Tom Knox: The Genesis Secret

'Alas, poor Yorick. You had fucking weird eyes. But quite superb cheekbones! Hah.'

He set the skull to the side, and took out the document and spread it across his knee so that he could read.

'Fascinating. Truly fascinating. I fully expected cuneiform. We all expected cuneiform. But late ancient Aramaic? A wonderful discovery.' Cloncurry glanced at Christine and Rob. 'Thank you, chaps. So kind of you to bring it all the way here. And to dig everything up.'

He folded the document, put it back in the box and replaced the skull on top of the document; the leather lid followed.

Rob watched all this with a kind of sullen, hatefilled resentment. The most disgusting flavour in this banquet of defeat was the sense that Cloncurry was right. The killer's whole gameplan had a kind of glistening, alien perfection. Cloncurry had outwitted and out-thought them all the way through. From the Kurds to the cottage and back again, Cloncurry hadn't just won, he had triumphed.

And now his triumph would be honoured in blood.

Rob stared at his daughter's shining, crying eyes; and he shouted across the water that he loved her.

Lizzie's eyes implored her helpless father: help me.

Cloncurry was giggling. 'Very touching. If you like that kind of thing. Makes me want to spew, personally. Either way, I think we should now proceed to the final drama, don't you? Before you actually drown. Enough of the preamble.' The killer regarded the wavelets lapping at Christine's ankles. As he gazed, one particularly enormous skull bobbed along the burbling floodwaters, like an obscene kind of bath toy. 'Oooh, look, there's one of the wrinklies. Say hello to granddad, Lizzie.'

Another chuckle. Lizzie wept louder.

'Yes, yes.' Cloncurry sighed loudly. 'I never liked my family either.' He turned and called across to Rob. 'You have a nice view from your hillock? Excellent. Because we're going to do the Aztec thing, and I want to make sure you can see. I'm sure you know the rigmarole, Robert. We splay your daughter over a rock, then we rip into her chest and yank out the beating heart. Can be a bit messy but I think my friend Navda has some Kleenex.'

Cloncurry nudged one of his followers. The moustached Kurd on his left grunted, but said nothing. The gang-leader sighed. 'Not the most expressive of chaps, but the best available. I do wonder about the moustaches though. Just a tiny bit…sincere, aren't they?' He smiled. 'Anyway, could you two chatty Kurdish gaylords take this little girl and drape her over that rock?' He mimed it for them.

The Kurds nodded, and obeyed. They picked up Lizzie and carried her over to a small boulder and laid her out with the boulder under her back, her feet held by one Kurd, her hands held by the other henchman; and all the while Lizzie sobbed, and struggled. And all the while Cloncurry smirked.

'Very good, very good. Now to the best bit. By rights, Mr Robbie, we should have a chac mool, one of those weird stone bowls, into which I can drop your daughter's bloody, still-beating heart, but we haven't got a chac mool. I suppose I shall feed her heart to the crows.'

He handed his pistol to one of the Kurds, then reached into his jacket pocket and took a huge steel blade from inside his jacket. This, he brandished exultantly, admiring it, his eyes bright and keen and loving. Then he looked over, and winked at Rob.

'We should really be using obsidian: that's what the Aztecs used. Dark obsidian daggers. But a big thick knife like this will do nicely, a big thick rather memorable knife. You do recognize it?' Cloncurry lifted the knife in the dusty sunlight. It flashed as he turned it. 'Christine? Any ideas?'

'Fuck you,' said the Frenchwoman.

'Well, quite. It's the knife I used to fillet your old friend, Isobel. I think I can still see some of her elderly blood on the handle. And a tiny bit of spleen!' He grinned. 'Also, as the Germans say. To our task. I see the water is now at your knees and you will drown within about ten minutes. But I so want the last thing you witness to be your daughter having her heart literally torn from her tiny chest as she screams helplessly for her pathetic, useless and cowardly father. So we'd better get cracking. Guys, hold the girl tighter, yes, like that. Yes, yes. Very good.'

Cloncurry lifted the knife in his two hands and the vicious blade sparkled in the sun. He paused. 'The Aztecs were so weird, weren't they? Apparently they came from Asia, over the Bering Straits. Like you me and Rob. All the way from North Asia.' The knife glittered; Cloncurry's eyes were likewise shining. 'They just loved to kill children. They lusted for it. Originally they killed the kids of all their enemies, their conquered foes. Yet I understand that by the end of their empire they were so nuts they started killing all their own children. No joke. The priests would pay poor Aztec families to hand over babies and infants to be ritually slaughtered. An entire civilization literally murdering itself, devouring its own offspring. Fantastic! And what a way to do it, to rip out the heart by smashing into the ribcage, then hold the still-beating organ in front of the living victim. So.' Cloncurry sighed happily. 'Are you ready, Lillibet? Little Betsy? My little Betty Boo? Mmm? Chesty open time?'

Cloncurry beamed down at Rob's daughter. Rob watched, with desolate disgust: Cloncurry was actually drooling, a line of spittle dribbling from his mouth onto Lizzie's gagged and screaming face.

And then the moment came: Cloncurry's two hands took a grip at the furthest end of the handle and raised the knife higher…and Rob closed his eyes in the sadness of uttermost defeat…

…as a shot cracked the air. A shot from nowhere. A shot from heaven.

Rob opened his eyes. A bullet had whipped across the waters and slammed into Cloncurry- a bullet so violent it had clean ripped off the killer's hand.

He blinked and stared. Cloncurry had lost a hand! Arterial blood was pumping from the severed wrist. The knife had been sent spinning into the water.

Cloncurry gazed at the hideous wound, nonplussed. His expression was one of deep curiosity. And then a second shot snapped out, again from nowhere-who was doing the shooting? — and this one nearly took off Cloncurry's arm at the shoulder. His left arm, already handless, was now dangling by a few red muscles, and blood was pissing into the dust from the gaping shoulder-wound.

The two Kurds immediately dropped Lizzie, turned with panic on their face and, as a third shot cracked through the desert air, ran.

Cloncurry fell to his knees. The third shot had obviously hit him in the leg. He knelt, bleeding, on the sand, scrabbling anxiously around. What was he looking for? His own severed hand? The knife? Lizzie was next to him lying gagged and hogtied. Rob stood knee-deep in the water. Who was shooting who? And where was Cloncurry's gun? Rob glanced left: he could see dust in the distance. Maybe a car was coming their way, but the dust obscured his view. Were they going to shoot Lizzie too?

Rob realized he had one chance. Now. He dived into the water, plunged and swam, swimming for Lizzie's life, swimming between the bones and skulls. He had never swum so hard, had never battled such surging, dangerous waters…He kicked and crawled, swallowing whole mouthfuls of cold water, and then he slapped a hand on dry hot earth, and hauled himself up. When he rose from the water, gasping and spitting, he saw Cloncurry a few yards away.

Cloncurry was lying down, using Lizzie's body as a shield from any further gunshots; but his mouth was wide open and drooling-and he was closing his jaw over Lizzie's soft throat. Like a tiger killing a gazelle. Jamie Cloncurry was going to bite into Lizzie's neck, and chew out her jugular.

A surge of fury ran through Rob. He flung himself across the sand and ran at Cloncurry just as the killer's sharp white teeth closed over his daughter's windpipe, and he kicked Cloncurry in the head, kicking him straight off his daughter. Then Rob did it again: he kicked the killer away for a second time, and then a third time, and Cloncurry sprawled with a yell of pain into the dust, his half-severed arm hanging useless and obscene.