Darkmans (59 page)

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…’

‘But this is all speculation…?’

‘Yes. Entirely.’

‘Will you ask him about it?’

‘Perhaps. I’m not sure. I’m in two minds on the matter – it might not really be my place…’

‘Your
place
?’ Peta parroted. ‘How come?’

He just shrugged.

‘I mean isn’t the phobia sufficiently disabling to justify your involvement, whatever the consequences?’

‘It’s certainly quite bad. Quite extreme…But if he
doesn’t
know – by some strange fluke – well, the wider ramifications could be absolutely
fascinating
…’ Beede turned to look at her, his eyes glimmering. ‘Because what it would potentially mean is that this isolated young man had somehow sustained a kind of unconscious memory of this extraordinary and singular culture from his genetic past. A kind of mystical or spiritual
imprint
…’

Peta frowned. ‘He might’ve had clues. There might’ve been – what do they like to call it? –
uh
…A certain amount of
leakage
from the family in general…’

‘Of course.’

‘And something else to factor in,’ Peta continued, ‘is that this is a culture he can never fully regain, that he can never actually
experience
or have ready access to. If his father was excommunicated…’ ‘That’s also true,’ Beede nodded. ‘It does seem very paradoxical, very
cruel
in a way – to discover something so monumental about yourself which lives on, just out of reach, and can never be recovered.’

‘And especially hard to bear,’ Peta expanded, ‘when everything about our modern culture seeks to engage, to democratise, to
convert
…’

‘The Dawasin are certainly a bizarre anachronism,’ Beede agreed.

He smiled. ‘Gaffar’s such an amazing creature, though. Such a paradigm…’

‘How so?’

‘Well, because he’s been stripped of literally everything – his past, his home, his
history
, even – and yet there he stands, utterly unbowed, just readying himself, quite calmly, for life’s next big assault…’

‘
You’re
quite extraordinary,’ Peta murmured, shaking her head.

‘Me?’ He turned to look at her, surprised.

‘You’ll happily spend a night tramping around the woods,’ she informed him, tartly, ‘in freezing mid-winter, on a doomed quest to find a lost friend. You’ll search the web trying to unlock the secrets of a random Kurd’s psyche, but when it comes to your own flesh and blood, your own
son
…’

‘That’s hardly
fair
,’ Beede snapped.

‘Why not?’

Beede glowered down at his rock cake. He felt a strong urge to throw it at her, to clamber out of the van and disappear, but it had started to rain – huge, round drops which smashed down in a thousand, mean little rabbit-punches on to the windscreen.

‘Why
not
, Beede?’ she repeated.

She didn’t return for over forty minutes. After two he took out his phone to check his messages. He sent a quick text to a client and a quick text to Gaffar. He put his phone away again. He carefully inspected his hands. He frowned. He chewed off the jagged tip of a broken thumb-nail. He inspected his hands for a second time. He stopped frowning. He took out his phone. He re-checked his texts. He read a perplexing message from Kelly which simply said,
I 4give U
 –

Eh?

He debated ringing her, decided against it and texted her instead (
uh
…
Thanx, I think
…).

He looked at his watch –

Late

– then gazed around the kitchen. His eye alighted on his mug of sweetened milk. He took a small sip of it and grimaced. It tasted strange. Rich. Thick. And there was a dense skin on the top. He ran a tentative finger along his upper lip then stood up, walked over to the sink, poured the eggy-milk down the plughole and washed out his cup.

Once he’d completed this task he noticed the dirty pan – how the milk had burned into a glutinous, brown mess on the base of it. He grabbed hold of it, found a scouring pad, some detergent, and scrubbed away, assiduously, until all the burned milk was gone –

Good

He placed the pan on to the draining-board, rinsed out the whisk, then set about cleaning the top of the hob – where the milk had
boiled over – shining it up to a perfect finish with a small piece of kitchen towel.

He leaned against the oven, with a sigh, and gazed around the room. He took out his phone. He held it in his hand, scowling, swore under his breath, and shoved it away again. He inspected his watch. He went and sat back down, then stood up, as if intending to go, but didn’t move. He cocked his head and listened –

Silence

He frowned. He inspected his watch. He glanced around him. He picked up the book by the doctor about his antsy-looking daughter. He sat down. He flipped through it…

Then the letters started to arrive. Slowly at first, then more and more frequently. All of them in Arabic. The Foreign Office had translated them, as best they could
…

‘She was a lovely girl,’ said one, ‘with a huge soul, a generous spirit…’

‘When she smiled,’ said another, ‘the world always felt like a better place.’

Kane snorted and tossed the book – contemptuously – back into the box. He pulled up his hood (like a sullen teenager), then crossed his arms and gazed around him.

Hung over the back of a nearby chair were three, tiny child’s socks, none of which matched. And on the table just in front of them? Something he hadn’t noticed before –

A scarf?

A shawl?

He reached out and grabbed a hold of it (it
was
a scarf. A long, grey scarf. Soft. Knitted) then closed his eyes and pressed it to his face. It smelled of cloves…

Yes
…

– and of chestnuts, and of winter – of old charcoal smoking in a
brazier. It was still damp. He frowned. Something was tickling his cheek. He opened his eyes and looked down –

Mud.

Flecks of mud
…

He carefully picked them out of the grey fabric, one by one, then rolled the scarf up, into a tight ball, to see how small he could make it –

Pocket size?

No
 –

Too big.

He grimaced and pressed it to his face again. He buried his nose into it, burrowed into it and stayed there for several minutes. It was then that he saw –

Huh?!

– the
goose
wings. Clear as day. In his mind’s eye…

Eh?

– and he was busily engaged in fastening them together –

Are those my hands…?

– with some twine –

Twine?

?!

– then slinging them over his shoulders, with a guffaw, and tying them into place –

Just like Icarus

– before starting to climb.

Climb?

The sound of running water distracted him from his reverie. He opened his eyes and glanced up at the ceiling. There was a crack. A long crack, which extended virtually the entire…

What’s she doing up there?

He frowned –

Showering?

He stared down at the scarf again, bemused. He hesitated for a moment and then pushed his face into it for a second time.

Soil

He saw soil. And it was French soil (he was certain of it). And he was scooping up this soil with his hands and he was slowly, carefully, piling it inside his shoes. His boots. His tiny, hand-made, exquisitely stitched, ludicrously pointed boots…

Then there was a rumbling –

Eh?!

He definitely heard a rumbling –

Almost a
…

He opened his eyes. He saw the dog. She was standing (as best she could) on the kitchen tiles in front of him and she was growling. She was baring her teeth at him.

‘Hey…’

He leaned down towards her to try and calm her. She continued to growl. Not at
him
, he soon realised…

‘Is it the scarf?’ he asked, proffering it to her. She backed off, still growling.

Kane threw down the scarf and stood up. His chair squeaked against the tiles. He felt strange, almost intoxicated. He thought about having a smoke to calm his nerves. He gazed down at the dog. The dog
seemed perfectly fine again. She was dragging herself over towards her water bowl.

Okay
…

He took a quick turn around the table to burn off some energy. After two or three steps, though, he stopped. He stared at his feet, at his Blundstones…

Ow!

He was sure there was something…

He squatted down, untied a lace on one boot and pulled it off.

He stared inside the boot –

Nothing

He tipped the boot upside down –

Nothing

He frowned. He inspected his sock –

Nothing

He slowly and suspiciously put the boot back on. He stood up. He stamped his foot. It felt fine.

Hmmn.

He began walking around the table again. On his way around he noticed a large, dark-blue,
faux
-military-style jacket hung up on a peg on the back door. He stared at it, scowling, then he walked over and quickly slipped his hand into one of the jacket pockets. He withdrew a small, brown pill bottle without a label on it and a neatly rolled-up length of bandage. He shook the bottle. He unscrewed the lid, frowning, and peered inside of it. The bottle was half-full of large, unwieldy-looking white pills. He tipped one out on to the palm of his hand and stared at it, still frowning, then he gently touched the tip of his tongue to it –

Eh?

He touched his tongue to it again –

Chalk
 –

Just chalk.

He tipped the tablet back into the bottle (his head cocked, nonplussed), replaced the lid and returned the bottle and the bandages to the pocket. He reached into the second pocket. This pocket was full of plastic…

Rubbish

He withdrew a small piece of packaging and was just set to push it straight back inside again when he paused and took a second look…

What?!

It was the packaging for a cat collar – but a
special
cat collar: a collar for a cat, with a
bell
on it. And shoved in alongside that? A Polaroid. A crumpled-up Polaroid. He carefully straightened it out. It was a photograph of a cat. A cat wearing a collar. A cat wearing a collar
without
a bell attached. And not just
any
cat, either –

Oh no
…

It was
Beede’s
cat. Beede’s
Siamese
cat –

Manny?

Is that his
…?

A door suddenly slammed shut in another part of the house. Kane quickly returned the photo and the packaging to the coat pocket and turned around, panicked, grabbing his cigarettes from his jacket –

I was just gonna pop outside for a quick
…

Elen looked dazed – dreamy,
distracted
, even – as she drifted back
into the kitchen. She’d changed her clothes and her hair was now wet – newly washed – falling in thick, dark tangles across her shoulders. She was wearing a dressing gown (a plain, brown dressing gown) which was loosely fastened with a belt. And under that? Nothing but a short, thin, pale grey slip.

As she entered the room she was dabbing at her face (her eyes, at least) with the sleeve of the dressing gown –

Crying?

Was she…?

And because her arm was lifted the dressing-gown belt had come loose. Kane could see the lean lines of her body beneath it, the slope and lift of her small breasts, the jut of her hip-bone, the neat angularity of her knees…

She didn’t immediately acknowledge him. She simply walked over to the table, picked up the grey scarf and buried her face in it. Her shoulders shook a little. Kane almost moved towards her then, but still, something stopped him.

Elen drew a deep breath, threw down the scarf (almost in disgust), turned and walked over to the sink. She stared into it for a while, blankly. She sniffed, forlornly and clumsily scratched at the back of her calf with the toes of her other foot. Kane stared, his lips parting, at the pale, soft flesh behind her knees.

Then he dropped his cigarettes. They landed on the tiles with a clatter.

‘John?’

She spun around, terrified, almost losing her balance, grabbing on to the cabinets behind her, her eyes wide, her nostrils flaring. She stared at him, wildly, almost blind – it seemed – with fear. Then she began blinking, very rapidly, as if not entirely sure…

‘Kane?’

At first she seemed astonished by his presence, and then (almost in the same instant) just as astonished that she’d somehow connived to forget that he was there.

‘Oh
God.
I just…I didn’t…’

She grabbed at her dressing gown and pulled it tightly around her.

Kane bent down to retrieve his cigarettes in a brave attempt to mask his dismay.

‘You were gone for so long…’ he murmured, straightening up again, ‘I was just going to…’

‘How
stupid
of me…’

She looked around her, confused.

‘What was I
thinking
?’

She slapped the side of her head, with frustration, slightly harder – perhaps – than she should have.

‘Don’t worry about it.’

He didn’t like to see her slap herself.

‘No. It’s just…I went upstairs to check on Fleet,’ she paused, frowning, ‘didn’t I? And then…Then I must’ve dozed off. I was sitting on the bed…’

She scratched at her head and felt her wet hair…‘Yes. Then I went to have a shower. I washed my…I was just feeling so…’ she shuddered. ‘Isn’t it cold? Is the heating on? It feels so cold.’ She quickly walked over to a heater and felt it with her hand. Her hand was shaking, he noticed. It had almost a blueish pallor.

‘I should go,’ Kane said, feeling mortified. ‘In fact I
must
go…I’ve got…’

He turned and tried the back door. It was locked. He looked for a key. He saw one. He twisted it and tried the door again. It remained tightly shut. He glanced up. There was a bolt, at the top. He unfastened it and pulled the door wide. He stepped outside.

‘You did the washing up…’ he heard her, still babbling, still anxious.

‘That was so…’

He began striding across the patio tiles towards the side-gate.

‘Kane?’

He glanced over his shoulder.

She was standing on the back step, her arms wrapped around her.

She looked tiny. Her feet were bare.

‘Kane?’

She stepped down on to the patio tiles.

‘Go back inside,’ he said irritably. ‘You’ll freeze.’

‘Please don’t leave.’

‘Go back inside,’ he repeated firmly.

‘No.’

She was shivering. Her teeth started chattering. But she didn’t move.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said, almost angry now. ‘Go back inside.’

‘Don’t leave,’ she said, ‘I’m very sorry…I wasn’t…’ Her voice was almost inaudible. He closed his eyes for a moment. He clenched his hands into fists. He was infuriated by her.

‘You’re tired,’ he said.

‘I just want to speak to you,’ she said. ‘I just need to tell you something.’

‘Tell me what?’ He turned. She didn’t answer. She just continued to stand, as before.

‘Tell me what?’ he repeated.

She held out her hand, plaintively.

‘I should go,’ he said, but then he took a tentative step towards her.

‘Just one second,’ she promised.

‘Fine.’

He walked straight up to her. He stood in front of her, almost too close. He stared down at her, intimidatingly. But she wasn’t intimidated. Instead she reached up, with both hands, and gently grabbed the white hood on either side of his face, then slowly, very deliberately, she stood up on to her tip-toes and pulled his head down towards her. Soon both of their faces were obscured by the hood’s dense fabric. Their noses were almost touching, and their lips.

‘What do you want?’ he murmured, mystified.

‘What do you want?’ she echoed, then she wobbled slightly. He reached out his hands and found her waist, her ribs. He fastened his hands around her and supported her. She opened her mouth slightly, as if to speak, but she didn’t speak. She just lightly exhaled on to his upper lip. He opened his mouth, too. Their lower lips touched. Her breath was warm and smelled of milk. He felt the cold tip of her nose almost brushing his cheek. Neither of them moved.

‘Mummy?’

As quickly as it had begun, it was done with. She was there, then she was gone – back into the house again to deal with her son.

Kane felt shaky. He pushed back his hood. He put out an unsteady hand to support himself against a piece of scaffolding. The scaffolding creaked and shifted. He quickly let go again. He glanced up, shoving his hand into his pockets and taking out his cigarettes. He tapped one from the packet and propped it between his lips. He located a box of matches, opened it, removed a match and struck it. He lit his cigarette, shook the match out and tossed it down, grimacing, on to the concrete.