The pine trees murmured; Christine nodded. ’I’ll go and see her. OK. And I’ll email you, every day…while you are in Iraq.’
When Christine said the word ‘Iraq’ Rob felt a shudder of fear. This was the real reason he wanted Christine to see and know his daughter: because he was worried for himself. Would he come back from this? Would he return and be a proper father? The Baghdad suicide bomber plagued his memories. He’d been lucky that time; maybe he wouldn’t be so lucky again. And if he didn’t come back-well then he wanted his daughter to meet and to know the woman he’d loved.
Iraq. Rob shuddered again. The word seemed to sum up all the danger he was about to face. The cities of death. The place of beheadings. The province of chanting men, and ancient stones, and terrible discoveries. And suicide bombers in bright red lipstick.
Christine squeezed his hand.
The next morning Rob got up without waking Christine. He left a note on the bedside table. Then he dressed, said goodbye to Andrea, hugged Isobel, stroked the cat, and took the sun-slanted path to the pier.
Twenty-four hours later, after one ferry ride, one cab ride, two plane trips and a gruelling service-taxi ride from Mardin airport, he arrived at the noisy tumult of the Iraqi-Turkey frontier post at Habur. It was a smoggy chaos of parked trucks and army tanks and impatient businessmen and bewildered pedestrians carrying shopping bags.
It took him five sweaty hours to cross the border. He was questioned for two of those hours by Turkish troops. Who was he? Why did he want to go to Iraq? Did he have links with the Kurdish rebels? Was he going to interview the PKK? Was he just stupid? A daredevil tourist? But they couldn’t stop him for ever. He had the visa, the documents, the fax from his editor-and at last he made it through. A barrier went up and he stepped over the invisible line. The first thing he noticed was a striking red and green flag with a sunburst symbol, fluttering above: the flag of free Kurdistan. The flag was banned in Iran, and you could actually go to prison for flying it in Turkey. But here, in the autonomous province of Kurdish Iraq, it was fluttering proudly and freely, flying stark against the burning blue sky.
Rob gazed south. A man with no teeth was staring at him from a wooden bench. A dog was urinating on an old tyre. The road ahead slid through the yellow and sunburnt hills, snaking towards the Mesopotamian plains. Shouldering his bag, Rob walked over to a dinged and rusty blue taxi.
The unshaven driver looked up at him with a wall eye. The only available transport was a oneeyed cabdriver. Rob felt like laughing. Instead he leaned towards the driver’s window and said, ‘Salaam aleikum. I want to go to Lalesh.’
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 schooclass="underline" 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 schooclass="underline" 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.