Phil Rickman - The Fabric of Sin

‘Such sheltered lives people had, back then,’ Lol said. Stourport scowled.

‘Wasn’t to be, anyway. I’d been back from London one … no, maybe two nights, when the Herefordshire Constabulary paid us an early-morning call.’

‘I think I heard about that.’

‘Pulled me and the faithful Mickey. Bastard Hereford magistrates sent me to jail. Served nine weeks. A nightmare. Mat and the Welsh guy got away … and the black girl. She was the only woman there at the time. I didn’t think about this then, but maybe it was a blessing for her, she was getting quite frail. Didn’t have the stamina of the other slappers.’

‘They used her in rituals? Sex rituals?’

‘Robinson, watch my lips and remember this: all I did at the Master House was pay for the drugs and expend some testosterone. The so-called magic passed over my head. I didn’t believe in it, then, and I don’t believe in it now. It was libidinal spice.’

‘So you never found the gold. Or whatever it was.’

‘Need you ask?’

‘What happened to the tapes?’

‘Mat took them, I suppose. If I should come across one, I’ll let you know. Or anything else that occurs to me. Just write down your phone number on there.’

Hayter picked up a folded copy of The Independent from beside his chair, tossed it at Lol, who wrote down his mobile number. The chances of Hayter getting back to him were about as likely as Alien going platinum. He looked up.

‘So the girl—?’

‘She was black. It was a novelty. She was … succulent.’

There was a coldness in the room and it seemed to gather in Lol’s spine and he sat back against a cushion. Stourport finished his drink and didn’t pour another.

‘Don’t expect me to go any further than that – not that any of it’s spectacularly obscene in comparison with some of my later escapades. Most of which have been extremely well chronicled, as you know.’

‘What happened to them? The ones that got away.’

‘Dunno. I was in the slammer. A nightmare. You couldn’t even get decent dope in British prisons back then.’

‘You didn’t hear from Mat?’

‘No. Dead, now. Somebody told me he’d gone out to the Middle East or somewhere and he’d died or been killed. I wasn’t sorry. He was a cold bastard.’

‘What about Mary?’

‘Dunno where she went. I was in the pokey, like I said. When I came out, just about the last place I was likely to go near was the Master House. In fact—’

Lord Stourport broke off, slowly put his glass back on the hearth and looked out from under his shelf of white hair, levelling at Lol a steady gaze that went on for a long time. All the time it took for Lol to realize that he’d said the name Mary and Jimmy Hayter had only ever mentioned a nameless black girl.

ON THE BACK of the stone, it said:

NOW WE RISE

AND WE ARE EVERYWHERE.

‘Where are you now?’ Merrily was asking in Lol’s ear.

‘In a churchyard. Under an oak tree. Tried to call earlier but your phone was busy. All the time.’

On the grave, in front of the stone, strewn like the fallen petals of plastic flowers, Lol had counted fourteen plectrums.

Above them, on the small, grey memorial, a blunted plectrum of stone in the grass, the names of MOLLY DRAKE and RODNEY DRAKE and their dates.

At the top, the name of the son who had predeceased them both. His dates: 1948 – 1974.

‘Churchyard, where?’

‘Um, Tanworth. Tanworth in Arden. In Warwickshire.’

Pause.

‘Lol, that’s …’

‘Nick’s village.’

‘Oh God, Lol.’

‘It’s OK.’ His glasses had misted; he took them off. ‘It was on the way. I saw the signpost. Had to stop, obviously, never having been. Maybe – you know – avoiding it.’

‘Of course you had to stop.’ Slightly awkward pause. ‘What do you … I mean, what’s it like. You know, the …?’

‘Very quiet and modest, really. Not unhappy. Listen, there are things I need to tell you. Lord Stourport.’

‘You saw him? I tried to reach you.’

‘Um … you won’t find this edifying.’

Lol put his glasses back on, took out a folded tour-schedule, full of the notes he’d scribbled in the truck, back near the burger van, and told her what he’d learned from Jimmy Hayter.

Standing next to the grave of Nick Drake and his parents, decent, prosperous residents of this increasingly wealthy village, while the sun was hiding in the oak tree, making an autumn bonfire amongst the turning leaves.

Merrily made notes on the sermon pad.

She wrote down the names:

PIERRE MARKHAM

MICKEY SHARPE

SIGGI—?

MAT PHOBE?

DE MOLAY – TREASURE?

With a kind of mental shiver, she wrote down,

CROWLEY

OTO

And then,

GROTTO OF DREAMS???

And, in rapid sucession,

BLOOD SACRIFICE … COUNTRY GIRLS.

… PAID

Underlining this, remembering Mary’s letter: it’s only your body and look at the money you’re getting .

Because he was safely out of there, in the sanctuary of the Tanworth churchyard, at the shrine of his first tragic hero, she was able to smile at the way Lol had blown it, dropping Mary’s name when Stourport had referred only to a black girl.

She wrote,

FRAIL.

And then, finally,

SYCHARTH????

Amid the distaste, an unexpected fizz of excitement as Merrily put down her pen.

‘Lol, did Lord Stourport miss something when he was in London, do you think?’

‘I can’t help wondering if he even went to London,’ Lol said. ‘Or if, whatever happened towards the end, he was effectively dissociating himself from it. Giving himself an alibi. And the way he was stressing that he was only in it for the sex, wasn’t really involved in the ritual magic.’

‘Was that true, do you think, or just a blokey thing to say?’

‘Well, it was blokey, but … the sex, the magic, I don’t think you can divide them. I think he did get off on all that. You sensed a kind of pride. After a while, he was enjoying talking about it – his decadent youth, before he had the responsibility of property and a title dumped on him. I think he’d do it again tomorrow if there was another Mat Phobe around to set it up.’

‘But he never went into detail?’

‘No. You’d probably be looking at whatever rituals Crowley did in that context.’

‘Templars. He was always intrigued by the Templars.’

Thinking of the time, while she was waiting for the first deliverance course at Huw Owen’s chapel in the Beacons, when she’d been reading heavily about magic, and Crowley in particular. All the books came back to Crowley, his attempts to raise spiritual and demonic entities, representing various energies – sexual arousal going hand-round-cock with higher consciousness. His ambition to become godlike.

In a seedy kind of way.

She remembered once making the mistake of reading in bed about how, at his abbey in Sicily, Crowley had supervised a ritual which involved a woman having sex with a goat, culminating in Crowley cutting the goat’s throat so that the blood washed over the woman.

It was about the magical energy of blood. Crowley liked to call them Scarlet Women, and that was how they’d end up, the sick bastard.

‘The Welsh guy,’ Lol said. ‘ He must’ve been there at the end.’

‘Yes. That’s your big discovery, Lol, and I’m truly grateful for this. I need to talk to the guy, don’t I? If it’s who I think it is.’

Was she going to talk to Sycharth, in defiance of the Bishop?

Oh yes. Oh God, yes.

Lol said, ‘You foresee him reacting with the same kind of half-suppressed glee as Jimmy Hayter?’