‘Right.’
‘These reliefs, housed in the porch, had been excavated by Austen Henry Layard, a cousin of Lady Charlotte Guest. The reliefs were significant and substantial. Each weighed several tons. They had originally adorned important thresholds in Nimrud.’
‘And Layard and Barry put them here?’
‘Yes. And together with a number of other reliefs they remained here, in the Nineveh Porch, until shortly after the First World War. Then the whole collection was offered for sale.’
‘So there’s nothing left?’
‘Hold on! The antiquities in the porch were replaced by humble casts. In 1923 Canford Hall itself was sold by the Guest family and it became a boys’ school. At that point, the Nineveh Porch, now robbed of its ancient treasures, was turned into a tuck shop. Selling sandwiches and Snickers bars.’
‘So our guys must have known this? That nothing was left. Why come here again?’
‘There is a slightly odd denouement to the story. In 1992 two academics came here. Both experts in Assyriology. They were on their way to a conference in Bournemouth but they had some time, so they decided to make a quick pilgrimage to this place so important in their discipline. They didn’t expect to find anything. But they looked at the stained glass windows, with their pictures of Sumeria, and they admired the vaguely Assyrian detailing of the architecture. And then they looked behind the Pepsi machine-and they found an original relief.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No. Only the casts were supposed to be left. But lo and behold! One more piece remained. It was recognized as the real thing, although covered by layers of white vinyl emulsion. The relief was taken down and sent to London, where it was offered for sale at auction by Christie’s. It was bought by a Japanese dealer, apparently acting on behalf of a religious sect. The price was, I think, around eight million pounds. The highest amount ever paid for an antiquity anywhere in the world. Et voilà.’
They had reached the riverbank. The rushing River Stour was before them; sunlight dappled across the waters, spangled by the arch of leaves above.
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Forrester. He picked up a stick and threw it into the river. ‘What links this with the Hellfire stuff?’
‘You remember what I told you on the phone the other day?’
‘About the Yezidi and the Black Book? How that might be what they are seeking?
‘Precisely. Austen Henry Layard, you see, was one of the first ever westerners to meet the Yezidi, in 1847. He was excavating in northern Iraq, in Ur and Nineveh. The early years of modern archaeology. Then he heard about this strange sect that lived near Mosul, around Dahuk. Layard made contact with the Yezidi. Then he was invited to their sacred capital Lalesh. In the mountains. It’s a dangerous place, hostile to this day.’
‘What did he do there?’
‘Now that’s a question. We know he was invited to witness some of their most secret ceremonies. A privilege, as far as I know, afforded to no one else before or since.’
‘Did they give him the Black Book?
De Savary smiled. ‘Detective! First rate work. Yes, that’s one theory. Scholars have speculated that Layard must have had a very close relationship with the Yezidi, to be treated the way he was. Some think he may have taken the Black Book with him. Thus giving rise to their legends that it came to England.’
‘So, if he had brought it back he might have brought it here, to the building designed for the best antiquities, the ones he kept to himself? Right?’
‘Vraiment!’
Forrester frowned. ‘But I thought we established that Jerusalem Whaley already had the Black Book. How does Layard get involved?’
De Savary shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe Jerusalem Whaley thought he had the Book, but didn’t. Maybe he gave the Book back to the Yezidi and Layard went to get it again, a century later. Shuttling back and forth! My personal hunch, for what it is worth, is that Jerusalem Whaley had the Book all along, and Layard is just a diversion.’
‘But the main thing is we can assume that this is what the gang are after. Otherwise they wouldn’t have come here. So it’s not necessarily anything to do with the Hellfire Club in itself. The gang are actually after the Black Book of the Yezidi. That’s their real prize.’
‘Yes.’
Forrester whistled, almost cheerfully. He slapped De Savary on the back. ‘Thanks for coming, Hugo.’
De Savary smiled, though he felt guilty for doing so. The smell of the man’s exposed flesh had not quite left his nostrils.
A loud shout ripped through the silent wood.
‘Angus! Angus!’
Something was up. Another shout echoed across the parkland. The shout was coming nearer.
De Savary and Forrester scrambled up the rise. A constable was running across the lawns, chasing something. Shouting out the name Angus.
‘That’s the dog handler,’ said Forrester. ‘Lost his dog. Hey, Johnson! Where’s the dog?’
‘Sir! Sir!’ The constable kept running. ‘Just gone past you, sir. Over there!’
De Savary swivelled and saw a large dog galloping towards the school buildings. It was having trouble running. Because it was dragging something. Something long, and slippery, and sullen grey. What was that? It looked very strange. For a moment the professor got the surreal and sickening idea that the dog was dragging a kind of ghost. He ran across to it. The dog turned, guarding its prize. It growled as De Savary approached.
The professor shuddered as he looked down. The dog was drooling over a long and stinking sheath, frayed into ribbons and strips.
It was a complete human skin.
33
Rob had been in Dahuk for ten days. The taxi driver from Habur had refused to go any further.
At first Rob had been reasonably content with this. Dahuk was a likeable and animated Kurdish city: poorer than Sanliurfa, but without the sense of brooding Turkish oversight. Dahuk was also enticing because the Yezidi were a visible presence. There was even a Yezidi cultural centre-a big old Ottoman house on the outskirts of town, ramshackle and noisy. Rob spent the first few days hanging around the centre. It was full of beautiful dark-haired girls with shy smiles and long embroidered dresses and laughing lads with Barcelona football shirts.
On the wall inside the centre’s hall was a striking picture of the peacock angel, Melek Taus. When he first saw it, Rob had stared at it for a good ten minutes. It was a strangely serene image, the demongod, the fallen angel, with his splendid tail of emerald and aquamarine. The tail of a thousand eyes.
The Yezidi at the centre were wary but not that unfriendly. The moustachioed Yezidi men gave him tea and pistachios. A couple of them spoke faltering English, more than a few spoke German. They told him this was because there was a strong Yezidi presence in Germany. ‘We have been destroyed everywhere else, we have no future here, now only you Christians can help us…’
What the Yezidi would not do was discuss the finer points of their faith. As soon as Rob started asking about the Black Book, or Sanliurfa, or the sanjak, or the worship of Melek Taus, the expressions turned to scowls, or disdain, or a defensive incomprehension. And then the moustached men got shirty, and stopped handing over saucers of pistachios.
The other sticking point was Lalesh itself. It turned out-and Rob was annoyed at himself for his lack of prior information, for rushing into this so impetuously-that no one actually lived in Lalesh. It was a sacred city in the truest sense of the phrase: a ghost town for angels, a city for exclusively sacred things: holy spirits, ancient texts, venerable shrines. The villages around Lalesh were busy and thronging, but the Yezidi only went into Lalesh itself to pray or worship, or for festivals, which would make any outsider conspicuous.
Moreover, just getting to Lalesh for a non-Yezidi was a difficult and even dangerous task, it seemed. Certainly no one wanted to take Rob. Not even after a hundred-dollar bribe. Rob tried more than once. The taxi drivers just looked at his money mistrustfully, and said a curt ‘La!’