The Babylon Rite

by Tom Knox

  ‘It’s ghastly,’ was all she could say. ‘Ghastly. Just … just ghastly.’ Her flashlight played across the hideous space and picked out a different bone, a larger, cruder, horsier skull. Just visible in the morbid shadows at the far corner of the antechamber. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A llama head.’ Dan’s voice expressed a shrug. ‘There are other llama remains all around. Jay thinks they probably had a feast. As they did it. Eating llama as they killed the children.’

  ‘Horrible.’

  ‘Possibly they played music as they did it. Feasting and music, and killing their children.’

  ‘How many corpses?’

  ‘Eighty.’

  Jess swayed in the darkness. The orphanage of sleeping bones stared back at her, reproachfully. A gassed Montessori; a tiny Holocaust school for infants. It was worse than Jessica’s experience of Calcutta. It reminded her of her father in the hospice. The absolute tyranny of death: the oncoming darkness.

  One small skull was tilted to the side, as if the child had tried to sleep as they cut open his chest. Tears sprang to Jessica’s eyes.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Dan touched her gently on the arm.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I heard what happened in Chiclayo, eh, Larry told me on the cell – sweetheart, are you sure?’

  Her headtorch caught his face. She muttered, ‘Really, I’m fine. It was just a ritual, imitative magic, apotropaic theatre.’

  ‘Getting rid of the evil we bring? Ah, yes.’

  The adobe dust hung in the ancient air. She said, ‘They think we are the vampire gringos, Dan. Like in the Inca legends of the conquistadors, the white men who eat the fat of the Peruvians: the pishtacas. And they also think we are digging up demons. Digging up the God Who Mustn’t Be Named, the terrible god we cannot identify. That’s what Larry said.’

  ‘Who knows, they might be right? Eh?’ He gestured across the pitifully neat little remains, the speechless silenced rows of infant skulls and infant femurs, stretching into the darkness of the antechamber. ‘You know, this really is different. Unique. What are we digging up? Mm? What kind of people? Maybe it should be closed down.’

  ‘You should be pleased.’ She tried to sound sincere, even encouraging. ‘This is a tremendous find. As you say, Dan, there probably isn’t anything like it in the literature.’

  ‘Oh, of course. But …’

  ‘But what?’

  He seemed to shiver. ‘Do you mind if we step outside?’

  Stepping outside meant a short, muddy crawl through the zigzagging adobe corridors into the wider tomb which had contained the insect corpses and the coral headdresses, only some of which had been removed. The ground was now carefully latticed with strings, marking out square-metre grids. A low wooden bench had been brought into the tomb, where the archaeologists could have lunch and talk. They both sat down. The great mud tomb was otherwise empty.

  ‘The child sacrifices make nonsense of it all,’ Dan said at last.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The pottery in the antechamber with the children is precisely datable. By style.’

  Jessica was perplexed. ‘And?’

  ‘It is not coincident with any El Niño event. There were no El Niño events which might have, eh, triggered these sacrifices.’

  With his hard hat taken off, Dan’s hair hung lank and lifeless. Jess stared away, embarrassed somehow. She looked along the lamplit tomb, where the princess had been laid out. The princess who cut off her own feet during her life, for no reason at all.

  Dan remained quiet, so Jess reached out a hand and squeezed his hand. ‘Which means your theory is wrong.’

  ‘Yep. Which means that my damn theory is wrong. I’ve been wrong all along. And you were right, Jessica, the Moche were just … they were just …’

  ‘Evil?’

  ‘Perverse. Deviant. Wicked. Psychotic. Maybe downright evil. I don’t know. Whatever you like.’ He ran tired fingers through his hair. ‘I’m not sure I want to do this any more.’

  ‘But you’ve made a major discovery!’ Jess could feel her lover’s anguish. It was unjustified. He was beating himself up too much. ‘Dan, come on. Don’t say this. So you found something that changes the paradigm, but you still found it. You! You did it.’

  ‘And the guy with the gun?’ Dan looked at her. ‘And Casinelli? And now you in Chiclayo? This may embarrass you, Jessica but I don’t care. You know that I have strong feelings for you. Heck, you know I love you. Don’t you? And I know you don’t love me but there it is. And I cannot put you in any more danger.’ He talked over her protests, and continued, ‘Whatever this is we’ve somehow strolled into, we’ve stirred up something we don’t understand. I’m not risking lives any more. And I’m not telling lies any more.’

  Jess caught the word. And examined it. And asked, ‘Lies?’

  He rubbed some dust off his shirt, another hockey team T-shirt now stained red with adobe mud, like unwashable old blood from a horrible fight.

  ‘What lies, Dan?’

  ‘McLintock. When that … the gunman asked me about him, I knew exactly who he meant. I knew very well.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Daniel Kossoy could barely bring himself to look her in the face. But he tried. ‘Archibald McLintock was a Scottish historian. He visited me, very discreetly, in Zana about a year and a half ago. Long before you came. No. Wait.’ He lifted a hand to halt her questions. ‘Wait, Jess. Let me finish. He wanted, eh, to know about the Moche, everything. Especially the ulluchu: he was fascinated by the mythos of the ulluchu, the blood of the gods.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He had a theory. That there isn’t just an unknown Moche god: he thought there was an unknown, ultimate god, underlying all pre-Columbian American cultures. A god that unites the Aztecs and the Hopi and the Moche, the Anasazi, the Chavin, the Nazca and Apache and Cahokians, all of them, which explains why they were all so obsessed with cruelty, and ritualized violence, and sacrifice.’

  ‘So he had a theory, so what, why did you lie?’

  ‘Because he paid me money.’ Dan’s eyes were shining with guilt. ‘At first I said to him I was busy and didn’t have time to talk, which was true, but then he offered me money, and TUMP needed money, and the money was … eh … very good, ten thousand US, enough for a few months’ digging, but I knew it was probably illegal, not going through the proper channels, and anyway McLintock swore me to secrecy, so that was the deal. So I took the cash, and said nothing. And I gave McLintock a secret tour of the site, and told him everything, even the stuff we haven’t published. And then he disappeared, went to Lima, I think. I don’t know.’

  ‘And you never told anyone?’

  An agonized shrug. ‘I never told a soul, Jess. But now you know. You. The person who means more to me than anything. But it’s over now. There’s too much violence. Even this McLintock guy is dead. I have no idea what is happening but I’m gonna hand in my notice, if TUMP want to continue – and they probably will, now we’ve found all these poor kids – then they can appoint someone else. That’s if the police don’t close us down, which they might, because we are disturbing the locals.’ He spat out the words. ‘Damn it all, Jess. Just damn it to hell. I’ll be glad to get out of here, out of this disgusting place.’

  Jessica couldn’t find the words. What to say?

  ‘The irony is,’ Dan went on, ‘I believe McLintock may have been on to something. A proto-god. A uniting mythology, underneath it all. It makes a kind of sense. There are too many sinister similarities between all these American cultures. Something unites them. A god, a hidden god, a terrible god, the god of death and of blood.’ He laid a gentle hand on her arm, lifted her wrist, and kissed her chastely on the hand. ‘There. Jessica Silverton, sweetheart. If you want to be famous, pursue that, make that your thesis. You are young and bold. I am not. I am done. But be careful. Beware the demons of the Moche.’

  He didn’t even say goodbye. He just switched off the tomb lights, turned and crouched, and began the
long crawl back to the huaca entrance, through the dark adobe tunnels.

  Jessica followed him, churning with emotion. Suddenly, and to her own surprise, she wanted to tell Dan about her father, and about the doctor: she had to tell someone, she had to share and divide her anxieties, and he was the only man she could really trust. Maybe she even loved him back; her sudden feelings were stronger than she had suspected. She didn’t want to lose him.

  Strapping her hard hat on her head, and turning on her headtorch, Jess crawled urgently through the narrow, claustrophobic, zigzagging tunnels. Dan was so eager to get out he was twenty metres ahead, a barely glimpsed glow of receding light.

  The final corner turned: and now Dan was gone, he’d stepped out into the fresh air.

  Jessica urged herself on, to confess and to share, but then she halted, her heart straining with fear, in the last yards of darkness, looking towards the grey light outside.

  She could hear voices. Curt, laconic, contemptuous voices. And it wasn’t Larry or Jay. It sounded like the intruder in the lab, the same man, the same accent. The same violent sneering voice.

  This time there was no argument, no preamble, no chance for Dan to escape his fate. The sullen gunshot echoed down the adobe passageway. Another shot confirmed the horror: they had shot Dan! Jess could actually see his body, fallen at the entrance, blood trickling into the dust.

  She gazed, paralysed by terror.

  Then a torchbeam pierced the dark of the passage. Jessica pressed herself flat against the mud walls, trying to hide. A figure was kneeling at the adobe entrance, peering in, pointing the torch up the tunnel.

  ‘Marco! Creo que hay alguien aquí.’ I think someone is in there.

  They were going to search the huaca.

  Jessica began to back up the passage. Crawling with infinite and painful slowness, away from the light.

  But the torchbeam followed her.

  33

  Clapham, south London

  DCI Mark Ibsen gazed around the clean white flat. It was decorated with framed photographs. Some foreign locations, some sombre, monochrome photo portraits.

  ‘It’s been a week now. How is she? Where is she?’

  The young journalist, Adam Blackwood, nodded at a closed door to the left. ‘Sleeping, she sleeps in the day and she doesn’t sleep at night. She cries at night.’

  ‘You?’

  Blackwood waved a hand across a weary face. ‘I’m OK. I sleep on the sofa.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s not like that, Detective. Not me and Nina. Not that this really bloody matters.’

  ‘I understand. And please, call me Mark.’

  Blackwood stood and walked to a bookshelf that was dedicated mainly to bottles of whisky rather than books. He took a bottle of Macallan, unscrewed the top, poured a good measure into a tumbler and glugged down the amber-dark Scotch.

  ‘You?’

  ‘I’m on duty. Your friend is generous.’

  ‘You mean lending me the flat? Or letting me drink his good Scotch?’

  ‘Both.’

  Adam Blackwood shrugged. He poured himself another, and drank some more of that with a faintly trembling hand. ‘Jason’s a photographer, he works with me a lot, very good mate. Ironically, he was working with me the day this all started, in Rosslyn, when all this lunacy began. Now he’s on assignment in Spain at the moment, some story. He said we could stay here as long as we wanted. Obviously we can’t stay at my place in case they … whoever they are … are still looking for us.’

  ‘I’m glad you took my advice. We’ll have cars outside, twenty-four/seven. There’s one on the corner by the Common, another at the junction with Nansen Road.’

  ‘You got the guy, didn’t you? You shot him …’

  ‘We cornered him in Barnsbury Square. An hour later. He went down fighting, refused to surrender. A marksman took him down.’

  ‘But who was he? Why did he want to kill us all?’

  Ibsen looked at Adam’s brave but frightened face. ‘Cammorista.’

  ‘Italian gangs? But he was American, he had an American accent.’

  ‘He’s half-Puerto Rican, brought up in California. But he’s been in Europe a long time, and he had strong links with southern Italian gangs, especially the Camorra, in Calabria, in Italy.’

  ‘And—’

  ‘They are known for people-trafficking: Moldovan girls, Romanian girls, sex slaves, high-class hookers.’

  ‘He was a pimp?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes. Sometimes drugs. High-level crime. He was a definite pro, with psychopathic tendencies. As we have seen.’

  Adam whirled the whisky, his journalistic mind churning through the facts. Computing the puzzle. ‘So that explains the sex. The girls, I mean. Ritter imported whores, poor girls … so that’s how he hooked up with the sex party crowd, the rich kids?’

  Ibsen nodded. ‘Yes. We believe so. Probably he supplied girls for the sex parties, for the millionaire swingers, or what you might call them. That’s how he got an in. To those elite circles.’

  ‘You know, if I wasn’t the bloody target of mad Puerto Rican sex-murderers this would be a bloody great story. Christ, why are they trying to kill us, Mark? Why did he kill Hannah McLintock? Like that?’

  ‘You stumbled on a trail first trodden by Archibald McLintock. He must have discovered something that the gangsters really want. Someone suspects you and Hannah and … sorry, you and Nina. They suspect that you know something. But you don’t. But they don’t know that. It is confusing, taken at face value.’

  ‘Confusing, and terrifying.’ Adam closed his eyes. ‘It was truly terrifying. I pissed myself. I did. I was sitting by that radiator chained to that radiator and I actually wet myself. Isn’t that pathetic?’ He opened his blue eyes and stared, intently, at the wall. ‘He was going to rape and kill Nina, after he raped and killed Hannah. And then he was going to kill me. And there was nothing I could do about it and so I wet myself like a baby. Jesus.’

  Ibsen shook his head, feeling real pity. ‘It’s a reflex. Don’t be ashamed. They say the landing craft at D-Day were like open sewers because of men voiding themselves with fear. It’s only human. You tried to tackle him straightaway, which was brave. Remember that.’

  Ibsen glanced at the window. The December afternoon was falling into darkness outside. Larkham was waiting for him around the corner, parked inconspicuously. They had some more leads to attend to. He had been here two hours and he needed to shift things along. ‘I have to broach a painful topic, Adam. I’m going to tell you something crucial and difficult because …’ He glanced at the door, behind which Nina McLintock was sleeping. ‘Because you are probably closest to Miss McLintock right now.’

  Adam looked at the policeman, thoughtfully, as if he was digesting this: he was the person closest to Nina McLintock. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Hannah McLintock wasn’t raped.’

  Adam stared at him. He shook his head. ‘No way. I can’t believe that … I saw … I heard—’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s true. We have had the report from Pathology.’

  ‘But I watched, Mark. I saw! He dragged her in there at gunpoint. It’s crazy.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Ibsen raised two pacifying hands. ‘I know. It seems impossible, but the evidence is clear. When a woman is raped, especially if it is a very violent rape, there is nearly always bruising around the perineum, and there are usually other marks of similar trauma in the area. We have found none on Miss McLintock’s body. None. It seems she was aroused. And maybe quite receptive. I am sorry.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘We also have evidence that she possibly orgasmed. Forensics have analysed the bedsheets.’

  Adam Blackwood said nothing; then he said, in a slow, bewildered voice, ‘This is horrible. Just … totally … horrible. And yet … some of the noises. It did sound, a little like …’

  ‘A bit like sexual climax?’

  ‘I don’t know. Christ. Yes. No. Maybe …’

 
; ‘I understand your perplexity. But the facts, horrific as they are, are the facts. We also believe – again you must prepare yourself – that she had anal sex. And, even more astonishing, she slashed her own throat. Ritter didn’t do it. She reached around with a cutthroat razor, that he gave her, and she slashed her own throat. The fingerprints and the bloodspatter and the angles of incision all point this way.’

  Adam Blackwood looked down at the ground as if he was going to vomit. ‘But she was plainly terrified. I saw her face, when he dragged her in there. It doesn’t remotely add up.’

  Ibsen sat forward. ‘I have a theory. It’s only, ah, the faintest theory at the moment.’

  ‘Tell me. Tell me something. Anything.’

  ‘We are thinking along these lines: that there is some kind of hypnosis in play, maybe involving a cult. And we think this hypnosis or autosuggestion stimulates the libido.’

  ‘A cult? Hannah McLintock?’

  Ibsen ignored this. ‘It is likely that the hypnosis or trance state leads to autoerotic, or perhaps hypersexual, arousal. But this also leads to a desire for self-mutilation, and the consequent sadomasochistic rush that comes with the pain.’

  ‘You’re talking about those horrible suicides?’

  ‘Yes, the horrible brutality of the suicides. Self-mutilation that generates a rush. A suicide that gives an orgasmic rush, perhaps the ultimate buzz.’

  ‘So this guy Ritter hypnotized her! And she cut herself.’

  Ibsen paused, and shook his head. ‘It’s not as simple as that. Experts say you can’t just hypnotize people into killing themselves in a few minutes. That’s just nonsense, stage hypnosis, rubbish.’

  ‘So …’

  ‘What you can do is inculcate a kind of hypnosis over weeks and months, sessions of it, perhaps in a sacred or ritualized setting, so that this hypnosuggestion can be turned on by a trigger word, some time later, even years later. That is possible. It seems.’

  Adam downed the last of his whisky. ‘I don’t believe it.’