Lucifer's Crown Read online

  Last night he’d gone away with Vivian, not Ellen. For good reason, she reminded herself. “Did you settle with the cow?”

  “Vivian? She’ll not be troubling us any more.”

  “She was never one of us, was she?”

  Robin’s pink lips curved into a smile, but his eyes remained hard. “No. She served her purpose, though.”

  Last night Ellen had been one of the family. She’d waded into the fray alongside Reg, ahead of the others, breaking and kicking. She could still hear the cries of the unbelievers as they ran, and the satisfying smash of her cricket bat against their idols. For an hour, she’d been strong.

  She sat up. Her mouth tasted of acid. “The cleansing went down a treat, right enough.”

  “Yes, it did. A pity the constabulary were so quick to respond, but then, they’ll learn right from wrong soon enough.” In a swirl of green and gold Robin turned to inspect the CDs stacked on a shelf. He picked up the Mozart Requiem. A spasm of his fingers cracked it like an egg and tossed the broken bits aside. “You don’t need this.”

  “Calum gave it me.”

  “Did he give you these, too?” Robin’s forefinger tapped the stack of paperback books piled next to Ellen’s special-edition Bible.

  “Yeh. He says I have a good mind.”

  Robin’s eyes glinted. “Who is the truth, the path, and the light?”

  “You are, Robin. You’re the business.”

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know. If there’s anything in a book I haven’t taught you, then it’s blasphemy. If there’s anything in a book I have taught you, then it’s redundant. Calum should know better than to muddle his mind and yours with books.”

  “Yeh,” Ellen agreed, adding, “Why did he bugger off so sudden-like last night?”

  “He had to get back to his business.” Robin stepped across to the basin. He upended a cup, dribbling brown water, and rapped it smartly against the tap. The cup shattered. His elegant fingertips chose a shard shaped like a leaf-bladed spear. “Ellen, I have work for you to do in Glastonbury.”

  “Yeh, anything.” She clawed her hair away from her face. She’d used the last of her shampoo and hadn’t the cash to buy more. To buy food, for that matter. Last night Reg had bought her a takeaway curry, all the while grumbling about sods too lazy to work. But she was working, for Robin.

  She’d met him last year, when he saw her pinch that Yank tourist’s pocketbook. He hadn’t shopped her to the cops. He’d told her that soon money wouldn’t matter. Soon the toffs in their posh cars and posh clubs, the skinny little birds who’d slagged her off for her clothes, the pillocks at school who teased her and then used her body—all of them would be consumed by the fires of Armageddon whilst she would be taken up to heaven alongside Robin himself, if only she believed.

  Ellen crawled from the bed. Her bare feet slipped on the newspaper cuttings scattered across the linoleum—rallies, revivals, marches, pilgrimages—explosions, massacres, assassinations.

  The green cloak billowed round Robin’s body even though the room was close and still. She slipped beneath it and wrapped her arms around his ribs. Slender ribs, strong as stone.

  He wrapped her in the cloak. His body was cold as death and she shivered. But she held on. His beard tickled her ear. His icy lips traced a path along her jaw until they found hers. His tongue, tasting of wine and flowers, slipped inside her mouth like a snake, probing, pushing, pursuing until she was bent backward against the basin. His right hand moved up her body beneath the T-shirt and his left pressed the crockery spear against her temple. It pricked, and she felt the blood run down into her hair. “Are you baptized in the one true faith?” he murmured.

  “Yes.”

  His thumb smeared the warm blood across her forehead. “Are you bathed in the blood of the ram?”

  “Yes, oh yes. Please, Robin, love me.”

  His eyes glinted green as gemstones. In one movement he spun her about, threw her down on the bed, and fell on her. Ellen clutched at him, cloak and all. She didn’t like this part, but then, she wasn’t any good at it, or so the sods at school told her. It didn’t matter. Robin had chosen her, alone of all her sex.

  She gasped in pain and ecstasy both as he drove himself into her. He was cold, and hard, like iron. But when he was inside her she wasn’t empty any more. Better cold than nothingness. Better pain now, and in the future the ultimate reward.

  From the corners of her eyes she saw the posters covering the stains on the wallpaper whirling like confetti, film actors and rock stars and prints of works by old foreigners Calum had given her—Nativity, Crucifixion, Rolling Stones. Robin’s voice was soft and subtle in her ear, “I am the way and the life. Who believes in me shall never die.”

  Outside a bus bleated. The sunlight faded. Robin’s body crushed her against the bed, again and again. “Love me,” she whimpered.

  The gold stitches on the green cloak shone like a bonfire. In the glory of gold and green the room disappeared and Ellen Sparrow glimpsed the light eternal. But as yet it was beyond her grasp. “Love me. Please, love me.”

  Robin laughed. In spite of her clenched jaw she smiled. She’d made him happy. That was worth any pain.

  Chapter Four

  Mick was sure three days had passed since he’d talked to his dad. But it was only Monday afternoon. The clouds had thinned and a smeary quarter moon slid down the western sky into the murk of the city. A whiff of peat smoke filtered into the office.

  At first the telephone had gone and gone again—the local police, the English police, a dispatcher in Carlisle asking questions but giving no answers. Calum and his car had vanished into thin air.

  Now the telephone huddled sullenly, the shoulders of its receiver hunched. When Mick switched on the desk lamp he felt like a copper having a go at a prisoner. He’d already had a go at everyone at the mill. Calum’s secretary, Amy, rang everyone he’d ever done business with. No one had seen him since his meeting in Birmingham on the Friday.

  Nothing vanishes into thin air, Mick told himself.

  In the filing cabinet he found a map of Scotland. Spreading it across the desk, he scanned every inch of the A68 and the A7. The roads ran south from Edinburgh, past Lauder and Stow, until they joined at Melrose. From there the A7 went on past Jedburgh and over Carter Bar into England, following the old Roman road to Hadrian’s Wall. The Wall met the western sea at Carlisle. Perhaps … Perhaps what?

  Calum had taken Mick on a tour of the Borders some years back, stopping at ruined castles and ruined abbeys and ruined forts until he begged for mercy, a Coke, and a fry-up. Now that same holiday would be a treat, Mick thought, grinding his teeth. As soon as he found his dad he’d organize it.

  Not one town in the map index was named Fairtichill. The black triangle labeled Schiehallion 1083 metres—one black triangle, not three—lay between Loch Tay and Loch Rannoch, in the Highlands. Mick didn’t think that, fairy mountain or not, it had moved house to the Borders. Folding the map, he jammed it back into the cabinet. It caught on something, so that he couldn’t shut the drawer.

  He spread the files apart to see what was lying beneath them, and picked up his great-grandfather Malise’s sgian dubh. The knife was sheathed in black leather trimmed with whorls of silver. Its bone handle was smoothed by years of use. At its top nested a flat chipping of what looked to be black marble, even though every other sgian dubh Mick had seen displayed a semi-precious gem. When he drew the steel blade it glinted bright and sharp. For such a small knife, extending from his wrist to his fingertips, it was surprisingly heavy. Its cold kiss sent a shiver up his arm. Why had Calum hidden it here? The last Mick had seen of it, it had been tucked away below the blankets in his mother’s kist.

  Replacing the knife in the drawer, he picked up Calum’s check book. Amongst the amounts written to Jenner’s Department Store and Safeway’s were five checks for fifty pounds each made over to “Ellen Sparrow.” His dad had been on his own for three years now. Nothing wrong with him havin
g a lady friend. But Mick didn’t know sod-all about his father’s life, did he?

  The phone went. His heart lurched. He fumbled the receiver, then slammed it to his ear. “Mick Dewar.”

  “Mr. Dewar,” said a male voice with a clipped English accent. “Detective Inspector Gupta of the Somerset constabulary here. We’ve just received a missing person report on your father. He was seen at Glastonbury Abbey yesterday afternoon with a woman, a journalist named Vivian. Do you know her?”

  “No.” Another woman? “Does she know where he is?”

  “She was found dead this morning.”

  Mick slid spinelessly down the chair, cradling his head on the bar at its back. “Dead? How?”

  “We don’t know yet. Why do you ask?”

  “When my father phoned this morning he was ranting something terrible, saying someone was chasing him, saying there was something he’d never told me. He was off his head. Maybe he…”

  “…witnessed a death?” Gupta asked carefully.

  Mick’s nod was more of a shudder. “Who saw Dad with this Vivian?”

  “Several Americans on a study course. The lecturer overheard Calum warning Vivian off an event scheduled for last night. Do you know his plans for last night?”

  “No. He was doing business in the south of England, and had an appointment this morning at Glastonbury, to view a line of sheepskins, but he never showed. Mind you, he planned his trip round the weekend, so he could have a tour of Stonehenge and Salisbury and the like.”

  “Do you have a photograph of your father and a copy of his itinerary? It could be the man at the Abbey was another Calum, but that would be too much of a coincidence, I expect.”

  Mick heard his father’s ragged voice saying, Nothing’s a coincidence. “Oh aye, I’ll put you onto the secretary.”

  “Thank you. We’d also like a statement from you detailing what he said in his phone call. We’ll arrange for someone…”

  “No.” Mick sat up straight as a ramrod. He had something to be going on with at last. “I mean, aye, I’ll do anything to help. But if something in Glastonbury drove my dad round the bend that’s where I’m needing to be.”

  “Very good, then. If you’d call round the station when you arrive.”

  “That I will. Amy?” Mick shouted toward the door. It opened so quickly she must have been listening outside. “The Inspector here needs a bit help.”

  “Half a tic,” Amy replied. The door shut.

  Mick replaced the receiver and heaved himself from the chair. He gathered up the map and the checkbook and put them in his rucksack. A hire car, he thought, not the train, so he could stop in at Carlisle … A woman in Glastonbury is dead. Dad’s in danger. Beyond that his usually fertile imagination withered.

  He retrieved the sgian dubh from the drawer. Traditionally a man thrust the small knife into the top of his sock when he wore the kilt. But this was one was round, not flattened to lie against the leg. No matter. Mick wasn’t going about his work in fancy dress. He slipped the knife into the inside pocket of his jacket. If this business concerned relics, then he had one to reckon with.

  In two long strides he was out the door.

  A purring cat just had to repel evil, Rose thought. This one even had a patch of white fur just below his chin, like a priest’s collar.

  A cool, crisp breeze rustled the glossy needles of the yew hedge at her back. A dove cooed … There it was, perched on the sagging, green-etched roof of the old church. Very old, judging by its narrow round-headed windows and massive walls of weathered stone.

  Sean’s voice came from the front of the house. If his arm on the back of Rose’s seat in the mini-van was any indication, he intended to take being the only guy in the group as far as it would go. Not that he was just a pretty face. He had a brain. The problem was, he knew he was a pretty face with a brain. He’d breathed, “And would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?” into her ear five minutes after the plane took off. What? Didn’t it occur to him she’d been hearing that one all her life?

  He’d made a big deal about his interview at the police station. He’d made a big deal about his knee operation while they were climbing the Tor, like they all hadn’t had to stop and rest. If he didn’t take the hint soon she’d tell him to his face. The group didn’t need to be tiptoeing around anybody’s libido.

  Although she’d rather have a romance than a mystery. A murder mystery. Finding the dead woman might be a story, but it wasn’t at all entertaining. She still felt cold and queasy. Maybe she should start wearing her mother’s miraculous medal of Mary instead of just keeping it in her billfold.

  But it wasn’t murder. Was it?

  An older man dressed in a sweater and jeans walked around the corner of the church. The wind ruffled his short dark hair, picking glints of silver from it. He called, “Good afternoon. I’m Thomas London. May I join you?”

  “Oh, hi! Please, sit down.”

  Sitting down, he offered his hand to the cat, who acknowledged him with a dignified sniff and a blink of his golden eyes.

  None of London’s books included his picture. Rose wondered just what she’d expected him to look like—the stereotypical professor, withered and wittering? This man was tall and broad-shouldered, with a strong, deep voice. His face was scholar-pale, though. And his smile was lean and angular, as though he’d gone so long without smiling he wasn’t sure how to do it.

  “I’m Rose Kildare,” she told him.

  “Rose Kildare,” he repeated, staring at her so intently she could see herself reflected not only in his glasses but in the ash-brown eyes beneath.

  Some days she hated the way people looked at her. Some days she was secretly pleased. Then there was today, when she knew her looks were only happenstance. “Rose is an old-fashioned name,” she told him, “but I like it. People don’t say ‘huh’ when they hear it, and you don’t hear it every five minutes.”

  “Rose is a lovely name.”

  “My sisters are named Faith and Grace, with our Irish Catholic heritage and everything.”

  London nodded. “St. Bridget of Kildare lived here at Beckery. In fact, the name might be from ‘Bec-Eriu,’ little Ireland. Or it may mean ‘Beekeeper’s Island,’ but, bees having been associated with virgin priestesses since time immemorial, that returns us to Bridget.”

  “I didn’t know that. But that’s why I’m here, flagrant curiosity. Is this your cat?”

  “He lives here, yes, but he possesses himself. His name is Dunstan.”

  “After St. Dunstan?” Rose counted down the points with her forefinger. “He was abbot of Glastonbury, archbishop of Canterbury, patron saint of goldsmiths, and drove the Devil away by pinching his nose.”

  “You’ve been swotting up, I see.”

  “I came on this seminar because I love history.”

  “How are you getting on, then, with your seminar?”

  “It’s going great. But I found a dead woman in the Abbey this morning.” She shook her head, but the image was caught like a thorn in her mind.

  “What?”

  Rose rushed through her summary, ending, “I feel like I should apologize to her, for seeing her like that.”

  His brows drew down. “Finding her was very difficult for you.”

  “Not as difficult as dying was for her. Unless she wanted to die. But we saw her in the ruins yesterday, alive and well. Maggie even heard her talking about having a good time. That’s how we know her name, Vivian. And now she’s gone.”

  “In what part of the ruins did you find her?” asked London.

  “The north transept. St. Thomas’s chapel.”

  “Ah.” He winced, although Rose couldn’t imagine why that part of the story was any worse than the rest. “Who’s been assigned to the case? Jivan Gupta?”

  “Yes. He’s good, isn’t he?”

  “The best. I’m sure he’s already asked you if you saw anyone else at the Abbey this morning.”

  “I caught a glimpse of a man with the str
angest eyes, like a cat’s when the lights hits them just right. Contacts, I guess.”

  “Did the man see you?”

  “Oh yeah, he saw me.” She couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice.

  London asked quietly, “And did you find your notebook?”

  “No. But it’s hardly important with somebody dead.”

  “We don’t always know what’s important, do we?” His voice had a rasp beneath it, like velvet lined with sandpaper. He was looking at her, but he was also seeing something a long way beyond her. “An innocent bystander could well find—herself—at risk.”

  “Maggie, our teacher, told me to watch my back.”

  “By all means. Choose your friends cautiously. Though I say it as shouldn’t, I suppose.”

  “That’s okay, you come with references.”

  His quick laugh had more irony in it than humor.

  “I came here to, well, witness everything I can,” Rose went on, “but I never intended to be a witness.”

  “One can most unexpectedly find oneself answering a call to witness truth,” said London.

  “I’d like to know the truth, and not just about Vivian. About everything. Theological. Intellectual. Romantic, in every possible sense. Beauty and magic and … But it’s like searching for the Holy Grail, you know? You look and you look but you don’t know if you’re good enough to find it. Not that I’d recognize it if I did.” She laughed, too, at her own pretensions.

  “The Holy Grail? Don’t be so sure you wouldn’t recognize it.”

  “Yo, Rose!” called Sean’s voice. “Food’s on the table!” He burst around the corner of the hedge and stopped.

  “This is Mr. London,” Rose explained, and gently dumped the cat, who sat down and began washing his face. “You know, Maggie told us about him.”