The Genesis Secret

by Tom Knox

  Cloncurry lifted up her jumper a couple of inches and Christine jerked away from his touch.

  ‘Goodness. She doesn’t seem very keen, does she? All I’m going to do is carve out her intestines and her stomach and maybe her bladder and boil them slowly in this pot so she dies over thirty minutes or more. Anyone would think she was at the dentist. What’s wrong with that, Christine?’

  In the fetid tension of the office, Forrester leaned to turn the video off.

  Rob snapped. ‘No! Watch it. I want you to watch it. I had to fucking watch it. Watch it!’

  Forrester sat back. Rob saw the glint of tears in the policeman’s eyes. Rob didn’t care. He’d had to watch it. Now they had to watch it.

  They watched.

  Cloncurry’s initial slicing movement was quick. With a professional ease, as if he was practised at butchery, Cloncurry stabbed the knife into Christine’s exposed stomach, and ripped the blade laterally. Blood seeped out, down the blade and onto Christine’s lap. A moan was distinctly audible, despite the gag and the hood, muffling Christine’s voice. The blood was seeping slowly, and the pink and red inner organs were beginning to ooze and poke out of the horizontal slash, like the smeared pink heads of weird babies.

  ‘Well lookie here,’ said Cloncurry, forcing open the huge wound to peer inside. ‘Who’s that pushing in front. Mrs Uterus? Come on gal, give someone else a chance.’

  Dropping the knife, the murderer reached his hands, deep into the lateral gash in Christine’s stomach. Rob couldn’t help noticing how pale Christine’s stomach was. Her tan had faded from her imprisonment; her skin looked almost white.

  But the whiteness was coloured by the slowly dripping blood. And the moans were escalating into whines of pain, as Cloncurry gently drew out Christine’s intestines: coils of pastel grey and greasy blue, like links of obscenely raw sausages.

  Carefully Cloncurry extracted more of Christine’s organs, still attached to her body by veins, arteries and muscles, and grey-white ganglions; then he carried the great handful of innards to the pot, and he dropped the organs with a plop, into the steaming vat of water.

  Christine writhed.

  ‘Now you see how clever those Swedes were. You can extract all the lower organs, but the victim lives on. Because she’s still attached to her major organs, so she’s still metabolizing. It’s just that she’s also being boiled to death.’ Cloncurry was smirking. ‘Hey. Shall we pop some pepper in? Make it spicy. A lovely hotpot of girlfriend.’

  Christine’s muffled voice was a strange, sobbing, urgent moan of pain. Smothered by the gag and the hood, it was a noise Rob had never heard anyone make before.

  Cloncurry had picked up a large wooden spoon from somewhere and was stirring Christine’s innards in the pot. The stirring went on for a few searing minutes, punctuated by the victim’s desperate groaning. Cloncurry sighed in frustration. ‘Jesus. She’s a bit of a moaner, isn’t she? She never moaned like this when I fucked her. Do you think she’s enjoying it? Hmm.’ He smiled. ‘I know, let’s cheer her up with a proper Swedish singsong!’ Cloncurry started humming, then burst into song. ‘Mamma Mia don’t you let me go, my my, how could I forget you! Yes, I was broken-hearted, blue since the day we parted, but now you’ve-put me in a pressure cooker!’

  He stopped singing. The moaning became a low murmur, then virtually a whimper. Cloncurry gave the pot another stir. ‘Chin up, Christine, not long to go now. Think the gravy is thickening.’ He smiled. ‘Ah look, what’s this here? Look at this! Mr Kidney.’

  Cloncurry turned to the camera and held up the wooden spoon. Balanced in the bowl of the spoon was one of Christine’s dark brown kidneys, draped with veins and arteries, like blood-red spaghetti.

  Forrester stared down at the floor.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Rob. ‘The video ends around now. Christine slumps. She just…she just dies.’

  Boijer leaned forward and shut down the email. Then he turned to Rob. He said nothing, but there was a definite wetness in his eyes.

  For a while the men sat around the room. Barely able to speak. Rob shrugged, desolately, at the policemen; and he got up to go.

  And then the phone rang.

  Forrester took the call. His gaze met Rob’s across the room, as he spoke, low, on the phone. At last, the detective put the phone down. ‘It may be too late for…for Christine. But we can still save your daughter.’

  Rob stared at him, from the open door.

  Forrester nodded, grimly. ‘That was the Gardai. In Ireland. They’ve found the gang.’

  42

  Forrester and Rob met at Dublin Airport. The policeman was accompanied by several Irish officers with gold star cap badges.

  There was little small talk. Forrester and the Irish police led Rob straight through the arrivals lounge into a breezy car park; they climbed wordlessly into a minivan.

  It was Rob who broke the sombre and frightening silence. ‘My ex-wife is here?’

  Forrester nodded. ‘Arrived on the flight an hour before you. She’s at the scene.’

  ‘It was the last seat on that flight,’ said Rob. He felt a need to explain himself. He felt guilty all the time now. Guilty about Christine’s death; guilty about Lizzie’s impending fate. Guilt about his own lethal stupidity. ‘So…’ he said, trying to control his emotions. ‘I got the next flight. I let her go first.’

  The cops all nodded. Rob didn’t know else what to say. He sighed and bit his knuckles and tried not to think about Christine. Then he lifted his gaze and told Forrester and Boijer about Isobel and her attempts to find the Black Book. He hadn’t heard from her in a day or more, he told them, and he couldn’t get her on the phone; but that silence might mean that she was close to her prize. Out there in the desert, beyond the reach of a signal.

  The policemen shrugged as if trying to be impressed, but failing. Rob couldn’t blame them: it seemed a long shot, and pretty obscure, and so very far away, compared to the reality of cold, rainy Ireland. And a cornered gang of murderers. And an eviscerated corpse. And a daughter about to be dismembered.

  At last he said, ‘So, what’s the latest…?’

  The senior Irish officer introduced himself. He had greying hair and a serious, firm-jawed face. ’Detective Liam Dooley.’

  They shook hands.

  ‘We’ve been staking them out. Obviously, we can’t go straight in. Heavily-armed buncha guys. They’ve killed…the woman…your friend. I’m sorry. But the girl is still alive and we want to save her. We will save her. But we have to be careful.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rob. They were struck in traffic on the busy Dublin ringroads. He gazed through the rainsmeared van windows.

  Dooley leaned forward and tapped the police driver’s shoulder: he turned on the siren and the Gardai minivan swung through the traffic, which peeled away to let the police vehicle pass.

  ‘OK,’ said Dooley, talking loudly above the siren. ’I’m sure DCI Forrester has filled you in but this is the scene now. We snatched one of them, the Italian—’

  ‘Marsinelli,’ said Forrester.

  ‘Yes, him. Marsinelli. We snatched him yesterday. Of course that’s alerted the rest of the gang: they know we are surrounding them and they’re heavily armed.’

  Rob nodded, and sighed, then he gave into his feelings and slumped forward, his head hard against the seat in front. Thinking of Christine. The way she must have heard her own organs boiling…

  Forrester put a calming hand on Rob’s shoulder. ‘We’ll get them, don’t worry, Rob. The Gardai know what they are doing. They dealt with Irish terrorism for thirty years. We’ll get Lizzie out.’

  Rob grunted: he wasn’t just feeling sad and scared, he was also feeling a rising resentment, at the police. The police had snatched just one gang member, and his daughter was still inside the cottage, still in the hands of Cloncurry. And Christine was already dead. The Irish cops were screwing up. ‘What you’re telling me then,’ he said, ’is that it’s a total stalemate? You’ve got the place surr
ounded so they can’t get out but you can’t get in either, in case they do anything to my daughter. But he’s already butchered my girlfriend! And we know he has killed before. So how do we know he isn’t killing Lizzie right now? Right this fucking minute?’

  Dooley shook his head. ‘We know your daughter is OK. Because we are speaking to Cloncurry all the time.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By webcam. He’s got another webcam set up-a two-way webcam this time. We’ve seen your daughter and she’s OK. Uninjured. Tied up. As before.’

  Rob turned to Forrester for reassurance. The DCI nodded. ‘Cloncurry is rambling on a lot. He may be on drugs.’

  ‘But what if he suddenly snaps?’

  There was a weighty silence in the minivan. The siren had been switched off. No one spoke. Then Dooley said, ‘For some reason he seems determined to get something out of you. He wants this Black Book or whatever it is. He goes on and on about it. We think he is convinced you have it. He won’t kill your daughter while he thinks that.’

  Rob couldn’t follow the logic. He couldn’t follow anything.

  They turned off the motorway, leaving the last of the Dublin suburbs behind, and sped along open country roads, heading into green, well-wooded hills. White-painted farmsteads dotted the fields. A sign said Wicklow Mountains 5km. It was still drizzling.

  Dooley added quietly, ‘And of course, if there is any sign that he is going to harm your daughter we will go in, whatever the risk. We’ve got armed Gardai all over. I promise.’

  Rob closed his eyes. He could imagine the scene: the police rushing in, the melee and the chaos. And Cloncurry silently smiling and slitting his daughter’s throat with a kitchen knife, or shooting her in the temple, just before the police smashed through the door. What was to stop him? Why would a lunatic like Jamie Cloncurry keep Rob’s daughter alive? But perhaps the police were right. Cloncurry must be desperate to find the Black Book: that was what Isobel had surmised. And Cloncurry must have believed Rob when he said he could find it. Otherwise he’d have just killed Lizzie as well as Christine.

  The problem was that Rob had no idea where the Book was. And unless Isobel came up with something, very quickly, this fact would soon become apparent. And what then? When Cloncurry guessed that Rob had nothing, what happened then? Rob didn’t have to guess. When that happened, Cloncurry would do what he had done so many times: kill his victim. Get that grim and macabre satisfaction, and silence the blood-lusting voice inside him. He would placate his Whaley demons-and kill with great cruelty.

  Rob gazed at the sodden green countryside. He saw another sign, half-hidden by dripping oak branches. Hellfire Wood, owned by the Irish Forestry Commission, Coillte. They were nearly there.

  He had studied the history of the place on the train to Stansted Airport, simply to give himself something to do. To distract himself from his horrible imaginings. On the top of a hill near here was an old stone hunting lodge: Montpelier House. Built on a hilltop also graced by a Neolithic stone circle. Montpelier had a reputation for being haunted. It was celebrated by occultists, ciderdrinking kids and local historians alike. The lodge was one of the main places where the Irish Hellfire members had got together. To drink their scultheen and burn those black cats and play whist with the devil.

  Much of what happened in the house was, as far as Rob could tell, legend and myth. But the rumours of murder were not entirely unsubstantiated. A house in the valley beneath Montpelier had also, according to legend, been used by the Hellfirers. By Buck Egan, and Jerusalem Whaley, and Jack St Leger and all the rest of the eighteenth century sadists.

  Killakee House, it was called. And when Killakee House was being refurbished decades ago they had dug up a skeleton of a child or a dwarf, next to a small brass statue of a demon.

  Rob turned and looked out of the other window. He could actually see Montpelier House now: a sombre grey presence on top of the hills, even darker and greyer than the grey clouds beyond. It was a vile day for June. Suitably rainy and satanic. Rob thought of his daughter shivering in the cottage somewhere near here. He had to get a grip. Think positive, even in the smallest way. He hadn’t congratulated Forrester on his coup.

  ‘By the way, well done.’

  The DCI frowned. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘On the hunch, you know, finding these guys.’

  Forrester shook his head. ‘It was nothing. Just a reasonable guess. I tried to think with his brain. Cloncurry’s deluded brain. He likes the historical resonance. Check his family. Where they live. He would hide out somewhere that meant something to him. And of course they are looking for the Black Book, for Whaley’s treasure. This is where Burnchapel Whaley came from, where Jerusalem Whaley came from. They would have started looking here, so why not base yourself here?’

  The van scrunched to a halt outside a farmhouse with a large tent erected in the forecourt and they all climbed out. Rob walked into the crowded tent and saw his ex-wife in the corner, sitting with a Gardai policewoman drinking a mug of tea. There were lots of policemen here, lots of sonorous Irish accents, flashing gold cap badges and screens of TV monitors.

  Dooley took Rob by the arm and talked him through the situation. The gang’s cottage was just a few hundred yards away down the hill. If you walked three minutes to the left, out of the farmhouse back door, you could see it, tucked into a narrow green valley. Montpelier House was right on top of the lofty hill behind them.

  ‘Cloncurry rented the croft months ago,’ said Dooley. ‘From the farmer’s wife. She was the one who informed us, when we were doing door to door. Said she’d seen strange comings and goings. So we put the cottage under surveillance. We’ve been watching them for twenty hours now. Think we’ve counted five men inside. We seized Marsinelli as he drove to the shops.’

  Rob nodded, dumbly. He felt very dumb. He was in some dumb stupid stand-off: policemen with rifles were apparently stationed around the fields and hills, gunsights aimed at the cottage. Inside were four men led by a fucking lunatic. Rob wanted to run down the hill and just…do something. Anything. Instead he glanced at the TV screens. It seemed the Gardai had several cameras, one of them infra-red, directed at the gang’s hideout. Every movement was scrutinized and noted, day and night. Though nothing serious had been seen for hours: the curtains were shut; the doors self-evidently shut.

  On a desk in front of the TV monitors was a laptop. Rob guessed this was the computer set up to receive communications from Cloncurry via the webcam. The laptop had a webcam of its own.

  Feeling as if someone had filled his lungs with frozen leadshot Rob crossed to Sally. They exchanged words, and a hug.

  And then Dooley called to Rob across the tent. ’It’s Cloncurry! He’s on the webcam again. We told him you were here. He wants to speak to you.’

  Rob ran across the tent and stood in front of the laptop screen. There it was. That angular face: almost likeable, yet so utterly chilling. The intelligent yet serpentine eyes. Behind Cloncurry was Lizzie, in fresh clothes; still tied to a chair; this time unhooded.

  ‘Ah, the gentleman from The Times.’

  Rob stared mutely at the screen. He felt a nudge from somewhere. Dooley was gesturing and mouthing: talk to him, keep him talking. ‘Hello,’ said Rob.

  ‘Hello!’ Cloncurry laughed. ‘I’m sorry we had to parboil your fiancée, but your little girl is perfectly unharmed. Indeed I like to think she’s in tiptop condition! We’re giving her lots of fruit. So she thrives. Of course I’m not sure quite how long we can maintain the status quo, but that’s up to you.’

  ‘You’ve…’ Rob said. ‘You’ve…’ He tried again. It was no good; he didn’t know what to say. In despair he turned and looked at Dooley, but as he did, he realized something. He did have something to say. He had one card in his hand and now he had to play it. He stared directly at the screen. ‘OK, Cloncurry, this is the deal. If you give me Lizzie. I can get you the Book. I can do that.’

  Jamie Cloncurry winced. It was the first flash of insecurity, howev
er subtle, that Rob had ever seen on his face. It gave him hope.

  ‘Of course,’ said Cloncurry. ‘Of course you can.’ The smile was sarcastic; unconvinced. ‘I suppose you got it in Lalesh?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So where did you get it? What the fuck are you on about, Luttrell?’

  ‘Ireland. It’s here in Ireland. The Yezidi told me where. They told me in Lalesh, where to find it.’

  It was a blatant gamble-and yet it seemed to work. There was a hint of worry and doubt on Cloncurry’s face, worry disguised by a sneer. ‘Right. But of course you can’t tell me where it is. Even though I might slice off your daughter’s nose with a cigar cutter.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter where it is. But I’ll bring it here. In a day or two. Then you can have your Book and you can give me back my daughter.’ He gazed into Cloncurry’s eyes. ‘Whether you shoot your way out after that, I don’t care.’

  ‘No. Nor do I.’ Cloncurry laughed. ‘Nor do I, Robbee. I just want the Book.’

  The two men stared at each other. Rob felt a surge of curiosity, the old journalistic intrigue. ‘But why? Why are you so obsessed by it? Why all of…this?’

  Cloncurry looked off-camera, as if thinking. His green eyes flashed as he glanced back. ‘I may as well tell you a little, I suppose. What do you journalists call it? A teaser?’

  Rob sensed the policemen moving on his left: something was happening. Was this the signal? Were the police moving in? Was his daughter’s fate going to be decided right now?

  Forrester made a hand gesture: keep him talking.

  But it was Cloncurry who kept talking. ‘Three hundred years ago, Rob, Jerusalem Whaley came back from the Holy Land with a cache of materials brought back from the Yezidi. He should have been a happy man. Because he had found precisely what the Hellfire Club had been looking for, what Francis Dashwood had sought all those years. He had found the final proof that all the religions, all the faiths, the Koran and the Talmud and the Bible, all that rancid, imaginary piffle, all of it was bullshit. Religion is just the stale reek of urine from the orphanage of the human soul. For an atheist, for a priesthater like my forefather, that final proof was the Holy Grail. The big one. El Gordo. The lottery win. God isn’t just dead, the fucker never lived.’ Cloncurry smiled. ‘And yet, Rob, what Whaley found went further than that. What he found was so mortifying it actually broke his heart. What’s the saying? Be careful what you wish for. Isn’t that how it goes?’