by Tom Knox
‘Well…’ Harnaby was smiling unsurely. ‘I was going to mention it. Not many people know about it but that’s the Balladoole burial site. Vikings. Eleventh century. It was dug up in the 1940s. They found brooches and the like. And…something else too…’
‘What?’
‘They also found a body.’
Harnaby elaborated. He told them about the great excavation during the war when scientists from the mainland had unearthed an entire Viking ship, interred with jewellery and swords. And the body of a Viking warrior. ‘And there was also evidence of human sacrifice. At the warrior’s feet, the archaeologists found the body of a teenage girl. She was probably a sacrificial victim.’
‘How do they know?’
‘Because she was buried without any grave goods. And she was garrotted. Vikings were quite partial to a bit of sacrifice. They would kill slavegirls to honour fallen men.’
Forrester felt a reflexive quickening. He looked at Boijer. He looked at the distant grey waves. He returned his gaze to Boijer. ‘Ritual sacrifice,’ he said at last. ‘Yes. Ritual human sacrifice. Boijer! That’s it!’
Boijer seemed puzzled. Forrester explained:
‘Think about it. A man buried alive with his head in the soil. A man with his head shaved-and his tongue cut out. Ritual carvings on both bodies…’
‘And now Balladoole,’ said Harnaby.
Forrester gave a brisk assent. Jumping over a second gate, he crossed to the bumps and rocks in the field. His shoes were ruined by mud but he didn’t care. He could hear the sounding waves from the beach; taste the tang of oceanic salt. Beneath him Vikings had interred a young woman, a woman who had been ritually slain. And these men, these murderers, had communed here: before committing their own ritualized execution: just a few hours later.
The clockwork was whirring. The machinery was engaged. Forrester inhaled the muggy moist air. Smirrs of grey cloud were racing in, from the roiled and choppy Irish Sea.
20
The Land Rover sped down the dirt track away from Sogmatar towards the main Sanliurfa road, twenty klicks alongside the ancient arroyo. Christine was staring ahead, concentrating on the road, her hand tight on the gearstick. They drove in silence.
Rob hadn’t told her what he thought he had discovered about the numbers. He wanted to prove it to himself first. And for that he needed a book, and maybe a computer.
By the time they arrived back in the city the sun was an hour from sunset and Sanliurfa was notably busy. As soon as they reached the centre they went straight to Christine’s flat, flung dusty jackets onto the wickerwork chair and flopped onto the sofa. And then Christine said, quite unexpectedly, and apropos of nothing, ‘Do you think I should fly home?’
‘What? Why?’
‘The dig is over. My salary stops in a month. I could fly home now.’
‘Without finding out what happened to Franz?’
‘Yes.’ She stared out of the window. ‘He is…dead. Shouldn’t I just accept it?’
The sun was dying outside. The muezzin were calling across the ancient city of Urfa. Rob got up, went to the window; creaked it open, and gazed out. The cucumber man was cycling down the pavement shouting his wares. Veiled women were in a group outside the Honda shop talking into mobile phones through their concealing black chadors. They looked like shades, like ghosts. The mourning brides of death.
He went back to the sofa and gazed at Christine. ’I don’t think you should go. Not yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘I think I know what the numbers mean.’
Her face was motionless. ‘Show me.’
‘Do you have a Bible? An English one?’
‘On that shelf.’
Rob paced to the shelf and checked the spines: art, poetry, politics, archaeology, history. More archaeology. There. He took down a big old black Bible. The proper authorized version.
At the same time Christine took Breitner’s notebook from the desk.
‘All right,’ said Rob. ‘I hope I’m right. I think I’m right. But here goes. Read out the numbers in the notebook. And tell me what they’re next to on the page.’
‘OK, here’s…twenty-eight. Next to a compass sign, for east.’
‘No, say it like the two numbers are separate. Two eight.’
Christine stared at Rob, perplexed. Maybe even amused. ‘OK. Two eight. By an arrow pointing east.’
Rob opened the Bible to Genesis, thumbed through the thin, almost translucent pages and found the right page. He ran his finger down the dense columns of text.
‘Chapter two, verse eight. 2:8 Genesis. “And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed”.’ Rob waited.
Christine was staring at the Bible. After a while she murmured, ‘Eastward in Eden?’
‘Read another one.’
Christine scanned the notebook. ‘Two nine. Next to the tree.’
Rob went to the same page in the Bible and recited, ‘Book of Genesis. Chapter two, verse nine. 2:9 “And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil”.’
Christine said in a low voice, ‘Two one zero. Two ten. By the river squiggly thing.’
‘The line that turns into four rivers?’
‘Yes.’
Rob looked down at the Bible. ‘Chapter two, verse ten. “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads”.’
‘My God,’ said Christine. ‘You’re right!’
‘Let’s try one more, to make sure. A different one, one of the big numbers.’
Christine went back to the notebook. ‘OK. Here are some bigger numbers, at the end. Eleven thirty-one?’
Rob fanned through the pages and recited, feeling like a vicar in his pulpit, ‘Genesis. Chapter eleven, verse thirty-one. “And Terah took Abraham his son, and Lot the son of Haran his son’s son, and Sara his daughter in law, his son Abraham’s wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there”.’
‘Haran?’
‘Haran.’ Rob paused, sitting down next to Christine. ‘Let’s try one more, one more of the others, one of the numbers next to a drawing.’
‘Here’s a number by a picture, seems to be a dog or a pig…or something.’
‘What’s the number?’
‘Two hundred and nineteen. So, two nineteen?’
Rob found the relevant passage: ‘“And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them…”’
Quietness filled the flat. Rob could still hear the cries of the cucumber seller floating up from the dusty streets below. Christine gazed at him intently. ‘Breitner thought he was digging up—’
‘Yes. The Garden of Eden.’
They stared across the sofa at each other.
21
Forrester was researching human sacrifice, in his London office. His coffee sat on his desk next to a photo of his son holding a beach ball and a picture of his snowy-blonde daughter, beaming and happy. It was a photo taken just before her death.
Sometimes when the black dog of depression was at his heels, Forrester would lay the photo of his daughter face down on the desk. Because it was just too painful, too piercing. Thinking about his daughter sometimes gave Forrester a kind of sharp chest pain, as if he had a fractured rib digging into his lungs. It was such a physical pain that he would almost vocalize it.
But most of the time it wasn’t quite this bad. Usually, he was able to look past the pain-to other people’s pain. This morning the photo stood on the desk ignored, his daughter’s happy still-alive smile white and bright. Forrester was transfixed by his computer screen, Googling away at ‘human sacrifice’.
He was reading about the Jews: t
he early Israelites who burned their children. Alive. They did this, Forrester learned, in a valley just south of Jerusalem-Ben-Hinnom. Wikipedia told the DCI that this valley was also known as Gehenna. The valley of Gehenna was Hell to the Canaanite, the ‘valley of the shadow of death’.
Forrester read on. According to historians, in ancient times Israelite mothers and fathers would bring their firstborn children down to the valley, outside the gates of Jerusalem, and there they would place their screaming babies into the hollow brass stomach of a huge statue dedicated to the Canaanite demon god Moloch. The brass bowl in the centre of the enormous statue of Moloch also functioned as a brazier. Once the babies and children were in the brass bowl, fires were lit under the statue, which heated the brass, thereby roasting the children to death. As the children screamed to be saved, priests would pound enormous drums to drown out the shrieks and save the mothers from undue distress, from having to listen to their children burning alive.
Forrester sat back, his heart pounding like the drums of an Israelite ritual. How could anyone do such a thing? How could anyone sacrifice their own children? Unbidden, Forrester thought of his own children, his daughter, his dead daughter. The firstborn of the family.
Rubbing his eyes, he scrolled through some more pages.
The sacrifice of firstborn was a common motif in ancient history, it seemed. All kinds of peoples-Celts, Mayans, Goths, Vikings, Norsemen, Hindus, Sumerians, Scythians, American Indians, Incas, many others-sacrificed humans, and many of them sacrificed the first child. Often this was done as a so-called ‘foundation sacrifice’ when a strategically important or sacred structure was being built: before the main construction took place the community would sacrifice a child, usually a firstborn, and they would bury the corpse under the arch or pillar or door.
Forrester inhaled, and exhaled. He clicked another link. The sky outside was bright, the sunshine of late spring. The DCI was too absorbed in his macabre task to notice or care.
Aztec sacrifices were especially blood-thirsty. Homosexuals would be ritually killed by having their intestines ripped out through their rectums. Enemy warriors would have their living hearts torn from their chest cavities by priests whose heads were daubed with the human offal of their previous victims.
He read on. And on. Supposedly the Great Wall of China was built on thousands of cadavers: yet more foundation sacrifices. The Japanese once venerated a hitobashira-a human pillar-beneath which virgins were buried alive. Enormous cenotes, or water cisterns, were used by the Mayans of Mexico as drowning lakes for maidens and children. And there was more. The pre-Roman Celts would stab a victim in the heart and then divine the future from the death spasms of the thrashing body. The Phoenicians killed literally thousands of babies as atonement and buried them in ‘tophets’-great baby cemeteries.
And on, and on. Forrester sat back feeling a little sick. Yet he also felt he was making progress. The ritual murder in the Isle of Man and the attempted murder in Craven Street had to be connected with sacrifice, not least because the murderers had gathered at the spot of a historically proven sacrifice. But what linked them?
He took a deep breath, like someone about to dive in a very cold pond, and Googled ‘Star of David’.
After forty minutes of searching through Jewish history he found what he needed. It was on some lunatic American website, possibly a Satanist site. But lunacy was just what Forrester was investigating. The mad website told him the Star of David was also known as the Star of Solomon, as the ancient Jewish king had allegedly used it as his magical emblem. The symbol was abjured by some modern rabbinical authorities because of its occult associations. Solomon was reported to have used the Star on the temple he raised to Moloch, the Canaanite demon, where he committed animal and human sacrifice.
Forrester read the webpage again. And again. And for a third time. The Star of David was not what the murderers were etching into their victims. They were cutting the Star of Solomon. A symbol closely associated with human sacrifice.
And the head shaving?
That took only three minutes to Google.
Victims of sacrifice in many cultures were purified in various ways before the ritual. They were bathed, or required to fast, sometimes they would be shaved of all hair. Some would have their tongues cut out.
Forrester’s thesis was confirmed. The murderers were obsessed or engaged with the concept of human sacrifice. But why?
He stood up and massaged his neck muscles. He’d been reading for three hours. His mind was buzzing with the pulse of the computer screen. All this was well and good. But they had no actual leads on the murder gang. All the Manx ports were being watched. The airport was under surveillance. But he had little hope they would catch the gang that way: they would surely have split up and fled the isle at once. Dozens of boats and ferries and airplanes left Man every day at all hours; most likely the gang had left Douglas before the corpse was even discovered. The only real hope was looking for CCTV images of the black Toyota. But it could take weeks for the available footage to be scanned.
Forrester sat down again and tugged his swivel chair nearer to the screen. He had three things left to research.
Jerusalem Whaley was a member of this club of roistering aristocrats: the Irish Hellfire Club. As the Manx historian had told him. But how was that fact linked to sacrifice? To the murders? Was it linked at all?
And the bones in Craven Street, in Benjamin Franklin’s House, what was all that about?
These two queries led to his third question: everywhere they went, the gang dug something up. What were they looking for?
His initial search was simple and immediately successful. Forrester typed in Benjamin Franklin and Hellfire and the very first hit gave him his answer: Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of America, was a good friend of Sir Francis Dashwood, and Sir Francis Dashwood was the founder of the Hellfire Club. Indeed, according to some authorities, Benjamin Franklin was himself a member of the Hellfire Club.
The puzzle yielded. The Hellfire Club was obviously crucial. But precisely who or what were they?
As far as Forrester could tell from Google, the Hellfire Club, in both Ireland and England, was a secret society of upper class ne’er-do-wells. But that was all. They were unsavoury and dangerous, maybe, indulged and hedonistic certainly; but truly Satanic and murderous? Most historians reckoned they were little more than a drinking club which sometimes got a little ribald. The rumours of devil worship were largely dismissed.
That said, there was one expert who disagreed. Forrester scribbled the name on a pad. A professor Hugo De Savary, at Cambridge University no less, reckoned that the Hellfires were serious occultists. Though he had been ridiculed for his views.
But even if De Savary was right it still didn’t answer the rest of the awkward questions. What were the gang looking for? Why were they digging stuff up? How was it connected with the Hellfires? What was the point in turning over lawns and cellars? Were they seeking treasure? Demonic gewgaws? Old bones? Cursed diamonds? Sacrificed children? Forrester’s mind was fizzing-a little too much. He had done enough for one morning. He had done well. He felt as if he had finally gathered all the main jigsaw pieces, or someone had tipped them all in his lap. The only problem was that he had lost the box and couldn’t see the lid. So he didn’t know what the jigsaw pieces were meant to represent, he didn’t have a clue what picture he was trying to recreate. Still, at least he had the pieces…
Stifling a yawn, Forrester yanked his jacket from the back of the swivel chair and fed his arms into the sleeves. It was lunchtime. He’d earned a nice lunch-Italian maybe. Penne arrabiata at the trattoria down the road. With some good tiramisu to follow, and a nice long read of the sports pages.
On his way out of the office, he glanced down at his desk. His daughter smiled back at him, with her innocent face shining. Forrester paused, feeling a sharpness inside. He looked at the picture of his son, and then again at the picture of his daughter. He thought of her voice. Saying
her first real words. Appull-App-ull. App-ull daddy! App-ull…
The pain was sharp. He laid the picture flat on the desk, and stepped through the door.
The first thing he saw was Boijer, breathless and excited.
‘Sir, I think we have something!’
‘What?’
‘Toyota. The black Toyota.’
‘Where?’
‘Heysham, sir. In Lancashire.’
‘When—’
‘Two days ago.’
22
Rob and Christine were sitting in the tea-house by the Pool of Abraham. The honeyed stones of the Mevlid Halil mosque were glowing in the morning light: their mellow hues reflected placidly in the water of the fishpond.
They had spent the previous evening researching the Eden theory separately: Christine on the laptop in her flat, Rob in a net café: dividing their time to get more data more quickly. And now they had met to discuss it. They had come here for the anonymity: it felt safer to be sitting amongst the crowds. The strolling friends and off-duty soldiers, the kids eating fried mutton balls with one hand as their mothers gazed at the carp. The only jarring note was a police car parked discreetly at the edge of the tea-gardens.
Rob was remembering how he’d arrived at his solution. They had discussed Genesis when they were in Sogmatar and Haran. And Christine had also mentioned the Adam and Eve legend. This combination must, Rob realized, have triggered memories of his father reciting the Bible; so he had seen how the numbers could be read. Chapter x verse y. Digit followed by digit. But now they had to examine this solution, more deeply, and compare notes on the underlying logic.