They jumped back in the car. Christine shifted a gear and they sped away. Rob sat back, watching the landscape blur into dust. Every so often the mouldering hills were punctuated by the odd ruined building, or a crumbling Ottoman castle. Or a dust devil, whirring its solitary way across the wastes. And then, unbelievably, the desolation intensified. The road got rockier. Even the blue of the desert sky seemed to darken, to turn a brooding purple. The heat was almost insupportable. The car rattled around bleached yellow promontories, and along hot rutted tracks. Barely a tree disturbed the endless sterility.
'Sogmatar,' said Christine, at last.
They were approaching a tiny village, just a few concrete shacks, lost in a silent bare valley in the middle of the baked and mighty nothingness.
A big jeep was parked incongruously outside one shack and there were a few other cars; but the roads and yards were devoid of people; it reminded Rob instantly and queerly of Los Angeles. Big cars and endless sunshine- and no people.
Like a city hit by plague.
'A few rich Urfans have second homes here,' said Christine. 'Along with the Kurds.'
'Why the fuck would anyone live out here?'
'It's got a lot of atmosphere. You'll see.'
They stepped out of the car, into the kiln of dusty heat. Christine led the way, scrambling over decaying old walls, past scattered and carved blocks of marble. The latter looked like Roman capitals. 'Yes,' Christine said, sensing Rob's next question. 'The Romans were here, and the Assyrians. Everyone came here.'
They approached a big dark hole in an odd and very squat building: it was a building carved literally out of the rock face. They stepped inside the low-slung structure. It took a few seconds for Rob's eyes to adjust.
Inside, the smell of goat shit was oppressive. Pungent and dank, and oppressive.
'This is a pagan temple. To the moon gods,' said Christine. She pointed at some crudely carved figures cut into the walls of the shadowy interior. 'The moon god is here, you can see his horns-see-the curve of the new moon.'
The badly eroded effigy had a sort of helmet: two horns like a crescent moon balanced on his head. Rob ran a hand over the stone face. It was warm, and strangely clammy. He drew his hand back. The decaying effigies of the dead gods stared at him with their eroded eyes. It was so quiet in here: Rob could hear his own heartbeat. The noise of the outside world was barely perceptible: just the tinkling bells of goats, and the churning desert wind. Hot sunlight blazed at the door, making the dark room seem even darker.
'Are you OK?'
'Fine. I'm fine…'
She walked towards the opposite wall. 'The temple dates from the second century AD. Christianity was sweeping the region, but here they still worshipped the old gods. With the horns. I love it here.'
Rob gazed about him. 'Very nice. You should buy a condo.'
'Are you always sarcastic when you are uncomfortable?'
'Can we get latte?'
Christine chuckled. 'I've one more place to show you.' She led him out of the temple and Rob felt a serious relief as they exited the clammy, fetid darkness. They headed up a slope of scree and hot dust. Turning for a moment to take a breath, Rob saw a child staring at them from one of the humble houses. A small dark face in a broken window.
Christine scrambled up and over a final rise. 'The Temple of Venus.'
Rob climbed the last metres of scree to stand beside her. The wind was brisk up here, yet still burning hot. He could see for miles. It was an extraordinary landscape. Miles and miles of endless, rolling, blanched-out desolation. Dying hills of dead rocks. The mountains were marked with the black empty sockets of caves. These were, Rob presumed, more temples and pagan shrines, each more derelict than the last. He stared at the floor on which they stood, the floor of a temple, open to the sky. 'And all this was built when?'
'Possibly by the Assyrians, or the Canaanites. No one knows for certain. It's very old. The Greeks took it over, then the Romans. It was certainly a place of human sacrifice.' She pointed out some grooves in the carved rock beneath them, 'See. That was to let the blood flow out.'
'OK…'
'All these early Levantine religions were very keen on sacrifice.'
Rob looked out across the desert hills and down at the little village. The child with the face was gone; the broken window was empty. One of the cars was on the move: taking the valley road out of Sogmatar. The road ran alongside a dried up old river bed. The course of a dead river.
Rob imagined being sacrificed up here. Your legs tied with rough twine, your hands bound behind your back, the foul breath of the priest in your face; and then the thud of pain as the knife plunged into your ribcage…
He breathed deeply and wristed the sweat from his forehead. It was surely time to go. He gestured in the direction of their car. Christine nodded and they walked down the hill to the waiting Land Rover. But halfway down the slope, Rob stopped. He stared at the hill.
Suddenly: he knew. He had worked out what the numbers meant.
The numbers in Breitner's notebook.
19
The weather was still grim. The lead-grey sky was as sombre as the green and windswept fields beneath. Boijer, Forrester and Alisdair Harnaby were in a big dark car, speeding south across the Isle of Man. Ahead of them was another long black car: containing DCC Hayden and his colleagues.
Forrester was feeling the anxiety. Time was passing: slipping from his grasp. And every minute they lost brought them all closer to the next horror. The next inevitable murder.
He sighed, heavily. Almost angrily. But at least they were now onto something: following a proper lead. A farmer had spotted something odd in a remote corner of the Isle, way down in the south near Castletown. Forrester had urgently persuaded Alisdair Harnaby to come along for the interview, as he felt the man might be good for some more information. The historical angle. It seemed important.
But first Forrester wanted to know what the CNN woman had said; Boijer was keen to divulge. The Finnish DS explained that Angela Darvill had heard about the Craven Street case 'from some hack on the Evening Standard'.
'So she linked them,' said Forrester. 'Fair enough.'
'Yes that's right, sir. But she said something else. Apparently there was a similar case. New York State and Connecticut. In New England.'
'How similar?'
'Same kind of elaborate torture.'
'Star of David?'
Boijer said no, then added, 'But carvings in the skin, yes. And flayings. She said it was one of the most horrible cases she'd ever covered.'
Forrester sat back and looked out of the window. Low damp sober green hills stretched away on all sides. Small farms dotted the rural emptiness, and small hunched trees, with their branches shaved brusquely and bizarrely to an angle by the prevailing winds. The scenery reminded him of a holiday he'd once taken in Skye. There was a melancholy beauty to the landscape, a melancholy beauty which edged close to real, haunting sadness. Forrester drove the thought of his daughter from his mind, and asked: 'Who committed the murders?
'They never found out. Weird though: the similarity, I mean…'
Ahead of them the road dwindled to little more than a rutted track, which led on through the wind-battered hedgerows to a farm. The two cars parked. The five policemen and the amateur historian walked down the track towards the low-slung white farmhouse. Boijer stared down at his shoes, now soggy with clay, and tutted with a young man's vanity. 'Damn. Look at that.'
'Should have brought your wellies, Boijer.'
'Didn't know we were going hiking, sir. Can I claim these on exes?'
