The police were definitely doing something. Rob could see armed men walking out of the tent. He heard whispered commands. There was a sense of action: the videoscreens were flickering with movement. At the same time the gang seemed to be erecting something in the garden. It was a big wooden stake. Like something you’d use for an impaling.
Rob knew he had to keep Cloncurry talking; stay calm and keep the killer talking. ‘Go on. Go on, I’m listening.’
‘Whaley said that if ever a temple was dug up in Turkey-’
‘Gobekli Tepe?!’
‘Clever boy. Gobekli Tepe. Whaley told his confidants precisely what the Yezidi had told him: that if ever Gobekli Tepe was dug up then the Black Book must be destroyed.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s the damn point, you halfwit. Because the Book is, in the right hands, seen the right way, combined with evidence from Gobekli, something that would overturn the world, Rob: it would change everything. It would demean and degrade society. Not just religions. The whole structure of our lives, the way the world exists, would be endangered if the truth was revealed.’ Cloncurry was leaning very close to the webcam. His face filled the entire screen. ‘That is the rich, rich irony here, Rob. All along I’ve just been trying to protect you from yourself, you jerks, protect all of humanity. That is the job of the Cloncurrys. To protect you all. To find the Book if necessary, and destroy it. To save you all! You know, we are practically saints. I am expecting an e-vite from the Pope any day now.’ The snakelike smile had returned.
Rob glanced up at the screens behind the laptop. He could see movement. One of the cameras showed three figures, obviously armed, crawling towards the cottage garden: it had to be the police. Going in. As he tried to concentrate on the dialogue with Cloncurry he realized that Cloncurry was probably trying to do exactly the same in reverse: to distract Rob and the police.
But Dooley and his men had seen the wooden stake: they knew this was the moment. Rob stared at the profile of his daughter. Tied to her chair, visible over Cloncurry’s shoulder. With a physical effort, Rob got hold of his emotions. ‘So why all the violence? Why all the killing? If you just wanted the Yezidi Book, why all the sacrifices?
The face on the laptop scowled. ‘Because I am a Cloncurry. We descend from the Whaleys. They descend from Oliver Cromwell. Capisce? Notice the theme of burning people there? Burning people in churches? With a nice big audience? Cromwell was heard to laugh when he killed people in battle.’
‘So?’
‘So just blame my fucking haplotype. Ask my double helix. Take a look at Dysbindin gene sequence DTNBP-1.’
Rob tried not to think of his daughter: impaled. ’So, you’re saying you inherited this trait?’
Cloncurry applauded, sarcastically. ‘Brilliant, Holmes. Yes. Quite clearly I am a psychopath. How much proof do you want? Stay tuned to this channel and you might see me eat your daughter’s brain. With some oven chips. That proof enough?’
Rob swallowed his anger. He just had to keep Cloncurry here, and keep Lizzie in view, via the webcam. And that meant listening to the madman, ranting. He nodded.
‘Of course I have the fucking genes for violence, Rob. And funnily enough I have the genes for very high intelligence, too. You know what my IQ is? 147. Yes, 147. That makes me a genius, even by the standards of geniuses. The average IQ of a Nobel Prize winner is 145. I’m smart, Rob. Very smart. I’m probably too smart for you to realize how smart I am. That’s the problem with very high intelligence. For me, relating to ordinary folk is like trying to have a serious chat with a mollusc.’
‘Yet we caught you.’
‘Oh, well done. You and your piffling post-grad IQ of, what, 125? 130? Jesus Christ. I am a Cloncurry. I carry the noble genes of the Cromwells and the Whaleys. Unfortunately for you and your daughter I also carry their propensity for flamboyant violence. Which we are about to see. Nonetheless-’
Cloncurry turned to his left. Rob looked up and checked the video monitors. The police were moving in: at last the guns had opened up. The shots and the echoes resounded along the valley.
There were shouts and noises and gunshots everywhere. From the laptop, from the monitors, from the valley. The laptop screen fuzzed and then came back, as if the camera had been knocked. Cloncurry was standing. Another shot was audible across the valley, then four more-and then it happened. Rob watched as a second team of police made a move, firing as they went. Shooting with speed and verve.
The Gardai snipers were taking out the gang. He saw the dark figures of the gang members on the TV monitors crumple to the ground. Two bodies fell. Then he heard another scream. He didn’t know if it was coming from the TVs or the laptop or real life outside, but the noises were unnerving: these were high-velocity rifles. There was a shout: perhaps one of the policemen was down. And then another? But the assault went on-live on the TV monitors all over the tent.
The police were pouring over the back wall of the cottage garden and vaulting over the fences. As Rob watched the screens the backyard of the cottage was filled with policemen in black skimasks and black helmets, yelling out orders. Screaming at the gang.
It was all happening with stunning and incredible speed. At least one of the gang looked seriously injured, sprawled and barely moving; another might have been dead. Then someone jumped forward and threw a stun grenade into the cottage and Rob heard an enormous bang; clouds of black smoke came streaming out of the broken cottage window.
Through the smoke and the deafening noise and confusion it was nonetheless clear: the police were winning-but could they take Cloncurry as well? Rob stared at the laptop. Cloncurry had Lizzie, wriggling, in his arms. He was frowning, backing off, retreating out of the room. As he ran from the room Cloncurry’s hand came out and snatched the laptop shut and the picture went black.
43
Apart from its leader the gang was finished, its members dead, seriously injured or in custody; two policemen were wounded. Ambulances were parked along the roads behind them; doctors and nurses and paramedics were everywhere.
Now the cottage was filling with police for the final stake-out. Cloncurry was apparently barricaded in the rear upstairs bedroom: he’d turned his laptop on again; Lizzie was once more lashed to a chair. Rob could see all this through the webcam. The room in which she was being held had been prepared for a final shoot-out.
Rob was gazing at Cloncurry’s leering face. Staring at that smile so thin and well-bred and sneering it was as if someone had sliced his mouth slightly wider with a knife. His mineral-green eyes glinted in the half-light of the cottage bedroom.
The police had been urgently discussing what to do. Forrester reckoned they should just charge in, blasting the door: every second they delayed endangered Lizzie’s life. The Gardai were much more reticent: Dooley felt they should talk some more. Maybe find a way of breaking in through the roof, clandestinely. Rob wanted them to go in now. He felt sure he’d worked out Cloncurry’s psychology. The gang leader surely knew he was dead: he knew he wasn’t going to get the Book, but he wanted to take Lizzie down with him, in the most disgusting way-by making her father watch his daughter die. Rob shuddered, to the depths of his spine, when he considered the ways Cloncurry might butcher his daughter. Right now. Live. On camera.
Forrester grasped Rob’s shoulder, trying to reassure him. The Gardai officers were urgently examining, once more, the plans of the cottage: the chimney; the windows, everything. Could they throw stun grenades through the upper floor windows? Could a marksman could take a shot through the window? Their deliberations infuriated Rob. Yet he knew that as soon as they tried anything Cloncurry would kill Lizzie. The doors to the last room were surely bolted, locked, and sturdy. It was a stand-off with only one possible outcome. It would take at least two or three minutes to break in. As soon as they began to break in, Cloncurry would take one of his gleaming knives and cut her tongue out. Slice her eyes out. Slice an artery in her pale young throat…