The Marks of Cain (26 page)

The car headed deeper into the thickening bush. David had never experienced this kind of terrain: it made the Pyrenees look like St James’s Park. He was glad they were losing themselves in the wilderness: it made them that much harder to follow. If they were being followed. Were they being followed?

‘These are the Damara wetlands,’ said Hans. ‘Underground rivers, coming to the surface. This water is what everyone relies on. We’ve gotta go straight through.’

It felt contradictory. From scorching desert they were shifting, abruptly, into an emerald paradise of sudden rivers. Waterbirds squawked, toads and frogs croaked. And the car
was rocking right down the middle of it all, wheel-arch deep in muddy water. It was like they were tunnelling into Eden.

Reeds cracked against the undercarriage, ducks fled the splashing wheels; more than once it seemed they were going to get stuck in the sucking black mud and would have to be towed free. But, just when the car was about to give up, Hans did some manly manoeuvre with the wheel and the gearstick and they lurched from the sucking swamps – charging back up onto dry land.

David wound the window open. They were on much firmer territory now; lush yet dry. Big orange cliffs stood on either side, they were rumbling down a dusty canyon.

A gazelle, or an antelope, stared quizzically at them from a rock.

‘Klipspringer,’ said Hans. ‘Beautiful things. Always remind me of Russian girl gymnasts…’ He checked the GPS coordinates given him by Amy. ‘We’re nearly there. I hope your woman has given you the right numbers. But I can’t see anything. I’d hate it if you guys have come all this way for nothing –’

‘There,’ said Amy.

David followed her gaze, and her pointing arm. Down a shallow side canyon he saw a group of tents – a largish camp of parked vans, pink tents and people. One of the men stood out, he had bright red hair. He was injecting a black girl in the crook of her arm; she was covered in grease and her breasts were quite bare.

‘That must be Nairn.’

The Land Rovers pulled up, David and Amy climbed out and approached the red-haired man – only then did he turn to look at them. He was still drawing blood from the black girl.

‘OK. I’ve nearly finished this bunch.’ Angus Nairn’s voice was loud, exuberant. He smiled at the visitors, then turned to a colleague and carried on issuing commands. ‘Alphonse! Alfie. Stop faffing about or I’ll be forced to get von Trotha on yer arse. Ask Donna to get the tables laid. And I want some kudu steak too. Excellent. Splendid. OK. You must be David and Amy? Eloise told me all about you. Give me a sec, we’re just finishing up. Alright, laydeez –’

David and Amy stood there feeling spare, and stunned, as the business of the camp continued. David contemplated Nairn as he chattered. Where was Eloise?

Hans came over, rubbing driver’s stiffness from his shoulders. As he shook Angus’s hand, the Scotsman smiled, quite warily, his green eyes gleaming.

‘And you are?’

‘Hans Petersen. Offered these guys a lift.’

‘Apparently so. Think I know your work with the ellies. Save the desert ellies, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Know the accent…Dorslander? Northern Dutch? Not an original thirstlander?’

Hans smiled at Angus.

‘Sorry, no…German Dutch. Otasha.’ He made his goodbyes to Amy and David. ‘OK. We gotta make the Huab by nightfall. Glad I could be of help.’

Nairn nodded, Hans retreated. The Desert Elephant Land Rovers departed, trailing clouds of orange dust, like cannon smoke drifting over a battlefield. Angus picked up a big steel syringe and beckoned over another tribeswoman. David felt absurd standing here, doing nothing. Where was Eloise? Was Enoka with Miguel?

Miguel and Enoka.

‘Mister Nairn. We think we may have been followed. To Namibia.’

The geneticist nodded, pensively. He continued drawing blood as he talked.

‘Call me Angus. Followed how?’

‘We’re not sure. We just think maybe someone was looking for us in Swakop. A friend of Miguel’s. Might be wrong.’

Angus sighed.

‘Eloise told me about Miguel. Garovillo? Yup. I knew they’d come for us. But we’re nearly done anyway. And we’re pretty safe out here in the bush.’

‘Where
is
Eloise?’

Angus lifted a hand.

‘Wait. Let me finish. Just a few Nama and Damara to go. And the ever delightful Himba.’

David watched as Angus took samples from the last tribespeople. The process of collecting blood was simple, it seemed. The locals queued patiently in the sun, then exposed their black and brown arms for Angus to plunge a shining needle in the soft veiny crook of the elbow. In return for the extracted blood samples, he then offered a brief medical examination, and dispensed medications – antibiotics, analgesics, antimalarials – to his sardonically mystified but apparently grateful customers.

Now he was almost done. One girl remained, her hair and her bare body smeared with a reddish ochre substance – a form of grease, Angus told them, made from dust and butter.

‘The topless ones are the Himba – don’t know why bras are taboo. OK, that’s it, just unfold your arm. Less jouncing would be good.’

The syringe glittered. The glass tube filled with blood, deep crimson blood, rubescent in the fading yet still burning sun. The shadows of the Damara canyon walls were long against the rocks; squawks and chirrs of birds and hyrax trilled through the air. The desert was returning to life after the infernal heat of the day.

‘There,’ said Angus. ‘One more
fluid
ounce and we’re finished.’

He turned and squirted the blood into a sealed glass vial, which he handed to Alphonse, who escorted it away with ceremonial care. Like a newborn being taken to the scales. Angus swabbed the girl’s arm with a cotton wool bud. ‘Alright love. Thank you very much. Here’s some medicine for the kiddo. Do you understand?
De Calpol juju?
’

The girl smiled, in shy puzzlement, and took the bottle of medicine, then turned and followed her family homeward through the acacias, assimilating with the long dark shadows of the trees.

‘Finally!’ Angus almost cheered. ‘Finito Benito! Now let’s have some Tafels and tucker. Guess you’re a bit confused, come all this way to see me and you can’t see Eloise? All can be explained, but first we drink. And eat!’

He was right. In the centre of the camp some trestle tables had been laid for a meal. There were big steel bowls of kudu steaks with cold pepper sauce, golden Windhoek and Urbock lager already poured into glasses. Fruit sat next to chocolate bars.

‘Courtesy of Nathan Kellerman, such a generous benefactor, albeit a Zionist hoodlum. Come on, sit down for fuck’s sake, you two came a long way in one drive. Damaraland from Swakop? Mad men! Amy, your name is Amy Myerson right? Eloise told me everything.’

Amy nodded, and said firmly: ‘
Where is Eloise?’

A mosquito whined and Angus shot out his hands and clapped. A squished mosquito was black on his fingers. ‘Howzat!’ He squinted closely at the insect’s corpse. ‘
Anopheles Moucheti Moucheti
. The day ones are arguably more dangerous, they carry dengue –’

‘Please.
Where is Eloise?
’ Amy repeated. ‘She told us to come here –’

‘She
was
here, you’re quite right. But I got a bit angsty. Decided to send her south.’

‘Where?’

‘The Sperrgebiet. The Forbidden Zone. Safest place in the world – for the world’s last breeding Cagot.’

‘Apart from Miguel.’

Nairn’s eyes brightened.

‘So he is a Cagot as well? The terrorist! How is that? Tell me how. Tell me everything. The Urbock is cold and the desert evening is long. Tell me!’

Over half a dozen beers, and plates of cold kudu steak and okra, Amy and David relayed the story to Angus Nairn.
They were getting used to telling this story. There seemed increasingly little point in concealing the story from a potential ally. Miguel was the enemy.

At length Angus sat back, the desert breeze riffling his red hair.

‘This explains a lot. It explains the murders, the ones you mention!’

David said, ‘But…why? It doesn’t explain why Miguel…’

‘Don’t you see? He’s involved in the killings where torture is involved. The first two victims, the poor old girls who turned out to be rich.’

The logic unfolded in David’s mind. Dimly.

‘I guess…He was just back from abroad. When he came in the bar – Amy –?’

She nodded. ‘And after Miguel was back in Spain, the killings changed. Right? The man in Windsor – he was just killed. Not tortured. And Fazackerly, the scientist, he was also…just killed. Cruelly but…efficiently. I suppose. But then when Miguel got
another
chance, in Gurs – Eloise’s mother. She
was
elaborately tortured…Miguel again. But why?’ Her blue eyes gazed Angus’s way, full of questions. ‘Why would he kill
and torture
– where others just kill?’

Angus stuffed another morsel of bread and chewed, exuberantly. ‘Think harder. One reason is obvious.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes!’ A broad smile. ‘Why is he so murderously cruel to the Cagots? In particular?’

The truth unpetalled in David’s mind.

‘Because…he knows about himself?’

‘Zakly.
He’s a fucking self-hater! Like that Basque witch burner.’

‘De Lancre?’

‘Yep. That’s it! He can’t face his own reality, his own race,
his terrible identity. Can’t deal with it. Sublimated self-hatred becomes externalized violence. That must be the answer. Like Freud said! And Miguel Garovillo is a Cagot! So he takes his violent feelings, and inflicts them on the hated Cagots who embody his self loathing, his misery. He uses the tortures once inflicted on the deformed people. The witches and outcasts. The pariahs of the forest who he cannot accept as kin.’

‘But –’

‘And he probably heard about the Basque witch burnings when he was a kid, all the stories. And that’s
gotta
affect you. Tales of fire and torments! They fuck you up, your mum and dad, especially if they are terrorists. He probably has a psychosexual neurosis about the witch tortures.’

There was a momentary silence. David turned Amy’s way, and he flinched. Because he’d noticed. Amy had just that second – briefly, subconsciously, surreptitiously – put her hand to her head.

As if she was hiding the scar.
The marks of the witch. David considered that scar, the interlocking curves. Was the scar simply more evidence of Miguel’s obsession, his sexual hang-ups, of the killer’s psychic need to revisit these witch tortures? But why did Amy let him
do
it? Cut her living skin? Why?

He remembered her words in Arizkun.

We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.

Angus was talking again, his face shadowed yet animated in the long Damara twilight.

‘And Miguel probably has his own strange urges, anyway. One or more of the nasty syndromes of the Cagots. The violent urges. Poor Cagot bastard. No doubt the church told its agents to despatch with swift efficiency. Yet when Miguel had a chance he snuck in a bit of medieval mutilation, couldn’t help himself…’

A large moth flickered in the lamplight: lanterns had been
strung from trees around the camp. David gawped: ‘You knew it was…the church?’

‘Well, I presumed. Am I right? I’m right, aren’t I? Uh-huh?’

‘Actually,’ Any interjected, ‘it was the Society of Pius X.’

‘Aha. The Lovely Zealots.’ He slapped a hand down on the table, gleefully. ‘Chalk one up! I should have guessed. Bigtime zealots. With lots of money and powerful sympathizers. If not them then another church sect. Yep, the Catholic church was, as you know, one of the prime movers in the closing of Stanford; they hated us, too. Totally hated GenoMap. And of course, thinking about it, the Society would be the obvious people to do the dirty work for Il Papa. And I mean dirty work. Left footers versus web footers. Hah.’ He gulped beer, and continued. ‘Always fascinated me, the infinite human capacity for violence. Where does it come from? Frankly I blame the girls. The chicks. If it wasn’t for them men would just sit around having a nice pint and a chat about the fitba.’

‘Sorry?
Girls?
’ said Amy, a defensive tinge in her voice.

David stared at the Scotsman, who was chewing almost as fast as he was talking. Nairn was consuming an enormous meal; yet he was so skinny. Angular cheekbones, wild red hair, green eyes a-glitter in the gloaming of the semi desert.

‘Yep,’ he said, tearing off another fistful of flatbread. ‘Women. The female of the species. They’re the ones who guide human evolution. Via sexual selection, no? And how do they steer our evolution? Towards nastiness – by choosing nasty guys. True or not? OK, yes, they all
pretend
they like metrosexual chardonnay sippers but they really go for the ruffians, don’t they? The bastards, the bad boys, the Miguel Garovillos – and so these bastards reproduce and so the evolution of man tends towards ever greater cruelty, perhaps explaining the pageant of blood that is twentieth-century history.’ He burped. ‘Thank God I take the Tube not the bus.’

An animal barked in the gloomy depths beyond the camp.
A jackal or a hyena. Angus was momentarily quiet, eating, drinking, smiling broadly and knowingly at Alphonse, his gracefully handsome helpmate. The rest of the camp dwellers seemed to have fled with the dying of the day. Disappeared unto their villages.

Amy was asking questions: ‘So Eloise is safe but you’re still camped out here. Why?’

‘Coz I’m testing the last racial variants.’ Angus shrugged, contented. ‘Dotting some genetic i’s and crossing some chromosomal t’s. And we’re nearly done. The Spanish fucking Inquisition are too late. I’ve got the Namibian blood tests in the car, ready to go.’ He slugged some Tafel and burped robustly. ‘We just have to pack up tomorrow, head down to the Sperrgebiet. Get to safety.’ A pause. ‘We’ve got all we need down there. Kellerman Namcorp have been preparing for this, for years, just in case they closed down GenoMap. We’ve been setting up parallel facilities, in the Sperrgebiet, so we could finish off, if it came to it.’ He chortled. ‘And so it goes. We need a few more days, do the last tests on Eloise, and…Canasta! The Fischer experiments are reiterated.’

He turned and looked solicitously at Alphonse. ‘Alphonse, have a bloody beer. You work too hard.’

‘Sure, Angus.’

‘Alfie, I mean it. C’m’ere.’ The Scotsman pulled the young ochre-skinned man towards him; Alphonse had glittering feline eyes, slender limbs. Angus kissed him on the lips.

Alphonse laughed, and pushed him away – ‘Mad Scotsman!’ he said, and gestured at the diminishing food. ‘Did you eat all the kudu…
Again?
You’ll get fat!’

‘Me? Get fat? As if.’ The Scotsman lifted his T-shirt and slapped his white stomach. ‘The six-pack of Apollo!’ Then he glared at Alphonse as he sat down again. ‘Don’t make fun, my little
bambusen,
or I shall be forced to wield the sjambok.’

‘No. No, sir. White massa he very kind. He give me de good job picken de cotton.’

The two men guffawed, then kissed again. Angus turned and offered Amy some of the kudu steak from the big steel bowl. David stared at Alphonse.

Angus was turning:

‘Jesus, jesusfuck. What’s that?’

The Scotsman stared down the valley. Now the noise was discernible. David realized he’d been hearing it for a while – but in the back of his mind he’d thought it a distant growling animal, or some effect of the wind in the thorn trees.

There were cars. Big dark cars were sweeping suddenly, up the dry river bed: heading for them. A roar of engines and lights. David stared. The fear was like a physical pain.

‘The tents – the guns are
in the tents –’

Angus was up and moving – but then a rifle shot split the still and sultry air. It whipped the sand between the tables and the tents. A warning shot.