The Genesis Secret

43

Apart from its leader the gang was finished, its members dead, seriously injured or in custody; two policemen were wounded. Ambulances were parked along the roads behind them; doctors and nurses and paramedics were everywhere.

Now the cottage was filling with police for the final stake-out. Cloncurry was apparently barricaded in the rear upstairs bedroom: he'd turned his laptop on again; Lizzie was once more lashed to a chair. Rob could see all this through the webcam. The room in which she was being held had been prepared for a final shoot-out.

Rob was gazing at Cloncurry's leering face. Staring at that smile so thin and well-bred and sneering it was as if someone had sliced his mouth slightly wider with a knife. His mineral-green eyes glinted in the half-light of the cottage bedroom.

The police had been urgently discussing what to do. Forrester reckoned they should just charge in, blasting the door: every second they delayed endangered Lizzie's life. The Gardai were much more reticent: Dooley felt they should talk some more. Maybe find a way of breaking in through the roof, clandestinely. Rob wanted them to go in now. He felt sure he'd worked out Cloncurry's psychology. The gang leader surely knew he was dead: he knew he wasn't going to get the Book, but he wanted to take Lizzie down with him, in the most disgusting way-by making her father watch his daughter die. Rob shuddered, to the depths of his spine, when he considered the ways Cloncurry might butcher his daughter. Right now. Live. On camera.

Forrester grasped Rob's shoulder, trying to reassure him. The Gardai officers were urgently examining, once more, the plans of the cottage: the chimney; the windows, everything. Could they throw stun grenades through the upper floor windows? Could a marksman could take a shot through the window? Their deliberations infuriated Rob. Yet he knew that as soon as they tried anything Cloncurry would kill Lizzie. The doors to the last room were surely bolted, locked, and sturdy. It was a stand-off with only one possible outcome. It would take at least two or three minutes to break in. As soon as they began to break in, Cloncurry would take one of his gleaming knives and cut her tongue out. Slice her eyes out. Slice an artery in her pale young throat…

Rob thought of his daughter's head detached from her body. He tried not to think about this. Sally was silently crying. So was their daughter, it seemed. In the background of the vidpicture Rob could see Lizzie's shoulders shaking.

Sally wiped her running nose with the back of her hand, and said what Rob was thinking. 'It's just a stalemate. He's going to kill her. Oh Jesus…'

Rob clenched his teeth at his ex-wife's tearful and jagged remark. She was right.

On the laptop screen Cloncurry was rambling. Talking to the webcam. He'd been doing this on and off for twenty minutes. Since the shootings in the cottage, and the backyard. The ramblings were bizarre.

This time he was talking about the Holocaust.

'Haven't you ever thought, Rob, about Hitler, why he did what he did? That was a big sacrifice, wasn't it? The Holocaust? A big human sacrifice. That's that the Jews call it, did you know that? The Shoah. The burnt offering. Shoah means a burnt offering, like the sacrifice. Hitler sacrificed them. They were burnt offerings, like the little children the Yids gave to Moloch. In the tophet. Ben hinnom. The valley of the shadow of death. In the place of burning. Yes. That's where we are Rob, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Where the little children get burned.'

Cloncurry licked his lips. He had a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. The killer's speech rambled on. 'Great men always sacrifice. Don't they? Napoleon used to march across rivers on the bodies of his drowned men. He would order them into the rivers, to drown, so he could use their stiffened corpses as a bridge. A truly great man. Then there's Pol Pot, he butchered two million of his people in Cambodia as an experiment, Rob. Two million. That's what the Khmer Rouge did. And they were the haute bourgeoisie: the upper middle classes. The educated and enlightened.'

Rob shook his head and looked away from the laptop.

Cloncurry sneered. 'Oh, you don't want to talk about it. How convenient. But you're going to have to talk about it, Rob. Face facts. Every political leader in the world has some urge towards violence, is a sadist of sorts. The Iraq war, we fought that for freedom, didn't we? But how many did we kill with our cluster bombs? Two hundred thousand? Half a million? We just can't help ourselves, can we? The more advanced societies just keep on killing. But killing more efficiently. That's all we humans are good for, because we are always led by killers. Always. What is it with our leaders, Rob? Why do they always kill? What is that urge? They seem insane, but are they really any different from you and me? What urges have you had towards me, Rob? Have you imagined how you might kill me? Boil me in oil? Stab me with razors? I bet you have. All the smart people, all the clever guys, they're all killers. We're all killers. So what is wrong with us, Rob? Is there something…buried in us, do you think? Hmm?' Another lick of the lips. Cloncurry stopped smiling. 'But I'm tired of this, Rob. I don't for a minute believe you've got the Book, or know where it is. I think the time has come to end this silly melodrama.'

He stood up, turned from the webcam and walked to the chair. In full view of the webcam, he undid the cords that bound Lizzie to the chair.

Rob watched his daughter wriggling in Cloncurry's arms. She was still gagged. Cloncurry brought the girl over to the laptop and sat her on his knee; then he spoke to the webcam again.

'Have you ever heard of the Scythians, Rob? They had some strange habits. They would sacrifice their horses. Herd them onto burning ships. Then burn them alive. Most amusing. They were equally cruel to shipwrecked sailors: if you managed to survive a disaster at sea the Scythians would run down to the shore, grab you by the arms, then lead you to a cliff and throw you off again. Such an admirable people.'

Lizzie writhed in Cloncurry's grasp. Her eyes sought her father's on the screen in front of her. Sally was sobbing as she watched their daughter struggle for life.

'So now I'm going to roast her head alive. It's a Scythian thing. It's the way they sacrificed the firstborn. She is your firstborn, isn't she? In fact she's your only child right? So I'm going to light a little fire and then-'

Rob snapped. 'Fuck you, Cloncurry! Fuck you.'

Cloncurry laughed. 'Oh yeah?'

'Fuck you. If you so much as touch her I'll-'

'You'll what, Robbie? What will you do? You'll what? Bang on the door like a pussy while I slit her throat? Shout naughty words through the letterbox as I fuck her then shoot her? What? What? What are you gonna do you snivelling little he-she? You pathetic ladyboy. Come on? What? What? Why don't you come and get me? Hey? Run down here right now and get me, you stupid tranny. Come on down, Robbie. I'm waiting-'

Rob felt the anger overwhelm him. He leapt from his chair and ran out of the tent. An Irish policeman went to stop him but Rob just punched him out of the way. He was sprinting now. Running down the green, wet, skiddy Irish hill, to save his daughter. Running as fast as he could. His heartbeat was like a mad bass drum thumping in his ears. He ran and ran, he half fell on the soggy turf then got up again and he threw himself down the hill and pushed past some more policemen with guns and black helmets who tried to stop him, but he screamed at them and they fell back and then Rob was at the cottage door and he was inside the cottage.

Police were running up the narrow cottage stairs but Rob overtook them. He dragged one policeman out of the way, feeling as if he could throw someone off a cliff if he had to. He felt stronger than he had ever felt in his life, and angrier than was possible: he was going to slay Cloncurry and he was going to do it now.

Moments later he was at the locked and sealed door and the cops were shouting at him to get out of the way but Rob ignored them: he kicked and kicked at the door, and somehow it gave way: the locks buckled. He kicked again. He could feel the bones in his ankle almost crack but he kicked a final time and the door groaned and the hinges snapped and Rob was in.

He was in the bedroom. And there was…

Nothing. The room was…empty.

There was no chair, no laptop, no Cloncurry; no Lizzie. The floor was scattered with the signs of a squalid occupation. Half-opened tins of food. Some clothes and dirty coffee cups. A newspaper or two; and there, in the corner, a pile of Christine's clothes.

Rob felt his mind orbiting close to insanity. Being pulled into some vortex of illogic. Where was Cloncurry? Where was the chair? The discarded hood? Where was his daughter?

The questions whirled in his mind as police filed into the room. They tried to usher Rob out, to take him away, but he didn't want to go. He needed to solve this dark and concussing puzzle. He felt fooled, humiliated and griefstruck. He felt a serious proximity to madness.

Rob looked frantically around the room. He saw little cameras, trained on the space. Was Cloncurry somewhere else? Watching them? Laughing at them? Rob could somehow feel the hideous buzz of Cloncurry's laughter, somewhere, out there on the internet, laughing at him.

And then he heard it. A real noise. A muffled noise coming from the wardrobe in the corner of the room. It was a human voice, but gagged and muffled: Rob knew that sound very well by now.

He pushed another Gardai officer aside, went straight to the wardrobe and opened the door.

Two wide frightened eyes stared at him from the darkness. A muffled voice of pleading, and relief, and even love, moaning from behind a gag.

It was Christine.