But this time there was the little symbol of an envelope on his screen. A new email had arrived, and the new email was from…Cloncurry.
Rob opened up the message, his teeth gritted with tension.
The email was empty: apart from a link to a video. Rob clicked the videolink: the screen fizzed and cleared, and then Rob saw Christine and his daughter in a bare room, again tied to chairs. The room was a little different, smaller than the last one. The prisoners’ clothes had changed. Obviously Christine and Lizzie had been moved.
But it wasn’t any of this that caused Rob to shiver, with a harsh new fear, and a deeper anguish: it was the fact the two hostages were hooded. Someone had put thick black hoods over the heads of the girls.
Rob grimaced. He remembered his own terror in that foul black hood in Lalesh. Staring at the darkness.
These new, chilling scenes on the video-of Lizzie and Christine, silent, hooded, and lashed to the chairs-lasted a long three minutes. After then Cloncurry appeared, talking directly to the webcam.
Rob stared at the lean and handsome face.
‘Hello, Rob! As you can see we’ve moved to more exciting accommodation. The girls have got hoods on because we want to frighten the living fuck out of them. So. Do tell me about the Black Book. Are you really on to it? I need to know. I need to be kept fully informed. Please don’t keep secrets. I don’t like secrets. Family secrets are such terrible things, don’t you think? So tell me. If you still want a family, if you don’t want your family dead, tell me. Tell me soon. Don’t make me do what I don’t want to do.’
Cloncurry turned away. He seemed to be talking to someone behind the webcam. Murmuring. Rob could hear laughter from somewhere off-cam. Then Cloncurry faced the camera again. ‘I mean, let’s get down to basics, Rob. You know what I like to do, you know my metier. It’s sacrifice, isn’t it? Human sacrifice. But the trouble is I am spoiled for choice. I mean: how shall I kill your daughter? And Christine? Because there are so many methods of sacrifice, aren’t there? What are your favourites, Rob? I rather like the Viking ones. Don’t you? The blood eagling, for example. The professor was quite alarmed I believe, when we took out his lungs. Alarmed and somewhat impressed, if I say so myself. But we could have been so much…crueller.’ Cloncurry smiled.
Rob sat in his flat, sweating.
Cloncurry edged nearer the camera. ‘For instance, there is a delightful rite the Celts had. They would impale their victims. Especially young women. First they would strip them naked, then they would carry them to a field, lift them up on top of a sharp wooden stake, and pull their legs apart, and then-well then just kind of yank them down, onto the stick. Impaling them. Through the vagina. Or the anus maybe.’ Cloncurry yawned, then continued, ’I really don’t want to do that to your lovely girlfriend, Rob. I mean, if I did shove a pike up her snatch she would just bleed all over the rug. And then we’ll have to buy a big carpet cleaner. A needless expense!’ He smiled again. ‘So just give me the fucking Black Book. The Tom Whaley shit. Stuff you found in Lalesh. Give it over. Now.’
The webcam wobbled slightly. Cloncurry reached out and steadied it. Then he said, direct to camera, ‘And as for child sacrifice, with little Lizzie over here. Well now…’
He got up and walked over to Lizzie’s chair. With a magician’s flourish, Cloncurry whipped off the hood-and there was Lizzie. Staring, terrified, at the camera, the leather gag tight around her mouth.
Cloncurry stroked the girl’s hair. ‘So many methods, just the one little girl. Which one shall we choose? The Incans would take children up mountains and just kill them by exposure. But that’s rather slow, I feel. Rather…boring. But how about one of the more refined Aztec methods? You may, for instance, have heard of the god Tlaloc?’
He moved around Lizzie’s chair. ‘The god Tlaloc was a bit of a cunt, to be perfectly frank, Rob. He wanted his thirst slaked with human tears. So the Aztec priests had to make the children cry. So they did this by tearing off the childrens’ fingernails. Very slowly. One by one.’
Cloncurry was unstrapping one of Lizzie’s hands now; Rob saw that his daughter’s hand was shaking with fear. ‘Yes, Rob, they would rip out the nails, then cut off little fingers like these.’ He caressed her fingers. ‘And that made the children cry, of course. Having their fingernails ripped away. And then as they tore off the nails the Aztecs would capture the tears of the sobbing children, and give the liquid to Tlaloc. Then the kids were decapitated.’
Cloncurry smiled. Then, brusquely, he tied Lizzie’s hand to the arm of the chair again. ‘So that’s what I may do, Rob, I may follow the old Aztec method. But I really think you should try and dissuade me. Don’t make me rip off her nails, slice off her fingers, and then chop her head off. But if I am forced by your obstinacy to do any of that, I shall be sure to send her tears to you in a little plastic pot. So get cracking, get moving, get working.’ He smiled. ‘Chop chop!’
The killer leaned forward, looking for a switch. The video paused; the clip was frozen.
Rob stared at the silent computer for ten minutes afterwards. At the final frozen image of Cloncurry’s half smile. His high cheekbones; his glittering green eyes; his dark hair. Sitting in the room behind him were Rob’s daughter and Rob’s girlfriend, tied to chairs, waiting to be impaled, to be mutilated and killed. Rob had no doubt that Cloncurry would do these things. He’d read the report of De Savary’s murder.
The following day Rob spent with Sally. And then he got another email. With another video. And this one was so grotesque that Rob vomited as he watched.
41
As soon as he’d got the new email with the new video Rob went to Scotland Yard, to Forrester’s office. He didn’t even ring first, he didn’t text or email, he wiped the puke from his mouth and washed his face with cold water, and hailed a cab.
On the way to Victoria he looked at all the happy people. Shopping; walking; climbing on and off buses; staring in shop windows. It was hard to reconcile the ordinariness of the street scene with the obscenity of what Rob had just witnessed in the video.
He tried not to think about it. He had to control his anger. They could still save his daughter; even if it was too late for Christine. Rob sat in the back of the taxi and felt like punching out the cab window, but he wasn’t going to lose control. Not yet, anyway. What he would do, if he ever got the chance, was slaughter Cloncurry. And not just slaughter him with a knife or a hatchet: Rob was going to take a poker to Cloncurry’s head, smash the back of his skull until brain came ejaculating out of his eyes. No, worse than that, he would burn Cloncurry slowly with acid, rotting away that handsome face. Anything. Anything anything anything ANYTHING ANYTHING.
Rob wanted payback for what he’d just seen Cloncurry do to Christine in the video. He wanted homicidal revenge. Now.
The taxi pulled up at the glass and steel atrium of New Scotland Yard and Rob paid the taxi driver with a fierce grunt and went in through the glass doors. The girls on reception tried to stop him but he glared at them so angrily they didn’t know what to do; then Boijer spotted him in the lobby.
‘There’s something you need to see,’ said Rob.
The friendly-faced Finn offered a smile but Rob didn’t smile back. The Finn’s expression darkened; Rob scowled in return.
The lift journey was quiet. They paced to Forrester’s corridor. Boijer knocked on his superior’s door but Rob shoved right in. Forrester was sipping from a mug of tea and staring at folders and he jumped, startled, as Rob burst into the office and sat down in the chair besides Forrester’s. Rob said, bluntly, ‘Check this webmail. Email from Cloncurry.’