He gulped-and then he couldn’t help it: he started to cry. The tears ran down his face. He had guessed they were going to kill him. But this? Blood eagling?
Jamie Cloncurry came around and looked close at him, his pale and handsome face very slightly flushed. ‘Of course you have heard of blood eagling, haven’t you? After all, you wrote that book. That rather alarming piece of pop history. The Fury of the Northmen.’ Cloncurry was sneering. ‘All about Viking rites and beliefs. Rather lurid, if you don’t mind my saying so. But I suppose that’s how you accrue sales…’ The young man was holding a book in his hands, quoting from a page: ‘“And now we come to one of the most repellent concepts in the annals of Viking cruelty: the so-called blood eagle. Some scholars dispute that this gruesome rite of sacrifice ever existed, but various references in the sagas and in skaldic poetry can leave an open mind in little doubt: the rite of the blood eagle existed. It was an authentic sacrificial ceremony of the North”.’ Cloncurry smiled in De Savary’s direction, and then went on, ‘“The notorious blood eagle rite was performed, according to Norse accounts, on various eminent personages, including King Ella of Northumbria, Halfdan son of King Harfagri of Norway, and King Edmund of England”.’
De Savary felt his bowels begin to liquefy. He wondered if he was going to soil himself.
Cloncurry turned a page, and read on. ‘“Accounts of blood eagling differ in detail, but essential elements remain the same. The victim first has his back sliced open close to the backbone. Sometimes the skin is peeled away beforehand. Then the exposed ribs are broken at the spine, perhaps with a hammer or mallet; maybe they are cut. The shattered ribs are then splayed out like a spatchcocked chicken, revealing the grey lungs beneath. The victim remains fully conscious as his pulsing lungs are yanked from the chest cavity and flung out across the shoulders, so that the victim resembles an eagle with its wings outspread. Salt is sometimes sprinkled in the enormous wounds. Death must have come sooner or later, perhaps from asphyxiation or blood loss; or a simple heart attack from the sheer terror induced by the cruelty of the act. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney cites the blood eagle in his poem “Viking Dublin”: “With a butcher’s aplomb they spread out your lungs, and made you warm wings for your shoulders”.’
Cloncurry snapped shut the book and laid it on the dining table. De Savary was quivering with fear. The tall young man smiled widely. ‘“Death must have come sooner rather than later”. Shall we see if that is true, Professor De Savary?’
The professor closed his eyes. He could hear the men behind him. His bowels were empty: he had soiled himself in terror. A vile faecal smell offended his own nostrils. There was some murmuring behind him. Then De Savary felt the first crippling pain: as the knife plunged into his back and ripped downwards. The shock made him almost vomit. He rocked back and forth in his chair. A man laughed in the background.
Jamie Cloncurry spoke. ‘I am going to have to cut your ribs with some humble pliers. I’m afraid we don’t have a mallet…’
Another laugh. De Savary heard a cracking noise and felt a hammering pain near his heart as if he had been shot; he realized they were cutting his ribs one by one. He felt them bend, then break. Crack. Like something very taut being snapped. He heard another crack; and then another. He vomited around the gag. He hoped he would choke on his own vomit, and he hoped he would die very soon.
But he wasn’t dead yet: he could actually feel Cloncurry’s hands as they rummaged in his chest cavity. He could feel the surreal sense of someone pulling out his lungs, and then the agonizing rapture of pain as the lungs were exposed to the air. His own lungs came flopping over his own shoulders, greasy and hot. His own lungs…A strange smell filled the air. Half fishy, half metallic: the smell of his own lungs. De Savary nearly blacked out.
But he didn’t black out. The gang had done the job welclass="underline" keeping him alive and quite conscious. So as to suffer.
De Savary watched in a mirror as the girl and Christine were bundled out of the room. They were being taken away. The gang was packing up: they were going to leave De Savary here, to die alone. With his ribs cracked and bent apart, and his own lungs draped over his shoulders.
The door slammed shut; the gang was gone.
Strapped to his chair, De Savary stilled his gasps of pain, and the anguish of frustration. He had been going to tell Christine-but he hadn’t had time. And now he was dying. There was no one to save him.
Then he noticed. There was a pen lying on the table very close, next to his book about Vikings. He could maybe reach the pen with his mouth. And write something; make some use of his final moments.
The tears of pain blurred his eyes as he stretched and struggled; the title of his own book stared back at him.
The Fury of the Northmen, by Hugo De Savary.
38
Rob was sitting in DCI Forrester’s office in Scotland Yard. The window was open and a chilly breeze was whistling through. It was an unseasonably cool, wet and overcast day. Rob thought about his daughter and fought back the anger and despair.
But the anger and despair were so powerful. He felt as if he was standing thigh deep in rushing floodwater: any moment he would lose it, lose his grip, and get swept away by his emotions. Like those people caught in the Asian tsunami. Rob had to concentrate on keeping upright.
He had told the police officers everything he knew about the Yezidi and the Black Book. Forrester’s junior, Boijer, had taken notes while Forrester stared directly and seriously at Rob. When Rob finished the senior officer sighed, and swivelled in his chair.
‘Well it’s pretty obvious how and why they kidnapped them.’
Boijer nodded. Rob said, bleakly, ‘Is it?’
Rob had only been aware of his daughter’s abduction for a few hours: since landing at Heathrow from Istanbul. He had rushed straight to his ex-wife’s house, then come straight to meet these policemen. So he hadn’t had time to work out how it had happened.
The policeman said, ‘Obviously Cloncurry read your article in The Times a few days ago.’
‘I guess…’ The words felt dry and pointless in Rob’s mouth. Everything felt dry and pointless. He recalled something Christine had told him-the Assyrian name for Helclass="underline" the Desert of Anguish.
That was where he was. The Desert of Anguish.
The policeman was still talking. ‘They obviously think, Mr Luttrell, you have some knowledge of the Black Book. So they must have traced your name. Googled you. And found out the address of your ex-wife. That was your old home, right? Where you were registered to vote?’
‘Yes. I never changed it.’
‘So. That was easy for them. They must have been watching that address for a good few days. Waiting and watching.’
Rob murmured, ‘And then Christine turned up…’
Boijer intervened. ‘She made it easier for them. All three of them went off to Cambridge, followed by the gang, no doubt. And then your girlfriend took your daughter to a remote cottage for the afternoon. The worst possible place.’
‘They may have known of De Savary already,’ Forrester added. ‘He was a bestselling writer, with books on sacrifice and the Hellfire Club to his name. Cloncurry must surely have read him. Or seen him on TV.’
‘Then…’ Rob was still swaying in the grey floodwater. He forced his mind to focus. ‘Then they waited outside the cottage. Knowing they could get Christine and my daughter all at once.’
‘Yeah. ‘ said Boijer. ‘They must have been waiting for hours. And then they rushed the house.’
Rob glared at Forrester. ‘She’s going to die isn’t she? My daughter? Isn’t she? They’ve killed everyone else.’
Forrester winced. And shook his head. ‘No…Not at all. We don’t know anything of the sort…’