But Rob knew he couldn’t save her. He knew what was going to happen next. And it wasn’t going to be a heroic rescue.
Cloncurry was going to kill Lizzie in front of him. He was going to sacrifice Rob’s firstborn, here in this wilderness, as the crows and the buzzards circled in the sky. His daughter was going to die, cruelly and brutally, in the next few minutes, and Rob would be forced to watch.
49
Cloncurry waved the gun at Rob and Christine. ’More over there, lovebirds.’
Rob gazed at his daughter kneeling there in the dust, feeling perplexed, and utterly anguished. Then he stared with fierce anger at Cloncurry. He’d never felt such a lust to hurt someone-he wanted to dismember Cloncurry with his bare hands, with his teeth. Dig out his eyes with his thumbs.
But Rob and Christine were trapped and unarmed: they had to obey; following Cloncurry’s languid directions, they moved up a slight rise in the middle of the valley, onto a kind of sandy knoll, though Rob had no idea why Cloncurry wanted them on this isolated hillock.
The wind was whispering and melancholy. Christine looked as if she was about to cry. Rob glanced left and right, desperate for some escape. There was no escape.
What was Cloncurry doing? Rob squinted, visoring his gaze against the sun with a hand. It seemed that Cloncurry had some kind of phone or other gadget in his hand. He was pointing it left, towards the encroaching floods. Where the levee protected them from the inundations.
At last Cloncurry spoke. ‘It’s not every day one gets to mutilate and kill a child in front of her daddy, so I think some celebrations are in order. Indeed, some fireworks. So. Here we go. Surf’s up!’
He pressed a button on the device he was holding. A fraction of a second later the boom of an explosion ripped across the desert-followed by a tangible blast wave: Cloncurry had blown up the little shepherd’s hut on the levee. As the smoke and the flames cleared, Rob saw why.
It wasn’t just the hut that Cloncurry had sent hurtling into the sky: half the levee had gone too. And now floodwater was pouring through the gap: it had found this lower channel, and the floodwater was tumbling, down the sides of the valley, tons of water spouting and screaming. Coming their way, very fast.
Rob grabbed Christine hard, and pulled her to the top of the knoll. The water was already gushing beside them; tons of water, some of it lapping at their ankles. Rob looked up at the crest: Cloncurry was laughing.
‘Do hope you can swim.’
The water was cascading now, filling the valley, splashing at Rob’s feet. A wall of water, roaring and engulfing, carrying with it a repulsive scum. Bobbing on the surface were bones, and slops of mummified baby, and some of the warrior skulls: floating and tumbling. Soon the scummy and turbulent waters had completely surrounded Rob and Christine on their little hill. If it continued to rise they were going to drown.
‘Perfect!’ exclaimed Cloncurry. ‘Can’t tell you how difficult that was. We had to come out here in the middle of the night to set it all up. In that nasty little hut. Lots of explosives. Tricky. But it worked to perfection! How enormously gratifying.’
Rob stared across the waters at Cloncurry, safe on his elevation. He didn’t know what to think about this man, the utter madness mixed with this…devious subtlety. And then Cloncurry made his usual near-telepathic remark:
‘I guess you’re a tad confused, little Robbie.’
Rob stayed silent; Cloncurry smiled.
‘Can’t work out how such a total psycho like me should end up on this side of the water? Eh? While the good guys, all you guys, you’re on that side. The drowning side.’
Again, Rob said nothing. His enemy grinned wider.
‘I’m rather afraid I’ve been using everyone all along. I got you to find me the Black Book. I harnessed the fine and famous minds of Christine Meyer and Isobel Previn to the cause. OK, I sliced Isobel’s head off but she’d done her job by then. Showed me the Book surely wasn’t in Kurdistan.’ Cloncurry was gleaming with pride. ‘And then, by simply sitting back and doing nothing, I got you lovely people to do the rest of the work, as welclass="underline" to decipher the Book, to locate the Valley of the Slaughter, to find the only evidence of the Genesis Secret. Because, you see, I needed to know for sure where all the evidence is, so it can be destroyed forever.’ He gestured across the frothing floodwater. ‘And now I am going to erase all of this in a huge flood-entomb it underwater for all time. And as I wipe away all the evidence, I will simultaneously kill the only people who know the Secret.’ He looked down, very happily.’ Oh yes, nearly forgot, and I have the Black Book, too! At least I think I do. Let me just make sure…’
Stooping to the dust, Cloncurry grabbed the box and wrenched the leather lid away. He peered down, reached inside, and took out the hybrid skull. For a moment he cradled the skull, caressing the smoothness of the cranium. Then he turned the skull so it met his gaze.
‘Alas, poor Yorick. You had fucking weird eyes. But quite superb cheekbones! Hah.’
He set the skull to the side, and took out the document and spread it across his knee so that he could read.
‘Fascinating. Truly fascinating. I fully expected cuneiform. We all expected cuneiform. But late ancient Aramaic? A wonderful discovery.’ Cloncurry glanced at Christine and Rob. ‘Thank you, chaps. So kind of you to bring it all the way here. And to dig everything up.’
He folded the document, put it back in the box and replaced the skull on top of the document; the leather lid followed.
Rob watched all this with a kind of sullen, hatefilled resentment. The most disgusting flavour in this banquet of defeat was the sense that Cloncurry was right. The killer’s whole gameplan had a kind of glistening, alien perfection. Cloncurry had outwitted and out-thought them all the way through. From the Kurds to the cottage and back again, Cloncurry hadn’t just won, he had triumphed.
And now his triumph would be honoured in blood.
Rob stared at his daughter’s shining, crying eyes; and he shouted across the water that he loved her.
Lizzie’s eyes implored her helpless father: help me.
Cloncurry was giggling. ‘Very touching. If you like that kind of thing. Makes me want to spew, personally. Either way, I think we should now proceed to the final drama, don’t you? Before you actually drown. Enough of the preamble.’ The killer regarded the wavelets lapping at Christine’s ankles. As he gazed, one particularly enormous skull bobbed along the burbling floodwaters, like an obscene kind of bath toy. ‘Oooh, look, there’s one of the wrinklies. Say hello to granddad, Lizzie.’
Another chuckle. Lizzie wept louder.
‘Yes, yes.’ Cloncurry sighed loudly. ‘I never liked my family either.’ He turned and called across to Rob. ‘You have a nice view from your hillock? Excellent. Because we’re going to do the Aztec thing, and I want to make sure you can see. I’m sure you know the rigmarole, Robert. We splay your daughter over a rock, then we rip into her chest and yank out the beating heart. Can be a bit messy but I think my friend Navda has some Kleenex.’
Cloncurry nudged one of his followers. The moustached Kurd on his left grunted, but said nothing. The gang-leader sighed. ‘Not the most expressive of chaps, but the best available. I do wonder about the moustaches though. Just a tiny bit…sincere, aren’t they?’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, could you two chatty Kurdish gaylords take this little girl and drape her over that rock?’ He mimed it for them.
The Kurds nodded, and obeyed. They picked up Lizzie and carried her over to a small boulder and laid her out with the boulder under her back, her feet held by one Kurd, her hands held by the other henchman; and all the while Lizzie sobbed, and struggled. And all the while Cloncurry smirked.
‘Very good, very good. Now to the best bit. By rights, Mr Robbie, we should have a chac mool, one of those weird stone bowls, into which I can drop your daughter’s bloody, still-beating heart, but we haven’t got a chac mool. I suppose I shall feed her heart to the crows.’