He handed his pistol to one of the Kurds, then reached into his jacket pocket and took a huge steel blade from inside his jacket. This, he brandished exultantly, admiring it, his eyes bright and keen and loving. Then he looked over, and winked at Rob.
‘We should really be using obsidian: that’s what the Aztecs used. Dark obsidian daggers. But a big thick knife like this will do nicely, a big thick rather memorable knife. You do recognize it?’ Cloncurry lifted the knife in the dusty sunlight. It flashed as he turned it. ‘Christine? Any ideas?’
‘Fuck you,’ said the Frenchwoman.
‘Well, quite. It’s the knife I used to fillet your old friend, Isobel. I think I can still see some of her elderly blood on the handle. And a tiny bit of spleen!’ He grinned. ‘Also, as the Germans say. To our task. I see the water is now at your knees and you will drown within about ten minutes. But I so want the last thing you witness to be your daughter having her heart literally torn from her tiny chest as she screams helplessly for her pathetic, useless and cowardly father. So we’d better get cracking. Guys, hold the girl tighter, yes, like that. Yes, yes. Very good.’
Cloncurry lifted the knife in his two hands and the vicious blade sparkled in the sun. He paused. ‘The Aztecs were so weird, weren’t they? Apparently they came from Asia, over the Bering Straits. Like you me and Rob. All the way from North Asia.’ The knife glittered; Cloncurry’s eyes were likewise shining. ‘They just loved to kill children. They lusted for it. Originally they killed the kids of all their enemies, their conquered foes. Yet I understand that by the end of their empire they were so nuts they started killing all their own children. No joke. The priests would pay poor Aztec families to hand over babies and infants to be ritually slaughtered. An entire civilization literally murdering itself, devouring its own offspring. Fantastic! And what a way to do it, to rip out the heart by smashing into the ribcage, then hold the still-beating organ in front of the living victim. So.’ Cloncurry sighed happily. ‘Are you ready, Lillibet? Little Betsy? My little Betty Boo? Mmm? Chesty open time?’
Cloncurry beamed down at Rob’s daughter. Rob watched, with desolate disgust: Cloncurry was actually drooling, a line of spittle dribbling from his mouth onto Lizzie’s gagged and screaming face.
And then the moment came: Cloncurry’s two hands took a grip at the furthest end of the handle and raised the knife higher…and Rob closed his eyes in the sadness of uttermost defeat…
…as a shot cracked the air. A shot from nowhere. A shot from heaven.
Rob opened his eyes. A bullet had whipped across the waters and slammed into Cloncurry- a bullet so violent it had clean ripped off the killer’s hand.
He blinked and stared. Cloncurry had lost a hand! Arterial blood was pumping from the severed wrist. The knife had been sent spinning into the water.
Cloncurry gazed at the hideous wound, nonplussed. His expression was one of deep curiosity. And then a second shot snapped out, again from nowhere-who was doing the shooting?-and this one nearly took off Cloncurry’s arm at the shoulder. His left arm, already handless, was now dangling by a few red muscles, and blood was pissing into the dust from the gaping shoulder-wound.
The two Kurds immediately dropped Lizzie, turned with panic on their face and, as a third shot cracked through the desert air, ran.
Cloncurry fell to his knees. The third shot had obviously hit him in the leg. He knelt, bleeding, on the sand, scrabbling anxiously around. What was he looking for? His own severed hand? The knife? Lizzie was next to him lying gagged and hogtied. Rob stood knee-deep in the water. Who was shooting who? And where was Cloncurry’s gun? Rob glanced left: he could see dust in the distance. Maybe a car was coming their way, but the dust obscured his view. Were they going to shoot Lizzie too?
Rob realized he had one chance. Now. He dived into the water, plunged and swam, swimming for Lizzie’s life, swimming between the bones and skulls. He had never swum so hard, had never battled such surging, dangerous waters…He kicked and crawled, swallowing whole mouthfuls of cold water, and then he slapped a hand on dry hot earth, and hauled himself up. When he rose from the water, gasping and spitting, he saw Cloncurry a few yards away.
Cloncurry was lying down, using Lizzie’s body as a shield from any further gunshots; but his mouth was wide open and drooling-and he was closing his jaw over Lizzie’s soft throat. Like a tiger killing a gazelle. Jamie Cloncurry was going to bite into Lizzie’s neck, and chew out her jugular.
A surge of fury ran through Rob. He flung himself across the sand and ran at Cloncurry just as the killer’s sharp white teeth closed over his daughter’s windpipe, and he kicked Cloncurry in the head, kicking him straight off his daughter. Then Rob did it again: he kicked the killer away for a second time, and then a third time, and Cloncurry sprawled with a yell of pain into the dust, his half-severed arm hanging useless and obscene.
Rob leapt on the gang-leader, lodging a knee on Cloncurry’s uninjured shoulder so that he couldn’t move. Now he had Cloncurry at his mercy. He could hold him here as long as he liked.
But Rob had no intention of showing mercy.
‘Your turn,’ said Rob.
He reached into his pocket for his Swiss Army knife. Slowly and carefully he unclasped the biggest blade and twisted it in the air for a moment, then he looked down.
Rob found himself smiling. He was wondering what to do first, how to torture and maim Cloncurry so that it would cause the maximum pain, before the killer’s inevitable death. Stab him in the eye? Carve off an ear? Slit the scalp open? What? But as Rob lifted the knife, he saw something in Cloncurry’s leering expression. A kind of shared and exultant shame, a hopeful yet defiant evil. The bile of revulsion rose in Rob’s throat.
Shaking his head, Rob closed the knife and put it back in his pocket. Cloncurry wasn’t going anywhere: he was bleeding to death right here. His leg was shattered, his hand was gone, the arm was hanging off. He was unarmed, and mutilated, dying from the shock of the pain and blood-loss. Rob didn’t need to do anything.
Rolling off the killer, Rob turned to his daughter.
He ungagged her immediately. She cried out Daddy daddy daddy and then she said Christine! and Rob turned, ashamed. He’d quite forgotten Christine in his urge to save Lizzie; but Christine was saving herself, and a moment later Rob reached down to the waters to grab her hand and help her out of the surging water. He hauled her up onto the dust, and she lay there, panting.
Then Rob heard a noise. Turning, he saw Cloncurry dragging himself along in the dust, creaking and slow, his half-severed arm hanging at his side, the wound in his thigh gaping wide and raw. As he crawled, he left a trail of blood behind him. He was heading straight for the water.
He was going to make the last sacrifice: suicide. Jamie Cloncurry was going to drown himself. Rob watched, transfixed and appalled. Cloncurry was at the water’s edge now. With a grunt of great pain he hauled himself the final yard, and then he flopped down into the scummy cold waves with a great splash. For a moment his head bobbed amongst the grinning skulls, and his bright eyes stared straight at Rob.
And then he sank beneath the waves. Gently spiralling down, to join the bones of his ancestors.
Christine sat upright, shaking her phone, making sure it was still working. At last, miraculously, she got a signal and rang Sally and began telling her the good news. Rob listened, half-dazed, halfhappy, half-dreaming. He found himself scanning the horizon and did not know why. Then, a minute later, he realized why he was scanning the horizon.
There were police cars speeding across the dust, negotiating their way between the fingers of floodwater. A few moments later the hilltop was alive with policemen and officers and soldiers-and there was Kiribali. In his dustless suit, wearing a wide bright smile. He was snapping orders into his radio, and pointing directions to his men.