The Genesis Secret: by Tom Knox Read Free Book Online

atmosphere at the site.
    Christine frowned. For a few minutes she paced around, showing Rob the various remains scattered in the garden, the Roman gravestones and Ottoman carvings. As they neared the car, she pointed to another statue: a representation of a bird-like man with wings outstretched. It had a narrow face with slanting eyes, cruel and menacing. ‘That was found near Gobekli. It’s a desert demon of the Assyrians, I think. Maybe the wind devil Pazuzu. The Assyrians and Mesopotamians had hundreds of demons, it’s quite a scary theology. Lilith the maid of desolation, Adramalech, the demon of sacrifice. Many of them associated with the desert wind, and desert birds…’
    Rob was sure she was stalling. He waited for her to respond to his question.
    Suddenly, she turned to him. ‘OK. You’re right. There is…an atmosphere at the dig. It’s funny.I’ve never experienced anything like it before, and I’ve been in digs all over the world. The workmen, they seem to resent us. We give them good money but still…they resent us.’
    ‘Is it the Turkish-Kurdish thing?’
    ‘No. Actually. I don’t think it is. Or at least it’s not just that,’ Christine led them back to the car, parked under a fig tree. ‘There’s more to it than that. All these weird accidents keep happening. Ladders falling away. Stuff collapsing. Cars breaking down. It’s more than coincidence. Sometimes I actually think they want us to stop, and go away. As if they are…’
    ‘Hiding something?’
    The Frenchwoman blushed. ‘It’s stupid. But yes. It’s as if they are trying to hide something. And there’s something else. I might as well tell you.’
    Rob had the car door half open. ‘What?’
    Inside the car, Christine said, ‘Franz. He does digs. At night. On his own, with a couple of workers.’ She started the car, and shook her head. ‘And I’ve absolutely no idea why.’

7
    DCI Forrester sat at his messy desk in New Scotland Yard. He had in front of him more photos of the wounded man, David Lorimer. The images were hideous. Two viciously inscribed stars in the man’s chest, blood trickling down the skin.
    The Star of David.
    Lorimer. Clearly Scottish, not Jewish. Did the raiders think he was Jewish? Were they Jewish? Or Nazis? Is that what the journalist was on about? The neo-Nazi angle? Forrester turned and looked again at the official scene-of-crime shots of the cellar floor: the treacle-black soil disturbed by the spades and shovels. The hole made by the raiders was deep. They were certainly looking for something. And looking hard. Had they found it? But if they were looking for something why had they bothered to mutilate the old man when he disturbed them? Why not just knock him out or tie him up, or kill him cleanly? Why the elaborate, ritualistic cruelty?
    Forrester suddenly wanted a proper drink. Instead he sipped his black tea, from a chipped mug bearing the image of an England flag, then got up and walked to his tenth-storey window. From this vantage he had a good view across Westminster and central London. The big steel bicycle wheel of the London Eye, with its alien glass pods. The Gothic pinnacles of the Houses of Parliament. He looked at a new building going up in Victoria and tried to work out what style it was. He’s always had a hankering to be an architect; had even applied to an architectural school as a teenager, then beaten a retreat when he heard the training was seven years long. Seven years with no proper salary? His parents didn’t like the sound of that-nor did Forrester. So he’d joined the police. But he still liked to think he had a well-informed layman’s knowledge of the subject. He could tell Wrenaissance from Renaissance, postmodern from neo-classical. It was one of the reasons he liked working and living in London, despite all the hassle: the architectural richness of the urban tapestry.
    He drained the rest of the tea, went back to his desk and sifted through the reports the SIO had