by Tom Knox
‘You spoke to them?’
‘Just one. I only heard the one man talk. He had an American accent.’
A heartbeat of a silence. Adam leaned close. ‘Did the American have tattoos?’
‘I can’t properly recall. Yes, perhaps. Why do you ask?’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Nina hurried on. ‘What else did they say?’
‘Well. This is the sinister bit, this is the element that perhaps you ought to, ah, be aware of. When I said they were on my land, they didn’t bat an eye. Instead they asked about your father, very aggressively. Did I know him? Archibald McLintock? What did I know of him? What were his reasons for visiting Penhill?’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘Nothing! Of course I asked them to get off my land in short order. Lucky I had Alaric with me, big boxer, big three-year-old bitch. So they sauntered to the car, and that was that, really. I watched them drive away. Most peculiar. As I say. I called your father to tell him, naturally – but he seemed … rather unsurprised. Perhaps alarmed, but unsurprised.’ Surtees sighed. ‘That was the very last time we spoke. So. There it is. Not sure if it is relevant. I am afraid I have to go in a minute, it’s already dark out there.’
Their drinks were finished. The conversation was finished. Surtees stood, solemnly shook them by the hand, gave his sympathies once more and exited into the dark and the cold.
All the other drinkers had left. It was just Nina and Adam in the bar, and a Christmas tree, fairylights frantically flickering, on and off.
A secret that will get you killed.
Nina was furiously texting something into her phone, her dark head bowed. A sudden, troubling notion unbalanced Adam. ‘Nina, have you been updating the Facebook page? And tweeting?’
She looked up. ‘Sorry?’
‘Are you still updating? Telling everyone where we are and what we’re doing?’
Her eyes expressed innocence, then anxiety.
‘Yes. Of course. But—?’
‘The whole world could be reading,’ Adam hissed. ‘Anyone at all. We need to get going. Right now.’
22
The American Christian Hospital, Trujillo, Peru
Dr Andrew Laraway, silver-haired, brisk and archly Bostonian, gazed sympathetically at Jessica.
‘You have no evidence of mercury poisoning, Miss Silverton.’
Jessica knew this. She’d always known this. Before she even got here she’d known this. But she just wanted to be here. To have a reason, however feeble and phoney, to escape from Zana. But she could not escape her fears, even as she ignored them. She had been pestering Laraway to explain her symptoms, even as she wanted to deny them.
‘I understand, Dr Laraway. I’m sorry for wasting your time. Asking all these questions.’
‘You’re not, Jessica, not at all …’ He hesitated, for a moment. ‘But I must ask – why did you come all the way here? I imagine you are aware that cinnabar is inert. After so long.’
‘Yes. I am.’
‘So what is it, Jessica? The mild diabetes we discussed when you were last here?’
‘No. Yes. No.’
An awkward silence intervened. The doctor sighed, delicately, and looked at her. ‘Can I ask you some personal questions, Jessica?’
‘Yes …’
‘You seem to suffer – and this is not meant to be insulting – a notable concern for your health, almost an obsession?’ He sat back, tutted at himself. ‘No, that’s not the mot juste. My sincere apologies. You are not hypochondriac, you are clearly very intelligent, determined, hard-working, even bold. Quite admirable. And yet … there is a hypersensitivity and a gentle neuroticism. Therefore, and before we go on, I’d like to know more about you and your life.’
This was strange, and a little unnerving. She said, ‘All right.’
‘Let’s start with your life now, your profession? How are things professionally? Is there anything in your career that has troubled you?’
Jessica knew she needed to talk about everything that was happening at Zana. But she didn’t want to. So she diverted, as always. ‘My last job was in Calcutta.’ She tried to seek Laraway’s eyes, like a truthful person. ‘That was tough. The anthropology of poverty.’
‘Please explain?’
‘We had to work with … these children, infants even. We had to research these poor kids that actually live under the platform at the railway station. This big British imperial railway station, you know. These street kids live there in utter poverty. They were attacked, molested, abused. I met one boy …’ Jess shook her head. She was being candid now. This memory was brutal. ‘He used to sleep under the platform, with a razor blade under his tongue. He showed me how to do it.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The razor was to ward off attackers: men, abusers. He was eight years old.’
Laraway sighed. ‘The world is too much with us. That’s awful.’
‘But, actually, you know, it wasn’t entirely bleak. There were people helping them, charities. Some of the stories were inspiring. Kids coming from nothing, from this dire poverty, and remaking themselves. The human spirit is really there, everywhere, indomitable. In Calcutta. India. It’s the best and the worst of places.’
The doctor leaned forward. ‘But what about Peru, Jessica? You never talk about what you are doing here.’
Jess didn’t really want to talk about Peru. But maybe, she thought, maybe she needed to talk about it. Maybe the perceptive Dr Laraway was just doing his job, and doing it well, and she needed to be honest.
‘There is something.’ Jessica inhaled, profoundly, as if she was on the stage of the Met and about to sing an aria: and maybe she was.
It took her ten minutes, fifteen, then twenty. But she told him everything. The Moche, the Muchika, the Museo Casinelli, the amputations, the intruder at Zana. Slowly and eloquently she recited the entire and recent demonology of her work in Zana.
At the end, for perhaps the only time in their acquaintanceship, Dr Laraway was entirely silenced.
It took him a long time to respond. ‘My God, that is quite a narrative. That is indubitably extreme. Anyone would be unsettled by such a sequence of events. Really. Astonishing. And very perturbing. I have never heard of the Moche. And this man McLintock. Goodness.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you believe the intrusion was linked to that awful explosion last month, here in Trujillo? The Texaco garage?’
‘Possibly.’
‘What do the police say?’
‘Not much, they’re looking into it. I reckon they think it is a bit far-fetched. Why should anyone be intent on destroying archaeological knowledge? It is bizarre.’
Another silent hiatus. The manioc trucks were hooting in the streets below. Now Laraway swivelled in his chair, and tried a new tack.
‘Very well, then. Now let’s talk about your background. I know some of it, but not all. Your father … ah … died of cancer.’
Jess felt her throat close against the words. This subject. This subject. ‘When I was seven. Yes.’
‘Your mother is still alive?’
‘She lives in Redondo, LA.’
Laraway nodded. Then he picked up, and put down, a pen. ‘You were witness to your father’s decline? I do not wish to sound glib or presumptuous. And I am not a psychologist. However, you must have been quite traumatized?’
Jess tried not to blink too fast. To give anything away. She wanted the Sechura sea fog to slide in through the windows and fill the room and wreath her, wrap her with phantasmic shrouds, hide her away from this.
‘I guess I was … Yep. Yes, of course it did. I was very young. My brother was much older. He took it better. Losing a father that young, like I did, I must, it must always affect a child.’
‘Especially a daughter, vis-à-vis the father.’ Andrew Laraway smiled, distantly. ‘I do understand. My own father lost his father when he was just nine. I believe it affected him all his life. When you lose a parent at an untim
ely age, it is fundamentally destabilizing, you forever have the sensation that even the world beneath your feet cannot be relied upon. My father used to compare it to living in an earthquake zone, the Pacific rim of the emotions. Like here in Peru!’ He leaned forward, spoke more quietly. ‘Could you describe your father’s symptoms? As much as you remember them? I know it might be hard but it would be beneficial.’
Jessica felt the sick dread of something hideous approaching. Faltering, she gave her answer. For several minutes she recalled, as best she could, her father’s trembling; perhaps a fit; his anger and fear; his terrible decline at the end.
‘I was seven, like I say. Maybe I’ve blocked some of it out, maybe I am totally wrong.’
The next silence was the worst of all.
‘No. I don’t think you are wrong, Miss Silverton.’ Suddenly Andrew Laraway’s expression had gone from avuncular concern to something much, much darker. He cleared his throat. ‘Jessica. This is very difficult to say. I want you to prepare yourself.’
The panic was rising in her throat.
Laraway spoke very softly, his words like a soothing prayer in a silent chapel. ‘I wouldn’t normally do this but you have been demanding answers, any answers—’
‘Go on!’
‘Well. Here it is. The symptoms you describe in your father don’t sound like any cancer I know. They sound like Huntington’s Disease. And that is …’ He took a deep breath, and continued. ‘That is a very evil way to die. It begins, innocently enough, with a slight loss of coordination, maybe an unsteady gait, and … fine trembling in the hands. As the disease advances, the body movements become repetitive and jerky: spasticated; this is accompanied by wasting of the muscles, heart decay, and many other symptoms. Violent episodes, terrible depressions. Then comes the terrible darkness of pure dementia.’ Laraway’s gaze was unblinking. ‘There is, of course, no cure. Moreover, Huntington’s Disease is genetic. Many people who might have inherited the disease actively refuse a genetic test to see whether they are carriers. Why? Because it is incurable – therefore they don’t want to know. Likewise, some parents keep the knowledge of the disease from their children, so their lives won’t be blighted by the fear. As the poet said, “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof”.’
The panic in Jessica’s throat had been replaced by an icy cold. She was swallowing coldness. ‘You think I am a carrier?’
His smile was bleak, yet empathetic. ‘There are certain early indications. You have some symptoms which are otherwise rather contrary. The only way we can know for sure is if you have a genetic test. But that … well that is something many people resist.’
Her heart was pounding now.
‘Do I have all the symptoms?’
‘One of the crucial early presentations is epileptic fits, that’s a clinching diagnostic sign. The beginning of the real decline. You’ve not had any of those?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then we do not know. As I say, only a genetic test can tell us.’ He stood. ‘I am so very sorry. One is never sure whether to impart a frightening and potentially false diagnosis like this … However, you seemed distressed and confused, and very much wanting to know. And now it is up to you to decide. You might also consider calling your mother, and asking for the truth.’
He was reaching out a hand. After delivering this possible death sentence, he was just reaching out a hand.
Jessica stood, and shook his hand.
‘Jess, you must call me any time you like, you must feel free to come here whenever.’
‘Thank you.’
She walked to the door, looking at her feet as she did so. Was she stumbling? She was not stumbling. She was dazed, that was all.
At the door she turned; she had to ask one more question. ‘Dr Laraway, if you were me, would you have the test?’
His smile was sadly sincere. ‘I really don’t know, Jessica, I really don’t know. And that’s the truth.’
Closing the door behind her, she walked past the receptionist and took the elevator to the ground floor.
Outside, the thrumming, grimy, fervent and slummy city seemed the same as ever. Bewilderingly normal and scruffy; and yet everything had changed. Jessica stared at her cellphone. She could maybe call her mother right now and get the truth: did her father have that disease? Had she been lied to, to protect her from the fear? If they had lied to her, the lie was no longer working: she had the fear. She was too scared to even call.
Instead, and for a reason she could not fathom in herself, Jessica took a taxi from the centre of town to the Texaco garage, and the Museo Casinelli. Or where they used to be.
Climbing out of the taxi, she stared. She was glad she had come here. The charred and ruined buildings were a fittingly melancholy sight: a temporary wooden fence had been erected around the shell of the building, but it was rickety and already broken. She could see, through the gaps, the black spars of burned concrete, the spoil heaps of ash and dust.
At first she tried not to think of poor Pablo, down there, consumed in the fire. But she couldn’t resist: maybe she wanted to think of him. Maybe that was a good way to go. Burned to death, a few minutes of pain. Better than months and years of decline and terror, then madness and agony.
Jessica felt sick, right down to her lungs, sick and somehow guilty. Maybe she had brought this on herself. Perhaps she had dug up something horrible, an ancient evil, the god of death and killing.
She had woken the sleeping gods of the Moche, and now they would not be dismissed.
23
Highgate, London
The angel was sleeping and quiet.
Ibsen gazed, perplexed, at the marble angel lying on the marble grave. It was an odd concept, even in a graveyard sculpture. Did Victorians actually believe that angels slept? Or maybe it was dead? Could angels die?
‘Mark?’
‘Sorry.’ He wiped the last crumbs of all-day-breakfast sandwich from his lips, with a Prêt A Manger napkin. ‘Just thinking, love. Sorry.’
His wife Jenny smoothed her nurse’s uniform; she had a small tray of takeaway salad on her knees. ‘You know I’ve only got thirty minutes.’
‘For lunch?’
‘We’re busy, Mark! Short-staffed in Maternity, there are a couple of girls with flu …’
‘The bloody Whittington Hospital is always bloody busy.’ Ibsen tutted. ‘They work you too bloody hard. You’re too bloody good for this job. You’ve got a bloody first-class degree. Bloody hell.’
‘But I enjoy it.’ She laughed. Dropping her plastic fork in her plastic tray, she stroked him under his chin and gently kissed his cheek, then murmured, slyly, yet shyly, ‘Besides, Detective Chief Inspector. You always told me you liked the uniform.’
As ever, his younger wife’s solicitations melted Ibsen, inside him, somewhere very important. For a second they sat together, staring silently across the mossed old statuary of the empty cemetery, at the stooped and wintry willows that loomed over eighteenth-century tombs, like tall but servile chamberlains admiring a royal baby in a crib.
Mark and Jenny occasionally came here to eat lunch, whenever Ibsen was free and in north London, near Jenny’s workplace. It was more for her than for him. DCI Ibsen always found Highgate Cemetery unsettling even as his wife found it obscurely soothing.
Today, on a cold December afternoon, the ancient graveyard was at its most melancholy, but at least it suited their subject. Suicide.
‘How come you suddenly have all day, anyway?’
‘We’re waiting on a lead, been waiting for two days. I thought I’d take a break and see my lovely, overworked wife.’
‘A lead? You mean you got something from that poor, poor girl? Imogen … Fitzsomething?’
‘Yes.’
‘But Mark, I thought she died.’
‘She did, Jen. The blood loss was horrific, stage 4 hypovolemia – a coma – she drifted in and out but the haemorrhaging was too profuse.’
‘So?’
‘She wrot
e an address, when she was lucid, she wrote down an address for us, just before she died. And a taxi driver has reported he took her there, three days before her suicide.’
‘And you think it’s where this guy lives, the bloke with the tattoos?’
Ibsen nodded, flourished his mobile phone. ‘Larkham’s checking it out now. I may have to go any moment.’
Jenny stood up. ‘Well come on, then, let’s be quick. I can explain everything you need to know about suicide clusters. In about twenty minutes.’
Ibsen grabbed her empty salad tray, and his voided sandwich packet, and dumped them in a bin. Then they walked the paths between the crumbled and mouldering graves. He sneaked a glance at his phone. Nothing yet.
‘OK. Suicide clusters work by social contagion, often spread through the media, or the internet. Social networks. Sometimes there is a celebrity suicide, widely reported, which is then copied by young, impressionable people.’
‘That doesn’t sound like our situation. There’s no rap artist who cut his own head off.’
‘No. Which is why I reckon you are better looking at mass suicides. Which are different.’
She walked on and he followed, attentive.
‘There have actually been quite a few large-scale suicides in history. Masada in ancient Israel is a famous example. Okinawa in Japan in World War Two’s another. One of the worst was the suicide of the women of Souli, in Greece: they threw their children over the precipice, and then jumped themselves, to avoid capture by the Ottomans.’
They turned left, past the Egyptian Avenue, with its Luxorlike pillars, its pharaonically slanted arches. The silence here, at the centre of the cemetery, was extraordinary.
‘But modern-day mass suicides are usually related to some kind of cult, or cultic religion. Led by a charismatic leader, some clever evil man with a hold over them. Think of Heaven’s Gate. Or the Order of the Solar Temple. The most famous, naturally, was the People’s Temple in the Jonestown incident.’
‘I remember that one – the audiotape—’