The Magus of Hay(114)

They walked across the square and into the vicarage drive, and then the leaner, more serious Martin Longbeach was padding into Merrily’s mind.

I hope I’ve made it clear that it’s nothing for you to worry about. You’re on holiday and you can relax.

Sylvia wanting Martin to meet her medium. In the white linen jacket, for innocence. Not at all an unhealthy practice, spiritualism. Something the Church might as well accept, in these liberal times. Merrily was thinking, this should be me in there.

The whole thing becoming clearer now. Sylvia Merchant had wanted to put her on the back foot. To feel threatened and make concessions to prevent the humiliation of accusations about the misuse of deliverance, accusations of spiritual bullying.

A Christian woman, worshipper at the Cathedral, who wanted its blessing for communication with the dead.

Pick and mix. Where would it end? Merrily felt a rush of anger. Should go in there, sort this out, not leave it to Martin. He’d be her witness and she’d be his.

And how long would that take?

Oh God.

Merrily pushed stiffened fingers through her hair, picked up her phone and her car keys and carried her airline bag out to the Freelander.





51

Received wisdom


HALFWAY DOWN BACK FOLD, she jumped, as Gwyn Arthur Jones detached himself from a doorway, like an urban fox.

‘Never thought,’ he said, ‘that I’d be a party to anything like this. But, there we are, I suppose life should never become predictable.’

The evening was unclouded, the castle like a cut-out. Back Fold bumped crookedly down its left flank into the town centre. And you could almost hear an old but well-serviced motor running inside Gwyn Arthur Jones, a man who would always know more than he’d reveal.

‘This all comes about, of course, because I happened to mention your name to Mrs Thorogood.’

Holding open a shop door for Merrily, and then she was stepping into a woodland glade on a moonlit night. Tree shadows on the walls, which faded up in shades of blue between the bookcases, to a celestial ceiling.

And like a solemn tableau, amongst the trees: Mr Kapoor in his Mumbai Indians T-shirt, Betty Thorogood in her Alice band and Robin Thorogood leaning not on a stick but a spade.

Betty stepped forward at once, hugging Merrily. Spontaneous but stiff with apprehension, and the hug was not so much a greeting as a transfer of tension, emotional osmosis.

‘Betty… you all right?’

‘Not totally. Thanks. Thanks so much for coming.’

Betty looking down at the airline bag. Everybody looking at the airline bag, which contained a Bible, a prayer book, a flask of water and salt.

The swastika brick lay on a console-type table. Gwyn Arthur picked it up, a forefinger following the relief pattern.

‘It’s left-facing, see. The technical term for which, I’ve learned tonight, is sauwastika. But see how its arms are rounded rather than angular, so it’s also two letter esses, crossed.’

Robin looked over Gwyn Arthur’s shoulder.

‘SS? Himmler?’

‘No, no, the circle in the middle is a letter O. Which also represents the sun, in negative.’ Gwyn Arthur opened the laptop, already booted, found a bookmarked site and the symbol came up at once. ‘The Order of the Sun in Shadow.’

‘And that is what?’ Robin said.

Merrily bent to the screen.

‘It was an ultra right-wing sect based not far from here.’

‘We’re not sure if it still exists,’ Gwyn Arthur said. ‘It had a newsletter called Dark Orb, which then became a website. The last edition I can find dates back seven or eight years. The symbol has also been changed several times. The one on your brick doesn’t seem to have been used for over twenty.’

Gwyn Arthur brought up another bookmarked site dominated by a larger circle, a more angular swastika and the line, DEFINING A NEW BRITAIN.

‘Could be the Liberal Democrats,’ he said, ‘until you read about the, ah, cosmic reservoir of untapped dark power left behind after the war. Which, it says here, may be drawn upon to facilitate, at an appropriate time, the opening of an era of what they touchingly describe as a necessary cruelty.’

‘And I bet they all got a full set of Iron Maiden albums,’ Robin said. ‘You ever arrest any of these assholes?’

‘Ha. The sad and slightly risible truth is that, while we knew some names and my colleagues occasionally had them under observation, none has ever been convicted of so much as a parking offence.’

‘But this Jerry Brace was a member, right?’

‘If he went to the trouble of installing its symbol in his wall… ’ Gwyn Arthur turned to Merrily. ‘It now seems that symbol may be masking something else. In the wall. Or, rather, the wall beyond the wall. Which is the castle wall.’