He tried to concentrate on his work. He was researching a long and rather learned TLS article on violence as a part of English culture. But as he sat in the morning sunshine his mind kept wandering back to the themes that had dominated his thoughts lately. The gang murdering their way across Britain. And the links to the curious story coming out of Turkey.
Picking up his sun-warmed phone from the lawn, De Savary contemplated calling Detective Chief Inspector Forrester to see if the police were having any luck at West Wycombe caves. But then he thought better of it, and put the phone back down. He was confident that the gang would, at some point, search out the caves. If they were so frenziedly seeking the Black Book, then the Hellfire Caves were an obvious place to look. Whether the police trap would work was an entirely different matter. It was a gamble. But gambles sometime paid off.
The sun was very warm now. De Savary dropped his papers onto the grass, stretched out on his deckchair and closed his eyes. The children were still laughing, somewhere across the water meadows. He thought about the Yezidi. Clearly this journalist, Rob Luttrell, had discovered something. The Black Book of the Yezidi must once have revealed some crucial information about this extraordinary temple, Gobekli Tepe, which appeared to be so central to their faith and their ancestry. A tiny hint of disquiet trilled through him as he thought about The Times piece. The gang had surely seen it-seen it and absorbed it. They weren’t stupid. The article implied that Rob Luttrell had garnered vital information about the Black Book. The article also mentioned Christine by name. The gang might therefore come looking for the couple at some point down the line. De Savary reminded himself to tell Christine when she came over that she could conceivably be in danger. The two of them, Rob and Christine, needed to take care: until the gang was caught.
De Savary leaned from his deckchair and picked up his photocopied thesis: Fear of the Mob: Riots and Revelry in Regency London. The birds chirruped in the apple tree behind him. He read and took notes; then read some more, and took some more notes.
Three hours later he had finished. He slipped some shoes on, climbed in his little sports car and thrummed over to Grantchester. He went to the bookshop and idled between the shelves for a pleasant hour; after that he strolled to the computer shop and bought some ink cartridges for his printer. Then he remembered that Christine was coming over, so he stopped off at a supermarket and bought some fresh lemonade and three punnets of strawberries. They could sit in the garden, and have strawberries in the sun.
On the drive back to his cottage De Savary hummed a tune. The Bach Double Violin Concerto. Such a beautiful peace of music. He resolved to download a new version when he had time.
For another hour he Googled in his study; then the doorknocker went and there was Christine. Smiling and suntanned, with an angelic little blonde girl in tow. De Savary beamed with pleasure: he had always thought that if he hadn’t been gay Christine was the sort of girl he could have loved: dreamy and sexy, but demure and somehow innocent too. And of course deeply gifted and clever. And this suntan suited her. As did the little girl by her side.
Christine placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder. ’This is Lizzie, Robert’s daughter. Her mum’s in town doing a course…and I am her adopted mother for the day!’
The girl did a sweet sort-of curtsey as if she was meeting the Queen and then giggled and solemnly shook De Savary’s hand.
As Christine followed him through to the garden she was already telling him gossip and stories and theories: it was as if they were back in his rooms at King’s. Laughing and talking, passionately: about archaeology and love, about Sutton Hoo and James Joyce, about the prince of Palenque and the meaning of sex.
In the garden De Savary poured the lemonade and offered the strawberries. Christine was animatedly describing Rob. De Savary could see the romance in her eyes. They talked about him for a short while and Lizzie said she was looking forward to seeing her daddy coz he was bringing her a lion. And a llama. Then she asked if she could play on the computer and De Savary happily agreed, as long as she stayed where they could see her; the little girl skipped inside the cottage, and sat by the open French windows, absorbed in her computer game.
De Savary was pleased he and Christine could now talk more freely. Because he wanted to talk about something else. ‘So, Christine,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Gobekli. It sounds incroyable.’
For the next hour Christine outlined the whole remarkable story. By the time she had finished the sun was just edging the treetops over by the water meadows. The professor shook his head. They discussed the strange interring of the site. Then they moved on to the Hellfire Club and the Black Book, conversing as they used to do: two engaged and lively minds with similar cultural interests: literature, history, archaeology, painting. De Savary was really enjoying the dialogue. Christine told him, as an aside, that she was trying to teach Rob the daunting delights of James Joyce, the great Irish modernist, and De Savary’s eyes sparkled. This cued him up for one of his latest theories. He decided to tell her. ‘You know, Christine, I was looking at James Joyce again the other day, and something struck me…’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a passage in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I’ve just wondered if-’
‘What?’
‘Sorry?
‘What was that?!’
Then he heard it. A loud thump behind them. Coming from the cottage. A strange, loud and ominous crash.
De Savary’s immediate thought was for Lizzie. He stood and turned, but Christine was already rushing past him. He dropped his glass of lemonade onto the lawn and ran after her, and as did so he heard something worse: a muffled shriek.
He found Christine inside the house and in the hands of several young men wearing dark jeans and ski masks. Only one man was unmasked. He was black-haired and handsome. De Savary knew him immediately. He’d seen the CCTV image in an email from Forrester.
It was Jamie Cloncurry.
De Savary felt like crying out: at the idiocy of it all. The gang had knives and guns. One of the guns was pointed at him. This was clearly ludicrous. This was Cambridgeshire. On a sweet Maytime afternoon. He had just been to the supermarket to buy some strawberries. On the way home he had whistled some Bach. And now there were armed psychopaths in his cottage!
Christine was trying to cry out and she was wriggling: but then one of the men punched her very hard in the stomach and she stopped writhing. She moaned. Her eyes were wild and wide. She stared at De Savary and he saw her total fear.
The tallest man, Jamie Cloncurry, waved his pistol languidly at De Savary. ‘Tie him to the chair.’
The voice was very educated: chillingly so. De Savary could hear stifled cries from the kitchen. Lizzie was in there, and she was crying. Then the girlish crying ceased.
Two of the gang members strapped De Savary to the chair. They put a sweaty gag around his mouth and tied it ferociously tight, making his lips bleed as the gag pressed his lips against his incisors. But it wasn’t this pain that was most troubling De Savary. It was the way they were tying him to the dining chair. They were tying him so he was sitting on the chair the wrong way round: straddling the seat, his chest pressed against the wooden chair back. Big straps were lashed around him. His ankles were bound, very tightly, under the chair. His wrists were twined viciously together also under the chair; his chin was painfully propped on the chair back. Everything hurt. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t see Christine or Lizzie: his ears detected a faint whimpering, in another room. But then his thoughts were drowned by mental terror when he heard the next words of Jamie Cloncurry, standing somewhere behind him.
‘Have you ever heard of blood eagling, Professor De Savary?’