Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

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.

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.’