The Babylon Rite

by Tom Knox

  ‘But maybe he wasn’t reaching for the phone! Maybe he was reaching for the laptop!’

  The next pause was tinged with sarcasm. ‘Visiting Facebook, sir? As he bled to death?’

  ‘Have you got the laptop there?’

  ‘It’s in the hard evidence bags, sir. Downstairs.’

  ‘Grab it and meet me at the house, Bishops Avenue. Now.’

  ‘But the chain of evidence, sir?’

  ‘We’ll fix it. Bring it!’

  After leaving his son with the neighbours, it took ten minutes for Ibsen to drive his Renault to Bishops Avenue, a brief journey which comprised a vast social ascent.

  The murder mansion was now decorated with so much police tape, fluttering in the cold winter wind, it was as if there was a small regatta taking place inside. Two constables guarded the large double front door.

  ‘DCI?’

  ‘Morning, constable. Wife OK? Kids?’

  Their chat was desultory. Because Ibsen was still working through the logic in his mind. The laptop. The laptop. The sitting room with the big TV and speakers …

  ‘Ah, Larkham!’

  The detective sergeant had arrived, driving himself from New Scotland Yard. As Larkham stepped out of his car he held up a large clear plastic ziplocked bag containing a laptop.

  ‘Let’s go inside.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Another constable opened the door. Ibsen gazed around a marbled hallway which shone with the polished gleam of wealth.

  The victim’s father, the oligarch, was apparently staying in a hotel in town, having flown in from Moscow, shocked and grieving. The man was understandably avoiding all the horrible police work: the house had been gridded and marked and powdered to uninhabitability, and it stank of cyano fumes.

  They stepped into the sitting room.

  A young forensic photographer was just finishing her UV work on the carpets, seeking hidden blood stains. Nods were exchanged as she quit the room, leaving them alone, though the DCI could hear more forensics officers in the kitchen.

  ‘All right, put the laptop on the desk, where it was, and boot it up.’

  With carefully gloved hands Larkham turned the laptop on, and Ibsen bent close to the screen. He sought Kerensky’s last browsing history, for the night he had died. He searched and scrolled, and scrolled a little more. And stopped. ‘There. Look.’

  Larkham leaned, and looked. ‘Jesus. Porn sites! Hundreds of them.’

  ‘Not just that. Look at the timing. All through the evening, Larkham …’ Ibsen checked the times again. ‘All through the evening in question he did this, surfing porn. Gay porn by the look of it. Justusboys. Hungdaddy. Grindr. Then – look – here – at about eleven p.m. He clicked on—’ Ibsen moved closer to the screen, tapping keys with his gloved fingers. ‘Redtube. And it seems like … He watched a movie. Yes. He watched an online porn vid. This one.’

  Another key click.

  The two men watched the little video buffer into life on the laptop. An older man was seducing a younger man in a doctor’s room. It was a patient/doctor porn scenario, a young jock being stripped and ‘examined’. The actors proceeded to vigorous sex, laughing and panting.

  ‘Nice.’ Larkham blushed faintly. ‘So he liked gay porn so much he watched it from about four in the afternoon to eleven p.m. the night he died.’ The young sergeant frowned. ‘He liked it so much that after his killer had forced him to cut off his hand and feet and practically his damn head he dragged himself from the kitchen, to go and watch some more gay porn as he was dying, with the killer standing over him – there. One a.m.! He’s online again. Surfing! What the fuck?’

  ‘There was no killer.’ Ibsen shook his head. ‘See, here, the computer.’ A click of two keys minimized the porn video, and revealed the tray of icons at the bottom of the screen. ‘There’s a wi-fi connection, surely, with those huge speakers. Turn them on.’

  Obediently, Larkham crossed the room and found a remote. With his gloved left hand he pressed a button. A red light at the bottom of the wall-high speakers flicked green, and a wireless symbol turned orange. The faint yet unheard hum of large electrical appliances, switched on and waiting, somehow filled the room.

  ‘Now,’ said Ibsen, ‘let’s play the video he watched at one a.m., as he was lying on the floor, dying. Here it is … on Boundstuds.com. Big Daddy’s Dungeon Party. I’m guessing this is not Teletubbies.’

  The video buffered for two seconds, then burst noisily into life. The sound from the speakers was intensely loud. On the laptop screen a man in a leather coat, a leather mask and a leather jockstrap, was whipping a chained and naked young man, whipping him hard. The boy screamed. The man shouted abuse. The noise filled the entire house – and beyond.

  Ibsen turned the video off.

  Larkham was staring at the speakers. ‘So that’s it. That’s what our witnesses heard? They heard the first porno video at eleven p.m., and the second, the violent one, at one a.m. They didn’t hear any intruder. Sir, that’s it. That explains it!’

  A constable entered the sitting room, breathless and flushed. ‘Is everything OK, sir? We heard – er – strange noises – ah—’

  Larkham laughed quietly. ‘No, it’s fine. It’s all good.’

  The constable looked between the two officers, bemused. ‘OK then … sir. I’ll leave you to it.’

  Ibsen stepped gently over the stained carpet and gazed towards the distant kitchen, speaking quietly. ‘That’s why we have zero evidence for a killer, why we have the victim’s prints on his own murder weapon. Because there was no murderer. There was no murder. It’s autoerotic. It’s a damn suicide. Kerensky watched gay porn all night, for some reason, then for some reason we don’t know this drove him to mutilate himself, so he went into the kitchen – and hacked off his own feet and his right hand.’

  Larkham crossed the room and stood beside his boss. ‘Then he even tries to cut his own throat, but realizes you can’t ’cause it’s virtually impossible. Without a chainsaw. But he is dying, anyway, and he wants a final high. Autoerotic as you say, sir.’

  Ibsen walked back into the middle of the enormous sitting room. ‘Exactly. He drags himself from the kitchen, because he wants that last amazing thrill. And then he reaches the desk. But he’s lying on the floor weak from blood loss. Desperately he reaches up for the laptop, turns it on, smearing blood on the keys. And he watches …’

  ‘Big Daddy’s Dungeon Party.’

  A throbbing silence filled the room. Ibsen expected to feel a rush of vindication, even triumph, but instead he felt only a tinge of disappointment. So: it was not a murder but a bizarre suicide, a truly bizarre suicide. He’d solved it, and probably deprived himself of a fascinating case.

  ‘Er, sir?’ Larkham was pointing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at the screensaver.’

  Ibsen swivelled to look at the computer. As the laptop had been left to its own devices, the screensaver had come on: the entire screen was filled with a single image.

  It was a human skull. The skull was adorned with a crown, and the neckbones were festooned with pink pearl necklaces and a red-and-blue Barcelona football scarf. Lodged between the stained brown teeth of the skull was a fat cigar, trailing smoke.

  Ibsen frowned. ‘That’s a little weird.’

  Larkham shook his head. ‘It’s not just weird, it’s fucked up. This whole thing is totally fu—’

  But he was interrupted. A young woman was standing at the sitting room doorway, in gloves and a paper suit, her frizz of blonde hair just visible under a paper bonnet. She was clutching something in another clear plastic bag.

  Ibsen just about recognized her. ‘Sergeant … Fincham?’

  ‘Yes, sir, Forensics. Are you the SIO?’

  ‘Yep. DCI Ibsen. What’s that?’

  ‘Something you ought to see, maybe.’

  She walked over to him, carefully stepping around the blood stains on the Turkish carpet, and dropped the bag on the desk for him to examine
.

  Inside the plastic bag was a glass. It was smeared red, on one side in particular. The concept thrown up by this made Ibsen’s stomach churn.

  ‘Where and when did you find this?’

  ‘Just now, sir, it had rolled under the cooker.’

  Larkham squinted. ‘Christ, is that blood?’

  The woman nodded. ‘Almost certainly. Human blood. Congealed. Nearly dried. Maybe two days old …?’

  Larkham pointed. ‘Look at the way it’s smeared down one side, like it has been … drunk from. It’s been used.’

  Ibsen didn’t need to have this pointed out. Before he died the victim had drunk a cup of his own blood.

  11

  Tomb 1, Huaca D, Zana, north Peru

  She could hear voices in the redness.

  ‘Jessica. Jessica!’

  Someone was pulling her; sideways. She coughed, and coughed again. Spluttering the dust from her mouth, rejecting it, puking it up.

  ‘Give her the water!’

  Another voice. Larry. She opened her eyes but all she could see was the redness. She shut them tight again. A cold sudden splash of water dragged her back to reality.

  ‘Jessica!’

  It was Dan: she could sense his touch, his fingers wiping the dust from her face with a cloth. Washing out her eyes and her mouth. Again she peered, and this time she saw.

  She was still in the passage chamber at the entrance to Tomb 1 of Huaca D. Beams of light pierced the floating clouds of red dust, beginning to settle: beams cast by the headtorches of her friends and colleagues, Larry, and Dan and Jay, who were staring at her: dark shapes behind the beams.

  ‘Jess. Jessica. Are you OK?’

  Her voice was a dusty croak. ‘I think so – think so, I …’ Faltering, she choked up some phlegm, and spat it on to the passage floor.

  With a shudder, Jess grabbed the cloth from Dan, and started rubbing the dust from her own face, and hands, and her shoulders. Get rid of this filth. She was covered in the stuff, hundreds of pounds of it must have fallen from the vault above, raining down on her head.

  ‘It’s cinnabar powder,’ said Dan. ‘Just cinnabarite.’

  Urgent and repulsed, Jess pared the disgusting powder from under her fingernails. The powder had a definite scent, not quite pungent, but organic, and dirty, and soiling. Like something excreted by insects.

  So it was cinnabar? Powdered ore of red mercury, used on corpses as decoration since the early Stone Age.

  And then the anxiety came rushing back.

  ‘Hold on. Cinnabar is mercury,’ she said, ‘it’s a poison—’

  Dan spoke, his voice softened by affection. ‘Yes, Jess … That’s why you got a dumping. The Moche put it in some of their tombs as a booby trap to ward off graverobbers. It’s triggered by opening the door.’ His headtorch was bobbing as he nodded. ‘It was lethal millennia ago, but it’s inert after so long: really – there is no risk, Jess. It’s just a shock when it happens.’ The headtorch turned, its beam circling like a lighthouse beam in the sea fog, through the floating red dust. ‘Larry?’

  Larry Fielding’s laconic voice emanated from the reddened darkness. ‘Yeah,’ he laughed. ‘It happened to me at Huaca de La Luna in Trujillo. Few years back, when Tronna first sent us here, we were tryin’ to get into Burial 5, you know, the famous one, with the princess.’ A chuckle. ‘Freaked me out. Like being in a little avalanche. But I was fine!’

  ‘But I passed out?’ Jessica said shakily.

  ‘Seems so,’ said Dan. ‘Only a few seconds, though – just the shock, I should think.’ A heavy pause. ‘Look. If you wanna go back we totally understand. Larry can help you, you can come back later.’

  The idea of scuttling back to the TUMP lab for a shower, then waiting, lamely, to hear what they had found, was surreal. And she definitely didn’t want any indulgent treatment from Dan, just because they were having an affair: secret or otherwise. Her defiance resurged. They were still here. At the door to Tomb 1 of Huaca D. What was beyond that door? She urgently wanted to be here the moment it opened, like Lord Carnarvon in the Valley of the Kings, like every explorer in human history, she wanted to say: I was there.

  ‘No way!’ Her voice had regained its edge.

  ‘Go, girl!’ Larry laughed.

  ‘OK, then.’ Dan was deciding. ‘OK, let’s get this done. A few more minutes and we’ll be in the tomb.’ Slowly, he shifted left, in the fetid confines of the dark passage, and began tugging once again at the rock doors to Tomb 1. The slates shifted as he spoke. ‘You know, this is actually a damn good sign. The Moche only used cinnabar as a deterrent for their most precious graves. That’s right, Larry, right? What did you find in the Huaca de la Luna?’

  From down the passage came the reply. ‘Oh, wow. The lot. A main skeleton: the warrior priest, buried with his tumi. Decapitated llamas, that was nice, and tons of grave goods – a headdress made from desert fox bones, this fantastic wooden club …’

  Dan was still working at the door. A faint crack of blackness could be seen – beyond. The tension was thick in the air, replacing the crimson powder of lethal cinnabar. Jessica guessed that all of them were feeling it, the rising tide of excitement.

  Jay spoke up. ‘Didn’t you find blood on that club?’

  The door was definitely opening. Larry replied, ‘Yeah, it was covered in this … like … black stuff. Horrible. We did immunoanalysis. It reacted to human blood antiserum only.’

  The door was opening further. Larry added, ‘It had been used so often, to kill people, ritually, that the blood had soaked through the wood. Like jam in a sponge. Yuk.’

  They were seconds from entering Tomb 1, Huaca D.

  Dan interrupted, his voice strained by exertion. ‘Looking back, ah, you know, with what we know from Jessica and Steve Venturi, I reckon – ah—’ He was pushing at the door now, and it was opening easily. ‘I reckon that, ah … the mace must have been used in the sacrifice ritual. When they were done drinking blood, they just lined victims up, hit them with the club, bludgeoned the brains away – so all we need to do is know why: who they did it for, who they, ah … worshipped. OK … ah … I think I think we’re in. I think we’re in the tomb!’

  Even the veteran professional calm of Dan Kossoy was affected by the excitement: he said nothing more. But the beam of his headtorch told the story.

  The door was open.

  Jessica breathed the ancient air exhaling from Tomb 1. It seemed to be respirating, releasing a long ancient sigh of relief, or submission. This was nonsense, of course. It was just some ventilation, air blowing through the entire huaca, now that the door was fully open, the desert wind whistling through, probably from their entrance to some further concealed exit – air sucking from one end to the other.

  The smell was tainted with an old putridity, something ancient, and distant, and incorrigibly dead.

  Jess looked around. Was she the only who had noticed this disgusting odour? No. Jay had a sleeve over his mouth. But Dan Kossoy seemed entirely unfazed.

  ‘It’s an unbroken Moche tomb all right. A big one. I know that singularly lovely perfume. Come on. Let’s go see.’

  One by one they crouched and waited to pass through the portal of Tomb 1, Huaca D. Jess felt, for a fraction of a moment, like a Second World War POW in a movie, waiting to use the secret tunnel to escape from the Nazis. The difference was, they were going further into the imprisoning evil.

  The first thing she noticed was the size of the tomb: it was huge, big enough to stand in, and it stretched deep into hidden darkness. Mud steps led down. So that was how it worked. The Moche must have dug down, to make this vast tomb, then built the adobe pyramid over the pit.

  Her feet crunched on something. What? She shone her headtorch down on the floor.

  A thousand glittering corpses sparkled back at her: the desiccated carapaces of beetles, iridescent, still showing their sinisterly gorgeous colours: purples and lurid greens and deep dark blues.

  ‘Skin beetles! Omorgus
suberosus. Flesh-eating Coleoptera. The Moche worshipped them – they worshipped skin beetles and blowflies. We see them on ceramics. Familiars of the unknown god, perhaps? Hmm.’ Dan Kossoy was standing close to Jess as he said this. Very close. The beams of their headtorches crossed like battling swords as they both stared at the floor. She felt his hand reach for her hand and grasp it discreetly, giving a brief, secret, affectionate, reassuring squeeze. Then he pointed. ‘And here, these are fly puparia. Thousands of them. But … my goodness. Look. Here – totally staked out.’

  Jessica gazed. The dead beetles formed a kind of stencil or silhouette: and they surrounded a skeleton of a smallish human figure.

  Protected by the sealed door, the corpse had rotted slowly, free of any covering. The body must have been totally naked for there were no clothes, no adornments, no headdresses or weapons or grave goods: it was stark naked. And it was, as Dan said, staked out.

  Hoops of metal fastened the wrists and ankles to the floor. Worst of all: the skull was screaming, locked in a rasping howl of pain, yellowy teeth grimacing. This person, this adolescent or young woman or man, had died in agony.

  ‘Dan!’ It was Jay, calling. ‘Dan, come and see!’

  They ran over. Another skeleton was staked to the floor along the side of the tomb, near the adobe wall.

  ‘Another girl, it looks like.’ Jay said. ‘No feet. Chopped off. Must be a human sacrifice, right? And here. Birds? Avian skulls. Vultures – must be vultures.’

  Jessica knelt by the skeleton. It was adorned with a necklace of some sort; she shone her flashlight. The necklace was maybe copper, and decorated with small, symbolic commas embossed into the metal. She had seen these before, many times, in Moche art. They were called ulluchus. No one truly knew what they were: stylized drops of blood, maybe; perhaps blood of the primary deity.

  But who was the god who demanded these strange rites? What kind of ancient faith demanded this horror?

  ‘Dan!’ Another shout across the tomb. This time it was Larry.