by Tom Knox
Rob tried not to think of Lizzie.
Some of the Kurds had spotted the jar, and the remains. The dead and rotting baby. They were pointing, and arguing. Christine asked them to continue digging. But they were shouting now.
Mumtaz approached Rob. ‘They say it is dangerous here. This place is cursed. They see the baby and they say they must go. The water will be here soon.’
Christine pleaded with the men, in English and Kurdish.
The men gabbled at Mumtaz and he interpreted. ’They say the water comes. To bury these bodies and that is good. They say they go now!’
Christine protested again. The argument continued. Some of the Kurds dug, some just stood and debated. The sun rose all the time, hot and menacing. The spades and trowels lay unused, glinting in the merciless light. The sun was baking the small slimy corpse of the baby. That obscene little package of flesh. Rob had an enormous urge to bury it again, to cover up the obscenity. He knew he was close to unlocking the puzzle, but he also felt close to some kind of nervous surrender. The tension was hideous.
And then the tension worsened. Some of the Kurds, led by Mumtaz, came to a decision: they refused to go on. Despite Christine’s pleadings, three of them climbed the slopes of the valley, and got into the second Land Rover.
Mumtaz looked in Rob’s direction as they left, a strange, wistful glance. Then the car accelerated away into the dust and the haze.
But four men still remained, including Radevan. And with the last of her charm, and the last of Rob’s dollars, Christine persuaded them to complete the task. So they all picked up the discarded shovels, and together they dug. They dug for five hours, sideways across the valley, shifting enough dry, yellow soil to expose what was necessary, and then moving on.
They uncovered parts of maybe thirty skeletons lying next to the jars. But these were no ordinary skeletons. They were a mixture of the large hominids and the hybrid men and the little huntergatherers. All jumbled together, promiscuously and wildly. And all of the skeletons showed damage: signs of violent death. Vicious cracks in the skull, spear-holes in pelvic bones. Broken arms, broken femurs, broken heads.
They had uncovered a battlefield. A terrible site of slaughter and conflict. They had uncovered the Valley of Killing.
Christine looked at Rob. He looked back and said, ‘I think we’re done here. Don’t you?’
Christine nodded solemnly.
Rob reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The sensation was almost elation. He felt it in his lungs and in his heart. He had worked it out: he had deciphered the great secret Cloncurry had been born to conceal. The Genesis Secret. And that meant Rob had power over Cloncurry, at last. Rob was going to win his daughter back.
Anxious-but hopeful for the first time in these bitter weeks-he keyed in the number. He was about to phone Cloncurry and demand his daughter’s immediate return when he heard a voice.
‘Well, hello.’
Rob swivelled. A figure was standing on the crest of the hill above them, between the valley and the westering sun. The sun behind the figure was so bright Rob couldn’t make out who it was. He squinted and raised his arm.
‘Have I put on weight? How depressing. Surely you recognize me?’
Rob felt his blood congeal with fear.
Jamie Cloncurry was standing on the hill above them, with a gun in his hand. The gun was aimed at Rob. The killer had two large men beside him. Big Kurds with black moustaches, also conspicuously armed. These two thugs were holding a small figure between them bound and strapped.
Lizzie! Alive, but evidently frightened, and gagged very tightly.
Rob stared to his left and right at Radevan and his friends-seeking their help.
Cloncurry chortled. ‘Oh, I shouldn’t expect any assistance there, Mr Robbie.’ With a languid gesture, he signalled at Radevan.
Radevan nodded, obediently. He turned and stared at Rob and Christine, and then rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. ‘Englishman much money. Dollars and euros. Dollars and euros…’ Then he gestured to his friends and the rest of the Kurds dropped their tools and walked away from Rob and Christine, nonchalantly deserting the couple. Leaving Rob and Christine to their fate.
Rob watched-slack-jawed, defeated, and desolate-as the Kurds calmly loped up the hill towards the last Land Rover. Radevan reached in the boot of the car and took out the Black Box. He carried it over to Cloncurry and laid it in the dust beside Lizzie. Cloncurry smiled and nodded, and Radevan walked back to the car, jumped in the front seat, and the car was driven away with a spin of wheel dust, taking with it the shotguns and the pistol.
The orange dust hung in the air, reproachfully, as the vehicle disappeared over the sunburnt horizon, leaving Rob and Christine alone and defenceless in the bottom of the valley.
Above them stood Cloncurry, armed, with the other two Kurds. The killer had his four-wheel-drive parked a few hundred yards away, silver and glittering in the desert light. He had obviously approached on foot, to surprise them. And it had worked.
They were trapped. Lizzie knelt, gagged and bound, in the dust, staring at her father with wild and puzzled eyes. Imploring him to save her.
But Rob knew he couldn’t save her. He knew what was going to happen next. And it wasn’t going to be a heroic rescue.
Cloncurry was going to kill Lizzie in front of him. He was going to sacrifice Rob’s firstborn, here in this wilderness, as the crows and the buzzards circled in the sky. His daughter was going to die, cruelly and brutally, in the next few minutes, and Rob would be forced to watch.
49
Cloncurry waved the gun at Rob and Christine. ’More over there, lovebirds.’
Rob gazed at his daughter kneeling there in the dust, feeling perplexed, and utterly anguished. Then he stared with fierce anger at Cloncurry. He’d never felt such a lust to hurt someone-he wanted to dismember Cloncurry with his bare hands, with his teeth. Dig out his eyes with his thumbs.
But Rob and Christine were trapped and unarmed: they had to obey; following Cloncurry’s languid directions, they moved up a slight rise in the middle of the valley, onto a kind of sandy knoll, though Rob had no idea why Cloncurry wanted them on this isolated hillock.
The wind was whispering and melancholy. Christine looked as if she was about to cry. Rob glanced left and right, desperate for some escape. There was no escape.
What was Cloncurry doing? Rob squinted, visoring his gaze against the sun with a hand. It seemed that Cloncurry had some kind of phone or other gadget in his hand. He was pointing it left, towards the encroaching floods. Where the levee protected them from the inundations.
At last Cloncurry spoke. ‘It’s not every day one gets to mutilate and kill a child in front of her daddy, so I think some celebrations are in order. Indeed, some fireworks. So. Here we go. Surf’s up!’
He pressed a button on the device he was holding. A fraction of a second later the boom of an explosion ripped across the desert-followed by a tangible blast wave: Cloncurry had blown up the little shepherd’s hut on the levee. As the smoke and the flames cleared, Rob saw why.
It wasn’t just the hut that Cloncurry had sent hurtling into the sky: half the levee had gone too. And now floodwater was pouring through the gap: it had found this lower channel, and the floodwater was tumbling, down the sides of the valley, tons of water spouting and screaming. Coming their way, very fast.
Rob grabbed Christine hard, and pulled her to the top of the knoll. The water was already gushing beside them; tons of water, some of it lapping at their ankles. Rob looked up at the crest: Cloncurry was laughing.
‘Do hope you can swim.’
The water was cascading now, filling the valley, splashing at Rob’s feet. A wall of water, roaring and engulfing, carrying with it a repulsive scum. Bobbing on the surface were bones, and slops of mummified baby, and some of the warrior skulls: floating and tumbling. Soon the scummy and turbulent waters had completely surrounded Rob and Christine on their little hill. If it continued
to rise they were going to drown.
‘Perfect!’ exclaimed Cloncurry. ‘Can’t tell you how difficult that was. We had to come out here in the middle of the night to set it all up. In that nasty little hut. Lots of explosives. Tricky. But it worked to perfection! How enormously gratifying.’
Rob stared across the waters at Cloncurry, safe on his elevation. He didn’t know what to think about this man, the utter madness mixed with this…devious subtlety. And then Cloncurry made his usual near-telepathic remark:
‘I guess you’re a tad confused, little Robbie.’
Rob stayed silent; Cloncurry smiled.
‘Can’t work out how such a total psycho like me should end up on this side of the water? Eh? While the good guys, all you guys, you’re on that side. The drowning side.’
Again, Rob said nothing. His enemy grinned wider.
‘I’m rather afraid I’ve been using everyone all along. I got you to find me the Black Book. I harnessed the fine and famous minds of Christine Meyer and Isobel Previn to the cause. OK, I sliced Isobel’s head off but she’d done her job by then. Showed me the Book surely wasn’t in Kurdistan.’ Cloncurry was gleaming with pride. ‘And then, by simply sitting back and doing nothing, I got you lovely people to do the rest of the work, as well: to decipher the Book, to locate the Valley of the Slaughter, to find the only evidence of the Genesis Secret. Because, you see, I needed to know for sure where all the evidence is, so it can be destroyed forever.’ He gestured across the frothing floodwater. ‘And now I am going to erase all of this in a huge flood-entomb it underwater for all time. And as I wipe away all the evidence, I will simultaneously kill the only people who know the Secret.’ He looked down, very happily.’ Oh yes, nearly forgot, and I have the Black Book, too! At least I think I do. Let me just make sure…’
Stooping to the dust, Cloncurry grabbed the box and wrenched the leather lid away. He peered down, reached inside, and took out the hybrid skull. For a moment he cradled the skull, caressing the smoothness of the cranium. Then he turned the skull so it met his gaze.
‘Alas, poor Yorick. You had fucking weird eyes. But quite superb cheekbones! Hah.’
He set the skull to the side, and took out the document and spread it across his knee so that he could read.
‘Fascinating. Truly fascinating. I fully expected cuneiform. We all expected cuneiform. But late ancient Aramaic? A wonderful discovery.’ Cloncurry glanced at Christine and Rob. ‘Thank you, chaps. So kind of you to bring it all the way here. And to dig everything up.’
He folded the document, put it back in the box and replaced the skull on top of the document; the leather lid followed.
Rob watched all this with a kind of sullen, hatefilled resentment. The most disgusting flavour in this banquet of defeat was the sense that Cloncurry was right. The killer’s whole gameplan had a kind of glistening, alien perfection. Cloncurry had outwitted and out-thought them all the way through. From the Kurds to the cottage and back again, Cloncurry hadn’t just won, he had triumphed.
And now his triumph would be honoured in blood.
Rob stared at his daughter’s shining, crying eyes; and he shouted across the water that he loved her.
Lizzie’s eyes implored her helpless father: help me.
Cloncurry was giggling. ‘Very touching. If you like that kind of thing. Makes me want to spew, personally. Either way, I think we should now proceed to the final drama, don’t you? Before you actually drown. Enough of the preamble.’ The killer regarded the wavelets lapping at Christine’s ankles. As he gazed, one particularly enormous skull bobbed along the burbling floodwaters, like an obscene kind of bath toy. ‘Oooh, look, there’s one of the wrinklies. Say hello to granddad, Lizzie.’
Another chuckle. Lizzie wept louder.
‘Yes, yes.’ Cloncurry sighed loudly. ‘I never liked my family either.’ He turned and called across to Rob. ‘You have a nice view from your hillock? Excellent. Because we’re going to do the Aztec thing, and I want to make sure you can see. I’m sure you know the rigmarole, Robert. We splay your daughter over a rock, then we rip into her chest and yank out the beating heart. Can be a bit messy but I think my friend Navda has some Kleenex.’
Cloncurry nudged one of his followers. The moustached Kurd on his left grunted, but said nothing. The gang-leader sighed. ‘Not the most expressive of chaps, but the best available. I do wonder about the moustaches though. Just a tiny bit…sincere, aren’t they?’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, could you two chatty Kurdish gaylords take this little girl and drape her over that rock?’ He mimed it for them.
The Kurds nodded, and obeyed. They picked up Lizzie and carried her over to a small boulder and laid her out with the boulder under her back, her feet held by one Kurd, her hands held by the other henchman; and all the while Lizzie sobbed, and struggled. And all the while Cloncurry smirked.
‘Very good, very good. Now to the best bit. By rights, Mr Robbie, we should have a chac mool, one of those weird stone bowls, into which I can drop your daughter’s bloody, still-beating heart, but we haven’t got a chac mool. I suppose I shall feed her heart to the crows.’
He handed his pistol to one of the Kurds, then reached into his jacket pocket and took a huge steel blade from inside his jacket. This, he brandished exultantly, admiring it, his eyes bright and keen and loving. Then he looked over, and winked at Rob.
‘We should really be using obsidian: that’s what the Aztecs used. Dark obsidian daggers. But a big thick knife like this will do nicely, a big thick rather memorable knife. You do recognize it?’ Cloncurry lifted the knife in the dusty sunlight. It flashed as he turned it. ‘Christine? Any ideas?’
‘Fuck you,’ said the Frenchwoman.
‘Well, quite. It’s the knife I used to fillet your old friend, Isobel. I think I can still see some of her elderly blood on the handle. And a tiny bit of spleen!’ He grinned. ‘Also, as the Germans say. To our task. I see the water is now at your knees and you will drown within about ten minutes. But I so want the last thing you witness to be your daughter having her heart literally torn from her tiny chest as she screams helplessly for her pathetic, useless and cowardly father. So we’d better get cracking. Guys, hold the girl tighter, yes, like that. Yes, yes. Very good.’
Cloncurry lifted the knife in his two hands and the vicious blade sparkled in the sun. He paused. ‘The Aztecs were so weird, weren’t they? Apparently they came from Asia, over the Bering Straits. Like you me and Rob. All the way from North Asia.’ The knife glittered; Cloncurry’s eyes were likewise shining. ‘They just loved to kill children. They lusted for it. Originally they killed the kids of all their enemies, their conquered foes. Yet I understand that by the end of their empire they were so nuts they started killing all their own children. No joke. The priests would pay poor Aztec families to hand over babies and infants to be ritually slaughtered. An entire civilization literally murdering itself, devouring its own offspring. Fantastic! And what a way to do it, to rip out the heart by smashing into the ribcage, then hold the still-beating organ in front of the living victim. So.’ Cloncurry sighed happily. ‘Are you ready, Lillibet? Little Betsy? My little Betty Boo? Mmm? Chesty open time?’
Cloncurry beamed down at Rob’s daughter. Rob watched, with desolate disgust: Cloncurry was actually drooling, a line of spittle dribbling from his mouth onto Lizzie’s gagged and screaming face.
And then the moment came: Cloncurry’s two hands took a grip at the furthest end of the handle and raised the knife higher…and Rob closed his eyes in the sadness of uttermost defeat…
…as a shot cracked the air. A shot from nowhere. A shot from heaven.
Rob opened his eyes. A bullet had whipped across the waters and slammed into Cloncurry- a bullet so violent it had clean ripped off the killer’s hand.
He blinked and stared. Cloncurry had lost a hand! Arterial blood was pumping from the severed wrist. The knife had been sent spinning into the water.
Cloncurry gazed at the hideous wound, nonplussed. His expression was
one of deep curiosity. And then a second shot snapped out, again from nowhere-who was doing the shooting?-and this one nearly took off Cloncurry’s arm at the shoulder. His left arm, already handless, was now dangling by a few red muscles, and blood was pissing into the dust from the gaping shoulder-wound.
The two Kurds immediately dropped Lizzie, turned with panic on their face and, as a third shot cracked through the desert air, ran.
Cloncurry fell to his knees. The third shot had obviously hit him in the leg. He knelt, bleeding, on the sand, scrabbling anxiously around. What was he looking for? His own severed hand? The knife? Lizzie was next to him lying gagged and hogtied. Rob stood knee-deep in the water. Who was shooting who? And where was Cloncurry’s gun? Rob glanced left: he could see dust in the distance. Maybe a car was coming their way, but the dust obscured his view. Were they going to shoot Lizzie too?
Rob realized he had one chance. Now. He dived into the water, plunged and swam, swimming for Lizzie’s life, swimming between the bones and skulls. He had never swum so hard, had never battled such surging, dangerous waters…He kicked and crawled, swallowing whole mouthfuls of cold water, and then he slapped a hand on dry hot earth, and hauled himself up. When he rose from the water, gasping and spitting, he saw Cloncurry a few yards away.
Cloncurry was lying down, using Lizzie’s body as a shield from any further gunshots; but his mouth was wide open and drooling-and he was closing his jaw over Lizzie’s soft throat. Like a tiger killing a gazelle. Jamie Cloncurry was going to bite into Lizzie’s neck, and chew out her jugular.
A surge of fury ran through Rob. He flung himself across the sand and ran at Cloncurry just as the killer’s sharp white teeth closed over his daughter’s windpipe, and he kicked Cloncurry in the head, kicking him straight off his daughter. Then Rob did it again: he kicked the killer away for a second time, and then a third time, and Cloncurry sprawled with a yell of pain into the dust, his half-severed arm hanging useless and obscene.