Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

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 Regent’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 amp; 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.

Lothian amp; 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?’