The Genesis Secret

by Tom Knox

  ‘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.

  For two more days Rob did nothing but agonize. Isobel stopped calling. Steve stopped calling so much. The silence was unendurable. He tried to drink tea and he tried to reassure Sally and he went to the supermarket to buy some vodka; then he got back home and went straight to his laptop, yet again. He was doing it by rote, now: expecting nothing.

  But this time there was the little symbol of an envelope on his screen. A new email had arrived, and the new email was from…Cloncurry.

  Rob opened up the message, his teeth gritted with tension.

  The email was empty: apart from a link to a video. Rob clicked the videolink: the screen fizzed and cleared, and then Rob saw Christine and his daughter in a bare room, again tied to chairs. The room was a little different, smaller than the last one. The prisoners’ clothes had changed. Obviously Christine and Lizzie had been moved.

  But it wasn’t any of this that caused Rob to shiver, with a harsh new fear, and a deeper anguish: it was the fact the two hostages were hooded. Someone had put thick black hoods over the heads of the girls.

  Rob grimaced. He remembered his own terror in that foul black hood in Lalesh. Staring at the darkness.

  These new, chilling scenes on the video-of Lizzie and Christine, silent, hooded, and lashed to the chairs-lasted a long three minutes. After then Cloncurry appeared, talking directly to the webcam.

  Rob stared at the lean and handsome face.

  ‘Hello, Rob! As you can see we’ve moved to more exciting accommodation. The girls have got hoods on because we want to frighten the living fuck out of them. So. Do tell me about the Black Book. Are you really on to it? I need to know. I need to be kept fully informed. Please don’t keep secrets. I don’t like secrets. Family secrets
are such terrible things, don’t you think? So tell me. If you still want a family, if you don’t want your family dead, tell me. Tell me soon. Don’t make me do what I don’t want to do.’

  Cloncurry turned away. He seemed to be talking to someone behind the webcam. Murmuring. Rob could hear laughter from somewhere off-cam. Then Cloncurry faced the camera again. ‘I mean, let’s get down to basics, Rob. You know what I like to do, you know my metier. It’s sacrifice, isn’t it? Human sacrifice. But the trouble is I am spoiled for choice. I mean: how shall I kill your daughter? And Christine? Because there are so many methods of sacrifice, aren’t there? What are your favourites, Rob? I rather like the Viking ones. Don’t you? The blood eagling, for example. The professor was quite alarmed I believe, when we took out his lungs. Alarmed and somewhat impressed, if I say so myself. But we could have been so much…crueller.’ Cloncurry smiled.

  Rob sat in his flat, sweating.

  Cloncurry edged nearer the camera. ‘For instance, there is a delightful rite the Celts had. They would impale their victims. Especially young women. First they would strip them naked, then they would carry them to a field, lift them up on top of a sharp wooden stake, and pull their legs apart, and then-well then just kind of yank them down, onto the stick. Impaling them. Through the vagina. Or the anus maybe.’ Cloncurry yawned, then continued, ’I really don’t want to do that to your lovely girlfriend, Rob. I mean, if I did shove a pike up her snatch she would just bleed all over the rug. And then we’ll have to buy a big carpet cleaner. A needless expense!’ He smiled again. ‘So just give me the fucking Black Book. The Tom Whaley shit. Stuff you found in Lalesh. Give it over. Now.’

  The webcam wobbled slightly. Cloncurry reached out and steadied it. Then he said, direct to camera, ‘And as for child sacrifice, with little Lizzie over here. Well now…’

  He got up and walked over to Lizzie’s chair. With a magician’s flourish, Cloncurry whipped off the hood-and there was Lizzie. Staring, terrified, at the camera, the leather gag tight around her mouth.

  Cloncurry stroked the girl’s hair. ‘So many methods, just the one little girl. Which one shall we choose? The Incans would take children up mountains and just kill them by exposure. But that’s rather slow, I feel. Rather…boring. But how about one of the more refined Aztec methods? You may, for instance, have heard of the god Tlaloc?’

  He moved around Lizzie’s chair. ‘The god Tlaloc was a bit of a cunt, to be perfectly frank, Rob. He wanted his thirst slaked with human tears. So the Aztec priests had to make the children cry. So they did this by tearing off the childrens’ fingernails. Very slowly. One by one.’

  Cloncurry was unstrapping one of Lizzie’s hands now; Rob saw that his daughter’s hand was shaking with fear. ‘Yes, Rob, they would rip out the nails, then cut off little fingers like these.’ He caressed her fingers. ‘And that made the children cry, of course. Having their fingernails ripped away. And then as they tore off the nails the Aztecs would capture the tears of the sobbing children, and give the liquid to Tlaloc. Then the kids were decapitated.’

  Cloncurry smiled. Then, brusquely, he tied Lizzie’s hand to the arm of the chair again. ‘So that’s what I may do, Rob, I may follow the old Aztec method. But I really think you should try and dissuade me. Don’t make me rip off her nails, slice off her fingers, and then chop her head off. But if I am forced by your obstinacy to do any of that, I shall be sure to send her tears to you in a little plastic pot. So get cracking, get moving, get working.’ He smiled. ‘Chop chop!’

  The killer leaned forward, looking for a switch. The video paused; the clip was frozen.

  Rob stared at the silent computer for ten minutes afterwards. At the final frozen image of Cloncurry’s half smile. His high cheekbones; his glittering green eyes; his dark hair. Sitting in the room behind him were Rob’s daughter and Rob’s girlfriend, tied to chairs, waiting to be impaled, to be mutilated and killed. Rob had no doubt that Cloncurry would do these things. He’d read the report of De Savary’s murder.

  The following day Rob spent with Sally. And then he got another email. With another video. And this one was so grotesque that Rob vomited as he watched.

  41

  As soon as he’d got the new email with the new video Rob went to Scotland Yard, to Forrester’s office. He didn’t even ring first, he didn’t text or email, he wiped the puke from his mouth and washed his face with cold water, and hailed a cab.

  On the way to Victoria he looked at all the happy people. Shopping; walking; climbing on and off buses; staring in shop windows. It was hard to reconcile the ordinariness of the street scene with the obscenity of what Rob had just witnessed in the video.

  He tried not to think about it. He had to control his anger. They could still save his daughter; even if it was too late for Christine. Rob sat in the back of the taxi and felt like punching out the cab window, but he wasn’t going to lose control. Not yet, anyway. What he would do, if he ever got the chance, was slaughter Cloncurry. And not just slaughter him with a knife or a hatchet: Rob was going to take a poker to Cloncurry’s head, smash the back of his skull until brain came ejaculating out of his eyes. No, worse than that, he would burn Cloncurry slowly with acid, rotting away that handsome face. Anything. Anything anything anything ANYTHING ANYTHING.

  Rob wanted payback for what he’d just seen Cloncurry do to Christine in the video. He wanted homicidal revenge. Now.

  The taxi pulled up at the glass and steel atrium of New Scotland Yard and Rob paid the taxi driver with a fierce grunt and went in through the glass doors. The girls on reception tried to stop him but he glared at them so angrily they didn’t know what to do; then Boijer spotted him in the lobby.

  ‘There’s something you need to see,’ said Rob.

  The friendly-faced Finn offered a smile but Rob didn’t smile back. The Finn’s expression darkened; Rob scowled in return.

  The lift journey was quiet. They paced to Forrester’s corridor. Boijer knocked on his superior’s door but Rob shoved right in. Forrester was sipping from a mug of tea and staring at folders and he jumped, startled, as Rob burst into the office and sat down in the chair besides Forrester’s. Rob said, bluntly, ‘Check this webmail. Email from Cloncurry.’

  ‘But why didn’t you call us we could have—’

  ‘Look at it.’

  With a worried glance at Boijer, Forrester leaned forward to his screen and opened up a search engine. He went to Rob’s email; Rob gave him the password.

  ‘There,’ said Rob. ‘It’s just a video link. Open it.’

  Forrester clicked and the video fizzed into life, showing the same scene as before. Christine and Lizzie tied to a chair. Same clothes, same hoods, a room as nondescript as the last. Hard to tell.

  ‘I’ve seen this,’ said Forrester, gently. ‘We’re working on it, Rob. We think he’s hooding them so they can’t blink at you and send messages, some people can do that-send signals by blinking. Anyway there’s something I wanted to mention—’

  ‘Detective.’

  ‘I’ve been researching the Cloncurrys and the Whaleys, their ancestry, it’s a new angle and—

  ‘Detective!’ Rob was full of righteous anger. And grief. ‘I want you to shut up. Just watch the clip.’

  The two policemen swapped another anxious glance. Boijer stepped round so he could look at the screen. The three men stared at the computer as the little video clip rolled into action.

  A figure emerged from the left of the screen. It was Cloncurry. He was carrying a big saucepan-a huge, grey metal saucepan, full of steaming water. He set the saucepan down, then disappeared off-screen again. Christine and Lizzie sat there in their vile black hoods, presumably oblivious. Not sensing what Cloncurry was doing.

  Now Cloncurry was back. With a kind of metal tripod, and a camping gas stove-already emitting an eager blue flame. He set up the tripod in front of Christine and put the burning gas stove between the legs of the metal stand; then he picked up the steaming tureen of water, and placed it on top. Wi
th the blazing flame directly beneath it, the water started to bubble, and to boil.

  Apparently satisfied, Cloncurry turned to the camera. ‘Those Swedes are an odd bunch, aren’t they, Rob? I mean, look at their cooking. Open sandwiches. Gravadlax. All that stuff with herrings. And now this! Anyway, we’re all set. I hope you appreciate the expense we’ve gone to, Robert. This saucepan cost fifty quid. I may take it back afterwards, swap it for a toast rack.’ He looked away from the camera. ‘OK. So. Guys. Has someone got the knife?’ He was looking offscreen. ‘Hell-o? Big knife for cutting up people? Yes. That’s it. Thank you so much.’

  Taking the blade from an unseen assistant, Cloncurry tilted the knife in his hand, and ran a thumb down the edge. ‘Perfect.’

  Now he was staring at the camera again. ‘Of course I’m not talking about modern Sweden, Rob. No. I don’t mean Ikea dining chairs. Or Volvos and Saabs and indoor tennis centres.’ Cloncurry laughed. ‘I mean Sweden before they went all gay on us. Real Sweden. Medieval Sweden. The long-haired barbarians who really knew how to deal with victims, who know how to sacrifice…to Odin. And Thor. You know. ‘Cause that’s what we’re going to do, in a very special way. We’re going all Swedish this morning. Old time Swedish sacrifice. The Boiling of the Innards.’ The knife flashed in the air. ‘We’re going to cut open one of your girls and boil her lights and vitals, alive, in this big old pot here. But which one shall we sacrifice? Which one do you fancy?’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Which one? The little girl or the big girl? Mmm? I think maybe we should save the best to last, don’t you? And much as you love pretty Christine here with that adorable birthmark near her nipple-yes, that one-I imagine you are more attached to your daughter. So I think we should spare your daughter for a different ritual, later on, maybe tomorrow, and instead we should slice open the Frenchwoman. She has such a nice tummy, after all. Shall we cut your friend open? Yes I think so.’

  The killer leaned towards Christine’s hooded figure. She was straining and arching against her bonds, pointlessly. Rob could see the hood inflating and deflating as Christine panted with fear under her shroud.