The Genesis Secret

7

DCI Forrester sat at his messy desk in New Scotland Yard. He had in front of him more photos of the wounded man, David Lorimer. The images were hideous. Two viciously inscribed stars in the man’s chest, blood trickling down the skin.

The Star of David.

Lorimer. Clearly Scottish, not Jewish. Did the raiders think he was Jewish? Were they Jewish? Or Nazis? Is that what the journalist was on about? The neo-Nazi angle? Forrester turned and looked again at the official scene-of-crime shots of the cellar floor: the treacle-black soil disturbed by the spades and shovels. The hole made by the raiders was deep. They were certainly looking for something. And looking hard. Had they found it? But if they were looking for something why had they bothered to mutilate the old man when he disturbed them? Why not just knock him out or tie him up, or kill him cleanly? Why the elaborate, ritualistic cruelty?

Forrester suddenly wanted a proper drink. Instead he sipped his black tea, from a chipped mug bearing the image of an England flag, then got up and walked to his tenth-storey window. From this vantage he had a good view across Westminster and central London. The big steel bicycle wheel of the London Eye, with its alien glass pods. The Gothic pinnacles of the Houses of Parliament. He looked at a new building going up in Victoria and tried to work out what style it was. He’s always had a hankering to be an architect; had even applied to an architectural school as a teenager, then beaten a retreat when he heard the training was seven years long. Seven years with no proper salary? His parents didn’t like the sound of that-nor did Forrester. So he’d joined the police. But he still liked to think he had a well-informed layman’s knowledge of the subject. He could tell Wrenaissance from Renaissance, postmodern from neo-classical. It was one of the reasons he liked working and living in London, despite all the hassle: the architectural richness of the urban tapestry.

He drained the rest of the tea, went back to his desk and sifted through the reports the SIO had distributed at morning prayers-the 9 a.m. meeting on the Craven Street incident. CCTV footage had failed to spot any suspicious characters on the streets around. There were no other eye witnesses, despite a day of appeals. The first twenty-four hours were the golden hours of any investigation: if you got no significant leads in that time you knew the case was going to be hard. And thus it had proved. Forensics were drawing blank after blank: the intruders had even erased, very carefully, their bootprints. The crime was cleverly and deftly executed. Yet they had taken time to maim and torture the old man, very precisely. Why?

At a loss, Forrester opened up Google, typed in Benjamin Franklin House and found that it was built in the 1730s and 40s. Making it, as Forrester had guessed, one of the older domestic houses in the area, featuring authentic panelling, box cornices, a first floor saloon ‘with dentils’. There was a dog-leg stair, with carved ends and ‘Doric columnnewels’. He clicked open another window to find out what column newels were, and, for that matter, dentils.

Nothing of interest.

The rest of the description was more of the same. Craven Street was a survivor of early Georgian London. A snicket of the gin-drinking eighteenth century town tucked away between the Slovenian fire-eaters and Kiwi opera singers of modern Covent Garden, and the itinerant junkies and shouting cabbies of scruffy Charing Cross.

This info didn’t help much. So, what about Franklin himself? Could there be some connection with him and the unknown men? Forrester Googled ‘Benjamin Franklin’. He already had a vague idea about him being the guy who found electricity with a kite, or something. Google gave him the rest.

Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790 was one of the best-known Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a leading author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, and inventor. As a scientist he was a major figure in the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity.

Forrester clicked on, feeling slightly inadequate.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Franklin learned printing from his older brother and became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia. He spent many years in England and France, speaking five languages. He was a lifelong Freemason, including in his liberal circle Joseph Banks the botanist and Sir Francis Dashwood, the British Chancellor. He was also a secret agent for many years…

Forrester sighed, and clicked off. So the man was a polymath. So what? Why dig in his cellar? Why mutilate the caretaker of his museum centuries later? He checked the clock on his computer. He needed lunch, and he hadn’t achieved much. He hated this feeling-a whole morning going by with nothing achieved. It was irritating at quite a deep and existential level.

OK, he thought. Maybe try something from a different angle. Something more oblique. He Googled ‘ Benjamin Franklin Museum cellar’.

And there, almost immediately. Yes! Forrester felt prickles of adrenalin. He scanned the screen urgently.

On the very first website was a verbatim newspaper report from The Times, dated February 11, 1998.

Bones Discovered in Founding Father’s House

Excavators at the Craven Street home of Benjamin Franklin, the Founding Father of the USA, have made a macabre discovery: eight skeletons concealed beneath the flagstones of the wine cellar.

Initial estimates suggest that the bones are about 200 years old and were buried at the time Franklin was living in the house, which was his home from 1757 to 1762, and from 1764 to 1775. Most of the bones show signs of having been dissected, sawn or cut. One skull has been bizarrely drilled with several holes. Paul Knapman, the Westminster Coroner, said yesterday, ‘I cannot totally discount the possibility of a crime. There is still a possibility that I may have to hold an inquest.’

The Friends of Benjamin Franklin Museum claim that the bones had no occult or criminal connection. They say the bones were probably placed there by William Hewson, who lived in the house for two years and who had built a small anatomy school at the back of the house. They note that while Franklin perhaps knew what Hewson was doing, he probably did not participate in any dissections because he was much more of a physicist than a medical man.

Forrester sat back. The cellar had been dug up before. With surprising results. Was this why the guys had returned? And what was this about ’occult or criminal connections’?

Occult…

The detective smiled. He was looking forward to lunch now. It was possible that he had the first sniff of a lead.