The Genesis Secret

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 surrounded 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, however 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?’

‘So what was it? What did he find?’

‘Ah.’ Cloncurry chuckled. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know, Robbie, my little tabloid hack? But I’m not going to tell you. If you really know where the Book is you can have a read yourself. Except if you tell anyone I shall slice up your daughter with a set of steak-knives from eBay. All I can say for now is that Thomas Buck Whaley concealed the Book. And he told a few of his friends what was in it. And that in certain circumstances the Book must be destroyed.’

‘Why didn’t he destroy it himself?’

‘Who knows? The Black Book is such an extraordinary…treasure trove. Such a terrifying revelation, Rob, maybe he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. He must have had some pride in its discovery. He had found what the great Dashwood didn’t. Him. Humble Tom Whaley from the boondocks of colonial Ireland had outdone the British Chancellor. He must have been proud, despite himself. So instead of destroying it, he hid it. Where exactly has been forgotten over time. Hence our heroic search for my brave ancestor’s discovery. But here’s the clever bit, Rob. Are you listening?’

The police were definitely doing something. Rob could see armed men walking out of the tent. He heard whispered commands. There was a sense of action: the videoscreens were flickering with movement. At the same time the gang seemed to be erecting something in the garden. It was a big wooden stake. Like something you’d use for an impaling.

Rob knew he had to keep Cloncurry talking; stay calm and keep the killer talking. ‘Go on. Go on, I’m listening.’

‘Whaley said that if ever a temple was dug up in Turkey-’

‘Gobekli Tepe?!’

‘Clever boy. Gobekli Tepe. Whaley told his confidants precisely what the Yezidi had told him: that if ever Gobekli Tepe was dug up then the Black Book must be destroyed.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s the damn point, you halfwit. Because the Book is, in the right hands, seen the right way, combined with evidence from Gobekli, something that would overturn the world, Rob: it would change everything. It would demean and degrade society. Not just religions. The whole structure of our lives, the way the world exists, would be endangered if the truth was revealed.’ Cloncurry was leaning very close to the webcam. His face filled the entire screen. ‘That is the rich, rich irony here, Rob. All along I’ve just been trying to protect you from yourself, you jerks, protect all of humanity. That is the job of the Cloncurrys. To protect you all. To find the Book if necessary, and destroy it. To save you all! You know, we are practically saints. I am expecting an e-vite from the Pope any day now.’ The snakelike smile had returned.

Rob glanced up at the screens behind the laptop. He could see movement. One of the cameras showed three figures, obviously armed, crawling towards the cottage garden: it had to be the police. Going in. As he tried to concentrate on the dialogue with Cloncurry he realized that Cloncurry was probably trying to do exactly the same in reverse: to distract Rob and the police.

But Dooley and his men had seen the wooden stake: they knew this was the moment. Rob stared at the profile of his daughter. Tied to her chair, visible over Cloncurry’s shoulder. With a physical effort, Rob got hold of his emotions. ‘So why all the violence? Why all the killing? If you just wanted the Yezidi Book, why all the sacrifices?

The face on the laptop scowled. ‘Because I am a Cloncurry. We descend from the Whaleys. They descend from Oliver Cromwell. Capisce? Notice the theme of burning people there? Burning people in churches? With a nice big audience? Cromwell was heard to laugh when he killed people in battle.’

‘So?’

‘So just blame my fucking haplotype. Ask my double helix. Take a look at Dysbindin gene sequence DTNBP-1.’

Rob tried not to think of his daughter: impaled. ’So, you’re saying you inherited this trait?’

Cloncurry applauded, sarcastically. ‘Brilliant, Holmes. Yes. Quite clearly I am a psychopath. How much proof do you want? Stay tuned to this channel and you might see me eat your daughter’s brain. With some oven chips. That proof enough?’

Rob swallowed his anger. He just had to keep Cloncurry here, and keep Lizzie in view, via the webcam. And that meant listening to the madman, ranting. He nodded.

‘Of course I have the fucking genes for violence, Rob. And funnily enough I have the genes for very high intelligence, too. You know what my IQ is? 147. Yes, 147. That makes me a genius, even by the standards of geniuses. The average IQ of a Nobel Prize winner is 145. I’m smart, Rob. Very smart. I’m probably too smart for you to realize how smart I am. That’s the problem with very high intelligence. For me, relating to ordinary folk is like trying to have a serious chat with a mollusc.’

‘Yet we caught you.’

‘Oh, well done. You and your piffling post-grad IQ of, what, 125? 130? Jesus Christ. I am a Cloncurry. I carry the noble genes of the Cromwells and the Whaleys. Unfortunately for you and your daughter I also carry their propensity for flamboyant violence. Which we are about to see. Nonetheless-’

Cloncurry turned to his left. Rob looked up and checked the video monitors. The police were moving in: at last the guns had opened up. The shots and the echoes resounded along the valley.

There were shouts and noises and gunshots everywhere. From the laptop, from the monitors, from the valley. The laptop screen fuzzed and then came back, as if the camera had been knocked. Cloncurry was standing. Another shot was audible across the valley, then four more-and then it happened. Rob watched as a second team of police made a move, firing as they went. Shooting with speed and verve.

The Gardai snipers were taking out the gang. He saw the dark figures of the gang members on the TV monitors crumple to the ground. Two bodies fell. Then he heard another scream. He didn’t know if it was coming from the TVs or the laptop or real life outside, but the noises were unnerving: these were high-velocity rifles. There was a shout: perhaps one of the policemen was down. And then another? But the assault went on-live on the TV monitors all over the tent.

The police were pouring over the back wall of the cottage garden and vaulting over the fences. As Rob watched the screens the backyard of the cottage was filled with policemen in black skimasks and black helmets, yelling out orders. Screaming at the gang.

It was all happening with stunning and incredible speed. At least one of the gang looked seriously injured, sprawled and barely moving; another might have been dead. Then someone jumped forward and threw a stun grenade into the cottage and Rob heard an enormous bang; clouds of black smoke came streaming out of the broken cottage window.

Through the smoke and the deafening noise and confusion it was nonetheless clear: the police were winning-but could they take Cloncurry as well? Rob stared at the laptop. Cloncurry had Lizzie, wriggling, in his arms. He was frowning, backing off, retreating out of the room. As he ran from the room Cloncurry’s hand came out and snatched the laptop shut and the picture went black.