Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

‘The gun was a Glock,’ said Jess. And three male faces turned her way. ‘My uncle is a gun nut. In Utah, I used to vacation on his ranch. A Glock’s a pricey gun for a local criminal. Glock 23, 45-mil, five hundred bucks minimum.’

Jay gestured in frustration. ‘Which means?’

‘I don’t know either!’ Jessica sighed. ‘But this wasn’t some average cane farmer with a grudge. Where would they get a smart gun like that? How?’

Larry suggested, ‘A haquero, then, like I said?’

Dan answered. ‘He wasn’t interested in new finds, new tombs. He just kept asking, me the same f- the same damn questions. Endlessly. With that gun.’

‘What questions?’

‘What we were doing here. What we’d found, stuff like that…’

Jess walked around the lab, pacing, thinking, thinking hard; she paused by the first large jar, and turned. ‘He was asking you about a man. Wasn’t he? I overheard it.’

‘Did he? Yes. Yes, maybe he did. I was so damn scared. But he did

… yes, he did.’

‘Did this guy have a name?’

‘Something odd. Something strange. Yes. I remember: Archibald McLintock. ’

‘Who?’

‘ McLintock.’ Dan repeated. ‘Ar-chi-bald Mc-Lin-tock. He said it precisely. What did I know about… Archibald McLintock. Such an odd name — that’s all.’

Jay looked at Jess and at Larry. ‘So who the fuck is that?’

Larry snorted. ‘Does it matter? Someone just tried to kill Dan.’

Jessica raised a hand. ‘I think it matters, I think it matters a lot. It’s gotta be linked.’

‘To what?’ Larry’s voice was verging on angry. ‘Jess, what the hell are you talking about?’

‘The truck. In Trujillo. That slammed into the garage.’

‘Eh?’

Her voice was almost as passionate his now. ‘Think about it. First an explosion, then a gunman. Can it really be coincidence? All this violence.’

‘Sorry, Jess, no idea.’

‘ Maybe, in Trujillo, it wasn’t the garage they were aiming for. Maybe it was Pablo himself, Pablo and the museum. Maybe someone is hunting down people who are connected with the Moche.’

‘Where’s the evidence?’

Jessica insisted, ‘I remember him saying, Pablo, the day it happened, that he’d had people in the museum — asking questions. He said they were… unpleasant people. Knowing Pablo, they could have had guns and he would call them “unpleasant” — isn’t that just a bit strange? And now this. Here. A gunman.’

A silence. Dan looked at her long and hard. ‘So you reckon that whoever they are, they are coming for anyone — anyone who knows too much about the Moche? ’

‘Yes. I do.’

The only sound in the room was the buzz of the fridges. Containing the smiling Moche skulls in their soft collars of yellow foam.

Mornington Terrace, Camden Town, London

DCI Mark Ibsen was standing in the scruffy beer garden of a large London pub near Regent’s Park. It was a frigid afternoon in mid-December; the beer garden was deserted. But he wasn’t here to drink, he was here to watch.

Larkham came into the garden with a couple of plastic coffee cups. He handed one over to his boss, then sipped from his own cappuccino.

Ibsen stayed silent, and staring. Larkham followed his superior officer’s gaze: which was directed over the wall of the beer garden, to the curtained sash windows of 74B, Delancey Street, a first-floor flat in a long, early Victorian terrace, which diagonally faced this pub across the road, and also the deep railway tracks that led down to Euston Station.

Larkham frowned, and swallowed his coffee. ‘What do you think, then, sir? We haven’t got a warrant yet.’

‘I know.’

‘Not that always stopped you in the past.’

Ibsen chuckled; but his mood was as sour and cold as the day. They were tracking down all the people they had seen in the photo with the tattooed man. Most of them had been located: more rich kids, all with the same boring story. I can’t remember that guy. He was probably a friend of Patrick Klemmer. No, I don’t know anything else.

Only a couple of people in the photo were yet to be traced and interviewed. And one of them was Imogen Fitzsimmons, twenty-five years old, an aspiring TV researcher, who lived here in Delancey Street. She was known as a party girl; she was a purposeful socializer. Yet she hadn’t been seen for two days. No one knew where she was; she hadn’t called in sick to work; she did not have a holiday scheduled and she had missed several professional and social engagements. Her close friends said she was maybe out of town with a secret boyfriend — could that be the tattooed man?

Ibsen stamped his feet against the cold, staring at the closed and curtained windows of 74B. ‘Larkham. Tell me again about the secret boyfriend. How secret? If he’s secret how come her pals all know about him?’

Larkham opened his notebook. ‘They don’t know for sure. Could be they’re just guessing. Her best friend is Lucinda Effingham, also in the photo. We interviewed her this afternoon. Effingham told me that in recent weeks,’ Larkham tilted the notebook to read better, ‘“Imogen had been acting strangely. Going off in the evening, not telling me where. We all reckoned she might be having an affair, she seemed happy, but she was furtive, and evasive. We speculated that she maybe met a married man at work.”’

Larkham closed the notebook. Ibsen tasted some of the rapidly cooling coffee, and put the cup down on the beer garden table. ‘Neighbours not seen or heard anything?’

‘Not in two days.’

‘Her phones…?’

‘Going unanswered. Landline and mobile. We will have a warrant by tomorrow. The landlord has keys and we can pick them up tomorrow morning.’

DCI Ibsen scowled. ‘No. This is wrong. This is giving me the collywobbles, Larkham. I think it’s the damn curtains.’

‘Sir?’

‘They are just too bloody shut. Look at them.’

‘Too… shut… sir?’

‘Yes, too bloody shut. When you go away for a weekend you don’t close curtains with such emphatic exactitude, do you? I think someone is in there, someone who wants to be in the dark.’

‘But-’

‘Come on — sod the warrant. This is a life-threatening situation. Call for some back-up.’

For the third time that day they asked the downstairs neighbours at 74 to open the external door, profusely apologizing as they did.

Larkham and Ibsen ran up the communal stairs to the flat on the first floor. 74B. They paused on the communal landing.

‘Armed response will be here in a few minutes-’

‘I don’t think she’s going to be armed, Larkham.’

Ibsen stepped back and vigorously kicked at the door; it nearly gave at the first attempt; Larkham kicked it a second time and the door swung open without protest, the lock cleanly snapped.

The flat was black as midnight, made very deliberately dark. And yes, Ibsen could sense a human presence: someone was either here or had been here, very recently. A slightly poisonous fragrance — of something ominous — hung in the stifled air.

Larkham punched the lights on and they gazed around.

The first thing they saw was the blood on the hallway floor, and on the opposite wall. Little seasonings of blood, like sprinkled cinnamon: blood spatter from a serious wound.

‘Jesus,’ said Larkham.

There was more blood in the living room: it was smeared on a white china mug, daubed in childish fingerprints on a magazine, and on a TV remote. Most bizarre was a mouth-shaped splodge of blood on a mirror at head height; as if someone wearing far too much scarlet lipstick had kissed the glass.

‘So,’ said Ibsen, ‘where is she? The blood is contained. She’s in the flat. She must be. She’s still here-’