Angus stared at the drifting sands ahead. The dunes were nearly all gone now, they were entering a flatter, slightly greener landscape; still desert, but with the odd little camelthorn tree, and yellow acres of pristine dust. David checked his watch. They had been driving for many hours. Hundreds and hundreds of miles, right across central Namibia. They hadn’t seen one other human being.
Angus said: ‘We should head for Aus. Then across the desert to Rosh.’ Angus squinted at the sun. ‘Though we’re not gonna make Aus before dark…Yes take that track there, by the ranch gates.’ He sat back. ‘So I was saying about the Hottentots. The Hotties are the sedentary version of the Bushmen, the Khoisan. Anyway, they had these creepy habits that the early researchers found
altogether
disturbing. Like the priest urinating on the newly wed couple, that wasn’t too popular. And the worshipping of grasshoppers. And of course the constant eating of intestines was a big winner. And when they get married the Bushmen have one single teste removed. How weird is that?’ He grinned, with a certain wildness. ‘I always used to…tease Alfie about that. Told him to come and live with me in Scotland with his one teste. So he could be Monorch of the Glen.’
Amy spoke up, her voice full of emotion: ‘Angus, I don’t think this is funny.’
‘No?’
‘Are
you
simply racist? Or just a
bit
racist?’
A huge plume of dust was riding behind them, like a bridal train of orange-grey floating on a breeze.
Angus snapped his reply: ‘I
despise
racism. I hate it. Racism is stupid. It’s like hating donkeys for not being sheep. Besides…we are all the children of God. All brothers and sisters.’
David was startled.
‘You believe in
God
?’
The scientist was almost angry.
‘How can you
not
believe in God? In a place like this? This is the last and greatest Namibian desert. The Succulent Karoo. Look at it, the driest place in the world, arguably, but watered by the fogs that come off the sea – thataway. Check the
farcical
trees. Entirely different ecosystem.’
He was pointing at a fat thorny awkward sapling, with massive spikes stark against the cloudless blue.
‘
Koekerboom.
The fauna and flora here are remarkable: lunatic cacti, insane beetles, thousand-year-old trees that burrow
underground.
There are also hyenas: a uniquely vicious subspecies called the strandwolf. Saw one once near Luderitz, frightened the living shit out of me. They prowl the beaches eating seal pups. Look like stage villains.’
David thought of Miguel, out there, hunting them down.
The strandwolf
.
Angus was still talking, a determined monologue. ‘But this is why I believe. Look at it. Look at it! It’s not an accident so many religions come from the desert. And this is the most daunting of all deserts. Look at this landscape!’ He waved, quite furiously, at the wilderness. ‘I’d like to drop a planeload of atheists at Luderitz airport and send them out across the wastes with a packet of cashew nuts. Within ten days they’d either be dead or believers. Atheists. Fuck ’em
. Adolescent wankers.’
David was perplexed. He simply couldn’t work out Angus Nairn. He was like no one he had ever met. Angus was still talking.
‘Of course that doesn’t mean God is this nice guy. He ain’t. The universe is fascist. It is a tyranny, a mad dictatorship. Stalin’s Terror. Saddam’s Iraq. It’s all so random and scary. We all lie there at night thinking, when will death come for
me
?
Don’t we?
And one by one, we disappear. The Death Gestapo comes, and they drag you away, and you are expertly tortured, with lung cancer, heart failure, Alzheimer’s.’ Angus was talking to himself, almost. ‘And people whisper, they tell each other, “You hear about so-and-so? He’s gone. He’s gone as well. They took him last night…”.’ He shook his head. ‘Alphonse, poor fucking Alphonse…’
The car motored south. Angus was, finally, quite silent.
David thought of his grandfather, and that eagle circling the Arizona sky. The Sonora desert was beautiful, but Angus was right: this desert, the Succulent Karoo, was
even more stirring, in a haunted way. The green and yellow bushman’s grass, the pale acacias, the pink acid wastes scarred by long disused railways. It was desolate but transfixing: and the violet and purple mountains, the sudden inselbergs, they floated above the hazy and aethereal sands like a kind of memory; a memory of mountains, in the ghost of a landscape.
He stared and drove, and thought of his grandfather. His grandfather’s strange and guilty shame.
Desolada, desolada, desolada…
Three hours later the sun had gone, and the violet-purples had turned to grainy black, and they were racing, silently and very fast, through the darkness. The true and noble darkness of the desert.
It was cold.
They were quiet and exhausted. Every so often the eyes of a nocturnal animal would catch in the headlights – a bat-eared fox, a desert hare. Then darkness. And then the headlights illuminated a big sign:
Sperrgebiet. Diamond Zone 1. Extreme Danger.
‘OK,’ said Angus. ‘Down that dirt road.’
Two hundred metres further, sudden lights blazed. Two armed black men had emerged from a wooden hut, with rifles cocked. They had torches: their faces were grim and determined.
‘Stop!’
Angus leaned out of the car.
‘Solomon. Tilac. It’s me!’
A silence.
‘Angus?’
Now the men were smiling.
‘Angus. You de bloody mad man. We could have shoot you!’
‘Sorry – sorry –’
The guards stepped back. One of them was flamboyantly waving them through.
They sped past; the untarred road was rumbling and rocky. Though it was hard to tell in the silvering darkness, the landscape seemed to have changed. The night air was still cooler. David realized he could smell the sea, salty and pungent.
And there indeed was the ocean, glittering malevolently in the moonlight. The road ran up and over seaside rocks, bare grey rocks. Ahead of them was the twinkle of more lights: the silhouette of structure, a large complex of buildings, bristling with antennae and satellite dishes.
‘Tamara Minehead,’ said Angus. ‘Park here.’
The reaction to their arrival was immediate: several men came straight out, one of them a tall and languid white man, in an intoxicatingly impractical grey flannel suit.
‘Nathan,’ said Angus, very wearily. ‘This is Amy…Myerson and David…Martinez. Friends…those friends of Eloise. Friends, this is Nathan Kellerman.’
Nathan Kellerman stepped closer. He was young and handsome.
‘My God, Angus, what happened to you all? You look terrible.’
‘We’re fine. Just need sleep. Fine.’
‘And Alphonse, where is Alphonse? Everyone else? What the hell happened?’
Angus shrugged; a painful silence enveloped them.
Nathan Kellerman lifted a manicured hand. His tone sharpened. His accent was faintly American.
‘Do you have the blood samples? The last blood samples, Angus!’
‘Yes.’
‘Then –’ David could see Kellerman’s relieved smile, his perfect white teeth. ‘Then all is well. Let’s go inside. Robbie, Anton. Help the good people.’
Slowly they shuffled through the bright modern building: offices, corridors, bedrooms. The cleanliness and modernity made an intense contrast to the privations of the desert. Expensively thin TVs, gleaming white kitchens. Cold steel fridges with glittering test tubes. It was another stunning dislocation, like stumbling on a Venetian palazzo in the jungle.
David and Amy were led to a bedroom. He tried to look calm and normal as they undressed, but some uncrystallized thought was troubling him. Something. Something. What was it?
He looked at his hands. Were they twitching? Maybe there had been some infection. From the body liquor.
He thought of Miguel sniffing the meat. He thought of Amy’s eyes as she looked at him; would she still look at Miguel the same way, sometime? David was bewildered by the absence of Eloise. Amy came close and kissed him.
‘Hey –’
‘Eloise,’ he said. ‘Where is Eloise…?’
‘I know,’ said Amy. ‘I know. But…I am
so
tired. I can’t even think…Let’s just…Tomorrow…’
Amy was nuzzling close. Scared and close and exhausted. The bedroom looked out onto the sea; a sharp salty breeze was lifting the curtains through the open window. The moon was high. It looked like a white screaming face, the face of someone being tormented.
They lay together in the moonlit bedroom, quite still, for a few moments.
Then they quickly fell asleep.
And he dreamed.
He was eating some meat, chewing on some gristly biltong; the dried meat was really gristly and bony. He was in his grandfather’s hospital room, the desert was blinding outside. Then Granddad reached from his bed and pointed. David
turned, with a mouthful of biltong, and he saw a naked girl, standing outside in the desert. And then he saw: she had no hands. And the reason she had no hands was because David was eating her hands. He realized he was
eating her hands.
David woke with a jolt of terror; it was the middle of the night, he was staring at the still-screaming silent desert moon, through the square windows, with Amy snoring courteously beside him.
At last he had the truth. David now realized the truth: why he had been thinking about his grandfather. His grandfather’s shame and guilt. The inability to explain, the terrible furtiveness.
He was in the Forbidden Zone in his mind, he had crossed into the Forbidden Land.
Granddad was a Cagot
. It was the only explanation that made any sense; that explained it all.
Granddad was a Cagot.
An untouchable. A pariah. A cannibal of Gascony. The Cagots were indeed cannibals. And David was descended from a Cagot: he was one of them.
Amy snored and turned over; her bare young shoulder was soft in the moonlight. Soft like a succulent peach.
Simon was standing at a payphone, by a bunch of exiled smokers just outside Gate A of Lyon Saint Exupéry airport. A watery October sun was rising over the terminals. The first planes were rumbling and ascending into the grey morning air.
The journalist weighed the shining euros in his hand. He’d tried calling Suzie through the night but got no reply. Were they safe? Where was Tim? His heart confessed his guilt – with a nasty stab of pain. He’d got some information out of the monk at Tourette, but was it worth it? What if something
had
happened? Where was Suzie? She could just be at work. But it was so early. And Conor. What about
Conor
? Where was his mother-in-law? And Tim?
The questions raked his soul.
There was no one left to call. But he’d also tried his parents, and they too were out –
So he had no choice. He had to try the police. Simon stared down at his euro coins. One, two, three…?
Fumbling with the change, he fed the phone. It rang. And it was answered.
‘DCI Sanderson.’
Simon paused – took a breath of diesely air – and then he gabbled his questions. Tim. Conor. Suzie. Conor. Tim
.
The policeman interrupted:
‘OK, Quinn, OK. I’m with you. Calm down. Are you on a payphone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
The doubt crept into Simon’s thoughts.
‘Somewhere in France. I chucked my new mobile. Don’t trust it. Don’t know…who to trust…Tell me what is happening.’
Sanderson said, very gently: ‘They’re fine. Your wife and son…are fine. But…there’s been…developments. Last night. I’m heading into my chief super’s office now. We’ll call you, I promise, in a few seconds. What’s your number?’
‘Developments? Is Conor OK? Have they found Tim?’
‘Conor’s totally fine. Suzie too. Safe as houses.
What’s your number?
’
Simon swallowed his anxieties; his anxieties had the horrible savour of bile, as if he had recently thrown up. He pressed a finger against his other ear, to drown out the sound of the airplanes. And he spelled out the digits.
‘Wait there,’ said the DCI. ‘I’m talking to the CS right now. Wait there and…trust me?’
Simon nodded and chunked the receiver. He looked at the dull steel payphone.
‘
Bonjour…
’
He swivelled. An affable-looking French chap, in neat jeans, and a light turquoise cashmere jumper – thrown suavely over his shoulders – was standing behind; the man was gesturing at the phone and smiling.
‘
Je voudrais utiliser?
’
Simon growled.
‘Go away.’
The man stared at Simon. Perplexed.
Simon growled again.
‘Go away!
Merci fucking beaucoup!
’
The Frenchman backed away, then actually ran into the terminal.
The phone trilled. Simon picked up.
‘OK –’ Sanderson’s tone was clipped, yet sympathetic. ‘I just wanted to get the latest from CS Boateng.’
‘What are these…
developments
?’
‘I’ve got extra men looking after your wife and son. And your mum and dad. That’s why they are safe. No one can get to them – these religious geezers, no one. No one can touch
them.
We haven’t rung you because we are being very careful, after what’s happened…’
The journalist had a cruel sense, at last, where this conversation was going.
The policeman confirmed it.
‘It’s Tim. Simon. Yer brother Tim. Why didn’t you tell us anything about
Tim
?’
‘I…don’t know…I just don’t know why.’
Simon shuddered with remorse. Tim. Of course. Why
hadn’t
he mentioned Tim? When Sanderson had asked about family members who could require protection, he
had not
cited Tim. Why? Was it because he was
ashamed
of Tim? Or because he just didn’t want to
think
about Tim? Or because he really thought Tim was safe so it was irrelevant?
Maybe it was all three explanations. Tied into a knot of denial.
‘What’s
happened
to him? Jesus. Is he…’
‘Not dead. But we know he’s been taken. Kidnapped.’
‘
How do you know?
Are you
sure
he hasn’t just run away?’
Sanderson’s voice was dry and cool. ‘Sorry. No. We have proof. They took him.’
‘Proof?’
‘A video. In an email. The captors sent it to everyone late last night. It went to your wife, your parents, and you, I’m guessing. If you get a chance to look at your email. You’ll find it. I suggest you delete first.’
‘Sorry?’ ‘Don’t watch it, Simon. Really. Don’t watch it!’
‘Why?’
‘It’s…bloody distressing.’
A plane was landing, with a malign roar. Simon pressed the phone closer: ‘Are they torturing him?’
‘No. But they are…using him. Manipulating emotions. And they do it well. They want to use your feelings, your guilt, to get at you. He’s their purchase on you. They clearly know you are in touch with Martinez, and Myerson. They will want all this, they want everything you know. Tim is in a lot of danger.’
‘So what do I do now? What can I do? Come
home
?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?
‘Hide.’
Simon pressed the phone closer to his ear, to make sure he was hearing correctly. ‘
Hide?
You just want me to…hide out?’
‘Just for now. Yes.’ Sanderson’s voice dropped a few tones. ‘I’m sorry but there it is. You chose to do what you did. You’re out there now. I don’t blame you for that. But…haring across France. Not telling us. Less than brilliant. But you’ve made your decision. And now you’re probably facing a bigger risk if you come back to London. You might be spotted
en route
, they will expect you to try and find your family. Your friends out there said we can’t trust the police in France, right? So it’s very bleeding tricky. Who knows where they will have people.’ He sighed, fiercely. ‘Main thing is – your wife and son are safe: I can vouch for that. My
men are good. And there’s nothing you can do to help us find Tim.’
‘So I stay here?’
‘Stay there, for now, until we work this out. Stay quiet in France or Germany, you can cross the border unseen thanks to Schengen. Lie low. Very very bloody low. You know to use payphones only.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t even use the same payphone twice. Call me direct as before…Call Suzie on this special number.’
Simon patted his pockets and found a pen. He wrote the number.
The DCI sighed.
‘Simon…I’m sorry about this. But you should…prepare yourself for the worst. And don’t watch the video. You know how ruthless these bastards are. Speak soon.’
The phone clicked and brrrd. Simon thought of his brother.
I made a dog hope you like it.