The Babylon Rite

by Tom Knox

  The wind dropped, even as her thoughts raced. Could this be it? Could this be the answer: the way in to the Moche culture, to their mysterious worship? Maybe this humble bone was a symbolic and universal key.

  The bone was positioned exactly where the mural showed an ankle, of a priest. Why? Perhaps because the bone was a deliberate clue. It was emblematic advice to anyone who saw the Moche murals of the Sorcerer: Look, all this is true. All this happens. We really do all of this.

  She nearly dropped the camera. Jess stared, appalled, at her own trembling hand. She definitely needed sugar.

  Snatching up her stuff, she paced across the patio, past the puma room, past the murals; she took the muddy steps as fast as she could, and then at last she was on the flats and running to the Hilux. Jumping in, she reached straight for her soda, guzzled it and waited for the glucose to correct her blood sugar.

  But as she sat back in relief, a terrible, long-buried shard of memory finally worked its way to the surface of her mind.

  She remembered her dad before he died. The way his hands used to shake.

  15

  The Inner Circle, Regent’s Park, London

  It was DCI Ibsen’s second visit to the scene of crime – if it was a crime – but he still had to fortify himself. Indeed, as he passed the fluttering police tape and walked towards the off-white SOC tent which entirely covered the car, he experience a greater, nauseating apprehension than he had during his first visit to the scene, six hours before.

  The Mini was parked along the Inner Circle, in the middle of Regent’s Park. Ibsen glanced left and right as he approached the tent.

  Down there was the boating lake, and the bandstand. A row of bare willows looked stark against the chilly grey waters and the overcast sky. On the other side of the road lay the Regent’s Park open-air theatre, Queen Mary’s Rose Gardens, flower beds and fountains, and empty footpaths making sad diagonals across the lawns.

  On a winter’s night, like last night – which was when the incident must have occurred – this was definitely a good place to choose: if you wanted somewhere very quiet, in central London, to slice off your own head with a chainsaw.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Constable.’

  The uniformed man quickly stooped and unzipped the entrance, allowing Ibsen inside.

  It was even colder within the tent than without. Letting his eyes adjust to the soft, suffused daylight inside, Ibsen leaned and gazed through the driver’s side window of the car.

  The cadaver was still here, though it was about to be moved: a headless corpse sitting in the front seat. The clothed body was in rigor mortis, and it was also twisted, tormented, locked in a shouting grimace from the sheer stunning pain induced by auto-decapitation.

  The head had tumbled off the body onto the passenger seat. It lay there on its side, gory with dried blood, looking unreal. It looked, momentarily to Ibsen, like a fake head from some execution scene in a TV series about the Tudors; a ludicrous wax head in a basket.

  Behold the head of a traitor.

  And yet: it all was too horribly real. The guy really had parked here, and got out his chainsaw, and sawn his own head off. The noise must have been tremendous, Ibsen surmised: the buzz of the saw, the grinding of steel on bone, the glottal scream of reflexive pain, the final rasp of blood-frothed air from the severed windpipe, and then … nothing. Did the chainsaw keep buzzing until it ran out of fuel? Presumably so. It had already been removed from the stiff cold grasping fingers – and taken away by Forensics.

  They now knew the chainsaw was an unusual, pricey model, a Unifire Rescue Saw, stocked by only one shop in London, and they consequently already knew it had been bought just yesterday, by the victim, the suicide: Patrick Klemmer.

  Leaning close to the driver’s side window – for some reason the only window not liberally splashed with blood – Ibsen stared in at the headless body.

  What did they already know of Patrick Klemmer?

  He was a rich kid. Another very rich kid. Twenty-seven years old, heir to a large fortune; his retail billionaire German father had gifted him a two-million-pound flat in London – just across the park, in Cumberland Terrace.

  In other words, it seemed that young Patrick was, like Nikolai Kerensky, a European playboy: Patrick Klemmer’s particular thing was sex parties. He organized them for a living, as much as he needed a living: themed orgies and swinging sex parties – erotic masques for bored, affluent young Londoners, people perhaps not unlike himself. The business, for all its scandalous nature, was a proper business: their initial investigations showed Patrick Klemmer was doing well, making a good profit.

  So why had he killed himself?

  Ibsen marvelled once more at the flamboyant spray of arterial blood across the windscreen. And the blood hadn’t just spattered the windscreen, it had sprayed the passenger window, the ceiling, the rear seats. There was one elegant Art Nouveau signature of blood even on the rear window.

  Enough. Ibsen checked his watch. Pathology would be here to take away the body in a few minutes. He had just wanted to see it one more time.

  Unzipping the tent, the DCI stepped out into the damp and chilly December air and breathed, deep and longing.

  The constable on duty gave him a sympathetic nod. ‘Doesn’t get any prettier, does it, sir?’

  ‘No,’ Ibsen agreed. ‘It certainly does not.’

  ‘Any idea why, sir? I mean, like, a chainsaw?’

  Ibsen gazed at a pair of grey Canada geese flapping laboriously across the blank white sky. ‘If you wanted to cut your head off, that’s virtually the only way to do it. A chainsaw, with one bold movement. Either that or fall onto the saw. Almost any other method and you lose consciousness, or blood, too quickly, before you can complete the task. Some people have managed to guillotine themselves, under falling sash windows with blades attached, for instance, but that’s very complex and difficult. Or you could hang yourself from too high a drop, and wrench the head off, but that needs mathematical precision, the drop and bodyweight and so forth.’

  ‘Er, yes, I see, sir.’

  ‘Sorry. A surplus of information?’

  ‘Not at all, sir.’

  Ibsen smiled, politely. ‘Please ask Path to give me a call when they get here. I’m going over to Klemmer’s flat now, Cumberland Terrace.’

  ‘I can get Jim to give you a lift, sir, he’s just—’

  ‘No bother, Constable. It’s a walk in the park.’

  Ibsen turned and made his way through a gate into Queen Mary’s Gardens. The fountains had been switched off. A few couples patrolled the deserted flower beds. The darkening afternoon was dank and uninviting – even without the knowledge that there was a headless corpse somewhere in the vicinity.

  As he walked, a strange but sudden sense of dread made Ibsen hurry along in his polished Barker brogues. It was odd. Most odd. As if he was being pursued by something he could not properly see. He actually glanced behind, into the twilight, as if he expected to see – to see – to see what?

  This was foolish. Ibsen cogitated as he paced. Solvitur ambulando. Solve it by walking. He often found walking good for working out puzzles. These deaths, they had to be linked: two rich kids, two bizarre and brutal suicides with an underlying motif of sexuality. But: what, and how, and why?

  Perhaps the young man’s apartment would yield the answer. Ibsen was nearly there: ten minutes’ brisk strolling had brought him to the Outer Circle; crossing the road brought him to the impressive entrance of Cumberland Terrace, another of the vast white-pillared mock-palaces that comprised the Nash Terraces, two-hundred-year-old Regency apartment blocks overlooking the park. A beautiful and very expensive place to live.

  Klemmer’s big, first-floor flat was busy with activity: three policemen were in the kitchen, another in the master bedroom. But Ibsen walked straight into the luxuriantly modernist sitting room and gazed at the view from the vast, floor-to-ceiling sash windows.

  The vista stretched right across the Regen
t’s Park, to the minaret of the Regent’s Park mosque, the green heights of Primrose Hill, and to the south, the millionaire townhouses of Marylebone, where the houselights were flickering on, rich and yellow.

  Imagine living with a view like this, every day. This kid had everything. Youth, brains, education, all the money he could need, even a thriving business. And this magnificent home.

  Why kill yourself?

  ‘Sir.’

  Ibsen swivelled. It was DS Larkham.

  ‘I was about to call, sir. You should take a look at this. I’ve been going through Klemmer’s laptop. His pictures.’

  Ibsen followed his eager junior into a large bedroom. He glanced at the wardrobes: wall to wall. A beautiful suit, just returned from the dry cleaners, judging by the clear plastic wrap, hung from one door. He couldn’t help wondering as to the exact make of the suit. It looked properly canvassed, with hand-sewn buttonholes, and real hornbutton cuffs. Savile Row, probably. Gieves & Hawkes perhaps?

  And then he realized something much more interesting. Why would someone intent on suicide collect a beautiful bespoke suit from the dry cleaners? So that he could look smart at his own funeral?

  This didn’t fit. The suicide was apparently an impulse. Yet the man had bought a chainsaw, so it wasn’t an impulse. Yet it must have been an impulse, otherwise why the suit? Was it, therefore, truly a suicide?

  ‘Sir. Here we go—’

  Another computer, another batch of files: this time photos.

  Briskly, Larkham paged through the snaps.

  ‘They’re from his sex parties, I’m guessing,’ Larkham explained. ‘But there’s no full-on scenes. Just people drinking and laughing, the odd kissing couple. Maybe he needed photos like this for his website, to attract punters.’

  ‘So what’s the interest for us?’

  ‘Here.’

  Larkham gestured. Ibsen tilted the laptop to get a proper look. This latest photo was slightly different from the others. It showed a happy group of partygoers sitting around a dining table. They were lifting up champagne glasses and toasting themselves; they looked drunk and young and exuberant.

  ‘I still don’t see it.’

  ‘Bloke at the far end.’

  The DCI made a second pass. The photo had obviously been taken at the end of a big boozy dinner. There was a slight sense of dishevelment. The men had removed their dinner jackets, and rolled up their white sleeves. The tall, faintly smiling man at the far end had what looked like tattoos on his arms. Ibsen felt the buzz, at once.

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘Yep. And it’s a high-res shot, and I already enlarged the tatts. Look.’

  Larkham clicked the photo editor and the enlarged section of the photo offered up the crucial detail: the man’s tattoos comprised a pair of elaborate and grinning skulls.

  Ibsen gestured intently at the photo. ‘Trace all these people. All of them. We need to speak to every single person. They must know something.’ He paused. ‘And they might not realize what danger they are in.’

  Larkham nodded and pulled out his phone. DCI Ibsen walked, pensively, to the large windows and gazed out over the dark, twilit park. Once again he got the strange, foolish, infantile sense that something dreadful was out there. Watching.

  16

  Lothian & Borders Police Headquarters, Edinburgh

  Nina was dressed again in black: she had come straight from her father’s funeral.

  Adam hadn’t had a chance to ask her how it went, whether or not she had spoken with her stepmother. He had been sitting in his overheated hotel room, digesting an overcooked hotel breakfast, wondering quite what to do, thinking about the previous night’s events in Archie McLintock’s flat when he had got a call from Nina. I’m going to see the police again, try and get some sense out of them. After the funeral. Will you come with me?

  Then he’d know at once what to do: help her. He wanted to help her as much as he wanted to get at the root of this peculiar, and now menacing, situation.

  But the police – as Nina had lucidly predicted when they walked into the stumpy, redbrick, 1970s-style divisional headquarters of the local cops – were somewhat obstructive, or at least very obviously uninterested.

  The Detective Chief Inspector, who gloried in the splendidly Italo-Scottish name of Lorna Pizzuto, had practically rolled her eyes at her colleague as Nina and Adam had walked through the door. As if to say: here she comes again, the nutter who thinks her dad was murdered.

  And now Adam sat in his plastic police chair, feeling uncomfortable.

  Nina repeated her earlier question. ‘Have you examined the car? Properly?’

  Detective Pizzuto put a hand to her forehead as if she was warding off a migraine. ‘Yes, Miss McLintock. As we told you last Tuesday, and indeed last Wednesday, we have taken it apart, piece by piece. There is absolutely no evidence of any tampering, the car was almost new, the wrapping was barely off. The brakes were perfectly functional.’

  Nina leapt on this statement, her green eyes fierce. ‘But what about that? A new car? How did he afford a new car?’

  Lorna Pizzuto sighed. ‘That is not our proper concern, Miss McLintock. We can’t investigate a man’s entire life and finances, no matter how tragic his demise, if we have no due cause. We have neither the manpower nor the remit.’

  Adam felt the need to say something. He was starting to feel sympathy for the police – and that was unjustified by the facts. The man with the tattoos. The break-in at the flat. A secret that gets you killed.

  ‘But Detective, you now have direct evidence of an intruder? Last night?’

  ‘Yes. And we’ll investigate this. But, I have to say, burglaries like this, are not exactly unknown.’

  Adam rejected this. ‘It’s just another crime? How can you be so dismissive?’

  Pizzuto interrupted. ‘Because you’re not listening, Mr Blackwood. These particular burglaries are horribly common. What I mean is: criminals actually wait for the obituaries. That’s how it goes. You can surely imagine it, some thief reads about the death of Miss McLintock’s father in the papers. Then he thinks: ah, look at this, Morningside, rich district, well-known author, just died, there’ll be money, antiques, distracted relatives, or even a nice empty home, so easy to crack. It’s cruel but true.’

  ‘But the description? The man I saw?’

  ‘The tattoos? It sounds like some local lowlife. We’re on it. We will, however—’ her direct and honest gaze switched to Nina, ‘—have to talk to Rosalind McLintock, the householder. She – your stepmother – will need to know that you both were, ah, shall we say, clandestinely on her property?’

  Nina waved a hand at the idea, ‘S’all right. I told her. Go ahead and talk to her. Knock yourselves out.’

  The detective permitted herself the faintest smile. ‘We will.’

  There was another hiatus. Adam seized the moment to ask his own questions, again. ‘What about the previous break-in, the one we heard about? The stealing of the notebooks?’

  The junior policeman spoke up, for the first time. ‘It wasn’t reported.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘To be frank, we don’t know it even happened.’

  ‘But the landlady, what’s her name … Sophie Walker. She said Archibald was freaked. Scared.’

  ‘Yes,’ the junior policeman persisted calmly. ‘But it’s just hearsay. She heard it from him. He didn’t report a break-in, so we have no evidence of a break-in. And of course, unfortunately, we can’t interview him now.’

  Adam felt as if he was trapped in a maze of impermeable logic. Everything the police were saying was entirely reasonable and rational. Yet he felt frustrated. But maybe his frustration was illogical: maybe he was the irrational person here. Him, and Nina?

  Pizzuto took over. ‘Again, we will ask Rosalind McLintock if she knows anything about the theft of,’ her eyebrows drifted upwards, by a sarcastic fraction, ‘the theft of these “notebooks”, and this “break-in”.’

  �
�Don’t bother.’ Nina spat the words. ‘I asked her today. Again. Says she knows nothing.’

  The two police officers exchanged a wearied frown.

  Adam had one last go, trying to remember his training in news journalism in Sydney. Always ask the obvious questions. Get straight to the heart of the matter.

  ‘He seemed happy that day. In Rosslyn. Why would he kill himself?’

  Pizzuto eyed Adam. ‘You mean he was smiling? Cheerful?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘But you said yourself, Mr Blackwood, he was also behaving “oddly”. Saying strange things. No?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘We have it on tape. “He seemed a little unbalanced, he was behaving oddly”. I’m sorry to be so brutal but these are your words.’

  ‘So why, then? Why did he do it?’

  The detective sighed. ‘Please. As you must know, that’s not our territory. You know that, as a journalist. And if I may explain something, because you might be unaware, as an Australian, Britain has differing legal systems. Remember you are in Scotland, not England. There is no coroner here. We have something roughly similar: a procurator fiscal. She, or he, will gather evidence. If anomalies or grounds for further investigation are found there may be a Fatal Accident Inquiry, where these issues can be aired. But, I have to say,’ she turned to Nina, giving her an expression of genuine sympathy ‘if you want my honest opinion, and I feel you deserve it, Miss McLintock – then there probably won’t be an FAI. Why? Because this was a suicide. All the evidence points that way.’ She raised a conspicuously wedding-ringed hand, preventing Nina from interrupting, and continued. ‘I know this is distressing, Miss McLintock. No relative, and certainly no child, wishes to hear that their parent may have killed themselves. Suicide is a tragedy for the survivors. You will have feelings of deep guilt and confusion, as well as grief. Guilt that you didn’t spot the clues as to his moods, guilt that you didn’t do something. You feel helpless. It is only natural to hope, paradoxically, for a different explanation. Murder is easier to deal with, emotionally, for close relatives, than suicide, however odd that sounds. I’ve seen it before. But, again, all the evidence we have – and I am a fairly experienced police officer – tells me this was a suicide. I am sorry. But there it is.’