They didn’t get back to Peckham police station for another three hours. When they did though, Jerry found to his surprise that the Reverend Denis O’Sullivan was waiting for him. He was upstairs in their office, leafing through a copy of Police magazine.
‘I was passed the message that you wanted to speak to me about exorcism,’ he said, in a very precise Sligo accent. ‘I happened to be here in Peckham this afternoon visiting St Thomas’s, so I thought I’d call in. The young lady downstairs told me that you wouldn’t be too long.’
The Reverend O’Sullivan was deacon of the Church of Our Lady of Eternal Grief in Nunhead. Jerry had tried to contact him earlier because the diocese office had informed him that he was the only practising exorcist south of the river. He was short and balding with large ears and dramatically sprouting eyebrows. He wasn’t wearing a dog collar, but he was dressed all in black – black shirt, black suit and black overcoat, and there was a black bucket hat on the table next to him.
Jamila went off to the toilet to wash while Jerry said, ‘Do sit down, reverend. I appreciate your calling in. You haven’t been waiting too long, have you? I was planning on paying you a visit this evening as it was.’
‘No, no,’ said the Reverend O’Sullivan. ‘I’ve been here only twenty minutes, and I have all the time in the world.’
He sat down and laced his fingers together, leaning forward with a concerned expression on his face as if he expected Jerry to start confessing that he had committed adultery or stolen a six-pack of Stella from his local off-licence.
‘Sorry, I pen-and-ink a bit,’ said Jerry. ‘DS Patel and I have just been attending a rather tragic fire.’
‘A fire? Dear Heaven. Did somebody lose their life?’
‘It’s all part of the reason I wanted to talk to you, reverend. I don’t suppose you get many people contacting you about exorcisms, but I think you’ll understand when I’ve explained exactly why.’
‘Well, you may not credit it, but I’ve had four or five parishioners asking about exorcisms recently. More than usual. We live in such a Godless world these days that people believe that demons are running amok. And I think that too. Once you close the door on God, you open the door for the Devil.’
Jerry quickly gave the Reverend O’Sullivan all the historical background about the witch-woman and how William Trench had burned her and sealed her smoke in a coffin. He mentioned her apparent fear of dogs. Then he went on to tell him about the malformed children, the fatberg and the deaths of all the forensic officers in the sewer, as well as the mutilation of Martin Elliot and the skinning of Dr Macleod. The Reverend O’Sullivan listened with his eyes closed, although he nodded from time to time to indicate that he was concentrating, and not bored, or half asleep.
When Jerry had finished describing this afternoon’s fire at the Evelina Children’s Hospital, he crossed himself and opened his eyes.
‘You’re not making any of this up, are you?’ he asked.
‘No, reverend. I know it all sounds stark staring bonkers, but every word of it’s true. The only reason you haven’t read about it in the papers or seen it on the news is because we’ve imposed a very strict media embargo. I’m also going to ask you to sign a non-disclosure agreement before you leave here.’
‘I believe you,’ said the Reverend O’Sullivan. ‘I’ve read about this kind of thing in the books I studied for exorcism – aborted children being revived – although I’ve not heard about it being done recently. The thinking behind it was that they would resent God because they would feel that He had turned his back on them. They weren’t growing in His image, as all children are supposed to, and that is why they had been terminated. But if they could be brought back to life by satanic witchcraft, they would be so grateful that they would become the Devil’s willing servants.’
He paused, and then he said, ‘Tell me – did this William Trench happen to mention the witch-woman’s name?’
‘No, not as far as I know. Alan Pattinson only had the diary on loan. If he hasn’t returned it yet, I could give him a bell and ask him, but I didn’t see a name mentioned in any of the bits I read. He called her the “witch-woman”, that was all.’
‘It would be most helpful to know who she was, since you say that this William Trench believed her to be the most powerful witch that England has ever known. More than one witch claimed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that they were the most powerful, but women who were rash enough to profess that they were witches were usually mentally unstable, since the consequence usually was that they were burned at the stake or drowned in the village pond or stoned to death.’
At that moment, Jamila came back into the office, smelling of Titan Celeste perfume. Jerry knew what it was, because he had sent it to her on her last birthday, on the recommendation of another Pakistani woman officer.
‘The Reverend O’Sullivan says it would help him to find out the witch-woman’s name.’
‘But we don’t know it, do we? Have you told him everything else? About the keys with the demon’s sigils on them? About those ghosts we saw, at the hospital? About Martin Elliot being taken away and having his legs cut off?’
‘Everything.’
‘Did you tell him about the message that Martin Elliot wrote to us before he died?’
‘Oh, no. I forgot about that. But I don’t think that meant anything anyway. He wrote “cave” and then he wrote “friendship”. That was all. According to the doctor, he was really worried that he hadn’t told us before, but by then he wasn’t exactly the full shilling, if you know what I mean. Like I told you, he’d been blinded, as well as having his legs amputated.’
The Reverend O’Sullivan was staring at Jerry as if Jerry had just blasphemed.
‘He wrote “cave” and then “friendship”?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you know that when people are possessed by a demon or other malevolent being, they are unable to tell anybody else the name of that demon or other malevolent being? They are simply incapable of saying it.’
‘No, I didn’t know that. But I suppose if I was a demon I wouldn’t want anybody to know either, in case somebody like you came along and exorcised me.’
‘But did you know that in the few minutes before people die, they are returned to God, no matter what they have done, and in those few minutes, they can speak the name of the demon or the other malevolent being who possesses them, and in those few minutes, that demon or other malevolent being no longer has the power to keep them silent, or to punish them?’
‘I can’t say I knew that either, to be honest with you.’
‘What do you think this unfortunate man meant when he wrote “cave”?’
‘I guessed he was telling us that the children were hiding in a cave. As it turned out, it was an abandoned cesspit.’
‘“Cave” in Latin means “beware”. And if he was warning you to beware, I’m not at all surprised. Especially if “friendship” didn’t mean “friendship” in the sense of camaraderie. Friendship was the name of Adeliza Friendship, who is recorded in the Vatican library as having been the only mortal woman to have been mistress of Satan.’
Jerry and Jamila looked at each other, and then back to the Reverend O’Sullivan.
‘The mistress of Satan?’ said Jamila. ‘Surely Satan is imaginary. A theological concept. How can a woman be the mistress of a theological concept?’
‘You’re wrong,’ said the Reverend O’Sullivan, shaking his head emphatically. ‘It was Pope Francis who said that Satan is not a diffuse thing. “He is not like a mist,” that’s what Pope Francis said. “He is a person.” Look it up for yourself if you don’t believe me.’
‘So this Adeliza Friendship was Satan’s mistress. Is that why she was the most powerful witch that ever was?’
‘Exactly. Satan lavished everything on her. He gave her gifts beyond all imagination. The gift of prediction. The gift of lighting fires by spontaneous combustion, which you’ve witnessed for yourselves. The gift of healing the sick, because she could kill viruses, even before anybody knew that viruses existed. The gift of curing the mad, because she could shrink brain tumours, even before anybody knew about brain tumours. Above all, he gave her the power to raise the dead.’
‘That old man who kept following us around – he really could have been Malcolm Venables then?’
‘From what you’ve told me, it’s not only possible but highly likely. Adeliza Friendship would always have had a familiar. Not a black cat, like witches in storybooks, but a dead person she had resurrected. They would do all her dirty work for her… cleaning her house for her, running errands, spying on her enemies. They would be so grateful to her for bringing them back to life that they would do anything for her. They also knew that if they disobeyed her, they would be shut back up in their coffins before they could blink.’
‘And you really believe that this smoky figure could be her? Or some kind of ghost of her?’
‘You said that she was frightened by your dog. That helped to convince me. One of the better known stories about Adeliza Friendship is that she renewed the ancient pagan tradition of sacrificing dogs to cure children born with birth defects.’
‘They really used to do that?’
‘Oh, yes. Thousands of dogs were sacrificed in China and Greece and Hungary, right up until the twelfth century. But you can’t commit mass murder against a whole species without that species seeking revenge, as the priests of China and Greece and Hungary found out, to their cost. And Adeliza Friendship too. It was said that dogs would ruthlessly attack her wherever she went.’
Jamila said, ‘I’m not sure I can take this all in. She was actually Satan’s mistress? But doesn’t Satan have horns and a tail and live in Hell?’
‘Of course not. As Pope Francis said, he’s a person, a very evil person, in the sense that he has human shape. But he still has command of all the demons of Hell, and those demons can possess people so that they do Satan’s work for him. That’s why he wants to revive all those aborted foetuses… so that they will always be his children.’
‘I still can’t understand how it’s done,’ said Jamila. ‘I can understand the science of reviving people by CPR or electric shock. But those aborted foetuses… some of them were found back in their mother’s wombs, or in other women’s wombs.’
‘That’s right. If they had been aborted before they had developed enough to survive for any sustained period of time outside the womb, Adeliza Friendship would return them to the wombs of their original mothers or, if that was impracticable, to the womb of any other woman who could be used as a surrogate mother. Then again, if a foetus was capable of independent movement, it might seek out a surrogate mother by itself. Even from a distance, Adeliza Friendship would be able to invest it with the power to crawl, and to find what you might call a nest.’
‘Yes,’ said Jamila. ‘We have had several cases of that. Now they begin to make some sort of sense. Maybe “sense” is not the right word, but at least we can understand what’s been going on, and why.’
‘There’s a book in the Vatican library, Progeniem Nidosque Diaboli Est Scriptor,’ the Reverend O’Sullivan told her. ‘It literally means “The Devil’s Nestlings”, and it describes in full how aborted foetuses were revived and then inserted by so-called witches into the wombs of innocent women while they slept. Either that, or they crawled in by themselves. The practice of “airing” beds by throwing back the covers was not originally done to dry the sheets after a night’s sleep, but to make sure that there were no aborted foetuses lurking under the blankets. That was one of the reasons duvets became so popular… it was so much easier to check for some unwelcome visitor hiding in your bed.’
While he was talking, Jamila had switched on her computer and googled Adeliza Friendship. Apart from the text describing her as ‘the most notorious self-proclaimed witch of the nineteenth century’, there were several engravings. One was of Adeliza Friendship herself, staring directly at the viewer. She had huge eyes and high cheekbones and a sensual mouth, and her hair was elaborately pinned up in braids. Her left hand was lifted with her fingers parted in the sign of Satan.
Another picture – a crude woodcut – showed her dressed in a voluminous skirt and dancing with the Devil. Unlike the Devil that the Reverend O’Sullivan had described, this Devil had horns and a tail and cloven hoofs, and was carrying a trident.
Jerry studied the pictures and read the text. It made no mention of William Trench and how he had burned Adeliza Friendship. It said only that she had ‘disappeared’ one day in September 1859, and that nobody knew what had become of her.
‘She’s a looker though, isn’t she?’ said Jerry. ‘If I bumped into her in my local, I’d have a go at chatting her up, I can tell you.’
‘Even if she wasn’t made of smoke, Jerry, she’s already spoken for,’ said Jamila. Then she turned to the Reverend O’Sullivan. ‘Before she set fire to those poor children, reverend, she shouted out “Amulet!” or something like it. Do you have any idea what that could have meant?’
The Reverend O’Sullivan thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘It’s possible that she was calling on the demon Adramalech. In the Bible, it is mentioned that the Sepharvites used to make sacrifices to Adramalech by burning their children alive. So even though she killed them, what she did would have met with Satan’s approval.’
‘You know what we’re going to ask you, reverend, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. I can’t say that I’ve ever performed an exorcism on anybody who’s already been exorcised once before, and cremated, and who is nothing more substantial than smoke. She obviously has extraordinary powers, and I think I can say with some certainty that those powers come directly from Satan himself – her lover.’
He frowned at his bucket hat for a moment, as if he expected it to move, or to speak to him. ‘I’ve exorcised what I believe to be real demons before now. A secondary school teacher in Bermondsey was possessed by the demon Crocell, who had taken over her brain by the cunning use of numbers. I was able to dismiss him by decoding his numbers, almost like cleaning malware out of a hard drive.
‘I have to admit though, that I’ve never had to face Satan himself. It frightens me, to be truthful. Satan has a reputation for emptying the minds of anybody who tries to challenge him, so that they lose all of their memories, all of their emotions, all of their personality. They stay alive, but they might as well be dead.’
‘Will you do it though?’ asked Jamila.
The Reverend O’Sullivan looked at her and gave her a weary smile. ‘This is obviously what my whole life has been leading up to. This is why I was born and this is why I took the cloth and then went on to study exorcism. This is my date with destiny. You ask me if I’ll do it, but I have no choice.’
‘Don’t get too doomy about it,’ said Jerry. ‘We’ve got to find her first.’