The Babylon Rite

Adam selected a fine, leatherbound edition of Bede’s History of the English People. He flicked through the pages, which were, sure enough, scribbled with spidery marginalia. But the notes were almost illegible: not just faded, but very small – and very badly handwritten, in ancient fountain pen.

He wasn’t remotely convinced of this detective work, but he didn’t want to argue with Nina. Returning Bede to his slot on the high shelf, Adam tried again, with Runciman’s History of the Crusades. And as he flicked and scanned the aromatic, scholarly pages, he asked, in a low, careful, wary voice, ‘Tell me where they met.’

‘Some academic conference, five years ago.’

‘Where?’

‘London. She teaches law there, that’s why she’s away so much. Like now. But she’s back tomorrow for the funeral.’

Adam nodded, absorbing the information, as he scanned the books, reading the little margin notes – see pp 235-237 Geertz; Tyndale/KJV? A thought unsettled him. ‘How do you know she won’t come back tonight? Late tonight?’

Nina shrugged, examining another paperback. The Trial of the Templars.

‘Nina. You don’t actually know, for sure, do you?’

She shrugged again.

Adam spat the words, ‘Christ’s sake. She could be here any minute!’

Nina didn’t reply. But her eyes were locked on Adam, and widened by fear. Because a muffled crash of glass had just sounded from the study.

Adam lifted a finger to his lips. She turned, half-crouched, by the bookcase, and her green eyes stared at the wall as if she could see through it. The uncertain silence returned. Then a doorhandle squealed distinctively.

Her words were quiet and fierce. ‘Jesus. Who is that?’

Adam pressed his ear to the wall: he could hear the mouselike squeak of metal: a metal doorknob in a glass and metal door.

‘Someone’s on the fire escape, back of the study …’

She shook her head. ‘No, Adam. They’re already in.’

She was surely right: he could sense the human presence, another heartbeat in the apartment. And now he strained to hear a footfall. And yes, there it was: the almost inaudible creak of floorboards, of someone stealthily moving around.

Adam grabbed Nina’s hand, which was damp with sweat, and hissed, ‘We have to get out! This could be, this could be anyone – the murderer, anyone!’

In an agony of fear they stepped to the door. As quietly as they could.

The presence – the intruder, the murderer – was moving around the study. Searching for what? The fear mixed with fierce anger somewhere in Adam’s soul: it was the old eagerness for action, maybe even violence, to resolve things. He could hear his father’s drunken boasts: never let a man frighten you, never show your fear. Take him on and beat him.

Maybe Adam could tackle the intruder: he lingered over the thought for a moment. But sanity quickly chased him back to reality. The man could easily have a knife. Even a gun. Any resistance might be suicidal.

No: they needed to flee. Adam pulled Nina to the open door, which gave into the darkened landing; he indicated with an urgent nod what he planned – they should run down the hallway to the front door and escape – before he opened the study door to the hallway and trapped them inside by standing between them and the only exit.

The floorboards creaked again. The intruder was moving across the study, coming their way.

Adam got ready to run, but even as he tensed for action he felt Nina disappear – she wrenched herself free and ran to the door at the other end of the landing. What was down there? A bathroom? A kitchen? What the hell was she doing?

He stared at her, quite desperate. Then he stared at where she had been, at the half-open door through which she had disappeared. What should he do now? Run away and leave her? But of course he couldn’t leave her – what if the man found her and …

She was back, hefting her rucksack: she had something inside it. He turned and pointed at the door and whispered the word now!

Together they ran. Uncaring of the noise, they raced down the hallway, flung open the front door, which creaked on its hinges, and slammed it behind them. The stairwell was dark again, but their indifference was pure and driven. Just get out fast. Just get the fuck out.

Panicking and hectic, they raced down the steps. Adam heard a noise above them, surely the intruder, alerted, sprinting onto the landing.

Just keep running and don’t look back. They had made the last flight. They were at the main door, and now they were outside, in the cold air, still running.

At the end of Springvalley Terrace Adam halted for a second, and turned. He could sense they were being watched and the feeling was so intense he had to turn and see.

Someone was standing at the window of the McLintocks’ flat. It was a very distinct figure, momentarily framed by the light: a thin tall man, wearing dark clothes, with close-shaven hair.

Was it him? The man he had seen, passing by an hour ago, with the tattoos? The figure suddenly shrank from the window, apparently aware he had been spotted.

Nina grabbed his hand.

‘Run!’

13

Interview Room D, New Scotland Yard, London

The girl really was exquisitely beautiful. Detective Sergeant Larkham had told him so on the phone, almost warned him – she’s a real looker, sir – but nothing had quite prepared him for the reality. She was like an artist’s idea of an English beauty. Golden waterfalls of hair, misted blue eyes, a pure and rose-dawn complexion. And she had been crying for about seven minutes.

The girl stared at him. Ibsen snapped himself out of his reverie, and went over his notes. Her name was Amelia Hawthorne. She was twenty-three, an aspiring actress, privately educated, a graduate of RADA. And she had been Kerensky’s girlfriend for the last two years.

He repeated the question. Were you in love with him?

Amelia Hawthorne sniffled, tearfully, in the quietness. ‘I’m sorry. I am. I know. It’s just the way Nik died – I … I still … I still …’

Larkham leaned in. ‘We understand, Amelia. It’s a total shocker. Horrible.’

‘But that’s exactly why we need to know,’ Ibsen repeated the point. ‘Your boyfriend cut off his own feet, and his hand. It’s an appalling suicide. So we need to know all the facts. All of them.’

‘Yes. Yes, I know. I get it.’ Slowly, the girl seemed to source some resolve, she sat a little taller, visibly preparing herself. ‘OK. Go on, then. Ask me.’

‘You say you met him two years ago?’

‘Yes.’

‘At a nightclub.’

‘Yes. Anushka’s.’

Ibsen flicked a glance at his notes. ‘And that is …’

‘A club in Mayfair. It’s down near Nobu. Everyone went there … back then … I mean, you know, two years ago …’

Ibsen had never heard of the place. He had also never heard of several other places the girl had already mentioned. In truth, he felt a little at sea in this world of beautiful young actresses and billionaire Russian playboys.

Larkham interrupted.

‘It’s a nightclub just off Berkeley Square, sir. Well pricey. Two hundred quid for a bottle of bubbly.’

‘Really? Prefer something more upmarket myself.’

The DS smiled; Ibsen turned to the girl. ‘So you met him at this high-class night club – and you started dating?

She scoffed. ‘Dating?’

‘I mean, you started a relationship. You were stepping out?’

‘Please. We started fucking.’

Ibsen leaned nearer. ‘OK, then. You began a sexual relationship.’

‘That first night. Yes.’ She stared at her exquisitely manicured nails. ‘Because I liked him. I liked Nik from the start, liked him a lot … Y’know, everyone said he was probably just another … Eurotrash wanker, like all the Russians, with their hookers in furs, all that awful crap. But he wasn’t.’

‘No?’

‘He was witty and smart. As well as fit.’

‘And extremely rich?’

‘Yeah, sure. He was rich. But, you know, everyone was rich.’

She gazed at Ibsen with those slightly contemptuous blue eyes and he wished, for a second, he had worn his better suit. The one from Hugo Boss.

‘Why else was he different? Explain.’

‘He was clever and really …’ She sighed. ‘Adventurous, really interesting. Not, like, totally desiccated like some of them, all those boring Chelsea boys banging on about their stupid fucking Ferraris. He used to go places, Asia, Africa … He read books, he would read to me, talk to me … and he went to the theatre, he loved London, art, everything, but he also liked fun, partying.’

‘Drugs?’

She halted.

Ibsen pressed the point. ‘Did you do drugs?’

No reply.

DCI Ibsen briskly reached pulled some folders out of his briefcase and laid them on the table. The folders contained the serology and toxicology reports on Kerensky, N, white male, 27. Instinct had told him the latter report would come up trumps, but it hadn’t. The hair tests showed just a trace of cocaine usage, probably from days before the death. Serology showed a small amount of alcohol in Kerensky’s blood, but he hadn’t been blind drunk when he killed himself. How then had he summoned the courage to do his self-mutilations? How had he managed the pain? Gastric examination showed he had eaten nothing more than bar snacks that night: nuts and crisps.

‘We have a hair test, Miss Hawthorne. We know he used cocaine. Did you do drugs with him?’

Total silence.

Larkham was leaning against the window. ‘You’re not under arrest, Amelia. We’re not going to arrest you if you confess to doing a little gak? Some charlie?’

The girl looked at her fingernails again. Then gazed up and said, ‘All right. All right, yes. He liked drugs sometimes. He liked sex too. And vodka. Taittinger. Everything. Caviar. Fucking sevruga. I told you, he was a party animal, and yet it wasn’t, like, frivolous, it wasn’t just for the sake of it …’

‘What—’

‘He knew he was going to take over his father’s business and I reckon he just wanted to get it all out of his system … see the world and do it all, do the lot, have his fun, and then he would sober up.’

‘Tell me more about the drugs.’

‘It wasn’t heavy. Really. No smack. Maybe a little toot. Before dinner. That’s all. You know? Maybe he dropped some E or mcat with his friends. But nothing heroiny, not with me. He was into new shit, new experiences, but not necessarily drugs … ’ She looked straight at Ibsen.

He sensed the direction of her thoughts. ‘Did you know he was bisexual?’

The actress pushed her ringlets from her eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘But you didn’t mind?’

‘He was basically, like, straight. But … but that was another of his … things. Try everything twice, that was Nik’s motto. So. Yeah. I knew. We had a few threesomes. It was funny … just fun. We are young.’

Ibsen waited. Her frown darkened.

‘But then it kinda changed. Towards the end. The last few weeks. He got … out of control.’

The moment intensified. Larkham stared at the girl. Ibsen said, ‘How?’

‘He wanted … things. Y’know, in bed.’

‘Things?’

‘Kinkier sex.’

‘In what way, precisely?’

Her lips were trembling. ‘He wanted anal sex. He wanted it … that way … all the time. I didn’t mind for a while, though it’s not my … not my scene – but then it was bondage. Heavy stuff. Ropes. Candle wax. Jesus. Every night, night after night. And he wanted me to go with other men, groups of men, in front of him. It was too much, it got way too much. That’s why we split, just before …’

‘Were you doing drugs at this point? Together?’

‘No! That was it. There were no drugs, it was like he had changed inside … he’d met new people. It changed him. Like someone converted him. Changed him.’

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you mentioned new people. Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Think.’

‘OK. OK, there was … there was an American, maybe.’

‘Sorry?’

She took a long breath. ‘It was the very last time I went to Soho House, two weeks ago, to meet Nik, talk about our … about the problems. In our relationship. But there was an American there. Older. Thirties. Maybe even forties, this really fucking eerie guy, tattoos, vulgar, aggressive, clever but … aggressive. Not Nik’s style at all. But Nik seemed to be in love with him, worshipping him like he was some … deity. This hero. Yet he was just a fucking villain, as far as I could tell.’

‘You know his name?’

‘No.’

‘Was he Nik’s lover?’

‘Jesus, I hope not.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’

‘Who?’

‘This American.’

She stared straight at Ibsen. ‘I never saw Nik again. That’s what I’m telling you. The last time I saw Nikolai alive was then: Soho House, two weeks ago. That was it. I’m telling the fucking truth.’

Ibsen sat back. He believed her. So they needed to find this American. But how? He felt the irritation inside himself, as something just out of reach.

‘Tatts,’ said Larkham, from the sill where he was perched. ‘You said he had tattoos?’

The girl turned, the light from the window gentle on her face. Ibsen could imagine her on stage. Spotlit.

‘Yeah. Serious tattoos. He had a skull tattooed on his hand. Both hands maybe …’

Larkham and Ibsen immediately swapped glances. Ibsen reached for another document, a print from Kerensky’s laptop. The skull screensaver.

‘Skulls like this?’

The girl took the barest moment to look at the print-out, and she shuddered visibly.

‘Skulls just like that.’

They concluded the interview ten minutes later. Two hours after that, Ibsen was back home, in the chaos of domesticity, talking football with his son, trying to use his wife’s intelligence.

Jenny was good at this stuff. She worked as a nurse, but she had a first-class degree in psychology from Bristol. The nursing was a choice. The psychology was a talent.

Ibsen cooked the dinner – rib-eye steaks and rocket salad – while Jenny stood at the kitchen door, a big glass of Merlot in a cradling hand. And while he cooked he told her about the case.

Her wise grey eyes narrowed as she listened to the details. ‘Jesus. His own hands and feet?’

‘One hand, both feet, yup.’

‘… That’s just ghastly.’

‘Yes. And all the sexual stuff. Any idea? How could anyone do that? What’s the psychology?’

‘Let me think …’

He knew her well enough to see this as a good sign. She was engaged and intrigued. But she needed time to ponder.

They ate the dinner, and Jenny walked the dog because she wanted the fresh air. When they went to bed, Ibsen tried to read an entire page of an Ian McEwan novel, but failed. Yet again.

He was woken at six a.m. He thought in his half-dreaming sleepiness that it was a fire alarm, then realized it was his phone, ringing merrily.

Jenny was breathing in deep sleep, beside him. He picked up, his hushed voice was sodden with tiredness. ‘Hello?’

‘Sorry, sir.’

It was Jonson: the SOC officer from Bishops Avenue.

‘DS. Ffff … What time is it?’

‘Far too early, sir. Sorry to disturb you. But we have another suicide, and we think it may be linked.’

‘Linked?’ Ibsen’s weary brain tried to engage the gears. ‘How can they be linked, I mean, how do you know?’

‘This one also tried to cut his own head off, sir.’

‘What?’

‘And this one succeeded.’

14

Huaca El Brujo, Chicama Valley, north Peru

‘Gracias.’

Jess waved in gratitude to Ruben, the gateman at the temple complex. He waved back, and lifted the wooden barrier for her Hilux. His little motokar, his three-wheeled ride home, was parked by the kiosk. It had Jesus es Amor stencilled in purple letters on the transparent plastic roof.

The day was hot yet clammy: typical muggy Sechura weather this close to the coast. She turned in her seat as she passed the kiosk and the gate. From here, looking west, she could see the Pacific, a line of dull sparkle, where the big dirty waves crashed on the lonely shoreline.

The only interruptions to the desert flatness were the bumps. The sacred huacas.

Changing down a gear, she accelerated towards the pyramids. Another kilometre in her pick-up brought her to Huaca Cao Viejo, known to the locals as El Brujo. The Sorcerer.

It was, like most Moche ruins, an unprepossessing site: a large adobe pyramid, very weathered and eroded – somewhat like a vast, ghastly, and collapsing chocolate sundae – maybe thirty metres high and a hundred metres wide. Beyond and around it were other, smaller pyramids, stretching down to the coast, half a kilometre east, where the waves made a distant thunder, where dead dogs lay on their vile bleaching spines and howled at the sullen sky.

It was a bleak and grisly location, yet the nothingness felt necessary, even soothing. Right now Jess needed the calm grey nullity to salve her anxieties; the events in the huaca last week still jangled uncomfortably in her mind. The cinnabar, the skeletons, the flesh-eating beetles, the unknown god. How did it all fit together?

There was no easy solution. So she needed to focus on the issue at hand.

Swerving sharp and right, she parked the car on the ruins of the old Spanish church. Notebook and camera zipped briskly in her rucksack, she opened the car door and inhaled. The humid air was distinctly flavoured by the sea: salty, and tangy, maybe slightly rancid. Weighing the keys in her hand, she wondered whether to lock the pick-up; then locked it, feeling stupid as she did so. There probably wasn’t another human being, apart from Ruben, for ten kilometres. It was just her and the crying seagulls.

A quick walk brought her to the muddy steps of El Brujo, which she ascended to the First Enclosure. Scraps of burned wood and old paper scribbled with Quechua spells and curses, littered the beaten earth en route. This was not unexpected. Probably some curanderos – some local shamans – had been here, performing their strange ceremonies in the depths of the desert night. The local villagers still revered the spiritual power of these huacas, hence the local name for the huaca – the Sorcerer. The descendants of the Moche still came to this horrible place to partake of whatever power the sacred pyramid possessed.

Jess strode close to the largest wall, and knelt to take photos. Here, in red and gold, and white and blue, were the great treasures of El Brujo: long wall murals showing fish and demons and seahorses and manta rays and dancing skeletons, and the sacrifice ceremony.

As they now knew, beyond doubt, this ceremony really happened. And this mural described it: precisely.

Jess scrutinized, and scribbled her notes. How was it enacted? First, it seemed, the Moche warriors performed some kind of ritualized combat. The main object of this brawl was to grab the opponent’s hair. When a man had his hair seized, he fell to the ground: submissive, and willingly doomed. All of these stylized combats took place within the community. DNA analysis showed this. The fights weren’t with enemies, but between friends and relatives, between brothers and uncles. The sole purpose of the fighting was to produce endless victims: for the sacrifice.

She snapped and clicked. And scribbled again in her notebook.

The ritual proceeded from here, with minor variations. The defeated warriors were stripped naked, and bound by ropes at the neck, like slaves being walked to the African coast. After that, as the next murals showed, the prisoners were taken inside the precincts of the temple. That could be here at El Brujo, or in Zana, or Sipan, or Panamarca, or the Temple of the Moon in Trujillo. At the peak of their empire the Moche had many great temples, stretching for hundreds of miles along the coast.

Jess scrawled, and then paused, thinking about Tomb 1 of Huaca D. She remembered the insect shells shining gaudily, like discarded fairground trash, in her flashlight, gathered grotesquely around a staked-out corpse.

What was the link between that discovery and El Brujo? Maybe there wasn’t one. And yet maybe there was.

They now knew the sacrifice ceremony had really happened. They also now had a sense the Moche really fed people to insects: hence their reverence of insects, depicted on the pottery as flies dancing around prisoners and skeletons. What, then, about the severed ankles and wrists of the skeletons they had also unearthed in Huaca D?

A few days ago Jess had sent another sample of these bones to Steve Venturi. Now she waited for his second verdict. If Venturi confirmed that her hunch was right on the amputations, then the clues began to form a narrative. But what narrative, precisely?

Jess pulled out her cellphone, and squinted at the little screen, in the dusty light, wondering idly when Steve would ring, or maybe Dan. But naturally there was no signal, not out here in the wilderness. She wouldn’t be disturbed by good or bad news, by any news at all, for the next few hours.

This was good, maybe. Fewer distractions meant she could concentrate on the task at hand: recording the murals.

Another scramble, up another flight of mud-brick steps, brought Jess to the Second Enclosure, where another large mural showed the concluding rites of the sacrifice ceremony.

Finding an angle to best catch the light, she took her photos of the row of prisoners, painted in vivid red. But the sea-wind was brisk up here on the higher levels and it kicked at her hair, which fluttered over the lens. Irritatedly she pushed her hair back, and considered what she was seeing.

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