Tom Knox: The Babylon rite

‘ Agua, sin gas, por favor? ’ Jess said to the tired woman who approached, her hand was scarred with an old burn. The woman nodded, loped off behind a counter, and returned with a bottle of mineral water. And a chipped glass. A chalkboard on the wall advertised ceviche, the national dish: raw fish. Jess shuddered. What might that be like out here in the desert? Rancid, rotten, decomposing: six days of dysentery…

Her cellphone rang. Daniel, again. Click. ‘Jess, you’re OK?’

‘Dan, I’m fine! You don’t have to keep ringing me — I mean, I’m glad you do but I’m fine.’

‘Where are you now?’

Jess squinted out of the little window, at the thundering fishmeal trucks heading Lima-wards. ‘Pan-American, about sixty klicks south of Chiclayo. I’ll be in Zana in an hour.’

‘OK. That’s good. Great. So, uh, do they know any more about the truck? The driver?’

‘No, not really.’ Jess drank a cold gulp of the water, refreshing the memory she would prefer to leave undisturbed. ‘The cops think, now, it may have been just some guy with a grudge. Apparently he was sacked by Texaco a week before, he was working off his notice. No one really knows. But Pablo paid the price.’

A sad brief silence. ‘Jesus F. Poor Pablo. Still can’t get over it, the museum was totally destroyed: all the Moche pottery, the best collection outside Lima!’

‘Yep.’

One of the men in the cowboy hats brushed past Jess, opening the door to the noisy highway. He turned, for a second, and glanced at her from beneath the brim of his hat. The glance was long, and odd, and obscurely hostile. The image of the eerie Moche pot, with the toads copulating, filled her mind. But she shook the stupidity away, and listened to Dan as he went on.

‘Jess, I do have, however, some pretty good news. It might cheer you up. We got results. From your friend the bone guy.’

Her alertness returned, even a hint of excitement. ‘What? Steve Venturi? The necks? He called you?’

‘Yes. He kept trying to reach you, apparently, but you were in the police station. So he called here and I picked up this morning and… well bone analysis confirms it all, Jess. You were right. Cut marks to the neck vertebrae, coincident with death. Made with the tumi.’

‘The cuts were made deliberately?’

‘Yes. No question.’

‘Wow… Just. Wow.’ Jess felt half-bewildered, half-exhilarated. Her theory was expanding, but the concept was still a little sickening. She pushed away her glass of water. ‘So we finally know for sure? ’

‘Yep we do, thanks to you…’ Dan’s voice drifted and returned, with the vagaries of the Claro Movil signal, across the vast Sechura.

‘Wait, Dan — wait a moment! I’ll take it outside.’

Jess stood and left a few soles on the table. She needed the fresh, dirty air of the Pan-American. The two remaining men in cowboy hats watched her depart, their gaze fixed and unblinking. As if they were wax statues.

Outside she breathed deep, watching the traffic: the SUVs of the rich, the trucks of the workers, the three-wheeled motokars of the poor.

‘Go on, Dan.’

‘This is it. The sacrifice ceremony really happened. You were spot on. They really did it, Jess. The Moche. They stripped the prisoners, lined them up, and ritually cut their throats, hence the strange cut marks on the neck bones. And then they probably drank the blood, judging by the ceramics. Extraordinary, eh? So the scenes on the pottery depict a real ceremony! I’m sorry I doubted you, Jessica. You are a credit to UCLA Anthropology. Hah. Steve Venturi actually called you his prize pupil. ’

Jessica felt like blushing. She watched as a turkey vulture descended from the sky, and pecked at a fat-smeared piece of plastic, half-wrapped around a lamppost. A dog came running over to investigate; the animals squabbled over it. A shudder ran through her: surely another aftershock, from the explosion.

‘Jess, are you still there?’

‘Sorry, yes, I’m still here.’

‘There’s something else. Something else you need to know. More good news.’ His pause was a little melodramatic.

‘Dan, tell me!’

‘An untouched tomb.’

‘Huaca D?’

‘ Yes. ’ He paused. ‘And you’ll be there to see it, when we go in tomorrow. If you want, of course!’

Jess smiled at the endless desert. ‘Of course I want to be there! An untouched tomb. Yay!’

Saying her goodbyes, she closed the call, and walked to the truck with renewed vigour. Her moments of fear and self-doubt had passed; she was already dreaming of what lay inside the tomb. An untouched Moche tomb! This was a fine prize; this would be perfect for her thesis. Now perhaps they would get to the heart of the matter: the ultimate Moche deity. The identity of the mysterious god, at the heart of the Moche’s mysterious religion, was one of the great puzzles of north Peruvian archaeology.

And maybe the solution was coming into reach.

Jessica started the truck and pulled away. Above her, unseen, the turkey vulture had won the day; with a flap of grimy wings it swung across the sky, carrying its prize.

Braid Hills, Edinburgh

The hotel was overheated, and reeked of beer from last night’s raucous wedding, which had kept him awake until three.

As he packed his bag, Adam wasn’t sad to be leaving. He’d done his job here in dark, wintry and rather depressing Edinburgh. The Guardian had run his Rosslyn Chapel story, with a gratifying double-page spread and some nice quirky photos by Jason. The paper had also taken a small but judicious personal addition, by Adam, to its unsigned obituary of Dr Archibald McLintock, expert and author in medieval history — ‘ in his last days I met Professor McLintock once again, and he was as courteous and enlightening as ever… ’

Yet even as he stuffed his dirty shirts into his suitcase, Adam felt a nagging sense of unease. Of course the suicide of Archie McLintock had been upsetting, but it was also those last words the professor had used, in the chapel.

It’s all true, Rosslyn is the key.

Adam had, with some reluctance, omitted their brief and eccentric encounter from his article on Rosslyn. The professor had obviously been mentally unbalanced at the end, and Adam had not wanted to trash McLintock’s memory by using those uncharacteristic quotes, which made the man look a fool. Not so close to his death. But the unanswered questions were still out there.

Frowning, Adam gazed through the bay windows of his second-floor bedroom. The hotel was a converted Victorian villa, with creaky corridors, wilting pot plants, a conservatory where old ladies ate scones; and a very decent view across the medieval skyline of Edinburgh Old Town, down towards the docklands of Leith.

That view was already darkening. Two o’clock in the afternoon and the onset of night was palpable, enshrouding the city like a sort of dread. Down there, on the Firth of Forth, vast swathes of winter rain, great theatre curtains of it, were sweeping westwards — past Prestonpans and Musselburgh, past Seafield and Restalrig.

A Nordic doominess prevailed even in the names. Alicia Hagen. Norwegian.

Adam hastened his packing, zipping up the suitcase with a rush of vigour, sealing any morbid thoughts inside, with his dirty washing. Jobless now, he could not waste time. He had done his last article for the Guardian, his pay-off was being wired into his account, now he really should bog off to Afghanistan. Or at least go right back to London, and look for more work.

He turned to the phone on the bedside table, and picked up. The receptionist greeted him cheerily, and gave him the number for a taxi. He re-dialled the cab firm. ‘Yes, Waverley Station. Straight away?’