paper. It was, oddly, his CV. His PhD was in psychology, but his master’s was in theology. His first degree divinity. Billy pushed his glasses on and scanned the publications list, the Positions Currently Held.
“You’re an editor of The Journal of Fundamentalism Studies?” Billy said. This was a test.
Baron said, “The FSRC is the Fundamentalist and Sect-Related Crime Unit.”
Billy stared at him, at Vardy, at the CV again. “You are a profiler,” he said. “You’re a cult profiler.”
Vardy even smiled.
“THERE’S …” BARON COUNTED ON HIS FINGERS. “AUM SHINRIKYO … The Returner Sect … Church of Christ Hunter … Kratosians, close to home some of them … Do you have any idea the increase in cult-related violence in the last ten years? Of course you don’t, because unless it’s, boo, Al Qaeda and the Al-Qaedalinos, it doesn’t come close to the news. But they’re the least of our worries. And part of the reason you haven’t heard about this is because we are good at our job. We’ve been keeping the streets safe.
“That’s why you were encouraged to keep shtum. But you told someone something. Which A, you should not have done, and B, is not unimpressive. Collingswood’s going to have to ask you again, a bit harder.
“It’s not as if we’re exactly secret,” he said. “It’s not so much ‘plausible denial’—that’s not the best strategy these days. It’s more ‘plausibly uninteresting.’ Everyone’ll be like, ‘FSRC? Why on earth you asking about them? Silly nonsense, bit of an embarrassment …’” He smiled. “You get the idea.”
Billy could hear officers in the corridors outside. Phones were ringing.
“So,” said Billy at last. “So you’re cult people. So what’s this got to do with that poor sod in the basement? And what’s it got to do with me?”
Vardy brought up a video file on his laptop and placed it where all three men could watch. An office, a tidy desk, books on the walls, a printer and PC. There was Vardy, sitting three-quarters toward the camera, another man with his back to the lens. All that could be seen of him was slicked-back thinning hair and a grey jacket. The colours were not very good.
“… so.” Billy heard the hidden-faced man say. “I done a stint with that bunch in Epping, bog-standard manickies they are I think, balance balance balance not very interesting, I wouldn’t waste your time.”
“What about this?” said video-Vardy, and held out what Billy could see was the symbol he himself had drawn.
The obscured man leaned in. “Oh right,” he said. He spoke in a breathless conspiratorial drone. “The tooths, the toothies,” he said. “Yeah no I don’t know,” he said. “The toothies they’re new I think I hen’t seen them much except they been drawing that leaving it about. A sign a sign. You been to Camden? Saw it and I thought I’ll have some of that but they’re odd ones, they sort of wave hello but then you can’t find much of them. So. Are they secret?”
“Are they?” said video-Vardy.
“Well you tell me you tell me. I can’t get to them and you know me so it’s, you know it’s tantalising is what it is.”
“Tenets?”
“Got me. What I hear,” the man made gossip-talk movements with his fingers, “all I can tell you is they talk about the dark, the rise, the you know the reaching out. They love that the outreaching, hafay …”
“What?”
“Hafay hafay, where’s your Greek professor? Alpha phi eta, hafe, hapsis if you like, touchy touchy, that’s what they say—it’s a haptic story, this one.”
Vardy froze the picture. “He’s sort of a freelance research assistant. A fan. He’s a collector.”
“Of what?” Billy said.
“Religions. Cults.”
“How the hell do you collect a cult?”
“By joining it.”
OUTSIDE THE WINDOW WERE THE WIND-BOISTEROUS LIMBS OF trees. The room felt very close. Billy looked away from the light outside.
The man on-screen was not the only one, Vardy said. A small obsessive tribe. Heresy geeks, going sect to sect, accumulating creeds as greedy as any Renfields. Soldiers of the Saviour Worm one week, Opus Dei or the Bobo Dreds the next, with genius for devotion and sudden brief bursts of sincerity sufficient to be welcomed as neophytes. Some were always cynically in it for the notch on the bedpost, others Damascene certain for two or three days that this one was different, until they remembered their own natures and excommunicated themselves with indulgent chuckles.
They gathered to compare gnoses, in Edgware Road cafés over sheesha or pubs in Primrose Hill or somewhere called Almagan Yard,