porno video at eleven p.m., and the second, the violent one, at one a.m. They didn’t hear any intruder. Sir, that’s it. That explains it!’
A constable entered the sitting room, breathless and flushed. ‘Is everything OK, sir? We heard — er — strange noises — ah-’
Larkham laughed quietly. ‘No, it’s fine. It’s all good.’
The constable looked between the two officers, bemused. ‘OK then… sir. I’ll leave you to it.’
Ibsen stepped gently over the stained carpet and gazed towards the distant kitchen, speaking quietly. ‘That’s why we have zero evidence for a killer, why we have the victim’s prints on his own murder weapon. Because there was no murderer. There was no murder. It’s autoerotic. It’s a damn suicide. Kerensky watched gay porn all night, for some reason, then for some reason we don’t know this drove him to mutilate himself, so he went into the kitchen — and hacked off his own feet and his right hand.’
Larkham crossed the room and stood beside his boss. ‘Then he even tries to cut his own throat, but realizes you can’t ’cause it’s virtually impossible. Without a chainsaw. But he is dying, anyway, and he wants a final high. Autoerotic as you say, sir.’
Ibsen walked back into the middle of the enormous sitting room. ‘Exactly. He drags himself from the kitchen, because he wants that last amazing thrill. And then he reaches the desk. But he’s lying on the floor weak from blood loss. Desperately he reaches up for the laptop, turns it on, smearing blood on the keys. And he watches…’
‘Big Daddy’s Dungeon Party.’
A throbbing silence filled the room. Ibsen expected to feel a rush of vindication, even triumph, but instead he felt only a tinge of disappointment. So: it was not a murder but a bizarre suicide, a truly bizarre suicide. He’d solved it, and probably deprived himself of a fascinating case.
‘Er, sir?’ Larkham was pointing.
‘What?’
‘Look at the screensaver.’
Ibsen swivelled to look at the computer. As the laptop had been left to its own devices, the screensaver had come on: the entire screen was filled with a single image.
It was a human skull. The skull was adorned with a crown, and the neckbones were festooned with pink pearl necklaces and a red-and-blue Barcelona football scarf. Lodged between the stained brown teeth of the skull was a fat cigar, trailing smoke.
Ibsen frowned. ‘That’s a little weird.’
Larkham shook his head. ‘It’s not just weird, it’s fucked up. This whole thing is totally fu-’
But he was interrupted. A young woman was standing at the sitting room doorway, in gloves and a paper suit, her frizz of blonde hair just visible under a paper bonnet. She was clutching something in another clear plastic bag.
Ibsen just about recognized her. ‘Sergeant… Fincham?’
‘Yes, sir, Forensics. Are you the SIO?’
‘Yep. DCI Ibsen. What’s that?’
‘Something you ought to see, maybe.’
She walked over to him, carefully stepping around the blood stains on the Turkish carpet, and dropped the bag on the desk for him to examine.
Inside the plastic bag was a glass. It was smeared red, on one side in particular. The concept thrown up by this made Ibsen’s stomach churn.
‘Where and when did you find this?’
‘Just now, sir, it had rolled under the cooker.’
Larkham squinted. ‘Christ, is that blood?’
The woman nodded. ‘Almost certainly. Human blood. Congealed. Nearly dried. Maybe two days old…?’
Larkham pointed. ‘Look at the way it’s smeared down one side, like it has been… drunk from. It’s been used.’
Ibsen didn’t need to have this pointed out. Before he died the victim had drunk a cup of his own blood.
11
Tomb 1, Huaca D, Zana, north Peru
She could hear voices in the redness.
‘Jessica. Jessica!’
Someone was pulling her; sideways. She coughed, and coughed again. Spluttering the dust from her mouth, rejecting it, puking it up.
‘Give her the water!’
Another voice. Larry. She opened her eyes but all she could see was the redness. She shut them tight again. A cold sudden splash of water dragged her back to reality.
‘Jessica!’
It was Dan: she could sense his touch, his fingers wiping the dust from her face with a cloth. Washing out her eyes and her mouth. Again she peered, and this time she saw.
She was still in the passage chamber at the entrance to Tomb 1 of Huaca D. Beams of light pierced the floating clouds of red dust, beginning to settle: beams cast by the headtorches of her friends and colleagues, Larry, and Dan and Jay, who were staring at her: dark shapes behind the beams.
‘Jess. Jessica. Are you OK?’
Her voice was a dusty croak. ‘I think so — think so, I…’ Faltering, she choked up some phlegm, and spat it on to the passage floor.
With a shudder, Jess grabbed the cloth from Dan, and started rubbing the dust from her own face, and hands, and her shoulders. Get rid of this filth. She was covered in the stuff, hundreds of pounds of it must have fallen from the vault above, raining down on her head.
‘It’s cinnabar powder,’ said Dan. ‘Just cinnabarite.’
Urgent and repulsed, Jess pared the disgusting powder from under her fingernails. The powder had a definite scent, not quite pungent, but organic, and dirty, and soiling. Like something excreted by insects.
So it was cinnabar? Powdered ore of red mercury, used on corpses as decoration since the early Stone Age.
And then the anxiety came rushing back.
‘Hold on. Cinnabar is mercury,’ she said, ‘it’s a poison — ’
Dan spoke, his voice softened by affection. ‘Yes, Jess… That’s why you got a dumping. The Moche put it in some of their tombs as a booby trap to ward off graverobbers. It’s triggered by opening the door.’ His headtorch was bobbing as he nodded. ‘It was lethal millennia ago, but it’s inert after so long: really — there is no risk, Jess. It’s just a shock when it happens.’ The headtorch turned, its beam circling like a lighthouse beam in the sea fog, through the floating red dust. ‘Larry?’
Larry Fielding’s laconic voice emanated from the reddened darkness. ‘Yeah,’ he laughed. ‘It happened to me at Huaca de La Luna in Trujillo. Few years back, when Tronna first sent us here, we were tryin’ to get into Burial 5, you know, the famous one, with the princess.’ A chuckle. ‘Freaked me out. Like being in a little avalanche. But I was fine!’
‘But I passed out?’ Jessica said shakily.
‘Seems so,’ said Dan. ‘Only a few seconds, though — just the shock, I should think.’ A heavy pause. ‘Look. If you wanna go back we totally understand. Larry can help you, you can come back later.’
The idea of scuttling back to the TUMP lab for a shower, then waiting, lamely, to hear what they had found, was surreal. And she definitely didn’t want any indulgent treatment from Dan, just because they were having an affair: secret or otherwise. Her defiance resurged. They were still here. At the door to Tomb 1 of Huaca D. What was beyond that door? She urgently wanted to be here the moment it opened, like Lord Carnarvon in the Valley of the Kings, like every explorer in human history, she wanted to say: I was there.
