The Babylon Rite (22 page)

‘What about all the blasphemy? Go back to the blasphemy.’ Nina sipped her coffee. Adam wrote down the word
blasphemy.
‘You say it’s crap but they confessed, didn’t they? The violent gay knights? At the trials? To spitting on the cross, urinating on it, stamping on it.’

Hannah interrupted. ‘But those confessions were extracted under torture. They are wholly unreliable, Nina. They had their feet roasted over fires; one poor Templar came to the courts with the bones of his feet in a bag, the bones had fallen out, he was tortured so horribly. You would confess to anything in that situation, wouldn’t you?’

‘Dad used to talk about the tortures. The pity and the horror.’ Nina screwed her mouth up in that peculiar way which Adam had come to understand meant she was repressing some deep, conflicted emotion.

A stagey and anxious silence stifled the kitchen. The sisters were staring into their Met Museum coffee mugs, Thinking About Dad. Adam looked around, prickling with nerves. The windows were so
dark.
Was that someone staring into the house? He yearned for curtains. Why did upper-middle-class English people have an aversion to curtains on the ground floor?

‘What about your father?’ said Adam, just to break the awkward moment. ‘Did he ever talk about anything pagan connected with the Templars?’

‘Not much,’ Hannah answered. She revolved her mug clockwise, then anticlockwise, staring into the black, black coffee. ‘Maybe the head worship. The adoration of this Baphomet idea. He found that intriguing.’

A jarring thought occurred, Adam voiced it. ‘And what about that horrible piece of pottery we saw, in your dad’s study? The one he brought back from South America?’

It was Hannah who responded. ‘I looked into that. It’s from Peru, from a culture called the Moche.’

‘And they were?’

She hesitated. ‘Some kind of strange pre-Inca civilization, a very bloodthirsty people. Sixth century, I think … But we know Dad went to Peru from his receipts, so there might be a link.’

‘It fits with the Green Men,’ Nina said. ‘Yes. A pagan head? A pagan deity? Then that explains the evil skeletons in Temple Bruer! No? Sacrificial victims? Adam, this must be it – the Templars worshipped a pagan deity: they were involved with some violent, evil, pagan religion, for real. It must be this. But what is so terrible about this revelation, that even today …’ She stopped.

It is so terrible that it gets you killed
was written in chilling silver letters in the very air between them.

‘It seems an awful long way. From medieval Europe to Peru in the sixth century,’ Adam said dubiously.

‘Sure,’ Nina answered, ‘but if my dad saw a link there must be a link. Otherwise why did all these people steal his notebooks, then come back and burgle his flat afterwards? They wanted what he found!’

‘And they still want it,’ Adam said. ‘They still want it now.’

The atmosphere was as dark as the windows outside. Hannah spoke, over-brightly. ‘Does anyone want supper? I think I’ve got some sea bass. No pud I’m afraid …’

Nina smiled, sadly. ‘I’d love some, Han.’

The doorbell rang.

Hannah got up. ‘That’ll be the delivery guy, Ocado to the rescue. Thought they’d never make it through the snow.’

Adam watched Hannah walk to the door. He drank some more coffee. Hannah opened the front door to the darkness outside.

He was thwarted. For almost the first time in his police career, DCI Mark Ibsen felt utterly defeated, and also at fault. Why had he even agreed to this tail, when he’d known the risks? There was always the likelihood that the suspect would limbo neatly under the radar – slip their feeble knot. And so it had turned out.

Morosely, he gazed out of the Met Police Lexus at the snowbound Georgian terraces of Canonbury Square. They were parked in a part of old London made more beautiful by the flurries and eider feathers of snow, now settling contentedly on every lateral surface.

‘Maybe we’ll get a visual, sir,’ said Larkham from behind the wheel, sounding entirely unconvinced. Their suspect had absconded with disdainful ease.

‘Yes,’ said Ibsen. ‘We’ll get a visual when we find the next body, with its fucking head hacked off, pretending to be a suicide.’

This was harsh and overdone. Ibsen didn’t care. A freezing cold December night had fallen on his hopes. He picked up his iPad. He’d been doing this on and off for the last hour as they sat here, helpless, waiting for Kilo team to pick up the scent of Antonio Ritter, who was somewhere out there, in Islington, doing whatever it was he did.
Persuading people to cut their own limbs off.

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.

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.

Ritter spat: ‘Right. All of you, sit there. In front of the radiator. Now. In a nice row like dogs at a show.’

They did as they were told. Adam squirmed, and furiously calculated the chances. A desperate rugby tackle might just unbalance the man. Ritter was big, at least six foot, but not as big as Adam. He looked fit, but not real Aussie Rules fit, like Adam. It could be done. Adam could take him, if only he could get near. One more time. He’d got that first punch in, he could do it again. Better this time.

But Ritter was blithe and clever in his long leather coat, he kept his distance, and his gun cocked, and his eyes on his captives, as he went from window to window, locking them and closing the curtains.

Ritter kicked out the landline phone sockets and stamped on them, trashing the phonelines. With the mobiles drowned, they were now entirely incommunicado.

Now he turned to them. ‘I need to keep you safe. And quiet. So we can
talk
.’ He tossed the handcuffs in Adam’s direction. ‘Put these on the girls. Chain them to the heater. Now.’

Adam did as he was instructed. The radiator was uncomfortably hot: he was already sweating. His moist hands slipped as he snapped the cuffs first over Nina, on one side, and then over Hannah, on the other side. Perhaps he would get a chance – one last opportunity to tackle this guy – before he himself was secured.

He got no chance. Ritter came over fast and locked Adam, likewise, to the firm ironwork of the radiator pipes. Now they were all shackled. Ritter extracted a cylindrical black silencer from an inside pocket and screwed it on to the muzzle of his pistol. ‘The Tundra Gemtech Suppressor,’ he said, almost murmuring. ‘As they say, it does not render the shooter inaudible, so much as invisible.’ A flash of a grin. ‘Reckon we’re ready.’