Nicola Barker - Darkmans

‘That’s a grisly story,’ Peta conceded, ‘but why might it generate this tremendous fear of salad? A fear of straw , yes, or a horror of amputation, perhaps…’

‘He’s a fascinating young man,’ Beede expanded, ‘a boxer. Has the most astonishing presence, amazing posture…’

‘But is it only salad he’s afraid of?’ Peta demanded. ‘Not all vegetables?’

‘Just salad. Specifically lettuce. I think he’d probably be perfectly fine around a tomato — say — even a cucumber, at a push, but grew increasingly anxious in the supermarket because of the necessary physical proximity of these items with the one thing he was really phobic about…’

‘I knew a girl who was petrified of buttons once,’ Peta volunteered. ‘That’s apparently quite a common phobia,’ Beede nodded.

‘It was the thought of a button “coming loose” which terrified her…’

‘Really?’

‘She couldn’t even say the word, or write it down or type it…’

‘So how did she ever manage to raise the issue?’

‘She didn’t. It was just something I observed. Even as a child I had a powerful interest in detail…’ she shrugged.

‘Did she ever recover from it?’ Beede wondered, unwrapping his KitKat and breaking it in half.

‘Yes. She went into therapy eventually. We met at a school reunion about ten years ago and I interrogated her about it. She claimed that it was a complex phobia — the complex ones are much harder to resolve — because she wasn’t so much afraid of the buttons themselves as of what they represented. For ages the therapist thought it was a sexual fear…a fear of disrobing…’

‘No surprises there, then,’ Beede observed, cynically.

‘But after a while they discovered — following some bouts of deep hypnosis — that she’d swallowed a button as a baby. It’d become briefly lodged in her throat…’

‘Hmmn…’ Beede gave this scenario some consideration. ‘So you think it’s possible that Gaffar might’ve had an experience along similar lines?’

‘Well it’s not inconceivable.’

Beede frowned. ‘I have another theory,’ he said, ‘but it’s quite a strange one…’

He offered her half of his KitKat. She thanked him and took it.

‘In a spare moment earlier this afternoon I actually did a web-search on Sinjar and got some rather bizarre results…’

She bit into the chocolate and then frowned as she chewed. ‘This is soft,’ she said, grabbing the packet and inspecting it. ‘The sell-by date is February 1997.’

Beede ignored her. ‘Obviously there was all the run-of-the-mill stuff — political, geographical …But hidden in amongst it…’

‘1997,’ she repeated, snatching the remainder of the bar away from him. ‘I doubt even Pinch would risk something of that vintage…’

Pinch sat bolt upright in the back of the van, on hearing his name uttered.

‘In fact…’

Peta offered the chocolate to Pinch. Pinch sniffed at it, gently took it from her, and then devoured it, with relish.

‘Chocolate is bad for dogs,’ Beede idly observed as Peta rolled down her window and spat out what little still remained in her mouth.

‘ Balls …’ she cursed, ‘I just dribbled it down the side of the door.’ She wound the window back up again. Beede took a few, quiet sips of his coffee.

‘So, hidden in amongst all the geographical stuff?’ she prompted him.

‘Yes,’ he unscrewed his Thermos and carefully topped up his beaker, ‘there was a ream of information about this ancient Kurdish tribe, this outlandish sect , known as the Dawasin…’

‘The what?’ Peta frowned.

‘The Dawasin, sometimes also known as the Yazidi, I believe — or Yez idi, the spelling varies on individual sites…’

‘I’ve heard of them,’ Peta butted in, ‘an ancient Kurdish sect. There’s a large community in Germany of all places…’

‘Apparently so, there’s several hundred thousand of them — in total — but one of their main populations was in Sinjar, until Saddam Hussein took it into his head to steal their traditional lands and cram them into collectives in the mid-1970s…’

‘Are they Moslem?’

‘No. At least other Moslems don’t consider them so. That’s another big part of the problem…’

‘So what do they believe?’

‘I’m not sure. It’s all kept very hush-hush. But from what I can tell their faith contains elements of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. They hold the Bible and the Qur’an sacred, but they have their own holy book written by their own special prophet, Shaykh Adi. It’s called The Book of Emergence — I can’t remember the Kurdish title off-hand…’

She smiled. ‘I think we can forgive you that…’

‘They worship a fallen angel,’ Beede continued, ‘called Malik Taus. He’s also known as The Peacock Angel. They believe that evil is as much a part of divinity as good…’

‘How very modern of them…’ Peta quipped.

‘Yes. Although Malik Taus isn’t the devil, strictly speaking, because he repented his fall — for 7,000 years — during which time he wept seven large jars of tears which he used to put out the fires of hell…’

‘Gracious.’

‘And God isn’t an active presence, either. He created the world but then he withdrew. Shaykh Adi and Malik Taus control the world’s destiny now.’

He paused. ‘They’re fanatical purists. You can’t join or convert. You have to be born into the tribe.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they believe — and this is the really crazy part — that they’re the last remaining direct descendants of Adam’s line which hasn’t been besmirched by the sins of Eve…’

‘What?! How? ’

‘I’m not sure,’ he shrugged, ‘but because they’re so pure — I mean racially — they’re insanely clannish and secretive. They never discuss or practise their religion openly, never marry outside of the sect, and if you leave the community for over a year then you risk excommunication, which means that your soul is effectively lost forever.’

‘Okay…’ Peta pulled a smallish, Tupperware container from her bag, prised open the lid and produced two home-baked rock cakes from inside. She passed one over to Beede. ‘…So how exactly does this relate to your friend?’

‘Well there was one fact which sprang out at me…’

He took a quick bite of the rock cake.

‘These are wonderful.’

‘Yes. They’re one of Ann’s specialities…’

Peta took a bite herself.

Beede quickly chewed and swallowed. ‘The Yezidis actually believe that lettuce is evil.’

‘No!’ Peta almost choked on her mouthful. ‘That must be apocryphal!’

‘It’s always possible — I mean I gleaned this information on the net , after all. But from what I could tell, a hatred of lettuce, of salad, is a deep-seated part of Yezidi culture. Malik Taus hid inside a lettuce patch at one point and so lettuces are associated with evil and all Yezidis are extremely cautious around them…’

‘So you honestly think…?’

Beede shrugged. ‘It just struck me as rather strange, that’s all.’

‘But does — uh— Gaffar ? Is that his name?’

Beede nodded.

‘Does Gaffar practise any religion that you know of?’

‘He’s a Moslem, a Sunni Moslem. But not an especially dutiful one. I get the impression that his mother is fairly traditional, quite devout. It’s possible that he might suspect something about his father’s past — I mean if I’m on even remotely the right track here, then I’m guessing that his father may’ve been raised among the Dawasin and then left the tribe at some point, travelled over to Turkey, converted, got married, started a new life there…’