The Magus of Hay(46)

‘No! Hell… the Bishop’s not even in the Masons…’

At least, not any more.

Merrily pulled her bag onto her knees.

‘Do they allow smoking in here, Athena?’

‘Of course. They also allow the snorting of decent-quality cocaine and a limited amount of oral sex. Help me up. We’ll go outside.’

The lawn slanted down to a golden row of laburnums and a teak bench, with a dedication plate, on which they sat, with the Zimmer alongside, as the smoky clouds crept up on them.

‘One cop,’ Merrily said. ‘A friend. No inquiry. Just suspicions. And I’m not even at work. I’m on holiday.’



Miss White peered at her from a corner of the bench.

‘Do I believe you?’

‘I’m a Christian.’

Miss White turned away and gazed, through a gap in the trees, at the modest grey twin-bell tower of Hardwicke Church in the middle distance and the hills of Radnor on the other side of the hidden Wye.

‘Very well. I’ll go this far with you. I’ll concede a difficulty in accepting that my friend Peter Rector died as a result of what the coroners used to call misadventure.’

‘How long have you known him?’

‘Forty years.’

‘Did you see him often?’

‘Saw him hardly at all.’

‘What bothers… some people… is that Mr Rector seems to have had visitors only hours before his death. I suppose it could save a lot of trouble if you were able to explain to me, so that I can explain to my friend, what they might have been doing there.’

‘And did some nosy neighbour report that one of them was on a Zimmer?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘That’s probably because I wasn’t there. So how would I know about his possibly apocryphal visitors?’

‘Well, maybe you wouldn’t, but I was thinking you might know why he was living there, under a spurious name, and… essentially, I suppose, what he was up to.’

Athena White adjusted herself on the bench.

‘Let’s be clear about something. There are – always have been – things I know about but can’t discuss. Any more than I could, in my former occupation, break the Official Secrets Act.’

Merrily didn’t really know what her former occupation had been, other than that it had included a period at GCHQ, the government communications centre at Cheltenham. You assumed it involved ciphers and the linguistics of espionage. But for all anyone really knew she might have been Head of Accounts.

‘I take it you know why Mr Rector left you his house and contents and… all his money?’

‘Not all his money. He has a daughter in Canada or somewhere. She’ll get half the money. And of course I know why I’ve been left the house. I also know I’m not obliged to tell anyone. And I won’t.’

‘And who will you leave the house to?’

‘That’s an interesting point. And pertinent. I don’t yet know. But to return to the first part of your original questions, I imagine he moved here for the same reason he moved to Wales. Now he’s dead, I can admit that I first encountered him while on secondment to the Security Service during the early seventies.’

‘MI5?’

‘Call it what you like if it gives you a frisson. There were worrying elements of neo-Nazism around at that time, even down to the pathetic little urban skinheads with swastikas tattooed on their skulls. Rector’s book was quite subtly written, from the wartime Nazi point of view, to show how magical thought – even when corrupted, or perhaps especially when corrupted – could damage the physical world. Some factions found it terribly exciting in a contemporary sense.’

‘Neo-Nazis?’

‘Rector’s book was a considerable influence on extreme right-wing activists. It suggested there was what you might call a dark energy just waiting to be tapped into again. It suggested he knew even more than he’d put into the book. We needed to know – to begin with – who his sources were and to what extent the… darkly inspirational effects of the book were intentional. I was asked to… look into him. Chosen, I suppose, for my knowledge of… certain allied matters.’

‘So your employers knew about your interest in the esoteric.’

‘Well, of course. Would’ve been futile to try and conceal something they could, occasionally, use in the national interests. In this instance, it amounted – initially – to little more than attending Peter’s lectures and working out where he was coming from.’

‘And that was…?’

‘Oh… Peter Rector had a great developed talent for what one might call magical empathy. He could project himself into other people’s consciousness, see through their eyes. Whether you want to believe this was simply the application of advanced visualization is up to you. It’s something which, in future years, he was able to pass on to pupils – especially writers – with considerable success.’