The Genesis Secret

32

Hugo De Savary got a taxi from the little station. In a few minutes he was speeding through gorgeous Dorset countryside in the full splendour of May. Hawthorn blossom and blowsy apple trees. Big clouds in a warm and smiling sky.

The taxi drove down a driveway ranked with large beech trees and came to a stop outside a grand manor house with rambling wings and gracious stone chimneys. All around the house overalled policemen were combing the lawns for evidence; others were coming out of the front door peeling off rubber gloves. He paid the cabbie, got out of the car, and glanced at the sign in front of the building: Canford School. From his research, done hastily on the train, he knew that the building had not long been a school: at least by the standards of its own history.

The estate itself dated back to Saxon times, when it encompassed large parts of Canford Magna, the nearby village. But only the Norman church and the fourteenth century 'John of Gaunt's' kitchen survived from those earliest years. The rest of the building was late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. But nonetheless beautiful for that. The manor, converted to a school in the 1920s, stood in fine parkland beside the River Stour. De Savary could smell the freshness of the air, despite the warmth of this gorgeous day: the river was evidently close at hand.

'Professor De Savary!' It was DCI Forrester. 'Great you could come at such short notice.'

De Savary shrugged. 'I'm not sure I can be of that much use.'

Forrester smiled, though, as De Savary noted, the policeman looked very haggard.

How bad was this murder, De Savary wondered? On the phone this morning all Forrester had said was that it had 'some sacrificial elements', which was why the professor had agreed to come. De Savary's professional interest was piqued: he was vaguely wondering if the theme-of contemporary human sacrifice-might make another book. Or maybe even a TV series. 'When was the body discovered?' he asked.

'Yesterday. Sheer luck. It's half term so the school's closed. The only person here was the caretaker. The victim. But there was a delivery…some sports equipment. An inquisitive kid thought something was up and poked his nose around.'

'He found the body?'

'Poor bastard. He's still being counselled.' Forrester eyed the professor. 'Mr De Savary-'

'Call me Hugo.'

'It's a bloody unpleasant sight. I'm a detecting police officer, I've seen a fair few gruesome murders but this one…'

'Whereas I am just an innocent from the groves of academe?' De Savary smiled. 'Please, Mark, I have been studying Satanic cults and psychotic impulses for more than a decade. I am used to handling some quite disturbing materials. And have a fairly strong constitution, I rather hope. I even ate a Southwest Trains prawn sandwich on the way down.'

The policeman didn't laugh. Or even smile. He just nodded, blankly. Again De Savary noted the harrowed quality of his expression. The detective had seen something awful. For the first time De Savary got an inkling of apprehension.

The policeman cleared his throat:

'I haven't told you what you are about to see because I don't want to nudge you. I want your honest opinion what you think is going on. Without any preconceptions…'

The front door was opened by an obedient constable. Inside it was very much the normal entrance to an English public school: roll calls of honour from the war: lists of boys who gave their lives. There were trophies and noticeboards and some desultory antiques, badly scuffed and damaged by generations of eager schoolboys running past, rugby boots slung over young shoulders. It was nostalgic for De Savary. He remembered his own schooldays at Stowe.

The entrance hall was dominated by a big door at the end. The door was shut, and guarded by another policeman. Forrester looked down at De Savary's feet. And gave him some plastic overshoes.

'There's a lot of blood,' the DCI said quietly, then he motioned to the constable standing by the large inner doors. The constable gave a sortof salute, and swung open the door, allowing them to step inside.

Beyond was a very baronial space. Wood panelling and heraldic coats of arms: a Victorian pastiche of a medieval nobleman's grand hall. But it was quite well done, thought De Savary. He could imagine minstrels at one end, on the first floor balcony, serenading the feasting duke, sitting above the high table at the other end. But what was at the other end? The police had erected a big screen.

Forrester led the way across the creaking floor-boards. The nearer they got the more sound their footsteps made: but they weren't creaking now, but squelching. This, De Savary realized, was because he was walking into patches of splashed blood. The polished wooden floor seemed to be sticky with splashes of blood.

Forrester rolled the movable screen out of the way and De Savary gasped. In front of him was a portable soccer goal. A portable wooden frame, which had been wheeled in from the sports pitches outside. Stretched between the goal post and the bar, tied to the bar and the posts by leather straps, was a man.

Or rather, what was left of a man. The naked victim had been suspended upside down from the frame by the ankles. His arms were stretched and tied to each of the posts by the wrists. The hideous grimace of pain on the face of the man, down there by the bloodied floorboards, showed the torment he had been through.

He had been flayed. Flayed alive, it seemed, very slowly and diligently, the skin peeled, or scraped, strip by strip, flap by anguished flap, from the man's body. The raw pulsing flesh had been left uncovered at each stage, leaving blobs of yellow fat; though sometimes this fat had been flensed away, exposing the raw red muscles underneath. You could actually see the organs and the bones in certain places.

De Savary put a forefinger to his nose. He could smell the body, smell the muscles and the lustrous fat. He could see the neck muscles taut with agony, the grey-and-white lungs, the curving definition of the ribcage. It was like an illustration of the muscles and tendons of the human body in a biology textbook. The genitals were missing, of course. A dark and scarlet socket was left where the penis and testicles should have been. De Savary guessed they had been forced into the victim's mouth: he had probably been obliged to eat them.

He stepped around. It looked like the work of more than one person. To do it this carefully, without killing the victim at once, needed care and skill. If you flayed a person correctly they could live for hours, as the muscles and organs slowly dried and crinkled. Sometimes the victim might faint with pain, De Savary imagined, but you could bring them round, before starting again. He didn't want to reconfigure the scene. But he had to. The terrified caretaker brought in here. Tied upside-down. Hanging by his feet from the bar. Then lashed with his arms to either post. Like an inverted crucifixion.

And then-then De Savary imagined it-the terrible horror that must have overcome the victim as he realized what they were doing: the initial tentative scrape of flesh at the ankle or on his feet. Then the searing pain as the skin was peeled away, leaving the pulp exposed to cold and heat. If anything had touched the raw flesh the pain would have been virtually unendurable. He must have screamed as the gang worked their way down his quivering, agonized body, working like expert butchers, making a pelt of his skin. Perhaps he had screamed too loudly at one point, so they had chopped off his genitals, folded the bloody handful of flesh into the screaming mouth, to shut him up.

Then the major flaying: the chest, the arms. Technically quite difficult. They must have practised beforehand, on sheep, goats or maybe cats. Getting it right.

He turned away, shuddering.

Forrester put an arm around the academic's shoulder. 'Yes, I'm sorry.'

'How old was he? It's hard to tell when there's no…skin on the face.'

'In his forties,' Forrester said. 'Shall we go outside?'

'Please.'

The policeman led the way. As soon as they were outside they made for the garden bench. De Savary was pleased to sit down. 'Just ghastly,' he said.

The sun was still warm. Forrester took his overshoes off with a grunt. They sat there in a heavy silence. The sweetness of the early summer air seemed sickly now.

After a while De Savary said, 'I think I can help.'

'You can?'

De Savary rephrased. 'That is to say, I think I understand what their psychology might have been…'

So?'

'Clearly there are Aztec themes. The Aztecs had…many methods of human sacrifice. The most famous, of course, is live heart excision. The priest would plunge the obsidian knife into the chest, rip open the chest cavity, and yank out the beating heart.'

They both watched as a police car pulled up the driveway. Two officers stepped out, carrying metal suitcases. They nodded briskly at Forrester, and he nodded back.

'Pathology.' said Forrester. 'Go on Hugo, the Aztecs…?'

'They would feed people to jaguars. They would bleed them to death. They would fire little arrows into warriors until they died. But one of the most elaborate methods was flaying. They even had a special day for it, the Feast of the Flaying of Men.'

'A special day for flaying?'

'They would strip the skins of enemy prisoners. And then they would dance through the streets of the city, wearing the flayed skins. Aztec nobles often wore the flayed skins of their victims: they considered it an honour for the victim. Indeed there is a story that they once captured an enemy princess, then a few weeks later they invited her father, an enemy king, to a feast, to make peace. The king presumed they were going to hand back his daughter, alive, as part of that peacemaking. But the Aztec emperor clapped his hands after dinner and a priest walked in, wearing the slain princess's skin. The Aztecs thought this was a great honour for the enemy king. I think the peace overture was not a great success.'

Forrester had gone very pale. 'You don't think they are wearing this skin? That Cloncurry is driving around in this guy's fucking skin?'

'It's very possible. That's what the Aztecs would do. Wear the human skin of their victims, like a suit, until it literally rotted away from them. The stench must have been appalling.'

'We certainly haven't found the skin yet. We've called in the dog unit.'

'That's a good idea. I consider it entirely possible they are wearing the skin. As they are following the Aztec method so closely.'

They both fell silent once more. De Savary gazed across the rolling parkland, the lofty trees bending over the river; the beautiful scene of tranquil, bucolic Englishness. It was hard to reconcile with that…that thing suspended on a wooden frame, just yards away. The pink and inverted cadaver; with its hideous grin of pain.

The detective stood up. 'So what were they looking for? The gang. I've been searching. There's no connection with the Hellfire Club at all.'

'No.' said De Savary. 'But there is a curious connection between this school and the Middle East.'

'And that is what?'

De Savary smiled, very hesitantly.

'If I recall from what I read on the train, the tuck shop should be down here.' He strode around the front of the building, Forrester following. At the far end of the south wing there was a curious gabled building adjoining the main elevation. It looked like a chapel. De Savary stopped.

Forrester gazed at the red-and-black design of the impressive doors: a motif of winged metal lions. 'What's that?'

'This is the Nineveh Porch. It has a profound association with Iraq and Sumeria. Shall we see if our guys were down this end?

Forrester nodded.

De Savary prodded the metal door and it swung open easily. Inside, apart from some peculiar stained glass windows, it looked like a normal tuckshop for a rich school. There was a Pepsi machine. A till. And boxes of snacks and crisps chaotically scattered on the floor. But the boxes were scattered too randomly. The unlit room had been ransacked. On closer examination, the wooden panelling along one wall had been ripped away; a window was broken. Someone had been in here, vigorously searching for something. Whether they had taken anything was a different matter. De Savary guessed they hadn't. The scattering of items in the tuck shop looked angry: frustrated and thwarted.

They stepped out into the peaceful sunshine and walked along the pathway. Pollen drifted languidly on the mild sunny air as De Savary told the tale of the Nineveh Porch. 'The porch was ordered by Lady Charlotte Guest and her husband Sir John around 1850. It was built after a design by the architect Charles Barry, better known as the creator of-'

'The Houses of Parliament,' said Forrester. And he smiled shyly. 'Architecture is a private hobby.'

'Quite so! The Houses of Parliament. Anyway the Nineveh Porch was a private loggia, built expressly for the purpose of housing some famous Assyrian reliefs gathered from Victorian explorations of Mesopotamia. Hence the rather unusual doors, with the Assyrian lions.'

'Right.'

'These reliefs, housed in the porch, had been excavated by Austen Henry Layard, a cousin of Lady Charlotte Guest. The reliefs were significant and substantial. Each weighed several tons. They had originally adorned important thresholds in Nimrud.'

'And Layard and Barry put them here?'

'Yes. And together with a number of other reliefs they remained here, in the Nineveh Porch, until shortly after the First World War. Then the whole collection was offered for sale.'

'So there's nothing left?'

'Hold on! The antiquities in the porch were replaced by humble casts. In 1923 Canford Hall itself was sold by the Guest family and it became a boys' school. At that point, the Nineveh Porch, now robbed of its ancient treasures, was turned into a tuck shop. Selling sandwiches and Snickers bars.'

'So our guys must have known this? That nothing was left. Why come here again?'

'There is a slightly odd denouement to the story. In 1992 two academics came here. Both experts in Assyriology. They were on their way to a conference in Bournemouth but they had some time, so they decided to make a quick pilgrimage to this place so important in their discipline. They didn't expect to find anything. But they looked at the stained glass windows, with their pictures of Sumeria, and they admired the vaguely Assyrian detailing of the architecture. And then they looked behind the Pepsi machine-and they found an original relief.'

'You're joking.'

'No. Only the casts were supposed to be left. But lo and behold! One more piece remained. It was recognized as the real thing, although covered by layers of white vinyl emulsion. The relief was taken down and sent to London, where it was offered for sale at auction by Christie's. It was bought by a Japanese dealer, apparently acting on behalf of a religious sect. The price was, I think, around eight million pounds. The highest amount ever paid for an antiquity anywhere in the world. Et voila.'

They had reached the riverbank. The rushing River Stour was before them; sunlight dappled across the waters, spangled by the arch of leaves above.

'I still don't get it,' said Forrester. He picked up a stick and threw it into the river. 'What links this with the Hellfire stuff?'

'You remember what I told you on the phone the other day?'

'About the Yezidi and the Black Book? How that might be what they are seeking?

'Precisely. Austen Henry Layard, you see, was one of the first ever westerners to meet the Yezidi, in 1847. He was excavating in northern Iraq, in Ur and Nineveh. The early years of modern archaeology. Then he heard about this strange sect that lived near Mosul, around Dahuk. Layard made contact with the Yezidi. Then he was invited to their sacred capital Lalesh. In the mountains. It's a dangerous place, hostile to this day.'

'What did he do there?'

'Now that's a question. We know he was invited to witness some of their most secret ceremonies. A privilege, as far as I know, afforded to no one else before or since.'

'Did they give him the Black Book?

De Savary smiled. 'Detective! First rate work. Yes, that's one theory. Scholars have speculated that Layard must have had a very close relationship with the Yezidi, to be treated the way he was. Some think he may have taken the Black Book with him. Thus giving rise to their legends that it came to England.'

'So, if he had brought it back he might have brought it here, to the building designed for the best antiquities, the ones he kept to himself? Right?'

'Vraiment!'

Forrester frowned. 'But I thought we established that Jerusalem Whaley already had the Black Book. How does Layard get involved?'

De Savary shrugged. 'Who knows? Maybe Jerusalem Whaley thought he had the Book, but didn't. Maybe he gave the Book back to the Yezidi and Layard went to get it again, a century later. Shuttling back and forth! My personal hunch, for what it is worth, is that Jerusalem Whaley had the Book all along, and Layard is just a diversion.'

'But the main thing is we can assume that this is what the gang are after. Otherwise they wouldn't have come here. So it's not necessarily anything to do with the Hellfire Club in itself. The gang are actually after the Black Book of the Yezidi. That's their real prize.'

'Yes.'

Forrester whistled, almost cheerfully. He slapped De Savary on the back. 'Thanks for coming, Hugo.'

De Savary smiled, though he felt guilty for doing so. The smell of the man's exposed flesh had not quite left his nostrils.

A loud shout ripped through the silent wood.

'Angus! Angus!'

Something was up. Another shout echoed across the parkland. The shout was coming nearer.

De Savary and Forrester scrambled up the rise. A constable was running across the lawns, chasing something. Shouting out the name Angus.

'That's the dog handler,' said Forrester. 'Lost his dog. Hey, Johnson! Where's the dog?'

'Sir! Sir!' The constable kept running. 'Just gone past you, sir. Over there!'

De Savary swivelled and saw a large dog galloping towards the school buildings. It was having trouble running. Because it was dragging something. Something long, and slippery, and sullen grey. What was that? It looked very strange. For a moment the professor got the surreal and sickening idea that the dog was dragging a kind of ghost. He ran across to it. The dog turned, guarding its prize. It growled as De Savary approached.

The professor shuddered as he looked down. The dog was drooling over a long and stinking sheath, frayed into ribbons and strips.

It was a complete human skin.