Cat would later remember the increasing heat (she had her back to the fireplace), her mounting thirst (she gladly accepted more and more of the orange soda pop) and the troubling stench (which she was convinced didn’t emanate exclusively from the cats). The ritual itself, as Agnes had predicted, proved more subdued – at least initially – than she expected.
A flat white box was placed in the middle of the table and the Great Sheldrake, sitting at nine o’clock, deftly extracted a large deck, thatched on the back like playing cards. For a moment Cat wondered if he was going to deal a hand.
‘Are we ready to begin?’ he asked, in a most theatrical tone.
When everyone nodded he gave a lupine smile and peeled off the first card, holding it in front of his eyes for a few pointed seconds before proceeding.
‘You are walking through the woods with your dog,’ he intoned. ‘The dog stops to dig behind a tree. You try hauling the hound away, but in so doing notice that it has unearthed an old suitcase. Intrigued, you open the case and discover gold pieces, cut diamonds and thick wads of cash.’
The Great Sheldrake now looked around the table, not even reading from the card – he seemed to have committed the remainder to memory.
‘Do you (a) put the suitcase back in the ground and kick dirt over it; (b) take the suitcase to the police and hope for a reward; or (c) spirit the suitcase home and keep the riches for yourself?’
Cat almost laughed at the banality: it sounded like the old board game Scruples.
‘Alice?’ the Great Sheldrake asked the old crone to his right.
‘I’d take the money for myself, of course,’ said the Irish-accented Alice. ‘If it’s buried in the woods there’s some criminal act involved, surely, and you can’t steal from a thief.’
The Great Sheldrake smiled indulgently and turned to the lady at seven o’clock. ‘Petra?’
‘I concur,’ the grey-haired Slovakian replied.
‘George?’
The Cornishman at six o’clock chuckled. ‘No need for debate. The system is as crooked as the Mafia in most parts of the world, so handing the case over to the authorities would only see the treasure disappear into the vortex of corruption. Under the circumstances, you’d be daft not to take the money for yourself.’
The Great Sheldrake’s smile looked painted on.
‘Johannes?’
‘The guilt reflex is an artificial construct for remotely controlling the masses,’ said the well-spoken Austrian. ‘And a central tenet of Satanism is to liberate us from such mind-shackles. Only a fool would hand over a windfall or put it back in the ground for someone else to discover.’
And on it went, anti-clockwise around the table, everyone agreeing that the only proper response was to take the money and make the most of it. Some of the answers were as clipped as Petra’s; others seemed too eloquent not to have been rehearsed.
But Cat herself was rarely one to compromise her opinions for social harmony. Her conviction, borne from experience, that the world is a whole lot more complex than people generally care to admit, was a cornerstone of her personal philosophy. So by the time the question had reached Agnes at one o’clock – ‘If you’d seen my bank balance, you’d know this was a no-brainer for me’ – she had resolved to unleash her full argumentative self.
‘Look, I don’t want to come across as difficult,’ she said, when her turn came, ‘but I really have to take issue with the imprecise nature of the question. Because in circumstances like this there are always lots of possibilities to take into consideration. Maybe, for instance, the woods where the suitcase is buried is a known hiding spot for criminal gangs. Maybe that’d make you less inclined to get involved, or maybe it’d make it easier for you to take the money. Maybe there’ve been a series of home burglaries in the area, making you suspect that the riches are not stolen at all, just hidden by someone who doesn’t want to keep them under the floorboards. Maybe the police are in league with criminal gangs, as someone else suggested, but maybe you know at least one policeman you can trust completely. And in all cases you have to think about your own financial state at the time. Because – if you have enough to live comfortably, with no pressing debts, no family obligations, no desperate need for cash – then the satisfaction you’d get from turning the suitcase over would surely outweigh the risks you’d take in smuggling the thing home. Remembering, too, that riches don’t always buy happiness. A cliché, sure, but no less true for all that.’
Cat heard her own voice echoing around the chamber.
‘So, I really don’t think there’s any easy answer,’ she went on. ‘Nothing that wouldn’t be glib, anyway. The truth is, I don’t know if I’d take that money, or hand it over, or put it back in the ground. It’d depend on my bank balance, my sense of well-being, and my familiarity with the neighbourhood. But I’m not trying to be difficult or evasive either. So, considering I’m new to Scotland, I’d have to say I’d rub my fingerprints from the case, kick dirt back over it, then inform the cops that my dog had dug up something unusual in the woods. In that way I could keep myself out of trouble while still leaving open the possibility that I’d get a reward if the police proved as honest as I hope they are in this country.’
The comprehensive nature of the response surprised even Cat herself. But such things, as a fraud investigator steeped in the study of ethics, came so naturally to her that she could not resist.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Hope that doesn’t make me sound like a jerk?’
No one laughed. No one sneered. No one coughed. But everyone was still smiling. Looking at her serenely, with an air of rapt approval.
It was the Great Sheldrake who ruptured the silence. ‘Not at all, Catriona. That was most enlightening.’
‘Well done,’ whispered Agnes, nudging her under the table.
There were further, ambiguous responses – Cat wasn’t really concentrating – and then the Great Sheldrake laid the first card down and plucked another one from the deck. Cat meanwhile looked around, seeing four or five figures – Maggie Balfour, Absalón Salazar and some of the other witches – watching her from the side of the room. All of them seemed to be grinning approvingly as well.
‘Second dilemma,’ Sheldrake announced, milking the suspense again. ‘The person you most desire ends up marrying someone else, a person for whom you have a very little regard. One weekend, while staying with the couple at their summer retreat, the two of them have a spiteful argument and the partner – the one you dislike – storms off. Shortly afterwards, over intimate drinks, the one you most desire invites you to bed for the evening. Do you (a) refuse outright; (b) suggest that you might be interested at a later date; or (c) fulfil your life’s desires?’
Sheldrake rotated to eight o’clock. ‘Alice?’
The old crone cackled. ‘Well, I hope I don’t sound glib,’ she said, with a good-natured glance at Cat, ‘but I reckon I’d be up for some slap and tickle. Can’t see any reason to be holding back at my age, assuming anyone’d want me.’
In normal circumstances this might have occasioned some mirth, but again no one laughed. Not even a polite chuckle. It was almost as though everyone was too nervous – or too well-rehearsed – to respond with any sort of spontaneity.
‘I concur,’ agreed Petra (who Cat was beginning to suspect was less than fluent in English).
George the Cornishman: ‘In a heartbeat. Life is too short – far too short – to be hamstrung by bourgeois morality. I can’t see any reason why a person shouldn’t enjoy the pleasures of the flesh in those circumstances. This is supposed to be the twenty-first century.’
Johannes the eloquent Austrian: ‘This is one of the central tenets of Satanism. The Satanic Bible is very clear on the matter. One must be free to satisfy one’s sexual needs with whomever one chooses, as long, of course, as there’s mutual consent. In this instance two grown adults have a desire to engage in sexual intercourse. The circumstances are irrelevant. Neither of these people is motivated by anything they should be ashamed of. And there’s genuine affection, not just sexual attraction, involved. In fact, what would be unnatural, what would be cruel, would be if the two people restrained themselves – surrendered to outdated inhibitions – and denied each other an innocent evening of physical pleasure.’
Around the clockface it went for the second time, with mutual agreement all the way to Agnes at one o’clock. ‘Is this a serious question?’ she asked with a guffaw. ‘You know me – I’m the Seven Deadly Sins in one package. So I’d be in, hammer and tongs, of course I would. Even if the one who walked out was my best friend. Especially if it was my best friend.’
But at midnight Cat was ready to pounce again
‘I’m sorry,’ she said with another apologetic chuckle, ‘but again I have an issue with the original question. Because this isn’t something you can predict without knowing all the facts. You say the partner I’m not supposed to like – the wife, in my case – storms off, and it’s implied that she’s being unreasonable . . . but can that really be assumed? What if the husband has been intolerably rude? What if he’s a terrible womaniser? What if the wife has good reason to be angry? Not to mention all the other considerations. What if the couple has kids, for instance? What if the husband has a habit of bragging about his sexual conquests? Do we know, for that matter, that the wife, having stormed out in a huff, wouldn’t return just as impulsively? I mean, would it really be without consequence to go to bed with the husband under those circumstances? An hour or two of fun might lead to a lifetime of complications. But – let me be clear – that’s not to say I’d rule it out. Not at all. Because what if, hypothetically, I happen to know that the wife, on top of being an unpleasant woman, has been having affairs behind her husband’s back? What if the heated argument is about just that – her infidelity? What if the marriage has long been a farce, it’s been crumbling for years, and for me this is a chance to convince the husband that he made a terrible mistake in not marrying me in the first place? The bottom line is, this isn’t an open and shut case of free love versus sexual guilt. Not at all. Impulse control is essential to emotional maturity, but we’re all prone to lapses under pressure, and the sexual urge is one that generates an unusually large number of regrets. So in all honesty it’s impossible to predict how anyone would respond within the confines of this dilemma. I sure can’t say how I would. I’d need to be there, and juggle all the variables, in order to make a calculated decision before jumping right in. Or not, as the case may be. I’m sorry I can’t give you a straight answer, but that’s the way I see it.’
Cat looked around the table and found everyone beaming at her again. They appeared positively enthralled. Even one of the cats miaowed. And the Great Sheldrake made a flourishing gesture with his hand, like a courtier before the Queen.
‘Another splendid answer, Catriona. You really are something to behold.’
Cat again gathered that she was meant to be pleased with herself. But she wasn’t pleased with herself. She was only impatient.
Then came the third, considerably darker dilemma.
‘You’re working for a secret government agency,’ read the Great Sheldrake, ‘when you uncover evidence of a terrorist plot to assassinate a leading political figure whom you despise. Do you (a) inform your supervisors in order to prevent the politician’s murder; (b) let others find the information for themselves; or (c) actively bury the evidence?’
Of those sitting between eight and one o’clock Johannes the Austrian was again the most well-spoken: ‘This illustrates a central tenet of Satanism – that the power of God, the right to kill, should be delegated to the common man. Now, if everyone had a right to kill then there would be barbarism, that’s true, but that right is currently exercised freely by those on the highest rungs of power, and very often such people only reach those positions through psychotic levels of deceit and narcissism. So if a Satanist is given the opportunity to participate in the assassination of a man he or she judges to be a menace to society – simply by burying the evidence – then it’s one’s duty to do so, without guilt or second thoughts. Not burying the evidence, in most cases, would be an act of irresponsibility.’
At twelve o’clock Cat was wondering if this was all an oblique reference to her own desire, privately shared with Agnes, to eliminate the guy upstairs – the very reason she was here. So she forced herself into another challenging response.
‘This sounds like the Hitler dilemma,’ she said. ‘Would you assassinate Hitler in the 1930s and prevent the Second World War? The answer is yes, of course you would. And if you had nothing to do with the actual assassination, well, so much the better. But is it really as simple as that? I mean, who are the people – these so-called terrorists – arranging the assassination? Members of some ethnic minority? Wouldn’t then the assassination only empower the tyrant’s cause? Turn a maniac into a martyr? Make things even worse than they are? Because there’s now proof that a minority is acting against the nation’s will? Besides,’ she said, ‘is there any real evidence that Hitler’s replacement – Himmler, say – is any less of a psychopath? Or that a war would be prevented? Who can say? I mean, you can’t really judge these things unless you’re immersed daily in the detail and fully aware of all the variables. In light of that, I can understand how someone might pass the information on to her superiors or pretend not to see it at all. Suffice to say the devil is always in the details.’
It wasn’t intended as a joke and Cat, when she realised what she’d said, blinked self-consciously. She wouldn’t have blamed the Satanists if they were offended; if they decided to give up on the game entirely. Part of her wished that they would. But the people around the table – and those off to the side – didn’t look remotely upset. They were still wearing their wax-museum smiles. Their adoring eyes. Their tense postures.
‘Can I take my jacket off?’ she asked. ‘It’s hotter than . . . than Florida in here.’
‘Of course, dear.’ Maggie sprang to attention. ‘I’ll pour you another Irn-Bru!’
‘Thanks,’ said Cat, wriggling her arms out of the sleeves just as the Great Sheldrake reached for another card.
‘So there’s to be more of these questions?’ she asked, annoyed.
‘Oh yes,’ said Sheldrake. ‘The devil, as you say, is always in the details.’
And then things started to turn really dark.