39

DCI Forrester was on the phone, arranging a meeting with Janice Edwards; he wanted to ask her opinion on the Cloncurry case, because she was an expert in evolutionary psychology: she had written dense but well-received books on the subject.

The therapist’s secretary was evasive. She told him that Janice was very busy and that the only time she could spare in the coming week was tomorrow, when she was at the Royal College of Surgeons, for the monthly meetings of the College Trust.

‘So. That’s fine. I’ll meet her there then?’

The secretary sighed. ‘I’ll make a note’

The next morning Forrester caught the Tube to Holborn, and waited in the pillared hallway of the Royal College until Janice arrived to guide him into the large, shiny, steel-and-glass museum of the college as being a ‘good place to talk’.

The museum was impressive. A maze of enormous glass shelves, arrayed with jars and specimens.

‘This is called the Crystal Gallery,’ said Janice, gesturing at the glittering racks of dissections. ‘It was refurbished a couple of years ago: we’re very proud of it. Cost millions.’

Forrester nodded politely.

‘Here’s one of my favourite exhibits,’ said his doctor. ‘See. The preserved throat of a suicide. This man slashed his own throat-you can actually see the explosion in the flesh. Hunter was a brilliant dissector.’ She smiled at Forrester. ‘Now. What were you saying, Mark?’

‘Do you think there can be a gene for murder?’

She shook her head. ‘Nope.’

‘Not at all?’

‘Not one gene, no. But perhaps a gene cluster. Yes. I don’t see why that is impossible. But we can’t know for sure. This is still a fledgling science.’

‘Right.’

‘We’ve only just begun to crack genetics. For instance: have you ever noticed how gayness and high intelligence are interlinked?’

‘They are?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘Gay people have an IQ about ten points higher than average. There is clearly some genetic element at play here. A gene cluster. But we are not remotely sure of the mechanics.’

Forrester nodded. He glanced at some animal specimens. A jar containing a hagfish. The pale grey stomach of a swan.

Janice Edwards went on, ‘As for the heritability of homicidality, well…it depends how these genes interact. With each other and the environment. Someone who had the trait might still live a perfectly normal life, if their urges weren’t catalysed or provoked in some way.’

‘But…’ Forester was confused. ‘You do think murderousness could be inherited?’

‘Let’s take musical ability. That seems to be partially heritable. Consider the Bach family-brilliant composers over several generations. Of course environment played a part but genes must surely be involved. So, if something as complex as musical composition is heritable then, yes, why not a fairly primal urge like murder?’

‘And what about human sacrifice? Could you inherit a desire to commit human sacrifice?’

She frowned. ‘Not sure about that. Rather a bizarre concept. What’s the background?’

Forrester recounted the story of the Cloncurrys. An aristocratic family with a history of martial values, some of whom took their aggression to lurid lengths approaching human sacrifice. And now they had begat Jamie Cloncurry: a murderer who sacrificed without apology or rationale. Even more bizarrely, the family appeared to be attracted to sites of human sacrifice: they lived near the biggest sacrificial deathpit in France and the Great War battlefields blooded by their appalling forefather, General Cloncurry.

Janice nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Interesting. I suppose murderers often return to the scene of the crime, don’t they?’ She shrugged: ‘But that is rather odd. Why live there? Near the battlefields? Could be coincidence. Maybe they are in some way honouring their ancestors. You’d need to ask an anthropologist about that.’

She walked on down the Crystal Gallery. Two girls were sitting cross-legged on the floor with sketch pads on their laps and little tins of paint at the side. Student artists, Forrester surmised. One of the girls was Chinese-she was squinting with great concentration, at five eerily preserved foetuses: deformed human quintuplets.

Janice Edwards turned to Forrester: ‘What it sounds like to me, actually, is an inherited and homicidal psychosis that possibly presents as sacrifice in certain situations.’

‘Which means?’

‘I think a psychosis that predisposed you to extreme violence could be inherited. How might such a trait survive, in Darwinian terms? Generally in history, a tendency towards outrageous violence might not always be a bad thing: for instance, if the bloodlust and brutality was channelled, it might be adaptive.’

‘How?’

‘If, for instance, there was a military tradition in the family. The most violent offspring could be sent straight into the army, where their aggressions and bloodlust would prove an asset.’

They walked on, past the students. Further along the gallery was another array of tiny foetuses showing the development of the embryo from four weeks to nine months. They were remarkably well preserved, floating in their space of clear liquid like tiny aliens in zero gravity. Their expressions were human from an early stage: grimacing and shouting. Silently.

Forrester coughed, and looked at his notebook. ’So, Janice, if these guys carried these genes for murder and sadism, they might have been disguised until now? Because of, say, Britain’s imperialist history? All the wars we’ve fought?’

‘Very possibly. But these days such a trait would be problematic. Intense aggression has no outlet in an era of smoking bans and smart bombs. We often kill by proxy if we kill at all. And now we have young Jamie Cloncurry, who is maybe what we call a “genetic celebrity”. He carries the sadistic genes of his forefathers but in the most outrageous way. What can he do with his talents? Apart from murder? I see his dilemma, if that doesn’t sound callous.’

Forrester stared at half a pickled human brain. It looked like a withered old cauliflower. He read the accompanying sign. The brain belonged to Charles Babbage, ‘inventor of the computer’.

‘What about a propensity for sacrifice then? Are you sure you couldn’t, you know, inherit that, as a trait?’

‘Maybe in historic times this gene cluster might have led you to commit human sacrifice, in a religious society already structured for such acts.’

Forrester pondered this for a moment. Then he retrieved a slip of paper from his pocket: a printout of the email that had been sent to Rob Luttrell. He showed it to Janice, who scanned it very quickly.

‘Anti-Semitism. Yes, yes. This sort of thing is a fairly common symptom of psychosis. Especially if the victim is very bright. The dimmer kind of psychotics just think aliens are living in the toaster, but a clever man, going mad, will perceive more intriguing patterns and conspiracies. And antisemitism is a pretty regular feature. Remember the mathematician, John Nash?’

‘The guy in that film? A Beautiful Mind?

‘One of the greatest mathematical thinkers of his time. Won the Nobel I believe. He was totally schizophrenic in his twenties and thirties, and he was obsessively anti-Semitic. Thought the Jews were everywhere, taking over the world. High intelligence is no defence against dangerous lunacy. The average IQ of Nazi leaders was about 138. Very high.’

Forrester took the sheaf of paper and folded it back into his pocket. He had one last question. A very long shot. He gave it a try. ‘Maybe you could help with one last thing. When we found that poor guy De Savary he had written a word, a single word on the front page of a book. The paper was soaked with flecks of aspirated blood.’

‘Sorry?’

‘He was writing with his mouth. The pen was in his mouth, and he was coughing blood as he wrote.’