Rob stared at the email. The racist filth was almost concussive in its psychosis. It was dizzyingly insane. Yet there might be clues in it.
He reread it twice. Then he picked up the phone and called Detective Forrester.
DCI Forrester was on the phone, arranging a meeting with Janice Edwards; he wanted to ask her opinion on the Cloncurry case, because she was an expert in evolutionary psychology: she had written dense but well-received books on the subject.
The therapist’s secretary was evasive. She told him that Janice was very busy and that the only time she could spare in the coming week was tomorrow, when she was at the Royal College of Surgeons, for the monthly meetings of the College Trust.
‘So. That’s fine. I’ll meet her there then?’
The secretary sighed. ‘I’ll make a note’
The next morning Forrester caught the Tube to Holborn, and waited in the pillared hallway of the Royal College until Janice arrived to guide him into the large, shiny, steel-and-glass museum of the college as being a ‘good place to talk’.
The museum was impressive. A maze of enormous glass shelves, arrayed with jars and specimens.
‘This is called the Crystal Gallery,’ said Janice, gesturing at the glittering racks of dissections. ‘It was refurbished a couple of years ago: we’re very proud of it. Cost millions.’
Forrester nodded politely.
‘Here’s one of my favourite exhibits,’ said his doctor. ‘See. The preserved throat of a suicide. This man slashed his own throat-you can actually see the explosion in the flesh. Hunter was a brilliant dissector.’ She smiled at Forrester. ‘Now. What were you saying, Mark?’
‘Do you think there can be a gene for murder?’
She shook her head. ‘Nope.’
‘Not at all?’
‘Not one gene, no. But perhaps a gene cluster. Yes. I don’t see why that is impossible. But we can’t know for sure. This is still a fledgling science.’
‘Right.’
‘We’ve only just begun to crack genetics. For instance: have you ever noticed how gayness and high intelligence are interlinked?’
‘They are?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘Gay people have an IQ about ten points higher than average. There is clearly some genetic element at play here. A gene cluster. But we are not remotely sure of the mechanics.’
Forrester nodded. He glanced at some animal
specimens. A jar containing a hagfish. The pale grey stomach of a swan.
Janice Edwards went on, ‘As for the heritability of homicidality, well…it depends how these genes interact. With each other and the environment. Someone who had the trait might still live a perfectly normal life, if their urges weren’t catalysed or provoked in some way.’
‘But…’ Forester was confused. ‘You do think murderousness could be inherited?’
‘Let’s take musical ability. That seems to be partially heritable. Consider the Bach family-brilliant composers over several generations. Of course environment played a part but genes must surely be involved. So, if something as complex as musical composition is heritable then, yes, why not a fairly primal urge like murder?’
‘And what about human sacrifice? Could you inherit a desire to commit human sacrifice?’
She frowned. ‘Not sure about that. Rather a bizarre concept. What’s the background?’
Forrester recounted the story of the Cloncurrys. An aristocratic family with a history of martial values, some of whom took their aggression to lurid lengths approaching human sacrifice. And now they had begat Jamie Cloncurry: a murderer who sacrificed without apology or rationale. Even more bizarrely, the family appeared to be attracted to sites of human sacrifice: they lived near the biggest sacrificial deathpit in France and the Great War battlefields blooded by their appalling forefather, General Cloncurry.
Janice nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Interesting. I suppose murderers often return to the scene of the crime, don’t they?’ She shrugged: ‘But that is rather odd. Why live there? Near the battlefields? Could be coincidence. Maybe they are in some way honouring their ancestors. You’d need to ask an anthropologist about that.’
She walked on down the Crystal Gallery. Two girls were sitting cross-legged on the floor with sketch pads on their laps and little tins of paint at the side. Student artists, Forrester surmised. One of the girls was Chinese-she was squinting with great concentration, at five eerily preserved foetuses: deformed human quintuplets.
Janice Edwards turned to Forrester: ‘What it sounds like to me, actually, is an inherited and homicidal psychosis that possibly presents as sacrifice in certain situations.’
‘Which means?’
‘I think a psychosis that predisposed you to extreme violence could be inherited. How might such a trait survive, in Darwinian terms? Generally in history, a tendency towards outrageous violence might not always be a bad thing: for instance, if the bloodlust and brutality was channelled, it might be adaptive.’
‘How?’
‘If, for instance, there was a military tradition in the family. The most violent offspring could be sent straight into the army, where their aggressions and bloodlust would prove an asset.’
They walked on, past the students. Further along the gallery was another array of tiny foetuses showing the development of the embryo from four weeks to nine months. They were remarkably well preserved, floating in their space of clear liquid like tiny aliens in zero gravity. Their expressions were human from an early stage: grimacing and shouting. Silently.
Forrester coughed, and looked at his notebook. ’So, Janice, if these guys carried these genes for murder and sadism, they might have been disguised until now? Because of, say, Britain’s imperialist history? All the wars we’ve fought?’
‘Very possibly. But these days such a trait would be problematic. Intense aggression has no outlet in an era of smoking bans and smart bombs. We often kill by proxy if we kill at all. And now we have young Jamie Cloncurry, who is maybe what we call a “genetic celebrity”. He carries the sadistic genes of his forefathers but in the most outrageous way. What can he do with his talents? Apart from murder? I see his dilemma, if that doesn’t sound callous.’
Forrester stared at half a pickled human brain. It looked like a withered old cauliflower. He read the accompanying sign. The brain belonged to Charles Babbage, ‘inventor of the computer’.
‘What about a propensity for sacrifice then? Are you sure you couldn’t, you know, inherit that, as a trait?’
‘Maybe in historic times this gene cluster might
have led you to commit human sacrifice, in a religious society already structured for such acts.’
Forrester pondered this for a moment. Then he retrieved a slip of paper from his pocket: a printout of the email that had been sent to Rob Luttrell. He showed it to Janice, who scanned it very quickly.
‘Anti-Semitism. Yes, yes. This sort of thing is a fairly common symptom of psychosis. Especially if the victim is very bright. The dimmer kind of psychotics just think aliens are living in the toaster, but a clever man, going mad, will perceive more intriguing patterns and conspiracies. And antisemitism is a pretty regular feature. Remember the mathematician, John Nash?’
‘The guy in that film?
A Beautiful Mind?
‘One of the greatest mathematical thinkers of his time. Won the Nobel I believe. He was totally schizophrenic in his twenties and thirties, and he was obsessively anti-Semitic. Thought the Jews were everywhere, taking over the world. High intelligence is no defence against dangerous lunacy. The average IQ of Nazi leaders was about 138. Very high.’
Forrester took the sheaf of paper and folded it back into his pocket. He had one last question. A very long shot. He gave it a try. ‘Maybe you could help with one last thing. When we found that poor guy De Savary he had written a word, a single word on the front page of a book. The paper was soaked with flecks of aspirated blood.’
‘Sorry?’
‘He was writing with his mouth. The pen was in his mouth, and he was coughing blood as he wrote.’
The doctor grimaced, ‘That’s horrible.’
Forrester nodded, ‘Not surprisingly, the writing is barely legible.’
‘OK…’
‘But the word seems to be “Undish”.’
‘Undish?’
‘Undish.’
‘I have absolutely no idea what that means.’
The DCI sighed, ‘I did a search on it, and there is a Polish death metal band called Undish.’
‘Right. Well…there’s your answer no? Aren’t these satanic cults often influenced by this awful music? Goth metal or whatever?’
‘Yes,’ Forrester agreed. Janice was heading for the exit, past ancient dark planks, smeared with dissected veins. He followed, adding, ‘But why would someone like De Savary know about a death metal band? And why tell us about them anyway? If he had one last word to write, when he was in massive pain, why write
that?
’
Dr Edwards checked her watch ‘Sorry, I have to go. We have another meeting.’ She smiled. ‘If you like we can have a proper session next week: call my secretary.’
Forrester made his farewells and walked down the stairs, past its plinths and pedestals, and the sombre unsmiling busts of famous medical men.
Then he strode, with a certain relief, into the sunny streets of Bloomsbury. His conversation with Janice had given him some intriguing ideas. He wanted to sort through them. Right now. The phrase his doctor had used:
honouring their ancestors,
had set him thinking. Hard. It chimed with something in Rob Luttrell’s report in
The Times.
Something about ancestors. And where you chose to live.
He strode to Holborn station, hummed impatiently on the Tube train, barrelled his way through the crowded shopping streets of Victoria. When he reached Scotland Yard he sprinted up the stairs and slammed into his office. He would have knocked over the photo of his dead daughter if it hadn’t already have been laid face down on the desk.
Straight away he booted up his computer and Googled ‘ancestors buried house’.
He found it. Bang to rights. His prize. What he wanted; what he remembered being mentioned in
The Times
article.
Cayonu and Catalhoyuk. Two ancient Turkish sites, near the temple of Gobekli Tepe.
The crucial aspect of these sites, for Forrester, was what had happened beneath the houses and buildings. Because the inhabitants had buried the human bones of their sacrificial victims in the floors beneath their homes. Consequently, these people lived and worked and slept and fucked and ate and talked right above their own victims. And
this, it seemed, would go on for centuries: new layers of human bones and corpses, then another floor, then more bones. Living above the sacrificial victims of your ancestors. In the Skull Chamber.
He took a victorious glug of water from an Evian bottle. Why would you want to live near or even above your own victims? Why did so many killers want to do this? He stared out of the window at the sunny London sky and considered the curious echo in so many modern murder cases. Like Fred West in England, burying his murdered daughters in the backyard. Or John Wayne Gacy in Indiana, who buried dozens of the boys he killed, right under his own house. Whenever you got a mass murder the first place you looked for bodies was in the murderer’s house or under his floorboards. It was standard police procedure. Because murderers so often hid their victims nearby.
Forrester had never properly considered this phenomenon in the round before: but now that he did he was struck by the strangeness of it. There was obviously a deep, maybe subconscious urge-to live near or above your dead victims, an urge that had been arguably present in humanity ten thousand years back. And maybe that was what the Cloncurrys were doing. Living above the bodies of their own victims: all those soldiers killed by the Butcher of Albert.
Yes.
He swallowed another mouthful of lukewarm
Evian. What about the death-pit? Maybe the Cloncurry family fancied some affinity with those victims, too: after all, the victims in the Ribemont death-pit were Celtic. Gaulish warriors…
Forrester sat straight. Something was tugging at his thoughts like a loose nail pulling a thread. Unravelling a pullover. Celtic. Celts. Celts? Where did the Cloncurrys come from originally? He decided to search under ‘Cloncurry ancestors’.
Within barely two minutes he found it. The Cloncurry family were descended, by marriage, from an old Irish family. But not just any old Irish family. Their forefathers were…the Whaleys.
The Cloncurrys were descended from Buck and Burnchapel Whaley, from the founders of the Irish Hellfire Club!
He beamed at the screen. He was on a roll, on a high. He felt he could crack the whole thing. He was hitting the sweet spot. Knocking every ball for six. He could solve the damn thing now. Here and now. Right here-at his desk.
So where could the gang be? Where could they be hiding? For a long time he and Boijer and the rest of the squad had presumed the gang was slipping in and out of Britain, going to Italy, or France. On a private plane, or maybe by boat. But maybe he and Boijer were looking in the wrong place. Just because certain gang members were Italian or French didn’t mean they were going to France or Italy. They might be in another country: but they could be in the one country you didn’t need
a passport to get to when you left Britain. Forrester looked up. Boijer was coming through the door.
‘My Finnish friend!’
‘Sir?’
‘I think I know.’
‘What?’
‘Where they are hiding, Boijer. I think I know where they are hiding.’
Rob sat in his flat and watched the video obsessively. Cloncurry had sent it three days before, in an email.
The video showed his daughter and Christine in a nondescript little room. Lizzie’s mouth was gagged, as was Christine’s. They were tied, firmly and lavishly, to wooden chairs.
And that’s all it showed of them. They were in clean clothes. They didn’t look injured. But the tight leather gags around their mouths and the terror welling in their eyes made the video almost unwatchable, for Rob.
So he watched it every ten or fifteen minutes. He watched it and watched it, and then he wandered around his flat, in his underwear, unshaven, unshowered, in a daze of despair. He felt like a deranged old saint in the Desert of Anguish. He tried to eat some toast and then gave up. He hadn’t eaten a proper meal in a long time. Apart from the breakfast his ex-wife had cooked him a few days back.
He’d been over to Sally’s to discuss their daughter’s fate and Sally had, in her generous way, made him bacon and eggs, and for the first time in ages Rob had felt hungry and he had got halfway through the meal but then Sally had started crying. So Rob had stood up and comforted her with a hug: but that just made it worse: she had shoved him away and said it was all his fault and she yelled and cried and slapped him. And Rob had just stood there as she slapped him and then thumped him in the stomach, flailing. He took the blows, placidly, because he felt she was right. She was
right
to be angry. He had brought this terrible situation upon them. His ceaseless pursuit of the story, his selfish desire for journalistic fame, his mindless denial of the increasing danger. The mere fact he wasn’t in the country to protect Lizzie. All of it.
The drenching guilt and the self-hatred Rob felt at that moment felt almost good. A least it was real: a genuine, searing emotion. Something to pierce the oddly numb despair he felt so much of the time.
His only other lifeline to sanity was the phone. Rob spent hours gazing morosely at it, willing it to ring. And the phone did ring, many times. Sometimes he got calls from friends, sometimes from colleagues at work, sometimes from Isobel in Turkey. The callers were all trying to help, but Rob was impatient-for the one communication he wanted: the call from the police.
He already knew they had a promising lead: Forrester had rang four days back saying they now reckoned the gang was possibly somewhere around Montpelier House, south of Dublin. The home of the Irish Hellfire Club. The detective had explained Scotland Yard’s route to this conclusion: how the killers were surely moving in and out of the country, because of their ability to totally disappear, yet they weren’t being traced by Customs and passport checks. That meant they must be escaping to the one foreign country for which you didn’t need passport checks-when leaving the UK.
They must have driven or flown to Ireland.
All that was very plausible. But Forrester had felt it necessary, when talking to Rob, to add some strange supporting theory-about buried victims and the Ribemont death-pit and Catalhoyuk and a murderer called Gacy, and the fact that Cloncurry would choose somewhere near his ancestors’ victims…And Rob had switched off at that point.
He was far from convinced that Forrester was right with these psychological speculations. It just seemed to be a hunch and Rob didn’t trust hunches. He didn’t trust anyone. He didn’t trust himself. The only thing he could trust was the sincerity of his own self-loathing, and the fierceness of his anguish.
That night he went to bed and slept for three hours. He dreamed of a crucified animal, screaming on a cross, a pig or a dog maybe. When
he woke it was dawn. The image of the nailed animal persisted in his mind. He took some Valium. When he woke again it was noon. His mobile phone was ringing.
Ringing!
He ran to the table and picked up.
‘Hello? Hello.’
‘Rob.’
It was…Isobel. Rob felt his mood dive precipitously; he liked and admired Isobel, he craved her wisdom and succour, but right now he just wanted to hear from the police, the police, the police.
‘Isobel…’
‘No news then?’
He exhaled. ‘Not since last time, no. Nothing. Just…just these fucking emails. From Cloncurry. The videos…’
‘Robert, I’m sorry. I’m
so
sorry. But…’ She paused. Rob could picture her in her gracious wooden house, staring at the blue Turkish sea. The mental image was piercing, reminding Rob of how he and Christine had fallen in love. There, under the Marmara stars.
‘Robert, I have an idea.’
‘Uhn.’
‘About the Black Book.’
‘OK…’ He could barely muster any interest.
Isobel was not dissuaded. ‘Listen, Rob. The Book. That’s what these bastards are looking for, right? The Black Book? They are absolutely desperate. And you’ve told them you can find it,
or you’ve found it, or whatever, to keep them going…Correct?’
‘Yes, but…Isobel we
haven’t
got it. We have no idea where it is.’
‘But that’s it! Imagine if we do find it. If we do locate the Black Book then we’ve got some real leverage over them, haven’t we? We can…swap…negotiate…you see my meaning?’
Rob assented gruffly. He wanted to be energized and excited by this phone call. But he felt so tired.
Isobel talked on. As she did, Rob wandered barefoot through the flat, cradling the phone under his chin. Then he sat at his desk and gazed at the shining laptop. There was no email from Cloncurry. No new email, at least.
Isobel was still talking; Rob tried to focus. ‘Isobel, I’m not with you. Sorry. Say again?’
‘Of course…’
She sighed. ‘Let me explain. I think they-the gang-might be barking up the wrong tree.
Vis à vis
the book.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve been doing some research. We know, at one point, the gang were interested in Layard. The Assyriologist, who met the Yezidi. Correct?’
A dim memory wafted across Rob’s distractions. ’The break-in, at the school, you mean?’
‘Yes.’ Isobel’s voice was crisp now. ‘Austen Henry Layard, who instigated the Nineveh Porch. At Canford School. He is famous for meeting the Yezidi. In 1847.’
‘OK…we know that…’
‘But the truth is he met them twice! He met them again in 1850.’
‘Rrright…so…’
‘It’s all in this book I’ve got-I’ve only just remembered. Here.
The Conquest of Assyria.
Here’s what it says: Layard went to Lalesh in 1847. As we know. Then he returned to Constantinople and there he met the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte.’
‘Sublime…’
‘Porte. The Ottoman Empire. The ambassador was called Sir Stratford Canning. And that’s when it all changes. Two years later, Layard goes back to the Yezidi again-and this time is met with inexplicable triumph, and he finds all the antiquities that made him famous. And all this is true. It’s in the history books. So you see…?’
Rob forced the image of his daughter from his mind. The leather gags…’Actually, no, I haven’t the foggiest what you’re on about.’
‘OK, Rob, I’m sorry. I’ll get right to the point. On his first expedition Layard went to Lalesh. My guess is that when he was there he was told by the Yezidi about the Black Book, how it had been taken from them by an Englishman, Jerusalem Whaley Layard was the first Brit the Yezidi had met, probably the first westerner-since Whaley’s visit-so it makes perfect sense. They must have told him they wanted the Book returned.’
‘Mmmmaybe…’
‘So, Layard then goes to Constantinople and tells the ambassador, Canning, about his findings. We certainly know they met. And we also know Sir Stratford Canning was Anglo-Irish, of the Protestant ascendancy.’
Rob dimly discerned, at last, where this might be going. ‘Canning was Irish?’
‘Yes! The Anglo-Irish aristocracy. A tiny coterie. People like Whaley and Lord Saint Leger. The Hellfires. They are all related.’
‘Well yes, that’s curious. I s’pose. But how does it all fit in?’
‘Around the same time, rumours were flying around Ireland, about a certain Edward Hincks.’
‘Sorry? Right over my head.’
‘Hincks was an obscure Irish parson from Cork. Who single-handedly managed to decipher cuneiform! All this is true, Rob. Google it. This is one of the great mysteries of Assyriology. The whole of educated Europe was trying to decipher cuneiform, then this rural Irish vicar beats them to it.’ Isobel was rushing her words in her enthusiasm. ’So let’s put two and two together. How did Hincks suddenly decipher cuneiform? He was an obscure Protestant cleric from the middle of nowhere. The bogs of Eire.’
‘You think he found the Book?’
‘I think Hincks found the Black Book. The book was almost certainly written in cuneiform-so Hincks must have somehow found it, in Ireland, and translated it, and deciphered cuneiform, and
realized he’d found the Whaley treasure. The famous text of the Yezidi, once owned by the Hellfires. Maybe he tried to keep it secret-only a few Protestant Irish toffs would have known what Hincks had found, people already aware of the Whaley story, and the Irish Hellfires, in the first place.’
‘You mean Irish aristos. People like…
Canning?
Isobel almost yelped. ‘That’s it, Rob. Sir Stratford Canning was hugely important in Anglo-Irish circles. Like many of his type he was no doubt ashamed of the Hellfire past. So when he heard that Whaley’s book had been found Canning had the perfect idea to solve all their problems. They wanted rid of the Book. And he knew that Layard needed the Book to give to the Yezidi. And Hincks had just found the Book.’
‘So the Black Book was sent back to Constantinople…’
‘And then finally it was returned to the Yezidi…via Austen Layard!’
The phone went silent. Rob pondered the concept. He tried not to think about his daughter. ‘Well. It’s a theory…’
‘It’s more than a theory, Rob. Listen to this!’ Rob could hear the pages of a book being flipped. ’Here.
Listen.
Here’s the actual account of Layard’s second visit to the Yezidi. “When it was rumoured among the Yezidi that Layard was back in Constantinople, it was decided to send four Yezidi priests and a chief”-and they went all the way to Constantinople.’
‘So—’
‘There’s more. After some “secret negotiations” with Layard and Canning in the Ottoman capital, Layard and the Yezidi then headed east into Kurdistan, back to the lands of the Yezidi.’ Isobel drew breath, then quoted directly: ‘“The journey from Lake Van to Mosul became a triumphal procession…Warm feelings of gratitude poured over Layard. It was to him the Yezidi had turned and he had proven worthy of their confidence.” After that the group made their way through the Yezidi villages, to Urfa, accompanied by “hundreds of singing and shouting people”.’
Rob could sense Isobel’s excitement, but he couldn’t share it. Staring glumly at the cloudy London sky he said, ‘OK. I get it. You could be right. The Black Book is therefore in Kurdistan. Somewhere. Not Britain, not Ireland. It was returned by Layard after all. The gang are wrong. Sure.’
‘Of course, darling,’ Isobel said. ‘But it’s not just in Kurdistan, it’s in
Urfa.
You see? The book says Urfa. Lalesh is of course the sacred capital of the Yezidi. But the ancient administrative capital, the political capital, is Urfa. The Book is in Sanliurfa! Hidden away somewhere. So Layard took it there, to the Yezidi. And in return the Yezidi told him where to find the great antiquities, the obelisk of Nineveh, and so on. And Canning and Layard got the fame they wanted. It all fits!’
Rob’s mouth was dry. He felt a surge of sarcastic
despair. ‘OK. That’s great, Izzy. It’s possible. But how the hell do we get hold of it? How? The Yezidi just tried to kill us. Sanliurfa is a place where we are not wanted. You suggest we just march back in and demand they hand over their sacred text? Anything else we should do while we’re at it? Walk across Lake Van perhaps?’
‘I’m not talking about you,’ Isobel sighed, firmly. ’I mean me. This gives
me
a chance! I have friends in Urfa. And if I can get to the Black Book first-even just borrow it for a few hours, just make a copy-then we have something on Cloncurry. We can exchange our knowledge for Lizzie and Christine. And I really do know Yezidi people. I believe I can find it. Find the Book.’
‘Isobel—’
‘You can’t dissuade me! I’m going to Sanliurfa, Rob. I’m going to find the Book for you. Christine is my friend. And your daughter feels like my daughter. I want to help. I can do it. Trust me.’
‘But, Isobel, it’s dangerous. It’s a wild theory. And the Yezidi I met certainly thought the Book was still in Britain. What’s that about? And then there’s Kiribali—’
The older woman chuckled. ‘Kiribali doesn’t know
me.
And anyway I’m sixty-eight. If I get beheaded by some psychotic Nestorians so be it, I won’t have to worry about a new prescription for my spectacles. But I think I’ll be all right, Rob. I already have an idea where the Book might be. And I’m flying to Urfa tonight.’
Rob demurred. The hope Isobel offered was faint, very faint, yet it also appealed to him-perhaps because he had no other real hopes. And he also knew Isobel was risking her life, whatever the outcome. ‘Thank you, Isobel. Thank you. Whatever happens. Thank you for this.’
‘
De nada.
We’re going to save those girls, Rob. I will see you soon. All three of you!’
Rob sat back and rubbed his eyes. Then he went out for the afternoon, and drank alone in a pub. Then he came back, for a few minutes, and couldn’t bear the silence so he returned to the streets and carried on drinking. He went from pub to pub, drinking slowly and alone, staring at his mobile every five minutes. He did the same the next day. And the next. Sally rang five times. His friends from
The Times
rang. Steve rang. Sally rang. The police didn’t ring.
And through it all Isobel called, almost every other hour, giving him her progress in Urfa. She said she felt she was ‘close to the truth, close to the Book’. She said some of the Yezidi denied they had the Book, yet some thought she was right, that the Book had been returned, but they didn’t know where it was kept. ‘I’m close, Rob,’ she said. ’I’m very close.’
Rob could hear the sound of the muezzin in the background of this last call, behind Isobel’s earnestly encouraging voice. It was a strangely horrible feeling, hearing the hubbub of Sanliurfa. If he’d never gone there in the first place none of
this would have happened. He never wanted to think about Kurdistan ever again.