Tom Knox - The Babylon rite

The image of the girl in the wardrobe returned to him, uninvited. The pure horror. He needed to work. Deftly, Ibsen Googled the words ‘death cult’. A number of rock bands topped the screen. Southern Death Cult. Monolith Death Cult. Horizon Death Cult. Lots and lots of death cult metal bands. This was useless. He turned and asked his junior a question.

‘Larkham. Do you ever think of jumping under a train?’

The answering silence was amplified by the muffling snow. Eventually Larkham shrugged and said, ‘Not really, no. Except when I am changing my ninety-eighth nappy of the day. Why d’you ask?’

‘I’m just thinking about suicide — as a concept. I wonder if we are all capable of it at some time or other.’

A solitary pedestrian scrunched past the parked police car. The man was dressed as for an Arctic walk to a remote Inuit village.

Larkham spoke up again: ‘Actually, sir, there was this one…’ He scratched his nose: the universal body language of uncertainty.

‘Go on?’

‘I remember, when I was a kid, my grandfather had this old well in his back garden. It was very deep and mysterious, and kind of scary. We used to drop stones and coins down it when we were kids, me and my sisters, listening for the plop when it hit the water. Took ages. And I used to have nightmares about that scary old well. About falling down it and not being able to get back up. And yet… sometimes I think a bit of me wanted to fall down the well. Just to know what it was like, how horrible it would be, never able to get back up. I guess that may be the same thing? Some kind of internal death wish? Bit ghoulish!’

Ibsen gazed at his driver. ‘Yes,’ His voice was low. ‘Yes, it is. A bit ghoulish. But interesting.’

The car was quiet. London was quiet. Quietened by the ward sister of snow, hushing everyone, tucking them all up in stiff white quilts, then turning off the lights.

He glanced at his radio, as if looking at it would make it crackle into life. Nothing. Kilo team were drawing a blank. Larkham was lost out there, in the icy wastes of failed police work, trudging towards the North Pole of pointlessness.

He switched on his iPad again. But Larkham was sighing impatiently. Ibsen glanced across.

‘Everything OK?’

‘I could slaughter a coffee.’

‘So why not go and get a coffee?’

‘You always get to the heart of the matter, sir. That’s why I respect you so much.’

‘Ditto your sarcasm, Larkham. I’ll have an espresso.’

Larkham laughed, and climbed out; the car door slammed shut behind him. Ibsen bent to his iPad and typed ‘Islington cult’. Of course he drew a zero. ‘Islington murders’ was equally unfruitful, not least because Detective Chief Inspector Ibsen already knew all the murders in Islington.

‘Islington suicides’ seemed just as unproductive. But Ibsen read the citations anyway. There were a lot of suicides. An old lady in a care home. A kid with some pills. Not rich, just a kid. Then a Scottish academic with Islington relatives, who drove into a wall.

This Scottish guy even had a Facebook page, cached; the page itself had been deleted. Ibsen scanned the contents and one of the photos struck him, but he wasn’t sure why. It was just a photo. And so he moved on, and glanced at some more examples. And then he stopped.

The sudden, retroactive realization impaled Ibsen.

There was something about that photo. Something he had seen, subliminally maybe. What was it? Quickly he paged back through his history to the cached Facebook page and read the text carefully.

Archibald McLintock had driven himself into a wall. The daughters thought it was not suicide. They had set up the Facebook page. They were appealing for information. Their father was an elderly but distinguished historian who had no cause to blah blah.

Now Ibsen went to the Contacts. One daughter was called Hannah McLintock. She was an ‘economist, living in Islington’. The Facebook page gave no other info, and no phone numbers, just an email address. So what was it about this photo that had so struck him?

With a flick of two fingers he enlarged the photo. It showed the suicide victim, the late Archibald McLintock, sitting in some kind of study. It was a portrait of a scholar in his work room: behind him were shelves and cases full of old books, in front of him was a big, handsome desk. It was a very posed photo, presumably a publicity shot, for the jacket cover of the guy’s own history book, maybe.

Ibsen looked closer. What was that? On the desk?

Another protraction of two fingers enlarged the photo further.

There. Sitting on the desk, was a very strange pot. The strange, old-looking pot showed a man in a loincloth kneeling at an altar.

Both of his feet had been cut off.

Ibsen swore out loud, cursing himself for allowing Larkham to wander off. This was it; this was it. They needed to get going now, right this minute, not wait around as they did with Imogen Fitzsimmons. And they needed to go in hard, mob-handed, and with armed response: Ritter was very dangerous.

But finding Hannah McLintock could take hours.

Thornhill Crescent, Islington, London

Adam sensed the danger immediately. He leapt from his stool and ran to the door; just as the dark, leather-coated man kicked it with a boot-heel.

Adam’s fist connected with a chin, satisfyingly; the man reeled back; Adam punched again — but this time his fist missed, and instead the hard butt of a pistol cracked Adam’s head, sending him spinning. And then, with great speed, the intruder twirled the gun and pressed it hard into Adam’s stomach. Ready to shoot. Adam froze.

‘Good move, mate, very sensible. Back off.’ The man spoke, in an American accent. He eyed Nina in the semi-dark. ‘Same goes for you. Back the fuck off, bitch.’ His gaze switched between them. ‘So we’re all here. Very good. Both of the girls, both of the McLintocks. And you, the brawling Aussie. Adam Blackwood, right? My name’s Ritter. Not that it’s going to help you now, mate. Get over there, join the girls. And put all your fucking cellphones on the counter. Right now. Or,’ he angled the muzzle of the gun at Hannah, ‘I will put my gun in her cunt. And shoot.’

The phones clattered on to the counter.

Ritter briskly filled a sink with water, and chucked the phones in the liquid. Then he commanded, ‘Upstairs. Let’s have ourselves a little downtime. A meeting. So we can share. Condemned Fuckers Anonymous. Hi, I’m Adam and I’m about to die. Hello, Adam. Hello, Tony.’

His pistol pursued them up the stairs into a green painted sitting room. Leather couches, some not-too-abstract art.

‘Typical. No proper fucking chairs. The fucking English bourgeoisie.’ Ritter sighed.

Adam watched, waiting for a moment to fight, it could be the last chance. Ritter’s thirty-something face was darkish. And he was big. A fleck of foam silvered at the corner of his mouth as if he had the lips of a rambling coke addict. But he did not seem high; eager, alert and bright-eyed, but not high. He seemed wary, wised up, lean, ruthless.

Ritter produced three sets of handcuffs from a pocket of his capacious leather coat. Hannah, Adam and Nina backed into the corner. Adam edged further, as discreetly as he could, to the window.

‘Don’t scream out of the window. Or I will hurt your friends. Very, very badly.’

Hannah was close to crying, her face a crumpling mask of failing courage. Folding on itself, into tears. Nina was impressively blank. Adam admired her display of courage, even as he realized what appalling danger they were in: this man wouldn’t have let his name slip unless he aimed to kill them all, tonight. Indeed, Ritter was taunting them: evidently enjoying the horror.