Lalesh.'
32
Hugo De Savary got a taxi from the little station. In a few minutes he was speeding through gorgeous Dorset countryside in the full splendour of May. Hawthorn blossom and blowsy apple trees. Big clouds in a warm and smiling sky.
The taxi drove down a driveway ranked with large beech trees and came to a stop outside a grand manor house with rambling wings and gracious stone chimneys. All around the house overalled policemen were combing the lawns for evidence; others were coming out of the front door peeling off rubber gloves. He paid the cabbie, got out of the car, and glanced at the sign in front of the building: Canford School. From his research, done hastily on the train, he knew that the building had not long been a school: at least by the standards of its own history.
The estate itself dated back to Saxon times, when it encompassed large parts of Canford Magna, the nearby village. But only the Norman church and the fourteenth century 'John of Gaunt's' kitchen survived from those earliest years. The rest of the building was late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. But nonetheless beautiful for that. The manor, converted to a school in the 1920s, stood in fine parkland beside the River Stour. De Savary could smell the freshness of the air, despite the warmth of this gorgeous day: the river was evidently close at hand.
'Professor De Savary!' It was DCI Forrester. 'Great you could come at such short notice.'
De Savary shrugged. 'I'm not sure I can be of that much use.'
Forrester smiled, though, as De Savary noted, the policeman looked very haggard.
How bad was this murder, De Savary wondered? On the phone this morning all Forrester had said was that it had 'some sacrificial elements', which was why the professor had agreed to come. De Savary's professional interest was piqued: he was vaguely wondering if the theme-of contemporary human sacrifice-might make another book. Or maybe even a TV series. 'When was the body discovered?' he asked.
'Yesterday. Sheer luck. It's half term so the school's closed. The only person here was the caretaker. The victim. But there was a delivery…some sports equipment. An inquisitive kid thought something was up and poked his nose around.'
'He found the body?'
'Poor bastard. He's still being counselled.' Forrester eyed the professor. 'Mr De Savary-'
'Call me Hugo.'
'It's a bloody unpleasant sight. I'm a detecting police officer, I've seen a fair few gruesome murders but this one…'
'Whereas I am just an innocent from the groves of academe?' De Savary smiled. 'Please, Mark, I have been studying Satanic cults and psychotic impulses for more than a decade. I am used to handling some quite disturbing materials. And have a fairly strong constitution, I rather hope. I even ate a Southwest Trains prawn sandwich on the way down.'
The policeman didn't laugh. Or even smile. He just nodded, blankly. Again De Savary noted the harrowed quality of his expression. The detective had seen something awful. For the first time De Savary got an inkling of apprehension.
The policeman cleared his throat:
'I haven't told you what you are about to see because I don't want to nudge you. I want your honest opinion what you think is going on. Without any preconceptions…'
The front door was opened by an obedient constable. Inside it was very much the normal entrance to an English public school: roll calls of honour from the war: lists of boys who gave their lives. There were trophies and noticeboards and some desultory antiques, badly scuffed and damaged by generations of eager schoolboys running past, rugby boots slung over young shoulders. It was nostalgic for De Savary. He remembered his own schooldays at Stowe.
The entrance hall was dominated by a big door at the end. The door was shut, and guarded by another policeman. Forrester looked down at De Savary's feet. And gave him some plastic overshoes.
'There's a lot of blood,' the DCI said quietly, then he motioned to the constable standing by the large inner doors. The constable gave a sortof salute, and swung open the door, allowing them to step inside.
Beyond was a very baronial space. Wood panelling and heraldic coats of arms: a Victorian pastiche of a medieval nobleman's grand hall. But it was quite well done, thought De Savary. He could imagine minstrels at one end, on the first floor balcony, serenading the feasting duke, sitting above the high table at the other end. But what was at the other end? The police had erected a big screen.
Forrester led the way across the creaking floor-boards. The nearer they got the more sound their footsteps made: but they weren't creaking now, but squelching. This, De Savary realized, was because he was walking into patches of splashed blood. The polished wooden floor seemed to be sticky with splashes of blood.
Forrester rolled the movable screen out of the way and De Savary gasped. In front of him was a portable soccer goal. A portable wooden frame, which had been wheeled in from the sports pitches outside. Stretched between the goal post and the bar, tied to the bar and the posts by leather straps, was a man.
Or rather, what was left of a man. The naked victim had been suspended upside down from the frame by the ankles. His arms were stretched and tied to each of the posts by the wrists. The hideous grimace of pain on the face of the man, down there by the bloodied floorboards, showed the torment he had been through.
He had been flayed. Flayed alive, it seemed, very slowly and diligently, the skin peeled, or scraped, strip by strip, flap by anguished flap, from the man's body. The raw pulsing flesh had been left uncovered at each stage, leaving blobs of yellow fat; though sometimes this fat had been flensed away, exposing the raw red muscles underneath. You could actually see the organs and the bones in certain places.
De Savary put a forefinger to his nose. He could smell the body, smell the muscles and the lustrous fat. He could see the neck muscles taut with agony, the grey-and-white lungs, the curving definition of the ribcage. It was like an illustration of the muscles and tendons of the human body in a biology textbook. The genitals were missing, of course. A dark and scarlet socket was left where the penis and testicles should have been. De Savary guessed they had been forced into the victim's mouth: he had probably been obliged to eat them.
He stepped around. It looked like the work of more than one person. To do it this carefully, without killing the victim at once, needed care and skill. If you flayed a person correctly they could live for hours, as the muscles and organs slowly dried and crinkled. Sometimes the victim might faint with pain, De Savary imagined, but you could bring them round, before starting again. He didn't want to reconfigure the scene. But he had to. The terrified caretaker brought in here. Tied upside-down. Hanging by his feet from the bar. Then lashed with his arms to either post. Like an inverted crucifixion.
And then-then De Savary imagined it-the terrible horror that must have overcome the victim as he realized what they were doing: the initial tentative scrape of flesh at the ankle or on his feet. Then the searing pain as the skin was peeled away, leaving the pulp exposed to cold and heat. If anything had touched the raw flesh the pain would have been virtually unendurable. He must have screamed as the gang worked their way down his quivering, agonized body, working like expert butchers, making a pelt of his skin. Perhaps he had screamed too loudly at one point, so they had chopped off his genitals, folded the bloody handful of flesh into the screaming mouth, to shut him up.
Then the major flaying: the chest, the arms. Technically quite difficult. They must have practised beforehand, on sheep, goats or maybe cats. Getting it right.
He turned away, shuddering.
Forrester put an arm around the academic's shoulder. 'Yes, I'm sorry.'
'How old was he? It's hard to tell when there's no…skin on the face.'
'In his forties,' Forrester said. 'Shall we go outside?'
'Please.'
The policeman led the way. As soon as they were outside they made for the garden bench. De Savary was pleased to sit down. 'Just ghastly,' he said.
The sun was still warm. Forrester took his overshoes off with a grunt. They sat there in a heavy silence. The sweetness of the early summer air seemed sickly now.
