‘I can’t do that, Rush.’
‘Can’t?’
‘Won’t, then. Trust me, it’s a lot better for you if you don’t know. If you don’t get any closer to this than you already are.’
‘What does that mean?’ Rush asked.
Kennedy tried to pick her words with care, but she felt stupid and tongue-tied. ‘It’s the sort of thing … once you know it, you can’t just walk away. There are consequences.’ It was the wrong thing to say, she could see from his face.
‘I’ll take my chances,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Look, I do feel like I owe you something, Rush. But it’s not an explanation, it’s a warning. You asked me if I knew who Alex Wales was.’
‘Do you?’
‘I know his … family. I’ve met them before and I know what they’re like. They’re going to be looking for payback for what happened to him. From everyone who was in that room, just as soon as they find out who was there. So your best bet is to get far away from Ryegate House for a while and let this die down.’
‘And you think if they really want to find me, they won’t keep looking?’
Damn. Good question. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘They’ll keep looking.’
‘Exactly. And you’re going straight back in there tomorrow morning and picking up the investigation, right? I’m not stupid, Heather. Not as stupid as I look, anyway. I know there’s stuff you didn’t work out. Questions you still need to get answered.’
Kennedy’s heart sank. ‘Rush, questions are pretty much all I’ve got,’ she said, allowing her exasperation to show through in her voice. ‘These people broke into Aladdin’s cave and stole a single book. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe they broke in and burned a book. Can you come up with a plausible explanation for that? Because I can’t. And that’s before we even get to the part where I let Emil Gassan, who I kind of count as a friend, get stabbed — maybe fatally — right in front of me. So yes, I’m still hired. I’m still on the job. But your job description is a little different from mine.’
‘I didn’t even mean any of that,’ Rush said.
‘No? Then what did you mean?’
‘I mean why was Wales still there? He stole — okay, stole or else destroyed — that book three weeks ago. If the job was finished, he should have cut and run.’
‘So?’
‘So the job wasn’t done. He came back because he had unfinished business, and whatever it was, it was something that made it worth the risk of sticking around through a police investigation.’
Kennedy had reached the same conclusion, but she didn’t want to have this conversation with Rush. She just wanted him to understand how close he was to the edge of a precipice and to have the sense to walk in the opposite direction.
‘Have you got any holiday coming?’ she asked.
‘Holiday?’ Rush was derisory. ‘I haven’t even finished my probation yet. I’m casual labour.’
‘Then be casual about it,’ Kennedy said. ‘Don’t turn up for work tomorrow. If they bounce you, shake it off and walk away. You’re young. You’ll bounce right back. Stay away from Ryegate House. And if anyone asks you about what went down today, don’t answer.’
‘What if it’s the police?’ Rush demanded sardonically.
‘If it’s the police, stonewall them. You don’t remember, you didn’t see, nobody told you a thing. You’re just poor bloody infantry.’
‘You’re making a lot of assumptions.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like that death means the same thing to me that it does to you.’
‘Death means the same thing to everyone,’ Kennedy said sharply. ‘It means your hearts stops, your brain cools and people start referring to you as “the body”. There’s no such thing as a good death, Rush. There are just some that are worse than others.’
Rush tapped his beer glass with his thumbnail, watching it rather than looking at her. ‘My best mate died in a knife fight at school,’ he said, in a tone that was almost conversational. ‘He got stabbed. And my first girlfriend killed herself with sleeping pills because her step-dad raped her. She sent me a text to say goodbye and I couldn’t get there in time. She must have known I wouldn’t, but she wrote that message anyway. I still have it. I went after him and almost killed him, except that when I had him on the ground I couldn’t do it. Didn’t have the right mindset, I suppose.’
‘Did any of this come up in your job interview?’ Kennedy asked laconically.
He shrugged. ‘It was a long time ago.’
She sighed. ‘Okay, I get it. You’re telling me you know about this dark, grown-up stuff. Well, maybe you do, at that. If you’re sure you want the truth, I’ll give it to you.’
‘I want it,’ he said at once.
So she told him the whole story — or at least, as much of it as was hers to tell.
She started with the death of Chris Harper, her partner, who bled out in her arms after taking a wound from one of the Messengers’ poisoned knives. It was hard for her to keep her voice steady. Even after three years, it still hurt to remember.
She talked about the Judas People for what must have been an hour or more. She told Rush how they lived as a separate tribe within the mass of humanity. How they hid in the cities of the Earth, choosing places where there was sufficient density of population to hide them, and how they’d perfected the arts of camouflage to the point where they left no footprint on history, no record of their comings or their goings.
Rush kept quiet for most of it and let her talk.
‘And they really believe they’re descended from the serpent of Eden?’ he asked, when she’d finished.
‘By way of Cain and Judas,’ Kennedy said.
‘But the serpent was the Devil.’
Kennedy shrugged. ‘That’s our version. Their version is that he was an emissary of the true God who stands above and outside creation. So Cain was special, and all Cain’s offspring are special, whereas Eve begat a lineage of sinners and wastrels. But they name themselves after Judas because he’s the one who made the covenant with God on their behalf.’
‘And the deal was?’
‘Three thousand years in the wilderness. For all that time, the children of Adam are the stewards of God’s Creation. But after that time is up, the faithful — the true heirs of Cain and Judas — will be given their reward. Which is everything. Dominion over the whole world.’
Rush absorbed this for a few moments in silence. ‘Three thousand years counting from when?’ he asked at last.
‘Well, let’s just say that God should have called by now. Judas made the covenant about two thousand years ago, but the date that was used as a reference point was around a thousand years BC. The unification of the tribes of Israel, under King David. That was the cornerstone of history, as far as Judas was concerned. The one moment in time that everybody knew and nobody was going to argue about. So that was what he and Christ used as a reference point. At least, that’s what the Judas Gospel says.’
‘And they waited all that time …’ Rush mused.
‘They’re still waiting. They’re not happy about it, but at this point they don’t have a lot of choice. The thing is, there aren’t that many of them. And three thousand years is a long time as far as genetic inbreeding goes. So they come out into the world every so often. I mean, some of them do.’
Rush was looking at her with a baffled kind of expression, so Kennedy went on, picking her words carefully. This part of the story belonged to others. It wasn’t for her to tell how Leo Tillman’s family had been stolen from him, and how he’d later killed his own sons, at Dovecote Farm in Surrey, without knowing who they were. That secret, at least, she intended to take to her grave. ‘They send women out, to get pregnant. To bring in new genes. The women meet Adamite men, get married and raise families with them.’