eight o’clock. ‘Alice?’
The old crone cackled. ‘Well, I hope I don’t sound glib,’ she said, with a good-natured glance at Cat, ‘but I reckon I’d be up for some slap and tickle. Can’t see any reason to be holding back at my age, assuming anyone’d want me.’
In normal circumstances this might have occasioned some mirth, but again no one laughed. Not even a polite chuckle. It was almost as though everyone was too nervous – or too well-rehearsed – to respond with any sort of spontaneity.
‘I concur,’ agreed Petra (who Cat was beginning to suspect was less than fluent in English).
George the Cornishman: ‘In a heartbeat. Life is too short – far too short – to be hamstrung by bourgeois morality. I can’t see any reason why a person shouldn’t enjoy the pleasures of the flesh in those circumstances. This is supposed to be the twenty-first century.’
Johannes the eloquent Austrian: ‘This is one of the central tenets of Satanism. The Satanic Bible is very clear on the matter. One must be free to satisfy one’s sexual needs with whomever one chooses, as long, of course, as there’s mutual consent. In this instance two grown adults have a desire to engage in sexual intercourse. The circumstances are irrelevant. Neither of these people is motivated by anything they should be ashamed of. And there’s genuine affection, not just sexual attraction, involved. In fact, what would be unnatural, what would be cruel, would be if the two people restrained themselves – surrendered to outdated inhibitions – and denied each other an innocent evening of physical pleasure.’
Around the clockface it went for the second time, with mutual agreement all the way to Agnes at one o’clock. ‘Is this a serious question?’ she asked with a guffaw. ‘You know me – I’m the Seven Deadly Sins in one package. So I’d be in, hammer and to
ngs, of course I would. Even if the one who walked out was my best friend. Especially if it was my best friend.’
But at midnight Cat was ready to pounce again
‘I’m sorry,’ she said with another apologetic chuckle, ‘but again I have an issue with the original question. Because this isn’t something you can predict without knowing all the facts. You say the partner I’m not supposed to like – the wife, in my case – storms off, and it’s implied that she’s being unreasonable . . . but can that really be assumed? What if the husband has been intolerably rude? What if he’s a terrible womaniser? What if the wife has good reason to be angry? Not to mention all the other considerations. What if the couple has kids, for instance? What if the husband has a habit of bragging about his sexual conquests? Do we know, for that matter, that the wife, having stormed out in a huff, wouldn’t return just as impulsively? I mean, would it really be without consequence to go to bed with the husband under those circumstances? An hour or two of fun might lead to a lifetime of complications. But – let me be clear – that’s not to say I’d rule it out. Not at all. Because what if, hypothetically, I happen to know that the wife, on top of being an unpleasant woman, has been having affairs behind her husband’s back? What if the heated argument is about just that – her infidelity? What if the marriage has long been a farce, it’s been crumbling for years, and for me this is a chance to convince the husband that he made a terrible mistake in not marrying me in the first place? The bottom line is, this isn’t an open and shut case of free love versus sexual guilt. Not at all. Impulse control is essential to emotional maturity, but we’re all prone to lapses under pressure, and the sexual urge is one that generates an unusually large number of regrets. So in all honesty it’s impossible to predict how anyone would respond within the confines of this dilemma. I sure can’t say how I would. I’d need to be there, and juggle all the variables, in order to make a calculated decision before jumping right in. Or not, as the case may be. I’m sorry I can’t give you a straight answer, but that’s the way I see it.’
The Devil Upstairs Page 7