Especially a daughter, vis-a-vis the father. Andrew Laraway smiled, distantly. I do understand. My own father lost his father when he was just nine. I believe it affected him all his life. When you lose a parent at an untimely age, it is fundamentally destabilizing, you forever have the sensation that even the world beneath your feet cannot be relied upon. My father used to compare it to living in an earthquake zone, the Pacific rim of the emotions. Like here in Peru! He leaned forward, spoke more quietly. Could you describe your fathers symptoms? As much as you remember them? I know it might be hard but it would be beneficial.
Jessica felt the sick dread of something hideous approaching. Faltering, she gave her answer. For several minutes she recalled, as best she could, her fathers trembling; perhaps a fit; his anger and fear; his terrible decline at the end.
I was seven, like I say. Maybe Ive blocked some of it out, maybe I am totally wrong.
The next silence was the worst of all.
No. I dont think you are wrong, Miss Silverton. Suddenly Andrew Laraways expression had gone from avuncular concern to something much, much darker. He cleared his throat. Jessica. This is very difficult to say. I want you to prepare yourself.
The panic was rising in her throat.
Laraway spoke very softly, his words like a soothing prayer in a silent chapel. I wouldnt normally do this but you have been demanding answers, any answers-
Go on!
Well. Here it is. The symptoms you describe in your father dont sound like any cancer I know. They sound like Huntingtons Disease. And that is He took a deep breath, and continued. That is a very evil way to die. It begins, innocently enough, with a slight loss of coordination, maybe an unsteady gait, and fine trembling in the hands. As the disease advances, the body movements become repetitive and jerky: spasticated; this is accompanied by wasting of the muscles, heart decay, and many other symptoms. Violent episodes, terrible depressions. Then comes the terrible darkness of pure dementia. Laraways gaze was unblinking. There is, of course, no cure. Moreover, Huntingtons Disease is genetic. Many people who might have inherited the disease actively refuse a genetic test to see whether they are carriers. Why? Because it is incurable therefore they dont want to know. Likewise, some parents keep the knowledge of the disease from their children, so their lives wont be blighted by the fear. As the poet said, Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.
The panic in Jessicas throat had been replaced by an icy cold. She was swallowing coldness. You think I am a carrier?
His smile was bleak, yet empathetic. There are certain early indications. You have some symptoms which are otherwise rather contrary. The only way we can know for sure is if you have a genetic test. But that well that is something many people resist.
Her heart was pounding now.
Do I have all the symptoms?
One of the crucial early presentations is epileptic fits, thats a clinching diagnostic sign. The beginning of the real decline. Youve not had any of those?
No.
Well, then we do not know. As I say, only a genetic test can tell us. He stood. I am so very sorry. One is never sure whether to impart a frightening and potentially false diagnosis like this However, you seemed distressed and confused, and very much wanting to know. And now it is up to you to decide. You might also consider calling your mother, and asking for the truth.
He was reaching out a hand. After delivering this possible death sentence, he was just reaching out a hand.
Jessica stood, and shook his hand.
Jess, you must call me any time you like, you must feel free to come here whenever.
Thank you.
She walked to the door, looking at her feet as she did so. Was she stumbling? She was not stumbling. She was dazed, that was all.
At the door she turned; she had to ask one more question. Dr Laraway, if you were me, would you have the test?
His smile was sadly sincere. I really dont know, Jessica, I really dont know. And thats the truth.
Closing the door behind her, she walked past the receptionist and took the elevator to the ground floor.
Outside, the thrumming, grimy, fervent and slummy city seemed the same as ever. Bewilderingly normal and scruffy; and yet everything had changed. Jessica stared at her cellphone. She could maybe call her mother right now and get the truth: did her father have that disease? Had she been lied to, to protect her from the fear? If they had lied to her, the lie was no longer working: she had the fear. She was too scared to even call.
Instead, and for a reason she could not fathom in herself, Jessica took a taxi from the centre of town to the Texaco garage, and the Museo Casinelli. Or where they used to be.
Climbing out of the taxi, she stared. She was glad she had come here. The charred and ruined buildings were a fittingly melancholy sight: a temporary wooden fence had been erected around the shell of the building, but it was rickety and already broken. She could see, through the gaps, the black spars of burned concrete, the spoil heaps of ash and dust.
At first she tried not to think of poor Pablo, down there, consumed in the fire. But she couldnt resist: maybe she wanted to think of him. Maybe that was a good way to go. Burned to death, a few minutes of pain. Better than months and years of decline and terror, then madness and agony.
Jessica felt sick, right down to her lungs, sick and somehow guilty. Maybe she had brought this on herself. Perhaps she had dug up something horrible, an ancient evil, the god of death and killing.
She had woken the sleeping gods of the Moche, and now they would not be dismissed.
23
Highgate, London
The angel was sleeping and quiet.
Ibsen gazed, perplexed, at the marble angel lying on the marble grave. It was an odd concept, even in a graveyard sculpture. Did Victorians actually believe that angels slept? Or maybe it was dead? Could angels die?
Mark?
Sorry. He wiped the last crumbs of all-day-breakfast sandwich from his lips, with a Pret A Manger napkin. Just thinking, love. Sorry.
His wife Jenny smoothed her nurses uniform; she had a small tray of takeaway salad on her knees. You know Ive only got thirty minutes.
For lunch?
Were busy, Mark! Short-staffed in Maternity, there are a couple of girls with flu
The bloody Whittington Hospital is always bloody busy. Ibsen tutted. They work you too bloody hard. Youre too bloody good for this job. Youve got a bloody first-class degree. Bloody hell.
But I enjoy it. She laughed. Dropping her plastic fork in her plastic tray, she stroked him under his chin and gently kissed his cheek, then murmured, slyly, yet shyly, Besides, Detective Chief Inspector. You always told me you liked the uniform.
As ever, his younger wifes solicitations melted Ibsen, inside him, somewhere very important. For a second they sat together, staring silently across the mossed old statuary of the empty cemetery, at the stooped and wintry willows that loomed over eighteenth-century tombs, like tall but servile chamberlains admiring a royal baby in a crib.
Mark and Jenny occasionally came here to eat lunch, whenever Ibsen was free and in north London, near Jennys workplace. It was more for her than for him. DCI Ibsen always found Highgate Cemetery unsettling even as his wife found it obscurely soothing.
Today, on a cold December afternoon, the ancient graveyard was at its most melancholy, but at least it suited their subject. Suicide.
How come you suddenly have all day, anyway?
Were waiting on a lead, been waiting for two days. I thought Id take a break and see my lovely, overworked wife.
A lead? You mean you got something from that poor, poor girl? Imogen Fitzsomething?
Yes.
But Mark, I thought she died.
She did, Jen. The blood loss was horrific, stage 4 hypovolemia a coma she drifted in and out but the haemorrhaging was too profuse.
So?
She wrote an address, when she was lucid, she wrote down an address for us, just before she died. And a taxi driver has reported he took her there, three days before her suicide.
And you think its where this guy lives, the bloke with the tattoos?
Ibsen nodded, flourished his mobile phone. Larkhams checking it out now. I may have to go any moment.
Jenny stood up. Well come on, then, lets be quick. I can explain everything you need to know about suicide clusters. In about twenty minutes.
Ibsen grabbed her empty salad tray, and his voided sandwich packet, and dumped them in a bin. Then they walked the paths between the crumbled and mouldering graves. He sneaked a glance at his phone. Nothing yet.
OK. Suicide clusters work by social contagion, often spread through the media, or the internet. Social networks. Sometimes there is a celebrity suicide, widely reported, which is then copied by young, impressionable people.
That doesnt sound like our situation. Theres no rap artist who cut his own head off.
No. Which is why I reckon you are better looking at mass suicides. Which are different.
She walked on and he followed, attentive.
There have actually been quite a few large-scale suicides in history. Masada in ancient Israel is a famous example. Okinawa in Japan in World War Twos another. One of the worst was the suicide of the women of Souli, in Greece: they threw their children over the precipice, and then jumped themselves, to avoid capture by the Ottomans.
They turned left, past the Egyptian Avenue, with its Luxorlike pillars, its pharaonically slanted arches. The silence here, at the centre of the cemetery, was extraordinary.
But modern-day mass suicides are usually related to some kind of cult, or cultic religion. Led by a charismatic leader, some clever evil man with a hold over them. Think of Heavens Gate. Or the Order of the Solar Temple. The most famous, naturally, was the Peoples Temple in the Jonestown incident.
They turned left, past the Egyptian Avenue, with its Luxorlike pillars, its pharaonically slanted arches. The silence here, at the centre of the cemetery, was extraordinary.
But modern-day mass suicides are usually related to some kind of cult, or cultic religion. Led by a charismatic leader, some clever evil man with a hold over them. Think of Heavens Gate. Or the Order of the Solar Temple. The most famous, naturally, was the Peoples Temple in the Jonestown incident.