The Devil's Moon by Peter Guttridge Page B

alight you’d want to stay and watch it go up, surely? Especially if you’d dumped a body inside it.
    â€˜Who’s collating the video footage?’ she called out to the room.
    A young female officer stuck her hand in the air. Sylvia somebody. Gilchrist’s mother had been called Sylvia but it wasn’t a name you came across much in younger generations. Sylvia Wade.
    â€˜Sylvia, aside from looking to see if there’s evidence of who set the Wicker Man alight, we need to try to match everybody watching on the beach with the witness statements Bellamy took. It’s possible whoever put the body in there stayed around to watch it burn but not to give a statement.’
    â€˜Ma’am,’ Sylvia said to her.
    â€˜Someone else double check the witnesses’ addresses – see if we’ve a wrong one.’
    A young, eager-faced constable volunteered for that with a wave of his hand. Gilchrist nodded.
    â€˜Right,’ she said. ‘I’m off to see the chief constable.’
    Caspar made a phone call to Colin Pearson’s wife to arrange a meeting for Watts. When Caspar made the call, Watts was standing with Fi and the artist, whose name was Nick Brunswick. He lived in the basement and used a shed at the bottom of their garden as his studio.
    â€˜You know Pearson too?’ Watts said.
    Brunswick nodded. ‘Back in the day.’
    â€˜Can you get down there tomorrow?’ Caspar said over his shoulder to Watts.
    â€˜The Devil’s Dyke?’ Bob Watts said. ‘Sure. What time?’
    â€˜He’ll be expecting you late afternoon.’
    Watts nodded.
    â€˜That’s cool, Avril, thanks,’ Caspar said, putting the phone down. ‘Avril. Very cute cookie in her day.’
    â€˜I suppose you had a thing with her,’ Fi said.
    Caspar shrugged.
    â€˜
Everyone
had a thing with her. It was the sixties and seventies and rock ’n’ roll.’ He winked at Watts. ‘And no HIV plague to worry about.’
    â€˜What’s this about AA?’ Watts said to Nick Brunswick. ‘Do they call each other
mon semblable, mon frère
?
    Brunswick looked at Caspar and Fi.
    â€˜We told him you’re the expert,’ Fi said.
    â€˜It’s a super secret cult set up by Crowley linked to but separate from his Temples of Thelema, which are the churches he founded,’ Brunswick said.
    â€˜It’s so secret that even its members don’t know if it exists,’ Fi said.
    Watts frowned. ‘I don’t get that.’
    â€˜It’s more that they don’t know how many members there are,’ Caspar said.
    â€˜You only know the person above you – your mentor – and the person below you – your mentee,’ Brunswick said. ‘So you don’t know how high you are in the hierarchy or who the top person is. Every so often someone has proclaimed that they are now in charge but others have contested that so now there could be as many as six AA organizations running side by side.’
    â€˜Essentially, if your mentor dies or leaves you’re fucked in terms of your own progress but you control the one below you,’ Caspar said.
    â€˜You’re all members?’ Watts said.
    â€˜Not me,’ Fi said with her throaty chuckle. ‘A mere woman.’
    â€˜I was,’ Caspar said. ‘Nick here was my mentor.’
    â€˜And your mentor?’ he said to Brunswick.
    â€˜Disappeared.’
    Watts thought for a moment. ‘That sheep’s heart anything to do with this AA?’
    Caspar bared his teeth. ‘In a moment of drug-induced madness I declared myself the big cheese a few years ago. It was total bollocks, of course – as Nick was the first to point out. It pissed off more than a few people.’
    â€˜So you have enemies.’
    â€˜Lots. But as long as they keep their violence on the astral plane with a few bloody hearts thrown in I can cope.’
    â€˜The shit through