Amongst Our Weapons

6 Spear

‘Or can you call something a cult when it’s a recognised part of the Catholic Church?’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘Actually, I’m not sure it was that well recognised – certainly I don’t ever remember anyone particularly churchy turning up. Not a dog collar in sight. I was nominally raised a Catholic, so the absence of official priests might have been part of the appeal.’

According to my therapist, attaching conditionals to your past is a classic distancing technique indicating an unwillingness to face your memories directly. Or, I pointed out, it could be a rhetorical device designed to add a humorous note to enliven a story. To which she said, ‘Or both.’ You can’t win with therapists, you know. And even if you do, they just tell you it’s part of the process.

Guleed showed Dame Jocasta a copy of the group photograph.

‘Oh my God, oh my God,’ she said, taking the picture from Guleed and holding it close to her face.

‘Just to clarify,’ said Guleed. ‘The woman on the left is you?’

‘Don’t I look young?’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘And the hair …’

‘Where was this taken?’ asked Guleed.

‘In Manchester,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘In Fallowfield. At a church hall near my digs – about 1989, judging by my clothes. I can’t believe I was such a frump.’

‘Were these your fellow cult members?’ I asked.

‘I suppose so,’ said Dame Jocasta.

‘Can you remember their names?’ asked Guleed.

‘Let me see,’ said Dame Jocasta, and she pointed at the only other woman. The same age as young Jocasta, but tall and thin with blonde hair cut into a Lady Di style. ‘That’s Jackie, who was so stuck-up you’d think she was related to the queen.’

She stabbed her finger at a young man with dark curly hair, thick eyebrows and a strong jaw. He was dressed in a denim jacket and loose jeans and leering at the camera as if daring it to make something of it.

‘That’s Alastair, the randiest man on earth. The girls used to call him the octopus.’ Dame Jocasta paused and, looking up from the picture, laughed. ‘If he’d been at university now, you lot would have had to arrest him. Terrible groper, although I heard he did reform.’

Since Guleed was a skipper and I was but a lowly constable, I was the one scribbling this down in my notebook. I’d just written Alastair – groper when I had a sudden cold sensation as if someone had opened a window. It was strong enough that I looked over at the windows, but they were all still closed.

I glanced over at Guleed, who gave me a slight head tilt to show she’d felt it, too. She flicked her eyes over at the entrance and I stowed my notepad and went to have a look.

‘So who’s this here?’ said Guleed behind me.

Another garden table facing the entrance served as a reception desk. As I passed it I caught flashes of hot sunlight, lemon-scented dust and what sounded like a choir singing something medieval and off-key in the next room.

The nervous young white man with floppy hair who served as receptionist gave me a worried look as if he sensed something, too. When the phone on his desk rang it took him a moment to remember it was his job to answer it.

All my mobiles and Airwave handsets are rigged to have a hard on/off switch. It’s a pain to get them retrofitted, but if there’s no power running through them, the chipsets don’t get damaged by nearby magic. I took a moment to thumb off my mobile before cautiously making my way to the entrance and out on to the landing. But I left my Airwave on, just in case and because it came out of the Folly’s budget, not mine.

Whoever had converted the warehouse into offices and flats had obviously done it back in the carefree sixties, when lifts were for wimps and people with disabilities hadn’t been invented. This explained the long steep staircase, minus handrails, stretching straight down to the double doors at the front. Halfway up, climbing the stairs towards me, was a small white woman in a grey zip-up hoody.

‘Lesley!’ I shouted, because she was about the right size and shape and you never know.

The woman looked up and her eyes literally flashed – a white light in both sockets like a pair of camera flashes. Bright enough to make me flinch but leaving, I noticed, no after-image. A magical effect, not a real one. The light faded to reveal brown, widely spaced eyes in a smooth tanned face with a straight nose and an oxbow mouth.

Lesley can change her face but this woman’s response was all wrong. She’d hesitated, and after the flashes the eyes looked puzzled – no hint of recognition at all. Not Lesley but, potentially, the person who had scooped the hearts out of two men’s chests.

‘Sahra!’ I shouted. ‘Code Zulu, IC1 female on the stairs. Bring in Falcon One. Call in Zulu One.’

Or translated, major Falcon threat on the stairs, looks like a white woman, get Nightingale quick. Since there was a good chance Dame Jocasta was the next target, Guleed would have to stay with her. So that just left me on the landing and little Ms Code Zulu on the stairs.

Policing dilemma. Do I let her come up and get closer to her potential target? Or do I go down the stairs and greatly increase the risk of both of us falling down and breaking our necks? I figured if she started coming up I could use impello to knock her feet backwards so she’d fall safely on her face. Then see if I couldn’t get a restraint in before she could recover. Impello, with its variants, was the second spell I’d ever learnt. So it’s something I can cast fast and accurately when I need to.

The woman gave a long-suffering sigh and, neatly solving my dilemma for me, turned and started walking back down the stairs. I started down after, keeping my distance and trying to not look like Scooby Doo sneaking after a ghost.

She paused at the bottom and turned to look back up at me when I was halfway down. I kept going but in as friendly and non-threatening a manner as I could.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t mind answering a few questions, would you?’

Her brow furrowed and she squinted at me for a moment and then she turned and went out the door.

I went down the remainder of the stairs three at a time, and just managed to avoid tripping and planting my face on the wall at the bottom. I yanked open the door, looked both ways and caught a flash of grey hoody heading north on the right-hand pavement. I went after her at a lope in the hope of closing the distance before she noticed me. But before I’d got a couple of metres she looked back, spotted me and took off in a sprint.

Running while yelling into your Airwave is a skill you pick up the first couple of weeks into your probation.

‘All units, all units, Falcon Two chasing suspect on Middlesex Street towards the market. IC1 female, slim build, grey hoody, blue jeans and white trainers. Possible Falcon – report only, do not approach. Repeat, do not approach.’

Once I’d got that out of the way I could concentrate on narrowing the gap. She was fit, but I was fitter and taller, and I was less than three metres behind her when she did an abrupt right turn into Wentworth Street. This is the street where Petticoat Market runs six days a week, and despite the rain it was choked with stalls and people out for a lunchtime shop.

As I rounded the corner she turned to face me and suddenly I heard the crash of cymbals and a brass note so deep it rattled my fillings. Around us there were yells and screams as stallholders and punters scattered.

I skidded to a halt like a cartoon character and showed my hands.

Her hood had fallen loose to reveal curly dark brown hair falling in ringlets to her shoulders, and behind her head blazed a circle of white fire. Light sprang from her back and spread like wings to either side. Where they brushed the tops of the stalls, the tarpaulin awnings snapped and rippled like flags in a gale.

In her right hand she brandished a spear of burning gold.

Fuck me, I thought, she’s the Angel of Death.

I lifted my hands to make sure she could see they were empty.

Her eyes were wary, her mouth a thin determined line.

The spear, I couldn’t help but notice, was pointing at my chest and I remembered the hole scooped out of David Moore’s chest, the shattered ribs pale amongst the glistening remains of his viscera.

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘My name’s Peter Grant – what’s yours?’

The angel’s expression didn’t change. No response – nothing.

But nothing is good when you’re a copper. Nothing means nobody’s getting stabbed or shot. Nothing means time is passing, and time is the police officer’s friend. Time for support to arrive, time for members of the public to clear the area, time for … whoever it might be … to sober up, come to their senses or realise that, really, he ain’t worth it, Tracy.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I asked, giving her my best reassuring smile. ‘Nice cup of tea? Coffee? Latte? Chai?’

The mouth lost a bit of its firmness and the eyes widened. The tip of the spear dipped, although that wasn’t as reassuring as it might have been, given it was now pointing below my belt buckle.

‘We can sit down,’ I said. ‘Sort things out. I’ll even throw in a croissant.’

The eyes snapped up to meet mine and the spear came up again – obviously she didn’t care for a continental breakfast.

‘Full English?’ I offered, but even as I said it I was lining up the formae for my shield.

She lunged, spear darting, the wing-like sheets of flame sweeping forwards. I jumped back and got my shield going – angling it so any trouble would be deflected into the air.

The world in front of me went white, the cymbals crashed again, and when the light was gone so was the angel.

I ran forwards but there was no sign of her.

Bollocks, I thought.

Guleed arrived beside me with her extendable baton ready and held, sword-like, in an overarm position that she definitely didn’t learn on an officer safety course.

‘What the fuck was that?’ she said.

‘That was an alien, bruv,’ I said. ‘Believe it.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Guleed. ‘Looked more like an angel to me.’

We even had CCTV of the incident from a camera that was outside the area of immediate magical effect, and thus still had its chips in one piece. In it you can just make out, in the middle distance, me and the angel facing off. Just for once, it was a modern camera with enough resolution to get a clear image of her face.

What it didn’t show were the fiery wings and the halo. That some magical phenomena that seem visible to the naked eye don’t register either on chemical film or a photosensor array is something we’ve known for some time. Our current theory – that is, mine and my cousin Abigail’s – is that no photons are being emitted or bouncing off the ghost, or the unicorn or the burning spear of a vengeful angel. What we think we see is, in fact, our brain’s interpretation of input from different senses – the one with which we ‘sense’ vestigia and ghosts, et cetera. We’ve even run up a tentative experimental protocol and one day, when we have time, we might even get to carry it out.

Dr Jennifer Vaughan thinks this is bollocks. If it was merely our individual interpretation of magical sensory input, she reasons, why is there such a strong correspondence between separate witnesses? Answer that or get the next round in.

And it’s true. There were a dozen witnesses to my confrontation with the angel and all but two of them agreed about the wings and the halo. Although one of them thought there was a tail as well, and another was adamant that there were no wings but was sure she had a whip.

The uniformity itself was suspicious – usually you canvas three witnesses and get five versions.

Fortunately for my finances, Jennifer doesn’t have an explanation for why the wings didn’t show on the camera footage, and so we had to pay for our drinks separately like normal civilised people.

Except for Beverley, of course, who never has to pay for her drinks – not even when it’s a Sprite.

All that came later.

‘An angel?’ said Nightingale after he’d arrived on scene.

‘Wings, halo, burning spear,’ I said. ‘All she was missing was a chariot of fire.’

‘And you think it was truly a messenger of God?’ he asked.

‘An angel wouldn’t have run away,’ said Guleed, with the conviction of someone who actually paid attention during Saturday School at her mosque and had taken a GCSE in Religious Education to boot.

‘Whatever it was,’ said Nightingale, ‘it seems from your account both powerful and capable. And I’m worried by this apparent ability to disappear. I’ve never heard of anything that could do that – not even during the war.’

‘Do you think it’s teleporting from place to place?’ asked Guleed. ‘Like in Star Trek.’

‘It could have been a trick,’ I said, ‘but it would explain how she got into the Silver Vaults to kill David Moore.’

This possibility was why we were having our little strategy meeting on the landing outside Dame Jocasta’s office while her underlings stole glances at us and occasionally offered us decaffeinated fair-trade macchiatos.

‘We need to finish the interview,’ Guleed had said, ‘before anything else happens.’

‘And ask whether she has a ring,’ I said.

Because to my mind it was obvious David Moore thought, at least, that the ring would protect him.

‘Are you talking about this?’ asked Dame Jocasta when we resumed the interview. She held up her left hand to display the silver band on her ring finger. ‘What’s so interesting about it?’

I wasn’t about to say it was enchanted, so I explained that the theft of a similar ring may have had a connection to Preston Carmichael’s suspicious death.

‘We’d like to rule out that line of inquiry.’

Getting it off Dame Jocasta’s finger involved removing three other rings – including one carved out of black shale that she admitted was literally an archaeological find – and, finally, Vaseline. When I held out my hand, she hesitated.

‘You will give it back?’ she said.

I assured her I would and she deposited it in my hand.

Nightingale had been right – it was too heavy to be silver and was definitely enchanted. As I opened it up it took the form of an astrolabe. I smelt lemon-scented dust and heard, as if a distant call to prayer, a lamentation in a foreign tongue. This time I got a greater sense of age, and over that a sharp crimson tinge like drops of blood in clear water. I put it down on the back of my notebook and took some pictures with my phone.

‘For comparison purposes,’ I told Dame Jocasta when she got restless.

When I was finished she didn’t snatch it out of my hand – but only, I got the impression, through an act of will. She pushed it back on her ring finger, wincing as it went over the knuckle.

‘I don’t dare have it adjusted,’ she said. ‘In case they break it.’

Guleed switched the focus back to the photograph. Dame Jocasta identified David Moore, but only knew his first name. She did know the surname of the last figure in the picture – Andrew Carpenter. Short, plump, with straight black hair cut into an untidy fringe, black-framed NHS specs and a surprisingly engaging smile. He was wearing a quilted blue bomber jacket over a white shirt with big lapels. Flares would have fitted that ensemble but the picture cut off at his knees. To me. for some reason, he looked out of place amongst the others but I couldn’t work out why. Certainly it was all very eighties.

‘I don’t remember very much about him – except his name, of course,’ said Dame Jocasta.

‘Why his surname in particular?’ asked Guleed.

‘Carpenter?’ said Dame Jocasta – as if the answer was obvious. Obviously me and Guleed looked blank because she said, slowly, ‘As was Jesus’s father – a carpenter, I mean.’

‘Got it,’ I said.

‘Who took the photograph?’ asked Guleed.

Dame Jocasta hesitated, her brow furrowed in memory.

‘It must have been Brian Packard,’ she said. ‘He sent me an eCard from America a couple of Christmases ago. I didn’t reply, though – I try not to look backwards.’

‘Did you keep the email?’ asked Guleed.

‘No, of course not,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘I deleted it at once. One must otherwise one drown in long-lost acquaintances.’

Guleed gave her a bland smile.

‘Tell me about the cult,’ I said.

‘We were charismatics,’ she said.

Which, it turned out, meant that they believed that the Holy Spirit imparted special gifts, called charism, to believers in order to build up the Church and, by building up the Church, improve the lot of all humanity.

‘What kind of gifts?’ I asked.

‘There were lots,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘I doubt I can remember them all. Let me see …’ She tilted her head to stare up at the ceiling. ‘There were gifts of grace … prophecy, speaking in tongues – which is not what you think it is.’

‘No?’ I asked.

‘It’s not babbling and making random noises,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘It’s about being able to preach the word of God beyond the constraints of your own tongue.’

‘The better to spread the word,’ said Guleed.

‘Precisely,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘Then there were the gifts of service, which I seem to remember were all about being able to discern God’s wisdom or something. You’re probably going to have to ask somebody else about them.’

I was thinking Professor Harold Postmartin – this seemed his sort of thing.

Then there were the gifts of work – which was the good stuff. Miracles, healing and the faith needed to recognise these things as God’s works.

‘Wouldn’t want the credit to go somewhere else, would we?’ said Dame Jocasta.

‘Did you receive any of these gifts?’ asked Guleed.

‘No,’ said Dame Jocasta, but there was an edge in the way she said it. ‘I was far too lazy to do God’s work on earth. Barely managed my coursework as it was.’

‘So how did you come to join this cult?’ I asked, and Dame Jocasta winced.

‘You shouldn’t call it a cult,’ she said. ‘I know, I know, I started it, but it wasn’t a cult, not really. There’s a difference between being enthusiastic in how you express your spirituality and a …’ She groped for a definition but didn’t find one she liked. ‘A cult,’ she concluded.

‘So when did you join this group of like-minded religious enthusiasts?’ I asked.

Dame Jocasta gave me a long look and then smiled.

‘I’ll bet you’re a hoot down the station, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘I met Preston after Mass in Manchester.’ She could remember the date because it was All Saint’s Day, 1 November 1988. ‘He was handing out leaflets,’ she said. ‘He looked at me and said, “I’ll bet you can’t be bothered to believe in anything.” And before I could think of anything to say he said, “If you turn up I’ll stand you a pint.” So I took the leaflet. Don’t laugh, I was a student – a free drink was not to be sneezed at.’

She shook her head.

‘Mind you, I had no intention of going,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t be bothered not to.’

It had started much like she’d expected. They sat around in a circle of chairs in a community hall and talked about Jesus. When we asked if she could remember who had been at that first meeting, she named the subjects in the photograph but admitted that there had been a couple more whose names she couldn’t remember.

‘But I don’t think they came back,’ she said.

Which was strange, because Preston Carmichael was very compelling.

‘One of those quiet preachers,’ she said. ‘None of that gesticulating and yelling nonsense. He spoke softly, but with this huge weight behind his words, as if God himself was sitting behind him with his hand on his shoulder. It was irresistible.’

And what he talked about was the power of the Holy Spirit, and how many Christians had tried to push that aspect of God into the background. Preston believed that by embracing the Holy Spirit as fervently as they embraced God and Christ their saviour, Christians could not only strengthen their faith but also get cool superpowers.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘He actually said “cool superpowers”?’

‘Like Superman,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘He actually said that – “God wants you to be a superhero for Jesus.”’

‘Was he serious?’ asked Guleed.

‘No,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘Not serious serious. He was making a point with a kind of knowing wink behind it. But he was serious about his faith and the power that faith brings.’

‘So did you get any superpowers?’ I asked.

Dame Jocasta hesitated, glanced out of the window and then back at me.

‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘But it did renew my faith in God and my Church.’

There hadn’t been any mention of religion in our background report – all her charitable foundations and organisational affiliations had been defiantly secular. If she went to church, it didn’t appear in any of her PR.

‘So you’re still a practising Catholic?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I don’t need to practise any more,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘I’ve got that good at it.’

‘So how long were you with the group?’ asked Guleed.

‘Not that long,’ said Dame Jocasta. ‘Until Easter the next year – 1989 that would have been, I think.’

‘Why did you leave?’

Again the hesitation – this time Dame Jocasta frowned down at the rough blue wood of her trestle table desk and idly rubbed the surface with her fingertips.

‘I suppose I drifted away,’ she said without looking up. ‘Besides, I felt it was time to concentrate on my studies.’

‘So there wasn’t a particular incident that decided you?’ asked Guleed.

‘Like what?’ asked Dame Jocasta, sharper than I think she meant to.

‘We’re trying to establish whether you’re at risk,’ said Guleed.

‘Am I at risk?’ asked Dame Jocasta.

‘We think you might be,’ said Guleed.

‘Should I be worried about my safety?’ asked Dame Jocasta.

I thought of the angel and its spear of burning gold.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You never went to university, did you?’ said Guleed as we walked down the long stairway to the entrance. Nightingale was waiting at the bottom. She didn’t wait for me to answer.

‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘it’s like school – you make friends there that you keep for ages and even if you never see them again you remember their names.’

‘Maybe she’s crap at names,’ I said.

‘And that was not the only thing she was keeping back,’ she said.

‘Something definitely happened at her not-really-a-cult,’ I said.

‘We need to TIE the rest of them,’ said Guleed.

As we reached the tiny hall at the bottom, Nightingale held up his hand to halt us.

‘Just a moment,’ he said, and then, louder to someone on the other side of the closed door, ‘Have you finished, Allison?’

‘All done,’ said a muffled voice on the other side.

‘Splendid,’ said Nightingale and, opening the door with a flourish, said, ‘Observe.’

Scratched into the paint on the outside of the door was a series of horizontal, diagonal and vertical lines. Despite being obviously fresh, I could still see curls of paint on some of the edges. They were faint enough that me and Guleed had walked right past them. In our defence, we’d been more worried about securing Dame Jocasta.

It was the same design we’d found on David Moore’s front door and it hadn’t been there when we’d first arrived – that much was certain.