Sanliurfa is a remarkable breeding ground of beliefs. Christianity, Judaism and Islam all have strong roots there. But there are other, even older, faiths, that inhabit the Kurdish lands. Like Yarsenism, Alevism, and Yezidism. Together they are called the cult of angels. These religions are maybe five thousand years old, maybe older. They are unique to that part of the world.' She paused. 'And Yezidism is the oldest and strangest of all.'
'In what way?'
'The customs of the Yezidi are intensely peculiar. They honour sacred trees. Women must not cut their hair. They refuse to eat lettuce. They avoid wearing dark blue, because they say it is too holy. They are divided strictly into castes, who cannot marry each other. The upper castes are polygamous. Anyone of the faith who marries a non-Yezidi risks ostracism, or worse. So they never marry outside the faith. Ever.'
Christine interrupted. 'Hasn't the Cult of Angels basically died out, in Turkey?'
'Almost. The last of the Angelicans live mainly in Iraq, about half a million of them. But there are still a few thousand Yezidi in Turkey. They are fiercely persecuted everywhere, of course. By Muslims, Christians, dictators…'
Rob asked, 'But what do they believe?'
'Yezidism is syncretistic: it combines elements of many faiths. Like Hindus, they believe in reincarnation. Like ancient Mithraists, they sacrifice bulls. They believe in baptism, like Christians. When they pray they face the sun, like Zoroastrians.'
'Why do you think the symbol on the jar is a Yezidi symbol?'
'I'll show you.' Isobel walked to the bookshelf on the far wall and returned with a volume. Halfway through the book the found a picture showing a curious copper stick with a bird poised on the top. The book said the symbol was a 'Yezidi sanjak'. It was the exact same symbol inscribed on the jars.
Isobel shut the book and asked Christine, 'Now. Tell me the full names of the workmen, at the site. And the surname of Beshet at the museum.'
Christine closed her eyes, trying to remember: faltering a little, she recited a list of half a dozen names. Then a few more.
Isobel nodded. 'They are Yezidi. The workmen, at your site. They are Yezidi. And so is Beshet. And I presume the men who came to kidnap you were Yezidi too. They were protecting those jars in the museum.'
'That makes sense,' said Rob, quickly working it through in his mind. 'When you look at the sequence of events. What I mean is: when Christine went to Beshet for the keycode, he gave it to her. But then he must have called his fellow Yezidis and told them what we were doing. And so they came to the museum. They were tipped off!'
Christine interrupted. 'Sure. But why should the Yezidi be so worried about some old jars? However ghastly the contents? What's it got to do with them now? Why the hell were they so desperate to stop us?'
'That's the nub.' said Isobel.
The shutter had stopped creaking. The sun sparkled on the placid waters beyond the window.
'There's one more thing,' said Isobel. 'The Yezidi have a very strange god. He is represented as a peacock.'
'They worship a bird?'
'And they call him Melek Taus. The peacock angel. Another name for him is…Moloch. The demon god adored by the Canaanites. And another name for him is Satan. According to Christians and Muslims.'
Rob was nonplussed. 'You mean the Yezidi are Satanists?'
Isobel nodded cheerfully. 'Shaitan, the demon. The terrible god of the sacrifice.' She smiled. 'As we understand it, yes. The Yezidi worship the devil.'
29
Cloncurry. This was their very last name, and the very best hope. Forrester sorted through the papers and photos on his knee, as the rain spattered the windscreen. He and Boijer were in a hire car in northern France, heading south from Lille. Boijer was driving, Forrester was reading: fast. And hoping they were finally on the right track. It certainly looked good.
They'd spent the last few days talking to headmasters and rectors and student advisors, phoning reluctant doctors in university clinics. Quite a few likely candidates had emerged. A drop-out from Christ Church, Oxford. A couple of expellees from Eton and Marlborough. A schizophrenic student, missing from St Andrews. Forrester had been shocked at the number of students diagnosed as schizophrenic. Hundreds across the country.
But the candidates had all been ruled out, one way or another. The posh Oxford drop-out was in a mental hospital. The St Andrews student was known to be in Thailand. The Eton expellee had died. In the end they had drilled it down to one name: Jamie Cloncurry.
He had all the right credentials. His family was extremely wealthy, and of aristocratic descent. He'd been very expensively schooled at Westminster where his behaviour, according to his housemaster, was eccentric verging on violent. He had beaten another pupil and come perilously close to expulsion. But his academic brilliance had afforded him a second chance.
Cloncurry had then gone to Imperial College in London to study mathematics. One of the finest scientific universities in the world. But this grand opportunity hadn't solved his problems; indeed his wildness had only intensified. He'd dabbled in hard drugs and been caught with call-girls in his Hall of Residence. One of them had reported him to the police for brutality, but the Crown Prosecution Service had dropped the charge on the grounds of an unlikely conviction: she was a prostitute, he a gifted student at a top university.
Crucially, it seemed Cloncurry had gathered around him a number of extremely close friends-Italians, French and American. One of his fellow students said Cloncurry's social circle was 'a weird clique. Those guys worshipped him'. And, as Boijer and Forrester had established, in the last two or three weeks that clique had disappeared. They hadn't been seen at lectures. A concerned sibling had reported her brother as missing. The college had posters of him in the union bar. An Italian kid: Luca Marsinelli.
The young men had left no trace. Their student digs were empty of evidence. No one knew or even especially cared where they had gone. The clique members were disliked. Acquaintances and neighbours were bafflingly vague. 'Students come and go all the time.' 'I thought he'd gone back to Milan'. 'He just said he was taking a holiday.'
At Scotland Yard they had therefore been obliged to make some tough decisions. Forrester's team couldn't follow every lead with equal zeal. Time was running out. The Toyota Landcruiser had been found, abandoned, on the outskirts of Liverpool, the gang having evidently guessed that the car was a liability. The gang had gone to ground, but Forrester knew they would surely strike again, and soon. But where? There wasn't time for speculation. So Forrester had ordered his team to zero in on Cloncurry, the alleged leader.
The Cloncurry family lived, it turned out, in Picardy in Northern France. They had an ancestral home in Sussex, a large flat in London, and even a villa in Barbados. But for some reason they lived in the middle of Picardy. Near Albert. Which was why Forrester and Boijer had caught the first Eurostar this morning from London St Pancras to Lille.
Forrester surveyed the huge and rolling fields, the pinched little woods; the grey and steely sky of northern France. Every so often, one of the hills would be adorned by another British wartime cemetery: a lyrical but melancholy parade of chaste marble headstones. Thousands and thousands of graves. It was a depressing spectacle, not helped by the rain. The trees were in Maytime blossom, but even the blossom was wilted and helpless in the relentless drizzle.
'Not the most attractive part of France, is it, sir?'
'Hideous,' Forrester answered. 'All these cemeteries.'
'Lots of wars here, right?
'Yes. And dying industries. That doesn't help.' He paused, then said, 'We used to come here on holiday.'
Boijer chuckled. 'Nice choice.'
'No not here. What I mean is we used to go camping in the south of France, when I was a kid. But we couldn't afford to fly, so we had to drive all the way down through France. From Le Havre. And we used to come through here, through Picardy. Past Albert and the Somme and the rest of it. And every time I would cry. Because it
