‘But you stopped?’
‘Yes.’
He draped himself over the side of the passenger seat provocatively and looked at her over the rims of his sunglasses. ‘There’s a story here then.’
She explained to him that Calvinists don’t believe in music other than psalms sung without accompanying instruments. That only the Divine revelation should be put to music, and that using musical instruments is exhibitionist. That this was the Reformation principle of the sola scriptura.
‘Calvin thought music was dangerous. It had the ability to lead people to either godliness or to lascivious conduct. He said that music exacerbates the power of words, whether good or bad.’
‘Well, I guess I could agree with him there.’ Mikko thought for a moment. ‘But that is all total bullshit. What about all of the incredible religious music? What about Bach – he wrote his music precisely in order to glorify God. I mean, some of the most beautiful shit in the world has been inspired by religion.’
‘And yet you hate religion.’
They both clammed up and sat in silence for a while. A tension had been introduced and neither of them was sure why. Then Mikko saw something that he hoped might lighten the atmosphere – a pile of CDs stuffed into the open glove compartment on the passenger side.
‘Oh, so you don’t like music, huh. Then what is this? Hildegarde von Bingen, twelfth century canticles. Ok, I guess she was a nun. But what about this? Abba Gold?’
Helen reddened, embarrassed, and protested ‘That’s Sister Mary’s. She’s the only other person who drives this car and she does allow herself a few musical indulgences.’
‘Let’s whack this baby on then. I fuckin’ hate silence. It freaks me out.’ He put the CD into the player and soon the cheerful tinny chugging of Abba’s ‘Waterloo’ filled the car. ‘Oh my god, I remember the fucking words to this. That memory of mine.’ He tapped at his temple. He turned it up and launched into growls and shrieks in a death metal version of the Abba vocals.
Helen laughed out loud and it felt good. She couldn’t remember the last time she had really laughed.
***
An hour later, Professor Clancy arrived at Northern Genome Ltd to see a nun and a man with a tattooed neck in the waiting area. He went to the reception and leaned over the desk to speak to his secretary in a low voice. ‘Tanya, who are those people?’
‘Oh, they arrived half an hour ago wanting to see you. You’ve got a window until eleven so I made them an appointment.’
‘What do they want?’
‘Actually I’m not sure. Maybe a couple wanting genetic testing for fertility?’
‘A nun, Tanya, planning on getting pregnant? Interesting theory. Give me five minutes then send them in to my office.’
‘Well, this is the strangest week I’ve had in a long time,’ he said, getting up to shake their hands as they came into the room. ‘First I am visited by detectives, and now by a nun and a…’
‘Musician.’ Mikko finished the sentence for him as they shook hands.
‘You were visited by detectives?’ asked Helen, as she sat down across the desk. ‘Was it about Andrew Shepherd?’
Professor Clancy paused briefly before confirming.
‘Yes, it was actually. So, what can I do for you?’
Helen did the talking. She explained the strange story as best she could; how the police had brought her to Andrew Shepherd’s apartment, how she had seen the drawing, and how they wanted to know what it meant. She wasn’t really sure where she was going with it herself, and now they were here it sounded ridiculous. ‘You see Mr. Kristensen had the same dream that was depicted in the drawing, and so… I saw that Dr. Shepherd still had lots of genetic testing equipment in his apartment, so I thought maybe he was still working with you.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t think I can help you at all really. I haven’t seen Andrew Shepherd for many years, and when we parted company he was… well, he was a troubled soul. That drawing could mean anything.’
‘Was he religious himself? Because his apartment was filled with religious books and papers.’
‘Yes, he became very religious, and that was the main problem, I think. There are some fundamental contradictions between genetics and religion, as you can imagine, which he struggled to resolve.’
‘What was his main concern? Was it to do with creationism? I suppose a geneticist of certain faiths would have a very hard time resolving their science with their beliefs.’
‘Not exactly. Look, it’s rather complicated. Let’s say that Shepherd struggled with the notion of playing God. Which is what modern science does, I suppose.’
‘Was it to do with the biological dark matter?’ asked Helen.
Professor Clancy raised his eyebrows. ‘Ah, so you have done some research then, Sister?’
Mikko shifted himself more upright in his chair and spoke up. ‘Biological dark matter? That is some cool shit for a song right there. That sort of blows my mind. So what exactly did he find? In this dark matter?’
Clancy looked at them for a long time, and then sighed, conceding. ‘We, or Shepherd I should say, discovered a new gene, which he called OS1. It was on a chromosome which is specific to humans, no other animals, and appeared to be dormant, not expressed. And he found a marking on this gene’s DNA that he couldn’t explain. He became convinced that he had found what he called the soteriological marker. The marker for Heaven or Hell.’
‘So he thought he had found the marker for sin?’ asked Mikko. ‘Don’t tell me, it’s the 666. Like in The Omen, right?’
Clancy ignored this comment and looked at Mikko as if he were a mildly irritating child. ‘No, no, sin is innate. Everybody has the gene for sin. According to Christianity, of course. No, he found a marker, which he thought was the marker for predestination.’
Helen was now lost in a personal realm of terror, but Mikko was fascinated.
‘But if the genome is so vast, how did he even get to that?’
‘Well, that is a very good question.’ Clancy looked surprised at this. ‘It was thanks to our other team member, Laurent Baptiste. The data we were using came from a maximum security prison, you know, really the worst criminals one can find. Simply because there was a large group of people from who cheek swabs could be easily provided. And Andrew spotted a centromere with an unusual shape, which he couldn’t explain. It was on the OS gene, so it was definitely specific to humans, and not everybody had it. In fact, only a very few of our data set possessed this mutation. So he wondered if there were sociological factors at play. Laurent, to humour him more than anything else, ran statistical studies on different populations, and Andrew was convinced that the numbers added up. Bad people, but not all, tended to be lacking this genetic marker. It didn’t seem to correlate to any other factors, stochastically: cognitive ability, disease, sex, sexuality, income. The only correlation, and even that was inconclusive, was with criminal activity. There were also indications that it was perhaps not completely dormant, and was somehow linked to activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. The part of the brain that controls our moral behaviour.
‘Andrew became convinced. There was no talking to him. He gradually became impossible to work with, he was off on his own agenda, and it wasn’t something to which we could in any way subscribe. I mean, it was insane. Very sad really.’
‘Did anyone else know about it?’ asked Helen. ‘I don’t remember anything coming out in the press.’
‘Oh no, we kept it to ourselves. I’m comfortable telling you now, because you can see how ridiculous it is, but we would have been completely discredited. And our position within the Human Genome Project was already tenuous at best. The whole thing smacked of creationism, eugenics, and would have done proper genetics a terrible disservice. But Andrew was threatening to reveal his so-called findings. Announce it to the world. Can you imagine what would happen? If people knew their fate?’
‘You mean, if they thought they knew their fate.’ said Mikko. ‘Becau
se it’s bullshit.’
‘Yes, exactly, if they believed, of course. I mean, the world would collapse. We couldn’t let any of that happen.’
‘Fuck,’ offered Mikko. ‘This is a mindfuck. I kind of wanna write that down, that is a sick concept album right there.’
‘Quite.’ Professor Clancy had no response to this, but Mikko’s return to inanity was somehow comforting to him. Next to Mikko, Helen was silent. She was teetering on the edge of a precipice. She felt that God was with her and that he was leading her somewhere, and that it may be terrifying yet she must keep going.
‘OS1. So – that stands for Original Sin, I presume. What does it look like, this… gene?’ she asked.
‘It looks very much like all the other genes, you know, they are very difficult to describe. But the mutated version, that is, the supposed,’ – he made inverted commas with his fingers here – ‘“marker for heaven” is a single base change in the OS1 – a guanine replaced with adenine at position 32. Not 666,’ he said, looking at Mikko in jokey accusation. ‘It’s almost imperceptible. A miracle, in fact, that he found it. Well, it would be a miracle if it were anything. The human genome is absolutely packed with this so-called junk.’
Clancy raised his eyebrows suddenly; he had a suggestion. ‘I can test you, if you want. Just for fun.’
‘What would that involve?’ asked Mikko. ‘I don’t like needles, man.’
‘With all those tattoos? I find that hard to believe. But don’t worry – it’s just a simple cheek swab each. And I can call you in a couple of days with the results.’
Mikko slapped his hands onto the chair arms in agreement, relieved to lighten the atmosphere. ‘I’m down. If I’m going to Hell that is way cooler than Heaven.’
‘Hotter.’ Helen reminded him, smiling sidelong. It was important to stay on the light-hearted surface of this, because the depths of horror below were too unfathomable to contemplate. There were a few moments of expectant silence then, and Helen realized that Clancy’s offer was serious.
‘I don’t know,’ she said uncertainly, ‘it feels somehow… blasphemous.’
‘It totally is. Fuck.’ said Mikko. ‘But I won’t tell God if you don’t.’
‘God sees everything. And I tell him everything.’
Clancy watched them banter back and forth as they almost forgot he was there.
Something was happening. Is this flirting? thought Helen. Using God’s name for flirting. My goodness what am I doing? If that isn’t blasphemy, I don’t know what is.
A few minutes later, as she allowed her mouth to be swabbed by Clancy’s gloved hand, while Mikko looked on awaiting his turn, she wondered if perhaps this was the test – and she was failing.
9.
Abandoned churches litter the land; giant tombstones marking the old days of belief. Liverpool is scattered with these austere red-brick corpses, Catholic and Protestant – the Victorian gothic towers and spires darkened by pollution, like dried blood never to be cleaned. Some of these carcasses of Christianity have suffered the indignity of renovation, and are reborn as emblems of modernity: climbing walls, nurseries, office space. Others stand resolute and mournful, with crumbling turrets that sprout weeds, smashed windows boarded with thick metal grills. Some boast fluorescent posters advertising events long past; although surprisingly few are scarred with graffiti, some innate reverence holding people back from defacement.
St. Wilfrid’s stands high and lonely on its mound at the edge of the Rimrose Valley, a couple of miles outside Crosby. This church, with its distinctive castle-like tower on which perches one miniature spire, was abandoned in the Nineties, the Church of England unable to justify supplying a vicar to such a puny and dwindling congregation. Its slightly out-of-the-way location meant that it slipped through the net of community regeneration projects, and so now it stands melancholy and somehow dignified, despite its partially-collapsed roof and smashed window. The tallest structure in this part of town, it is a beacon calling out to the other desolate former places of worship across the north of England.
Tonight the beacon is lit; at the bottom of the church steps a group of teenagers have started a fire around which they sit trading jocular insults, vodka and marijuana. Although Halloween is over, they are dressed in varying degrees of costume: sparkling red devil horns, a Scream mask, a furry werewolf suit. Too old for kids’ parties and trick-or-treat, too young to access the night-time delights of the city centre, they make their own fun, playing spin the bottle, daring each other to fumbled encounters. They shiver in the night air, an opportunity for boy to get close to girl, a moment to begin. Their faces are half lit by the flames, half-dark, half-golden; their eyes demonic with bravado and fear.
Arran has taken something stronger than alcohol or weed. Unable to sit still, he jumps up suddenly and yells, ‘Oh my god, I’ve got an idea!’ He runs up the steps and tries the church door, which creaks ajar. ‘Oh my fuckin’ god, it’s open!’
‘I dare you to go in!’ they shout. But he bounds back to his position in the circle and takes hold of the official spinning bottle.
‘Right, whoever it points to next has to suck me off, in the church, on the altar!’
The girls giggle nervously, and one boy shouts, ‘What if it’s one of the lads then?’
‘Ah no, I meant to say girls only,’ he protests, but is drowned out by roars of laughter. They push each other and collapse into mini-heaps. ‘I’m gonna wet meself,’ cries one of the girls clutching her chest. Amidst hilarity, the bottle is clumsily spun. It careers a little but spins to a halt, pointing, through the flames, to the quietest girl, Hayley. She is pleased because she likes Arran; terrified because she has never done this before. Fear flashes through her, but she brushes it aside; there’s no need for anyone to know it’s her first time, best to get this out of the way while she’s drunk enough to make herself do it. She clambers to her feet, and he puts his arm around her shoulders, nervous too now that the moment is real. They go up the steps together to the chants of ‘Suck It, Suck It,’ and at the top they both turn and raise a middle finger each to the circle as they push back the creaking door and go in.
The church has no roof; it is almost a ruin and the faint lights from the city add a pink tinge to the darkness above them, giving enough light for them to make their way gingerly to the altar, dodging rubble, fallen rafters, rubbish bags full of empty beer cans. He sits on the top of the three long steps, which were covered with ancient carpet. He undoes his flies and leans back on his hands, saying, ‘Go ’ed then.’
She does what she thinks she is supposed to do, kneeling in front of him, not really knowing whether to use her hands as well. He does what he thinks he is supposed to do, placing his hands on her head. She smells unwashed skin, a faint taste of urine, and is revolted by the saliva and the slurping sound she is making. She is appalled by the remarkable indignity of it all, and is worried that she will vomit when the moment comes, or even before.
But he smells something unpleasant too, and hopes it isn’t him. Where he is sitting it is sticky, and there are soft things on the floor, damp and cold. His hands move from her head to the floor at his sides, and it is wet and viscous, so he pads his hands along, and he touches something very cold and yet familiar. He feels around it and there is bone under skin, and the unmistakeable stubble of a recently shaved leg. He looks behind him and what he makes out in the darkness causes him to scream. Hayley’s teeth catch his taut foreskin as he jolts her from his crotch and their screams echo through the loose columns, through the rafters and into the night air.
***
As dawn broke the spotlights could be turned off and the crime scene took on its own natural, grey light. The police photographer continued to snap from every angle, each image more terrible than the last. Quinn had done her crying now, had retched up her stomach to acid, and now she stood numb, unable to look, but unable to stop looking. She had been a police officer for five years, and had seen a few things in her time, but she couldn�
��t imagine that in a whole career she would ever see anything more horrible than this.
The woman’s body – or perhaps girl’s, as she looked little more than a child, particularly in the vulnerability of death – was slumped against the baptismal font in a seated position, legs splayed, like a rag doll, with her head lolling to one side. Her lifeless eyes looked over to the north window which still had some remnants and shards of coloured glass. Almost inevitably, on the girl’s forehead, was the shape of an inverted axe, neatly carved in blood. The marking itself was fresh and black, but the blood had run down the girl’s face, staining it almost completely red. Her abdomen was splayed open, and entrails flopped down the stone steps, their bulbous masses dwarfing the size of her body. The steps were draped in a sheet of blood, which had been smeared in all directions by Arran and Hayley. Behind the body was an incongruous whiteboard, perhaps left over from Sunday schools many years ago. On it had been written, not in blood but, absurdly, in red marker pen:
As the proverb of the ancients says, ‘Out of the wicked comes wickedness.’
A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.
Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No-one!
‘You OK?’ Swift placed an arm around Quinn and rubbed her shoulder gently.
‘Nope. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.’
‘This is potentially a serial killer situation now. We need to widen missing persons to UK-wide ASAP and run it against women who might have a connection to Shepherd. I’m gonna give Tomlinson a call and see if there were any girls that Shepherd was bothering back then. Maybe it wasn’t just Jason. This could be the girl who was living in his apartment, but who knows if there are more.’
They stood in silence for a few moments, since springing into action would cement the reality of this horrible situation. Eventually he said:
‘You know what I’m worried about. I can hardly bear to say it.’
Without taking her eyes off the body, she wrapped her coat tighter around herself. ‘Go on.’
Reprobation Page 9