Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

‘What the hell?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. It’s odd, isn’t it? He brought it back from South America last year.’

‘After his trip?’

‘Yeah. Creepy, huh? There’s a couple more in the kitchen. Just as sinister.’

Adam replaced the pot on the desk, took out his phone camera and grabbed a couple of shots of the jar.

‘You think it’s relevant?’

‘No. Yes. Who knows? We need to hurry up-’

‘OK, I’ll do the desk.’

Adam felt like a burglar, or an undercover cop. He got the distinct feeling he should have worn gloves. Leave no prints. If anyone caught them doing this it would be ghastly.

He leaned towards a shelf. As he did, a car passed, very slowly, at the rear of the tenements. Was it parking? The blood ran a tiny bit colder in his veins. Adam stared at the far wall of the study: the wall was mainly glass and gave on to a kind of fire escape, and the darkness of chilly Edinburgh beyond. But the car passed on.

Slowly, he sorted along the shelves, turning over books, and peering in a box of cufflinks, fruitlessly.

Leaning down, he pulled at a drawer. For several minutes he rummaged, but there was nothing here. Just files of paperwork. A cancelled mortgage. A cheque book stub. Then floppy disks, and old cassette tapes with handwritten labels. Arwad. Damascus. Aleppo. A brief history of technology in one drawer, and little else. He’d had enough: he didn’t even know what he was looking for. ‘Nina. This is pointless. How about the living room? Let’s look at it laterally, different kinds of clues?’

She stared in the half-light. Then she nodded; together they prowled out of the study, and walked along the hallway. The door to the dark living room creaked, and squealed. Another dimmer switch was turned. But a quick glance around the room gave Adam no hope they would find anything here, either. It was just another nicely furnished, middle-class living room, with feminine touches.

The large windows were single-glazed: the flat was cold. Adam was glad he had kept his coat on. He wondered how Nina could stand the cold without her anorak: maybe all that alcohol was providing insulation.

She walked across the room to bookshelves stacked with volumes, and began pulling down books, one by one, her small, empty rucksack by her side. Adam paused, and cast another glance at the walls, where abstract art was juxtaposed with framed photos.

There was Archibald as a young man, probably receiving his doctorate: he was wearing a scholastic gown and smiling, and clutching a scroll of paper. Next to it, his wife — or so Adam guessed — photographed as a very young woman: attractive and smiling in some sunlit, foreign place. Deserty beige rocks and red sand formed a background. Taken in Morocco, perhaps?

The rest of the decor similarly implied shared yet divergent interests, in history, art, architecture. More prints of medieval Scotland hung above the scoured and unused fireplace. A lurid Victorian penny dreadful engraving of Sawney Beane, the Scottish cannibal, decorated one far corner.

A final photo of Archie and a woman, also framed, stood aslant on a small antique writing table. Adam walked over and examined the photo. The woman was definitely an older version of the young traveller in Morocco.

‘Your stepmother?’

Nina was furiously paging through books and didn’t hear him, or ignored him.

‘Nina.’ His voice was a hiss. ‘Nina!’

She swivelled, eyes narrow and green in the half-light. ‘What?’

‘Is this her? Your stepmum?’ He lifted up the silver-framed photo.

A grimace. Yes, that was her.

Adam returned the photo carefully to its allotted place.

‘Tell me about her.’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’ Adam shrugged. ‘If you want my help, I need to know as much as possible. Context.’

Their hunt resumed. ‘ Context?’ Nina flung the word down as if she wanted to stamp on its neck. ‘OK. Sure. Ach. I’ll give you context. But while I’m doing it — help me.’

‘How?’

She indicated the wide shelves, the many hundreds of volumes. ‘He used to write in books, annotate them. He was notorious for it. Scrawling on every page, and he had a real fishwife’s scrawl, like Byron! So, see if you can find…’

‘What?’

‘Somethin’. Anything. Please? ’

Adam obeyed. He walked to the shelves and reached and began flicking through the volumes.

‘No.’ Nina hissed, staring at him.

‘Sorry?’

‘Jane Austen? That’ll be hers. He never read fiction, hated it. He used to read novels then throw them down after a chapter and say, It’s all a pack of lies! ’

Adam replaced the paperback of Pride and Prejudice.

Nina was wearing a sad, remembering smile. ‘Look for history and biography. Science. Up here. On the higher shelves. Those are his. ’

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.