by Tom Knox
The tears of pain blurred his eyes as he stretched and struggled; the title of his own book stared back at him.
The Fury of the Northmen, by Hugo De Savary.
38
Rob was sitting in DCI Forrester’s office in Scotland Yard. The window was open and a chilly breeze was whistling through. It was an unseasonably cool, wet and overcast day. Rob thought about his daughter and fought back the anger and despair.
But the anger and despair were so powerful. He felt as if he was standing thigh deep in rushing floodwater: any moment he would lose it, lose his grip, and get swept away by his emotions. Like those people caught in the Asian tsunami. Rob had to concentrate on keeping upright.
He had told the police officers everything he knew about the Yezidi and the Black Book. Forrester’s junior, Boijer, had taken notes while Forrester stared directly and seriously at Rob. When Rob finished the senior officer sighed, and swivelled in his chair.
‘Well it’s pretty obvious how and why they kidnapped them.’
Boijer nodded. Rob said, bleakly, ‘Is it?’
Rob had only been aware of his daughter’s abduction for a few hours: since landing at Heathrow from Istanbul. He had rushed straight to his ex-wife’s house, then come straight to meet these policemen. So he hadn’t had time to work out how it had happened.
The policeman said, ‘Obviously Cloncurry read your article in The Times a few days ago.’
‘I guess…’ The words felt dry and pointless in Rob’s mouth. Everything felt dry and pointless. He recalled something Christine had told him-the Assyrian name for Hell: the Desert of Anguish.
That was where he was. The Desert of Anguish.
The policeman was still talking. ‘They obviously think, Mr Luttrell, you have some knowledge of the Black Book. So they must have traced your name. Googled you. And found out the address of your ex-wife. That was your old home, right? Where you were registered to vote?’
‘Yes. I never changed it.’
‘So. That was easy for them. They must have been watching that address for a good few days. Waiting and watching.’
Rob murmured, ‘And then Christine turned up…’
Boijer intervened. ‘She made it easier for them. All three of them went off to Cambridge, followed by the gang, no doubt. And then your girlfriend took your daughter to a remote cottage for the afternoon. The worst possible place.’
‘They may have known of De Savary already,’ Forrester added. ‘He was a bestselling writer, with books on sacrifice and the Hellfire Club to his name. Cloncurry must surely have read him. Or seen him on TV.’
‘Then…’ Rob was still swaying in the grey floodwater. He forced his mind to focus. ‘Then they waited outside the cottage. Knowing they could get Christine and my daughter all at once.’
‘Yeah. ‘ said Boijer. ‘They must have been waiting for hours. And then they rushed the house.’
Rob glared at Forrester. ‘She’s going to die isn’t she? My daughter? Isn’t she? They’ve killed everyone else.’
Forrester winced. And shook his head. ‘No…Not at all. We don’t know anything of the sort…’
‘Oh come on.’
‘Please.’
‘No!’ Rob was almost shouting. He stood up and stared down at the policeman. ‘How can you say that? “We don’t know anything of the fucking sort?” You don’t know what it is like, Detective. You can’t know what it is fucking like. My daughter has been abducted by some fucking killers. I will lose my only child.’
Boijer motioned at Rob: calm down. Sit down. Calm down.
Rob inhaled and exhaled, deliberately and slowly. He knew he was making a scene but he didn’t care. He had to vent his emotions. He couldn’t bottle them up. For a few moments Rob just stood there, his eyes blurred with anger. At last, he sat down again.
DCI Forrester continued, very calmly, ‘I know this is very difficult for you to appreciate right now, but the fact is the gang did not harm, as far as we know, either your daughter Lizzie or Christine Meyer.’
Rob nodded, grimly, and said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
The policeman pursued his logic. ‘We’ve found no blood, other than De Savary’s, at the scene of crime. Every other time the gang has struck they have, as you say, killed without compunction. But this time they didn’t. They abducted. Why? Because they want to get to you.’
The waters swirling around Rob seemed to weaken. He gazed attentively and even hopefully at Forrester. There was some logic here, some lucidity. Rob wanted to believe: he really wanted to trust this guy.
‘You gave an email address at the end of your article?’ Forrester asked.
‘Yes,’ Rob replied. ‘It’s standard practise. A Times email address.’
Boijer was writing on his pad. Forrester concluded, ‘I predict Jamie Cloncurry will be in touch with you. Very soon. He wants the Black Book. Desperately.’
‘And if he does get in touch? What the fuck do I do then?’
‘Then you call me immediately. Here’s my mobile number.’ He handed a card to Rob. ‘We need to string him along. Convince the gang you have the book. The Yezidi materials.’
Rob was confused. ‘Even though I haven’t got anything?’
‘They don’t know that. If we imply that you do have what they want, that buys us time. Precious time-for us to catch Cloncurry.’
Rob gazed across Forrester’s shirt-sleeved shoulder at the glass partition beyond. He thought of all the hundreds of policemen working away right now, in this building. Dozens of them on this case. Surely they must be able to find a gang of murderers? The trail of blood and cruelty was all over the papers now. Rob wanted to go out into that wider office and shout at people: Catch them! Do your job. Catch these fucking people! How hard can it be?
‘Where do you think they are?’ he said instead.
‘We have a few leads,’ said Boijer. ‘The Italian. Luca Marsinelli, has a private pilot’s licence. Maybe they are using planes to get in and out of the country, private jets.’
‘But these are just kids…’
Forrester shook his head. ‘Not just kids. Not just average kids anyway. These are rich kids. Marsinelli is an orphan. But he inherited a Milanese textile fortune. Immensely wealthy. Another gang member, we think, is the son of a hedge fund manager in Connecticut. These boys have trust funds, private fortunes, Jersey bank accounts. They can buy new cars just like that.’ Forrester clicked his fingers. ‘There are a lot of private airfields in East Anglia, old American airstrips from the war. Maybe they flew your daughter out of the country: we think Italy is the obvious place, given Marsinelli’s connections. He has an estate near the Italian lakes. Then there’s Cloncurry’s family in Picardy. Also being watched. The French and Italian police are up to speed on all of this.’
Rob actually yawned. It was a weird yawn of frustration and bitterness, not fatigue. It was a yawn from too much adrenalin. He felt thirsty and tired and wired-up and furious. The two women he most loved: Lizzie and Christine. Kidnapped; weeping; suffering: lost in the Desert of Anguish. He couldn’t bear to think about it.
Rob stood up. ‘OK, Detective, I’ll keep checking my emails.’
‘Good. And you can call me any time, Mr Luttrell. Five a.m. I don’t mind.’ The policeman’s eyes seemed to mist for a moment. ‘Rob, I do understand a little of what you are going through. Believe me.’ He coughed, then continued, ‘Cloncurry is an arrogant young man, as well as psychotic. He thinks he is smarter than everyone. People like that can’t resist taunting the police with their cleverness. And that’s how they get caught.’
He shook Rob’s hand. There was a firmness in the policeman’s handshake which, Rob felt, went beyond professional reassurance: there was an empathy there. And there was something in the policeman’s glance, as well: a distinct pity, even pain, in the detective’s eyes.
Rob said thanks, then he turned and left the building, walking like a zombie to the bus-stop and then he caught the bus home to his ti
ny flat in Islington. The journey was gruelling. Everywhere he looked he saw young kids, little girls: playing with friends, skipping along pavements, shopping with their mothers. He wanted to keep looking at them in case, just in case one was Lizzie: even though he knew this was ludicrous. But he also wanted to avert his face: to not look at these girls. Because they reminded him of Lizzie. The smell of her hair after he had bathed her as a baby. The eyes of trusting blue. Rob felt the tidal wave of agony all over again: enormous and crushing.
When he got to the flat he ignored his unpacked suitcases and the decomposing milk on the kitchen counter and he walked straight to his laptop, plugged it in, booted it up, and checked his emails.
Nothing. He checked again, by refreshing the screen; still nothing.
He took a shower, then started to dress and stopped. He unpacked one suitcase, then stopped. He tried not to think about Lizzie and failed; he was so angry and tense. But all he could do was this one ludicrous thing: keep checking his emails.
Shirtless and barefoot he went back to the laptop and clicked. He flinched. There it was, sent ten minutes ago. An email from Jamie Cloncurry.
Rob stared in fear and hope at the title. Your Daughter.
Was it going to be some hideous image of her corpse? Burned or headless? Buried and dead? Or was it going to say she was safe?
The tension and anxiety was unfeasible. Perspiring heavily, Rob opened the email. There was no photo; just writing. It began tersely enough:
We have your daughter, Rob. If you want her back you must give us the Black Book. Or tell us exactly where it is. Otherwise she will die, in a manner I shall not confide. I am sure your imagination can do the rest. Your girlfriend is similarly unharmed, but we will likewise kill her if you do not assist us.
Rob wanted to throw the laptop at the wall. But he read on: there was more. A lot more.
By the by, I read your piece about the Palestinians. Very moving. Heart-wrenching. You do write some quite effective prose, when you aren’t being so predictably liberal. But I wonder if you have ever really thought about the Israeli situation, and what underlies it. Have you, Rob?
Look at it this way: who are you most scared of? In terms of race? Which race most unnerves you, deep down? I’d hazard a guess that it’s blacks-Africans -yes? I’m right, aren’t I? Do you cross the road when you see a gang of black youths in their hoodies, on the streets of London? If you do, you are hardly alone, Rob. We all do it. And fear of black men is statistically sensible-in terms of petty street crime. You are far more likely to be assaulted and robbed by a black man than by a white man, let alone a Japanese or a Korean-given the proportion of black people in the general populace.
But think a little deeper.
I’ve read your articles and I know you are not stupid. You may be an idiot in terms of politics, but you are not stupid. So think. Which race really kills the most? Which one of the human races is the most lethal?
It’s the smart ones, isn’t it?
Let’s go through it. You are scared of black people. But, really, how many people have been killed by Africans, globally? By African armies? By African power? A few thousand? Maybe a few hundred thousand? And that’s for the whole of Africa. So you see, Africans, per capita, are actually not that dangerous. They are wholly chaotic, and clearly incapable of self-government, but they are not dangerous on a global scale. Now take the Arabs. The Arabs have barely mastered the computer. They haven’t successfully invaded anyone since the 15th century. 9/11 was their best attempt at killing lots of people in two hundred years. And they killed three thousand. The Americans could napalm that many in a minute. By remote control.
So who are the organized people who do the real killing, Rob? For this we need to go north. Where the smart people live.
Amongst the European nations the British and the Germans have killed more than anyone else. Behold the British Empire. The British wiped out the Tasmanian aborigines, in toto. Completely killed them all. The British in Tasmania actually had a sport whereby they went out and hunted them down. A bloodsport: like foxhunting.
The only European people who can match the British in terms of sheer lethality, Rob, are the Germans. They were slow to catch up, not having an empire and all, but they did rather well in the 20th century. They butchered six million Jews. They killed five million Poles, maybe ten to twenty million Russians. Too many to count.
And what are the IQ levels of the British and the Germans? Around 102-105: significantly above average, and well above most other races. This small margin is significant enough to make the British and the Germans some of the most lethal people in the world, as well as some of the cleverest.
But let’s look further afield. Who is even smarter than the British and the Germans, Rob? The Chinese. They have an average IQ of 107. And the Chinese killed maybe 100 million in the 20th century alone. Of course they killed their own people, but there’s no accounting for taste.
Now let’s go straight to the top.
Per head of population, who is most likely to kill you? Is it the Krauts or the British? Is it a black man or a Chinaman? A Korean or a Kazakh? A nigger or a wop?
No, it’s the Jews. The Jews have killed more people on this planet than anyone else. Of course, given the tiny size of the Jewish population, they have had to do their massacring by proxy, as it were: by harnessing the power of other nations, or getting other countries to fight each other. They live and they kill by weaponizing their cleverness: and there’s no denying how many they have put to the sword. Think about it. Jews invented Christianity: how many died for and by the cross? Fifty million? Jews dreamed up communism. Another 100 million. Then there is the atom bomb. Invented by Jews. How many will that kill?
Jews, in the guise of neo-conservatives, even came up with the second Iraq war. Yes that was a smalltime operation by their standards: only killed a million. Positively picayune. But at least they are keeping their hand in. Perhaps because they are rehearsing for the big war between Islam and Christianity. Which we all know is coming, and which we all know the Jews will start. Because they start all wars; because they are so very clever.
What is the average Ashkenazim Jewish IQ? 115. They are by far the smartest race on earth. And Jews are more likely to take your life, historically, than anyone else. They just don’t do it on the street, with a knife, looking for ten bucks to buy crack.
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.
39
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 smile
d 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.