The Magus of Hay(34)

Bliss said, ‘There’s an early David Bowie song…’

‘Well referenced, Frannie.’

Tamsin, standing in the doorway, looked a little mystified. A great oak door, possibly from a church, hanging open to the windowless inner hall linked to the kitchen. This room could be in a different and older house.

‘The Golden Dawn was Britain’s most famous nineteenth-century magical order, involving people like W. B. Yeats, the poet, and Aleister Crowley, the Beast 666. Its rituals were all very secret, until Regardie blew the lot in these books in maybe the nineteen thirties. There was a row about it. And I’m thinking this edition could be worth an arm and a leg.’

‘So Hambling could’ve been dealing in this stuff?’

‘Well, no… probably not, because… look, lot of new editions. Lot of paperbacks. Reprints. You can get some of these for ninety-nine pence in The Works. And they’re stacked alongside the expensive stuff. This is a working library, isn’t it? Alphabetical.’

Crowley in quantity. All the well-known ones, Magick in Theory and Practice, the Confessions, the novels, Moonchild and Diary of a Drug Fiend. And others she’d only heard of: The Book of Lies, The Book of Thoth. Bound copies of magazines and journals, like The Equinox.

Above, in the Bs, were Helena Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, Alice Bailey’s A Treatise on Cosmic Fire.

And some oddities.

‘More than just a magical library.’ Merrily pulled out a book. ‘The autobiography of Richard Booth, the King of Hay?’

Next to it, two novels by Beryl Bainbridge. On the shelf above Crowley, several books by Bruce Chatwin, travel writer and novelist. Who’d spent time in the Black Mountains, so maybe that accounted for him.

Tamsin said, ‘Should I make some fresh tea, boss?’

‘Yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘That’d be good.’

When she’d gone, Merrily shut the oak door.

‘So which of you really thinks there’s more to this than an old man falling into a pool – you or Tamsin?’

Bliss smiled. It was still lopsided, and there was a red scar under his left eye.

‘And how bad are you? Really. No bullshit, Frannie.’

Bliss wiped a hand across his mouth as if he’d been punched.

‘Could be better. Tunnel vision when I’m tired, which isn’t good, driving-wise. Double vision, when I look down without bending me head, whether I’m tired or not. Which means I don’t go up ladders in case I start missing steps on the way down by treading on the one that doesn’t exist. Offered surgery to correct the eyes, but they couldn’t guarantee it’d work, and apparently if it didn’t it might be friggin’ wairse. So I said it was improving all the time.’

‘Who knows the truth?’

‘Couple of people. One of whom could shaft me bigtime with West Mercia if we ever fell out. And someone who only knows what he can actually spot with his bits of kit. What he can’t detect, I haven’t told him.’

‘Frannie, you’re a—’

‘Fool to meself, yeh. But I think you can understand why I wouldn’t wanna spent me days knocking around a house that sooner or later Kirsty’s gonna get half of. If not the lot. First week out of hospital, I’d just sit down and pass out in the chair.’

‘You’re over that?’

‘Still gorra phobia about it. That and bright lights. Rooms like this – gloomy – are good. Powerful lights do me head in, so if I wound up with a friggin’ desk job I’d need an office with subdued lighting. Which’d probably contravene some Health and Safety shite to stop you tripping over the waste bin. Worst-case scenario is semi-permanent sick leave. That well-known euphemism for scrapheap. Not gonna happen, Merrily. Just need to stay in the saddle till it turns the friggin’ corner.’

‘That’s like walking a cliff edge.’

‘And if you look down you see all these pointed rocks. Only double.’ Bliss found a sickly laugh. ‘Good days and bad days, Merrily, and a bad day is how I wound up investigating a small drowning at Cusop Dingle. Dull morning, office lights, head feeling like it belongs to some other bastard. Small drowning? Ha. No such thing as a small drowning. Just gonna check it out.’

Merrily let her face fall into her hands.

‘Excuse was a dead drug dealer we pulled out of the Wye up towards Mordiford. Turf war thing. You get inventive when you’ve something to hide. And I gerra bit of leeway, being a damaged hero, and Brent had a day’s leave. And then… bugger me if it doesn’t get interesting. Tamsin shows me the dope… and all this. Kid thinks there’s more to it, and nobody else is likely to – the coroner’s officer wasn’t impressed. Be nice if the kid was right, wouldn’t it?’