The professor was talking about the liquid in the bottle from Castlerigg. Forrester tried to pick up some raw squid with his chopsticks and failed. ‘We’ve had several muti murders in London. African child sacrifice. So the lab boys had come across damu before.’
‘The headless torso of that poor child found in the Thames?’
‘Yep.’ Forrester sipped some of his warm sake. ’This damu stuff is apparently the concentrated blood of sacrificial victims. That’s what Pathology tells me.’
‘Well they’re right.’ Before them a large Japanese chef was gutting a lividly pink fish with great speed. ‘Muti really is quite disgusting. Hundreds of children die every year in black Africa. You know exactly what they do to the children?’
‘I know they chop off the limbs…’
‘Yes. But they do it when the children are alive. And they cut off the genitals too.’ De Savary sipped beer. ‘The screams of the living victims are supposed to add to the potency of the muti. Shall we have some of that yellowfin tuna steak?’
‘Sorry?’
The idea of this ultra-fashionable restaurant, it seemed, was that you kept ordering tiny bits of food. You didn’t order everything at the start: you kept going until you were full. It was fun. Forrester had never been anywhere like it. He wondered who could afford the prices. Soft shell crab sushi, flown in from Alaska. Toro with asparagus and sevruga caviar. What was toro?
‘The rock shrimp tempura is amazing,’ said De Savary.
‘Tell you what,’ Forrester said, ‘you order. Then tell me what you think about the gang…’
De Savary smiled gravely. ‘Yes of course. My lecture is at three. Let’s crack on.’
‘So what do you think?’
‘Your gang seems obsessed with human sacrifice.’
‘That much we know.’
‘But it’s an eccentric congeries of praxes.’
‘You what?’
‘They are carrying out sacrifices from different cultures. The tongue excision is perhaps Nordic, the burying of the head Japanese, or Israelite. The shaving is clearly Aztec. The Star of David is Solomonic, as you say.’
A young Thai waitress approached them and De Savary ordered. The waitress gave a tiny curtsey and went away. De Savary faced Forrester again.
‘And now we have the damu, buried at a spot dedicated to sacrifice. That’s what African witch doctors do, before a major muti killing. They bury the damu in hallowed ground. Then they carry out the sacrifice.’
‘So…You think they’ll kill again?’
‘Naturally. Don’t you?’
Forrester sighed, and assented. Of course the gang was going to strike again. ‘So what’s with the Hellfire stuff? How does that fit in?’
‘I’m not quite sure. They are, self-evidently, seeking something to do with the Hellfires. What that might be is less obvious.’
Three plates were set on the oak counter before them. The aroma was delicious. Forrester yearned to be allowed a spoon.
De Savary went on, ‘What I can tell you now is how these satanic cults work, the psychology of the groupuscule. They tend to come from the middle or even upper classes. Manson and his followers weren’t scumbag lowlifes, they were rich kids. It is the bored, intelligent rich who commit the most terrible crimes. One can see a parallel with the Baader Meinhof terror gang in Germany. Sons and daughters of bankers, millionaires, businessmen. Children of the élite.’
‘Then there’s Bin Laden…?’
‘Exactly! Bin Laden is the smart, charismatic son of a famous billionaire, yet he was drawn to the most nihilistic, psychopathic brand of Islam.’
‘So you see a parallel with the Hellfire Club?’
De Savary deftly chopsticked some of the yellowfin tuna. Forrester just about managed to do the same. It was unbelievably delicious.
‘Again, quite right. The Hellfire Cub provided the template, if you like, for the bon chic bon genre death cults of today. A group of English aristocrats, many of them very talented-writers, statesmen, scientists-yet drawn to deliberately transgressive acts. To épater les bourgeois, perhaps?’
‘But some people say the Hellfire Club was just a drinking club. A society of pranksters.’
De Savary shook his head. ‘Sir Francis Dashwood was one of the better religious scholars of his time. He went to the Far East to pursue his more arcane interests-religious esoterica. That’s not the action of a dilettante. And Benjamin Franklin was one of the finest minds of the century.’
‘So they wouldn’t have got together just to drink gin. And play naked Twister.’
‘No I don’t think so.’ De Savary chuckled. The Japanese chef in front of them was using two knives at once. Filleting and dicing a slippery long eel. The eel’s body danced on the chopping board as it was sliced, as if it was alive. Maybe it was alive. ‘It’s a matter of some dispute, what they got up to, the English Hellfire Club. We do know that the Irish Hellfires were hideously violent. They used to pour alcohol over cats, then set them on fire. The screams of the dying animals kept half of Georgian Dublin awake. And they murdered a servant in the same fashion. For a bet.’ He paused. ’I think the Hellfire Club and some of the other Satanic cults we see in Europe can help us understand what your gang will be like. Hierarchically. Motivationally. Psychologically. There will be a definite leader. Charismatic and highly intelligent. Probably someone very well-born.’
‘His followers?’
‘Close friends; weaker personalities. But still intelligent. Seduced by the cult leader’s Satanic charm. They are likely also to come from a privileged background.’
‘That fits with the descriptions, posh voices etcetera.’
De Savary took a plate from the counter. He thought for a moment, staring at the food, then continued, ‘However I think your gang leader is completely mad.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Don’t forget what he is doing. The ahistorical mixture of sacrificial elements. Indeed the very idea of sacrifice-it’s palpably insane. If he is looking for something connected with the Hellfires he could have done it in a much more discreet fashion. Rather than driving around the British Isles butchering people. Yes, the gang’s murders are planned and executed with a certain finesse, they cover their tracks as you say, but why murder at all-if your intention is principally to retrieve? To uncover something hidden?’ De Savary shrugged. ‘Et voila. This is no louche but logical Francis Dashwood, this is more of a Charles Manson. A psychotic. A genius, but psychotic.’
‘Which means?’
‘You are the detective. I think it means he will go too far. They will make a mistake in their frenzy. The only question is…’
‘How many people they will kill first?’
‘Exactly. Now you’ve got to try this daikon. It’s a kind of radish. Tastes like paradise.’
Back at Scotland Yard, Forrester relived the lunch with a happy burp. Then he sat in his swivel chair and spun around, like a kid. He was mildly drunk from the sake. But he could justify it. The lunch had been very useful. With his new friend Hugo. Forrester picked up the phone and called Boijer.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Boijer, I need a search. A trawl.’
‘What of?’
‘Ring around the classier public schools.’
‘OK…’
‘Start with Eton. Winchester. Westminster. Don’t go any lower than Millfield. Do Harrow. Check the list with the Headmasters’ Conference.’
‘Right. And…what do we ask them?’
‘For missing boys. Missing pupils. And try the better universities, too. Oxbridge, London, St Andrews. Durham. You know the roster.’
‘Bristol.’
‘Why not. And Exeter. And the agricultural college at Cirencester. We need to find students who dropped out, suddenly and recently. I want posh boys. With problems.’
27
The rotten, semi-mummified corpse of the baby lay on the floor. A reek of ancient decomposition swirled in the air. Bare bulbs flickered above the monuments and shelves of the museum vault. The approaching men were big, armed, and angry. Rob thought he recognized some from the dig. Kurds. They looked Kurdish.