The Marks of Cain (20 page)

‘It could open anywhere,’ said Amy. ‘Someone’s house. The
boulangerie.
’

‘We’re gonna surprise them –’

David climbed the earthen steps and shoved a shoulder violently upwards; the doorflap began to yield, a slant of light striped his face, and the trap door slapped open, with a bang. He looked across – as four faces stared back at him, grinning.

What?

But it wasn’t four faces. It was four rag dolls: Campan
mounaques.
The family of rag dolls installed in the front pew of the church.

The dolls smiled forever. Smiling at David’s soiled face as
he hoisted himself out of the trap door, then leaned down and hauled Amy to the surface. She gazed about.

‘The church –
of course.
’

David nodded. ‘We better get out of these – clothes – now, get out of them now – let’s use these –’

He pointed at the rag dolls. Within a minute they had stripped themselves, extracted money and possessions, and jumped into the ordinary clothes of the rag dolls, the baggy jeans and jumpers; David kicked away his clothes, trying not to imagine what kind of…things…what kind of fetid silt…had touched his skin.

‘OK?’ he said.

Amy was using her discarded jumper to wipe her head. She shivered.

‘Jesus. David. What…was…that stuff? In the cellar?’

‘Body liquor.’

‘What?’

‘If you store bodies in an airtight space, for centuries, they decay…in a certain way. But –’

‘They turn to
liquid
?’

‘Eventually.’ He glanced around the church, trying to work out what to do next. Amy pressed him: ‘Explain!’

‘The corpses slowly become adipocere – corpse wax. A sort of cheesy wax. Grave wax. Then over centuries they turn again, into…a…’ He was trying not to think about it. ‘A sort of soup. With flesh. I’m sorry. But that’s what we found –’

‘How do you know
that
?’

‘Human biochemistry.’

She was trembling.

‘Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.’

Her eyes were shut, absorbing the ghastliness. He decided not to tell her his darkest fears. One of the reasons you might store human bodies so diligently and carefully was if you feared they carried severe disease. Infectious disease.

‘OK,’ she said, opening her eyes. ‘I’m OK. But José…’ She inhaled deeply, to calm herself. ‘Poor José.’ Then she said: ‘What now?’

‘We get the fuck out of Campan.’

He crept to the main door, and creaked it open. They stealthily walked the path through the overgrown churchyard to the main iron gate. And gazed. There was not a person or a car to be seen; the only sign of humanity was one solitary old woman hurrying under an umbrella, way down the grey and lonely main street.

‘Run for it –’

They sprinted out of the churchyard, hurling themselves down the humble main street of Campan, beyond the last dilapidated villa, running into the countryside. And still running.

After twenty minutes Amy called a halt, she had her hands on her knees. Gasping and gulping. Almost puking. David stopped, exhausted, and looked around, they had reached a junction, where traffic slashed past, burning down the main road.

But now Amy was running on.

‘We can hitch! We need to hitch a lift –’

‘Where?’

‘Biarritz. Somewhere busy, with lots of people, where we can get lost. This road goes to Biarritz.’

He followed her, as she ran to the road, with her thumb out, hoping for a lift. David was desperate: who the hell would stop for them? Dressed like scarecrows, faces frightened, half smeared with some unspeakable effluent.

Five minutes later a French apple truck stopped; the driver leaned over, pushed the door open. They climbed in, profusely thanking the man. He glanced at their clothes, he sniffed the air, and then he shrugged. And drove.

They were escaping. Down the thundering autoroute to
Biarritz. David sat back, his arms aching, his mind spiralling, waiting for the sense of relief. But then he heard a beep. A message. He patted his scarecrow jeans: his phone! He’d forgotten that he’d turned his phone on, to use the light: he’d been keeping the phone off all this time, just in case Miguel was tracing his own number, too.

As he took the phone from his pocket, he felt the wild incongruity, a clash of modernity, and madness. He had been drenched with the vile distillation of many dead bodies, and yet his phone was bleeping.

The flashing number was British. He clicked.

And then he had one of the strangest phone calls of his life. From a journalist in England. A journalist called Simon Quinn. The phone call lasted an hour; by the time it was done they were in the depths of the Gascon hills, near Cambo-les-Bains.

David shut the call down. And then he rang a random number: and as soon as it answered he opened the window, and he threw the damp and mudded phone into the long grass of the verge, with a fierce relief. If anyone was tracing his calls, they would trace them to Cambo-les-Bains.

Amy was asleep in the seat next to him. The truck driver was furiously puffing a cigarette, oblivious.

He sat back, pensive. The phone call from the journalist. What did it all mean? Murders in Britain? Scientists? Genetics?

Deformity?

At the end of the bizarre phone call, his hand weary from scribbling notes, Simon thanked David Martinez and clicked off, falling back on the bed, his eyes bright with thoughts and ideas.

Extraordinary. It was truly extraordinary. And the tension in the young man’s voice. What was he going through? What was happening down there, in the Pyrenees?

Whatever the answer, the phone call was a revelation. A breakthrough – and it needed celebrating. He almost ran downstairs. He needed to speak to Sanderson, and he needed a cup of triumphant coffee.

Spooning dark brown Colombian coffee grounds into the cafetiere, he called New Scotland Yard. It occurred to him, as he did so, that Sanderson might be angered by Simon’s persistent pursuit of the story; it occurred to him that Sanderson would be
mightily
interested in this latest information.

But he couldn’t reach Sanderson. Instead he was put through to Tomasky. The young DS seemed to listen with appreciative and gratifying interest; as he told the story, Simon felt almost exultant at his success. The best bit was the toes. They now had an explanation: the syndactyly. Yes.

Even as Simon explained his discoveries, he cursed himself for his own failure in not making this connection before – as soon as Emma Winyard had mentioned the Cagots, he should have looked them up! Then he could have strung the pearls himself: webbed toes. Cagots. The Pyrenees.

Still, he had at least got there in the end.

The coffee had brewed and the mug was full. It was Tomasky’s turn to talk, as the journalist sipped.

‘So, Simon,’ the DS said, ‘you’re saying these people, the…Cackots…’

‘Cagots. Ca-gots.’

‘Right. You’re saying these Cag…ots are all
deformed
? They all have webbed fingers or toes?’

‘Not all. But some, certainly – and it is one of the characteristics of the Cagots. Since medieval times. That’s why they were given the, ah, goose’s foot to wear. To symbolize and epitomize their malformation.’

‘Why? Why do they have webbed fingers and toes?’

‘Genetics. They are a mountain people, inbred! Deformities like this are common in isolated communities with smaller gene pools. They don’t get bred out. Fascinating right?’

‘Sure.’ Tomasky went quiet. Then he added. ‘And you’re saying our victims…are Cagots then. Someone is killing the Cag…ots?’

‘Seems that way, Andrew. We don’t know why, but we know that some of them are Cagots, and the ones who are Cagot and deformed get tortured. And the killings are happening all over. France, Britain, Canada.’ He paused. ‘And some of them are old, and they were in Occupied France during the war, maybe in this camp called Gurs. Maybe that’s what links them as well. And some of them have lots of money…’ Simon wanted to laugh at the bewildering evidence, but at least it was evidence. ‘I need to speak to Bob Sanderson. He needs to
know
this.’

‘Sure. I’m on it. I’ll tell the DCI as soon as I see him.’

‘Excellent. Thanks, Andrew.’

Simon rang off. He set down the mobile and stared out of the window. For half an hour he exulted in his discovery. Then his hymn of happiness was joined by the chime of the doorbell. The journalist breezed down the hall and opened the door. Behind it was Andrew Tomasky. Surprising.

‘Hello, DS. I thought –’

The policeman pushed through the door and kicked it shut behind. Simon stood back.

Tomasky had a knife.

Tomasky growled with anger as his first stab of the knife missed Simon’s neck – by an inch.

The journalist gasped as he sensed another slashing cut, and he swerved, again, batting away the blade – but Tomasky came at him for a third time, jumping forward, and this time he got a hand on his victim’s throat and the knife was aimed directly at an eye.

Choking and spitting, Simon caught the stabbing arm at the last moment. The knife was poised just millimetres from the pupil, shaking with the violence of their struggle.

Tomasky was thrusting down, his victim was holding the wrist and grinding the hand upwards. They were on the floor. The knife was too close to see, it was just a menacing silver blur in his vision: a looming greyness. The knifepoint came closer, the journalist shuddered – he was going to be blinded, then killed. Drilled into the brain through the optical bone.

His eye was blinking reflexively, shedding tears. Loud noises rumbled behind. The bladepoint trembled with the strength of two men opposed. Simon screamed and made a final effort to force the blade away, but he was losing the
battle. He shut his eyes and waited for the steel to sink into the softness, popping open the eyeball, then crunching into his brain.

Then his face was covered with splattering wetness, like he’d been slapped with heavy blancmange: and suddenly Tomasky was just a body, dead weight, sagging down, and he forced the dead policeman off his chest and he stared upwards.

Sanderson.

DCI Sanderson was standing in the door; next to him was a policeman with chest armour. The door had been kicked open. The chest-armoured cop had a gun.

‘Shot, Richman.’

‘Sir.’

Sanderson reached a hand down and pulled the journalist to his feet. But when he stood up he felt his knees go, trembling and buckling with the fear and the shock; he crumpled to the floor again. He was staring at Tomasky’s body. The head had been blown apart, by a sidelong shot, at close range. The skull was in pieces. Actual pieces scattered across the hallway.

Then he sensed the wetness on his face. Smeary wetness. He had Tomasky’s blood and maybe his brains on his face. His throat tightened with nausea as he stood; without a word to the policemen he hurled himself upstairs to the bathroom, where he averted himself from the mirror: he didn’t want to see himself covered with brains and blood. Splashing water and more water on his face, he used a box of tissues, and half a bottle of handsoap, and finally he rinsed and nearly gagged, and rinsed again.

Now he checked the mirror. His face was clean. But there was something stuck in his cheek, lodged in its own little wound. Like a small piece of glass, burrowed in his flesh. Leaning close to the mirror he plucked the thing from his cheek.

It was one of Tomasky’s teeth.

‘League of Polish Families.’

The voice was familiar. DCI Sanderson was standing right behind, at the hallway door.

‘What?’

‘Tomasky. We’ve been watching the bastard for a while. Sorry it got that close. We’ve been monitoring his calls – but he slipped out of the building –’

‘You –’

‘Sorry, mate. Had to use lethal force. Waited too long –’

Simon’s hands were still trembling with fear. He extended one into the air, experimentally. Watched it shaking. He grabbed a towel and dried his face. Trying to be calm and manly. Largely failing.

‘Why
did
you suspect him?’

Sanderson offered a sad, sympathetic smile.

‘Odd little things. The knotting. Remember that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You found out it was a witch torture, in an hour. Tomasky didn’t. I put him on the job before you, and he turned up nothing like that. Yet he was a smart copper. That didn’t quite…fit.’ The DCI pointed at Simon’s face. ‘You’re still bleeding.’

He switched his attention to the mirror once more. The wound where the tooth had impacted was indeed bleeding. But not badly. Rifling the bathroom cabinet, he found some cotton wool. He swabbed himself with water, then rinsed the woollen bud. White wool, red wool, clear water, stained water. Blood in the water. Sanderson carried on talking.

‘When I noted that – the knotting, I mean – that’s when I took an interest. I remembered he was keen to be assigned to this case in the first place. Very very keen. And then we found he was taking certain calls that were meant for me, and not telling me, like the call from Edith Tait. And he
wasn’t following up other leads, either. So we looked into his background…’

The journalist gestured at Sanderson. He wanted to get out of the bathroom. He wanted to get out of the house. He could hear voices downstairs. More policemen, presumably. An ambulance outside, come to take the body away.

They stepped out onto the landing and leaned over the banister, looking down at the hall. The body was still lying there: with paramedics bustling around. Big splashes of blood, like bright red paint, were flung across the polished wooden floor. That wooden floor was Suzie’s pride and joy. Simon wondered, incongruously, how angry she would be: about her floor.

‘You said about his background?’

‘Yeah.’ Sanderson nodded. ‘Likesay, Polish. Came here with his family about ten years ago. A cleanskin. No record of anything suspicious, even trained as a priest. Or monk. But his dad was big in the League of Polish Families. And his brother worked for Radio Maryja.’

‘They are?’

‘Hard right nationalist groups, ultra Catholic political parties. Linked to the Front National in France and various Catholic sects, like Pope Pius the Tenth. Lots of them perfectly legitimate but with…radical right agendas. At the edges anyway.’

‘So he was a Nazi?’

‘Nah. These outfits, from what we can tell, are not really Nazi. More hearth and home. The blessed Virgin Mary and a nice big army. They don’t really go in for kicking shit out of black people. Or killing Anglo-Irish journalists. Not normally anyway.’

‘I don’t understand it.’

‘Nor do I, mate, nor do I.’ He squinted Simon’s way, assessingly. ‘But there may be some link…you know, your witch
theory. It alerted us. We’re still checking Tomasky out. He was a passionate churchgoer. Witches and churches, churches and witches? Who knows.’

‘So you listened in on the phone call I made to him?’

‘We did,’ Sanderson answered. ‘He must have thought you were onto something, when you rang him, something he wanted hidden. So his only choice was to take you out.’

‘The Cagots?’

‘Yup. The gist of your call with Tomasky. And these poor bastards in France? Very interesting. What the fuck is all this about?’

‘Sorry?’

The DCI looked momentarily sober, verging on reflective. Even maudlin. ‘Remember what I said way back? How right I was.’

‘What?’

‘This isn’t any old fish and chip job,
Quinn, this isn’t a fish and chip job. This is something else. Who the heck knows…’ His vigour returned. ‘OK. Let’s get sorted. Nuff rabbiting. Come on, we need to debrief you, Quinn. Then, I am afraid –’

‘What –?’

‘We’re gonna assign you protection. Just for the while. And your close family.’

They descended the rest of the stairs. Past the body of Tomasky. Tip toeing through the bloodsplashes, apologizing to the paramedics and SOC photographers. The grey drizzly air of late September was enlivening. The sun was battling to be seen through the clouds.

Sanderson opened a car door for Simon, who climbed in. Sanderson sat alongside, in the back. The car began the long journey to New Scotland Yard. Finchley, Hampstead, Belsize Park.

‘And,’ Sanderson said, ‘we will protect your family as
well. Your mum and dad, Conor and Suzie will be with you…’

‘You’re putting armed guards on my mother and father?’

Sanderson confirmed this with a curt ‘Yep’, then he leaned and tapped the driver on the shoulder. ‘Cummings, this traffic is a bitch. Try St John’s Wood?’

‘Right you are, sir.’

He turned back to Simon. ‘So that’s it, wife and kid, mum and dad, there’s no one else they can use. Right?’

The journalist nodded, then turned and stared out of the police car window, at the ordinariness of London. Red car yellow car white lorry. Pushchairs. Supermarkets. Bus stops. A knife three millimetres from his eye, a man bellowing with rage, forcing the knife down.

He rubbed his face with his hands, trying to rub away the horror.

‘You will feel weird for a time,’ Sanderson said, quite gently. ‘I’m afraid you better get used to it.’

‘Post-traumatic stress?’

‘Well, yeah. But you can handle it, eh? The Fighting Irish?’

Simon attempted a weak smile. Then said:

‘Tell me about the case, Bob. I need…distraction. What have you found, lately?’

Loosening his tie, Sanderson asked the driver to open the window. Cooler air refreshed the car. He said:

‘We got some interesting leads on GenoMap. There’s a Namibian connection. One of GenoMap’s biggest sponsors was a Namibian diamond company, Kellerman Namcorp.’

‘I remember Fazackerly mentioned them.
So?
’

‘Seemed a bit odd to me. When I thought about it. A bleeding diamond company? What’s that got to do with genetics? So I got a bod at the Yard to track down one of the scientists from GenoMap. A Chinese Canadian, Alex Zhenrong. We found him back in Vancouver. And he told us…quite a lot.’

They were passing the Regent’s Park mosque. Its golden dome glittered half heartedly in the uncertain sunshine.

‘Like what?’

‘Like…a lot. He told us GenoMap found it hard getting people to fund the lab, at first, after what happened at Stanford.’

‘But Kellerman were…keen?’

‘They came on board after a year, and they were very keen
indeed.
Superfuckingduper keen. The only ones. Apparently they poured money into the lab. For several years. Genomics is not cheap but GenoMap got every machine they wanted. From Kellerman Namcorp.’

‘And they are exactly? This corporation?’

‘Diamonds, like I said. Big aggressive multinational, mining and export. They’re up there with De Beers. They run their own part of Namibia, the Sperrgebiet. The Forbidden Zone. The owners are a very old Jewish family, South African. Jewish Dynasty.’

‘Why were they so determined to finance the lab?’

‘Because of Fazackerly and Nairn. According to Zhenrong anyway.’

‘Say again?’

‘Fazackerly was the best geneticist in Britain two decades ago. Big reputation. Nairn was maybe the best young geneticist in the world. Kellerman wanted their brains. And Kellerman wanted their results.’

‘So that was good for GenoMap.’

Sanderson nodded. He glanced out of his window as they overtook a double decker bus. Crowded with shoppers.

‘Yeah, but – so Zhenrong told us – Kellerman also wanted bangs for their bucks. They wanted some payoff for all that investment. So they pushed the research in…
a certain way…
If you see what I mean.’

‘No. I don’t…’

A brief silence. The journalist looked around the interior
of the police car. So calm and sensible and ordinary. So unlike the interior of his mind.

Sanderson explained.

‘By the end, it seems Nairn and Fazackerly weren’t just investigating genetic diversity in the way…you are supposed to.’

‘Explain?’

‘I’m no molecular biologist, Quinn, as you might have twigged. But my understanding is this. The initial idea behind GenoMap was…meant to be medical. Finding cures for diseases, through differering racial genetics.’ Sanderson shook his head. ‘That’s why Alex Zhenrong joined, anyhow. But by the end, with Nathan Kellerman’s strong encouragement, Fazackerly and Nairn, according to this Zhenrong lad, were just looking for genetic differences,
full stop
. They wanted to find and prove that there are large and serious genetic differences between human races. You understand.’

‘Next stop Joséf Goebbels.’

‘Yup. Maybe.’

‘In which case…You reckon they are, or were,
racist
? Nairn and Fazackerly. A couple of Nazis? Fits with Tomasky.’

He shivered at the memory of the Polish policeman, teeth bared in rage; he looked across the car.

‘Nope.’ Sanderson shook his head. ‘We don’t think Angus was racist. According to all his mates, and Zhenrong, he just wanted to be
famous
, to be published. He was ambitious,
that’s all.
Apparently he was pretty eccentric, as well as very smart. But he, at least, was not a Nazi.’ Sanderson leaned a little closer to Simon, across the front seat of the car. ‘And we think he and Fazackerly may have been onto something quite astounding by the end. Though they wouldn’t tell anyone what it was. But it must’ve been something that the Kellermans
really
wanted.’

‘So how do
you
know about it?’

‘Fazackerly started boasting about it! In his cups.’ Sanderson mimed a drinking hand. ‘Zhenrong says Fazackerly was a terrible boozer. There was a genomics conference in Perpignan about six months ago when Fazackerly got ratarsed. And he told everyone that him and Nairn, they were gonna publish something that would
amaze
everyone, that would make Eugen Fischer look like a nonce. That’s not how Zhenrong phrased it, by the way, that’s me.’

‘Eugen Fischer? I heard that name. Recently.’ Simon frowned. Exhausted by the mystery. ‘The young guy in France, Martinez, he mentioned him.’

‘That right? Well, Fischer was a race scientist. Worked in Namibia, and then for Hitler, one of the founders of eugenics. A real bastard. Thought Germans were supermen.’

‘Namibia.’

‘Namibia.’

‘I remember…’ Simon said, ‘I remember there was, ah, a picture in Fazackerly’s office of Francis Galton. He was a eugenicist…and he worked in Namibia.’

‘You see?’ Sanderson was broadly smiling. ‘It all connects. The Namibian Connection! I’m only telling you all this because you had a detective sargeant’s premolar embedded in your face this morning. Please keep shtoom for now. I guess you will wanna write a book when we’re done, won’t you?’

Simon found himself blushing.

‘Hah.’ Sanderson chuckled. ‘Fucking writers can’t resist. Make sure you give me a good haircut. Six foot two. Strong jaw. You know. And here’s another thing. Nathan Kellerman, the Jewish heir to all those diamond billions, he and Nairn became very close. Kellerman and Nairn would have these…chinwags, apparently, when he used to come and visit London, see how money was being spent.’