Tom Knox - The Marks of Cain

He was right. In the centre of the camp some trestle tables had been laid for a meal. There were big steel bowls of kudu steaks with cold pepper sauce, golden Windhoek and Urbock lager already poured into glasses. Fruit sat next to chocolate bars.

'Courtesy of Nathan Kellerman, such a generous benefactor, albeit a Zionist hoodlum. Come on, sit down for fuck's sake, you two came a long way in one drive. Damaraland from Swakop? Mad men! Amy, your name is Amy Myerson right? Eloise told me everything.'

Amy nodded, and said firmly: 'Where is Eloise?'

A mosquito whined and Angus shot out his hands and clapped. A squished mosquito was black on his fingers. 'Howzat!' He squinted closely at the insect's corpse. 'Anopheles Moucheti Moucheti. The day ones are arguably more dangerous, they carry dengue — '

'Please. Where is Eloise?' Amy repeated. 'She told us to come here — '

'She was here, you're quite right. But I got a bit angsty. Decided to send her south.'

'Where?'

'The Sperrgebiet. The Forbidden Zone. Safest place in the world — for the world's last breeding Cagot.'

'Apart from Miguel.'

Nairn's eyes brightened.

'So he is a Cagot as well? The terrorist! How is that? Tell me how. Tell me everything. The Urbock is cold and the desert evening is long. Tell me!'

Over half a dozen beers, and plates of cold kudu steak and okra, Amy and David relayed the story to Angus Nairn. They were getting used to telling this story. There seemed increasingly little point in concealing the story from a potential ally. Miguel was the enemy.

At length Angus sat back, the desert breeze riffling his red hair.

'This explains a lot. It explains the murders, the ones you mention!'

David said, 'But…why? It doesn't explain why Miguel…'

'Don't you see? He's involved in the killings where torture is involved. The first two victims, the poor old girls who turned out to be rich.'

The logic unfolded in David's mind. Dimly.

'I guess…He was just back from abroad. When he came in the bar — Amy — ?'

She nodded. 'And after Miguel was back in Spain, the killings changed. Right? The man in Windsor — he was just killed. Not tortured. And Fazackerly, the scientist, he was also…just killed. Cruelly but…efficiently. I suppose. But then when Miguel got another chance, in Gurs — Eloise's mother. She was elaborately tortured…Miguel again. But why?' Her blue eyes gazed Angus's way, full of questions. 'Why would he kill and torture — where others just kill?'

Angus stuffed another morsel of bread and chewed, exuberantly. 'Think harder. One reason is obvious.'

'Is it?'

'Yes!' A broad smile. 'Why is he so murderously cruel to the Cagots? In particular?'

The truth unpetalled in David's mind.

'Because…he knows about himself?'

'Zakly. He's a fucking self-hater! Like that Basque witch burner.'

'De Lancre?'

'Yep. That's it! He can't face his own reality, his own race, his terrible identity. Can't deal with it. Sublimated self-hatred becomes externalized violence. That must be the answer. Like Freud said! And Miguel Garovillo is a Cagot! So he takes his violent feelings, and inflicts them on the hated Cagots who embody his self loathing, his misery. He uses the tortures once inflicted on the deformed people. The witches and outcasts. The pariahs of the forest who he cannot accept as kin.'

'But — '

'And he probably heard about the Basque witch burnings when he was a kid, all the stories. And that's gotta affect you. Tales of fire and torments! They fuck you up, your mum and dad, especially if they are terrorists. He probably has a psychosexual neurosis about the witch tortures.'

There was a momentary silence. David turned Amy's way, and he flinched. Because he'd noticed. Amy had just that second — briefly, subconsciously, surreptitiously — put her hand to her head.

As if she was hiding the scar. The marks of the witch. David considered that scar, the interlocking curves. Was the scar simply more evidence of Miguel's obsession, his sexual hang-ups, of the killer's psychic need to revisit these witch tortures? But why did Amy let him do it? Cut her living skin? Why?

He remembered her words in Arizkun.

We do not exist, yes we do exist, we are fourteen thousand strong.

Angus was talking again, his face shadowed yet animated in the long Damara twilight.

'And Miguel probably has his own strange urges, anyway. One or more of the nasty syndromes of the Cagots. The violent urges. Poor Cagot bastard. No doubt the church told its agents to despatch with swift efficiency. Yet when Miguel had a chance he snuck in a bit of medieval mutilation, couldn't help himself…'

A large moth flickered in the lamplight: lanterns had been strung from trees around the camp. David gawped: 'You knew it was…the church?'

'Well, I presumed. Am I right? I'm right, aren't I? Uh-huh?'

'Actually,' Any interjected, 'it was the Society of Pius X.'

'Aha. The Lovely Zealots.' He slapped a hand down on the table, gleefully. 'Chalk one up! I should have guessed. Bigtime zealots. With lots of money and powerful sympathizers. If not them then another church sect. Yep, the Catholic church was, as you know, one of the prime movers in the closing of Stanford; they hated us, too. Totally hated GenoMap. And of course, thinking about it, the Society would be the obvious people to do the dirty work for Il Papa. And I mean dirty work. Left footers versus web footers. Hah.' He gulped beer, and continued. 'Always fascinated me, the infinite human capacity for violence. Where does it come from? Frankly I blame the girls. The chicks. If it wasn't for them men would just sit around having a nice pint and a chat about the fitba.'

'Sorry? Girls?' said Amy, a defensive tinge in her voice.

David stared at the Scotsman, who was chewing almost as fast as he was talking. Nairn was consuming an enormous meal; yet he was so skinny. Angular cheekbones, wild red hair, green eyes a-glitter in the gloaming of the semi desert.

'Yep,' he said, tearing off another fistful of flatbread. 'Women. The female of the species. They're the ones who guide human evolution. Via sexual selection, no? And how do they steer our evolution? Towards nastiness — by choosing nasty guys. True or not? OK, yes, they all pretend they like metrosexual chardonnay sippers but they really go for the ruffians, don't they? The bastards, the bad boys, the Miguel Garovillos — and so these bastards reproduce and so the evolution of man tends towards ever greater cruelty, perhaps explaining the pageant of blood that is twentieth-century history.' He burped. 'Thank God I take the Tube not the bus.'

An animal barked in the gloomy depths beyond the camp. A jackal or a hyena. Angus was momentarily quiet, eating, drinking, smiling broadly and knowingly at Alphonse, his gracefully handsome helpmate. The rest of the camp dwellers seemed to have fled with the dying of the day. Disappeared unto their villages.

Amy was asking questions: 'So Eloise is safe but you're still camped out here. Why?'

'Coz I'm testing the last racial variants.' Angus shrugged, contented. 'Dotting some genetic i's and crossing some chromosomal t's. And we're nearly done. The Spanish fucking Inquisition are too late. I've got the Namibian blood tests in the car, ready to go.' He slugged some Tafel and burped robustly. 'We just have to pack up tomorrow, head down to the Sperrgebiet. Get to safety.' A pause. 'We've got all we need down there. Kellerman Namcorp have been preparing for this, for years, just in case they closed down GenoMap. We've been setting up parallel facilities, in the Sperrgebiet, so we could finish off, if it came to it.' He chortled. 'And so it goes. We need a few more days, do the last tests on Eloise, and…Canasta! The Fischer experiments are reiterated.'