Silence ensued. Then the general conversation wandered, helplessly, between planes and airfields and car ferries for a couple more minutes. And then the laptop chimed.
Cloncurry had come online.
Rob waved a hand, wordlessly, at the people in the room and they gathered around and stared at the laptop screen.
There, in the webcam image, was Cloncurry. The image was clear and distinct. The audio was good. The killer was smiling. Chuckling.
‘Hello again! Thought we should catch up. Have a little chat. So, you managed to catch my cognitively deficient operatives. My brothers in Eire. How tiresome. I had a nice impaling planned as well. As you probably know. Did you see the big stick in the garden?’
Dooley nodded. ‘We saw.’
‘Ah, Detective Doohickey. How are you? Shame we didn’t get to kebab the French bitch. All that whittling for nothing. I should have at least tortured the slut, as I intended. But I had other things on my mind. It doesn’t really matter. Because I still have my friends. In fact I’ve got one right here. Say hello to my little friend.’
Cloncurry reached off camera and picked up something.
It was a severed human head.
To be precise, it was Isobel Previn’s head, white and faintly rotting. Grey nerves and greenish arteries dangled flaccidly from the neck.
‘Isobel! Say something. Say hello to everyone.’ With a jaggle of the hand he made the head nod.
Christine began to cry. Rob stared, aghast, at the screen.
Cloncurry was beaming with a kind of sardonic pride. ‘There. She says hi. But now I think she wants to go to her special place. I’ve made a special place for her head, out of respect for her archaeological achievements.’ Cloncurry stood, took a step forward and then kicked the head across the room, toe-punting it expertly. The head flew towards a rubbish bin in the corner, landing neatly in it with a chunky clatter. ‘Slam fucking dunk!’ He turned back to the camera. ‘I’ve been practising that for hours. Now, where was I? Ah yes. Robert the journalist. So-called. Hello. So pleased you could be with us. Don’t worry, as I said before, your daughter is still safe. Look-’ he leaned forward and twisted the webcam until it showed Lizzie. Still lashed to a chair; but alive and healthy, it seemed. The webcam was shifted back.
‘So you see, Robbeeeee. She’s just fine. Fit as a fucking fiddle. Unlike Isobel Previn. I’m so sorry about my little joke with her vital organs. But I just couldn’t resist the gag. Think I must have a bit of film director in me. And it was such a rare opportunity. There I was, mooching around these pissy little Turkish streets, and there’s Isobel Previn! The great archaeologist! On her own! Wearing lorgnettes! What the fuck are lorgnettes? So I had a little think, for about a second. I know my archaeologists, I know she was a colleague of De Savary, I know she taught the prize-winning Christine Meyer, I know she is an expert in Assyria and the Yezidi in particular. Yet she’s meant to be retired to her dildos in Istanbul?’ Cloncurry chortled. ‘Yeah right. Too much of a coincidence. So we grabbed her, sorry, and smacked her around a bit, and she told us quite a lot, Robbie, quite a lot of interesting detail. And then I had a flash, if I say so myself, of aesthetic insight. I came up with our little drama. With the hoods. And the saucepan. And her small intestine. Did you appreciate that? I so hoped to make you think that Christine was dying in front of you, under that hood, having her uterus boiled in gravy, and then-this is the beauty of it-then you would actually get to Ireland and see Christine die again, in the most grotesque fashion, impaled on a stake, in Ireland. How good is that? How many people get to see their loved ones tortured to death twice? First turned into soup? Then impaled? West End producers get paid millions for that kind of thing. A coup de theâtre!’ He gestured excitedly. ‘And that’s just half of it. What about the sheer directorial beauty of the whole gory drama in Ireland? Can I not have a little applause? For my Oscar-winning scenario?!’
He gazed out at them as if he seriously expected a round of cheers and bravos. ‘Oh, come on. Did you not have a sneaking admiration for the production values? In one go, I throw you off the scent and put you through the worst mental torture, you believe you are about to see your daughter impaled but then it would turn out to be Christine being impaled, and meanwhile I’m here, safe and sound and watching it all on high definition telly.’ The smile faded, slightly. ‘But then my cretinous assistants go and start shooting and fuck it all up before managing to skewer Christine. Tsk tsk. I tell you, you can’t get the staff these days. It would have been so good. So good. But still. Where were we? Where…you…you…were…’
Cloncurry’s voice drifted, his eyes seemed unfocused. His expression was odd, detached. Rob glanced meaningfully at Forrester, who nodded back.
‘No, I’m not going fucking mad,’ Cloncurry chuckled. ‘I’m already mad. You surely have noticed that, Detective Forrest Gump. But I’m also several times smarter than you, no matter how mad I am. So I know what you know. For instance, you’ve already worked out in your slow-witted way I am in Kurdistan. Given that I got hold of poor Isobel and her pancreas, that much must be obvious. And I have to say, what a shitty place this is. The Turks are so mean to the Kurds. Really. It’s disgraceful.’ Cloncurry shook his head, and exhaled, ‘I’m serious, they’re racist. And I hate racists. Really. You maybe think I’m some heartless psychotic but I’m not. I utterly despise racists. The only people I hate more than racists are niggers.’ Cloncurry spun around in his swivel chair, spun round twice, then stopped to face the camera again. ‘Why are the darkies so dim? Guys, come on, admit it. Haven’t you ever wondered? The sooties? They just fuck everywhere up, don’t they? Is that a plan they’ve got? Do the niggers get together and think-hey, let’s see if we can emigrate somewhere nice and turn it into a toilet? We can go and live in crappy houses and start robbing and shooting. Again. Then we’ll complain about white people. And as for Pakis! Pakis! And Arabs! God help us. Why don’t they just piss off and put their women in binliners at home? And stop all the yelling from mosques? No one cares. And what about the Yiddos, whining about the Holocaust?’ Cloncurry was chortling now. ‘Whining and mewling like a bunch of girls. Holocaust this, Holocaust that, please don’t hit me, it’s a Holocaust. Holocaust schmolocaust. Listen up, Johnny Kike, isn’t it time you got over it? Move on. And anyway was the Holocaust really that bad? Really? At least it was punctual. Those Germans can stick to a timetable. Even with cattle trucks. Can you imagine the chaos if the Brits had been in charge? They can’t even run a commuter line from Clapham let alone a pan-European Railway of Death.’ Cloncurry went into a fake Cockney accent. ‘“We’d like to apologize for the late running of the Auschwitz service. An alternative bus service has been provided. The buffet car will reopen at Treblinka.”’ Another chortle. ’Jesus, the Brits. Screw the Brits. Arrogant drunken idiots always brawling in the fog. And what about the Yanks? God save us from the Yanks and their buttocks! Fucking Yanks with their ginormous asses. What is that about? Why are their arses so big? Haven’t they worked out the link between their failure in Iraq and their massive great butts? Hey, here’s a clue, America. Wanna know what happened to those weapons of mass destruction? Some fat bitch in LA is sitting on them in Dunkin Donuts. Only she doesn’t even realize it, because her ass is the size of Neptune and she can’t feel a thing.’ Cloncurry swivelled again. ‘As for the Japs, they are just devious trolls with a gift for wiring. And the Chinks: seven ways to cook broccoli, and they look like gonks. Fish-eating fuckers.’ He paused, considering. ‘I quite like the Poles.’