The Babylon rite

10

East Finchley, north London

‘Er, dad, what are you doing?’

‘Nothing, son, nothing.’

Mark Ibsen was flat on his back on the living room floor in their small house in East Finchley. His wife was Sunday shopping with his younger daughter Leila. His son was unimpressed with his dad’s answer.

‘Dad. You’re lying on the floor.’

‘Luke. I’m fine. Haven’t you got some Xbox thing you can go and play for seventeen hours on your own, like normal kids?’

‘It’s more fun watching you, Dad.’

DCI Ibsen sighed, and gazed up. He was trying to conceptualize the final hours of Nikolai Kerensky, their murder victim. So here he was, theoretically lying on the kitchen floor of the big house at 113 Bishops Avenue, with no feet. And one hand. Blood gushing everywhere. The killer was — what? — looming over him with a gun, or another knife, some sort of weapon? The blood would have been everywhere.

Why slide from the kitchen into the sitting room? Fully sixty yards? In deep agony? Slowly bleeding to death?

Maybe the killer fled, therefore allowing Kerensky to make a desperate bid to reach a phone.

Ibsen glanced up at the kitchen window of their small terraced house. Weak winter sunlight was shining through the bottle of Tesco’s lemon-scented washing up liquid poised on the kitchen window sill.

He tried to imagine his kitchen as five times the size, with big French windows flung open to a massive garden, windows through which the killer had presumably made his ingress and egress. But how did the murderer do that without leaving any signs whatsoever? It was a true puzzle: they had no trace evidence, no fibre evidence, no hint of forced entry, no shoe marks in the muddy garden, no eye witnesses, nothing.

And why would the murderer flee halfway through his task? No one had disturbed him at his grisly business: it was a cook returning the following morning who had discovered the mutilated corpse of Nik Kerensky. The only ‘witnesses’ to the incident were those passers-by and neighbours who heard unusual noises — and did nothing.

‘Can you shift the cat, Luke, don’t want to squash him.’

‘He’s too fat to pick up! Mum gives him all the leftovers.’

‘Try?’

With a manful effort that made his father proud, Luke picked up their enormous cat Mussolini, and moved him to a nearby stool.

His route cleared, Mark Ibsen slowly dragged himself across the hallway, into their living room, again trying to quadruple the distance in his mind, and conceptualize the pain of having severed feet and a severed hand as he did this. At what point did the killer force Kerensky to try to cut his own neck? Why did he stop doing this? When did he loosen Kerensky’s trousers? Was that the prelude to some hideous castration, or was there a sexual element?

The hint of a glimpse of an idea caught the light of Ibsen’s mind, like a jewel momentarily illuminated. Gay sex. Gay sexual murders were often the most brutal. Was Kerensky gay? All they knew, so far, was that he was a bit of a playboy. They had yet to receive the toxicology and serology reports but friends had spoken of drugs and nightclubs.

Now he had reached his immediate goal. Their IKEA dining table had been laid out exactly as the antique desk in Bishops Avenue had been laid out: notepad and phone to the left, laptop to the right.

‘Have you finished, Dad?’

‘Nearly.’

Ibsen was lying on his back on the living room floor. Their ceiling needed painting. He let his thoughts coalesce to a quietness, then hoisted himself on one theoretically amputated arm — the blood theoretically spurting everywhere — and reached for the phone. But he didn’t make it, of course — they already knew no phone calls had been made from the house that night — so Ibsen fell back, in his mind smearing blood on the laptop. And then he theoretically died. The last blood jolting from his horrible wounds.

‘Dad, open your eyes. It’s scary now.’

‘Sorry, lad.’ Mark stood up, and tousled his son’s hair; then stared at the laptop on his dining table, slightly smeared with marmalade from breakfast.

The laptop.

The laptop.

The laptop.

Grabbing his mobile, Ibsen stepped urgently into the hall, calling Larkham’s mobile. ‘It’s Ibsen.’

‘Sir?’

‘You’re at the Yard?’

‘Yesssir. We don’t all get Sundays off-’

‘Nor do I, I’ve got an idea. Have we checked the laptop yet?’

A telephonic pause.

‘Sir?’

‘Has anyone checked the laptop, seen if it was used?’

‘Ahh, no.’ Another pause. ‘We’re getting round to it eventually, sir. Tomorrow, probs. Course it’s been fumed for prints but all we’ve got is Kerensky’s as he reached for the phone like you said…’

‘But maybe he wasn’t reaching for the phone! Maybe he was reaching for the laptop!’

The next pause was tinged with sarcasm. ‘Visiting Facebook, sir? As he bled to death?’

‘Have you got the laptop there?’

‘It’s in the hard evidence bags, sir. Downstairs.’

‘Grab it and meet me at the house, Bishops Avenue. Now.’

‘But the chain of evidence, sir?’

‘We’ll fix it. Bring it!’

After leaving his son with the neighbours, it took ten minutes for Ibsen to drive his Renault to Bishops Avenue, a brief journey which comprised a vast social ascent.

The murder mansion was now decorated with so much police tape, fluttering in the cold winter wind, it was as if there was a small regatta taking place inside. Two constables guarded the large double front door.

‘DCI?’

‘Morning, constable. Wife OK? Kids?’

Their chat was desultory. Because Ibsen was still working through the logic in his mind. The laptop. The laptop. The sitting room with the big TV and speakers…

‘Ah, Larkham!’

The detective sergeant had arrived, driving himself from New Scotland Yard. As Larkham stepped out of his car he held up a large clear plastic ziplocked bag containing a laptop.

‘Let’s go inside.’

‘Sir.’

Another constable opened the door. Ibsen gazed around a marbled hallway which shone with the polished gleam of wealth.

The victim’s father, the oligarch, was apparently staying in a hotel in town, having flown in from Moscow, shocked and grieving. The man was understandably avoiding all the horrible police work: the house had been gridded and marked and powdered to uninhabitability, and it stank of cyano fumes.

They stepped into the sitting room.

A young forensic photographer was just finishing her UV work on the carpets, seeking hidden blood stains. Nods were exchanged as she quit the room, leaving them alone, though the DCI could hear more forensics officers in the kitchen.

‘All right, put the laptop on the desk, where it was, and boot it up.’

With carefully gloved hands Larkham turned the laptop on, and Ibsen bent close to the screen. He sought Kerensky’s last browsing history, for the night he had died. He searched and scrolled, and scrolled a little more. And stopped. ‘There. Look.’

Larkham leaned, and looked. ‘Jesus. Porn sites! Hundreds of them.’

‘Not just that. Look at the timing. All through the evening, Larkham…’ Ibsen checked the times again. ‘All through the evening in question he did this, surfing porn. Gay porn by the look of it. Justusboys. Hungdaddy. Grindr. Then — look — here — at about eleven p.m. He clicked on-’ Ibsen moved closer to the screen, tapping keys with his gloved fingers. ‘Redtube. And it seems like… He watched a movie. Yes. He watched an online porn vid. This one.’

Another key click.

The two men watched the little video buffer into life on the laptop. An older man was seducing a younger man in a doctor’s room. It was a patient/doctor porn scenario, a young jock being stripped and ‘examined’. The actors proceeded to vigorous sex, laughing and panting.

‘Nice.’ Larkham blushed faintly. ‘So he liked gay porn so much he watched it from about four in the afternoon to eleven p.m. the night he died.’ The young sergeant frowned. ‘He liked it so much that after his killer had forced him to cut off his hand and feet and practically his damn head he dragged himself from the kitchen, to go and watch some more gay porn as he was dying, with the killer standing over him — there. One a.m.! He’s online again. Surfing! What the fuck?’

‘There was no killer.’ Ibsen shook his head. ‘See, here, the computer.’ A click of two keys minimized the porn video, and revealed the tray of icons at the bottom of the screen. ‘There’s a wi-fi connection, surely, with those huge speakers. Turn them on.’

Obediently, Larkham crossed the room and found a remote. With his gloved left hand he pressed a button. A red light at the bottom of the wall-high speakers flicked green, and a wireless symbol turned orange. The faint yet unheard hum of large electrical appliances, switched on and waiting, somehow filled the room.

‘Now,’ said Ibsen, ‘let’s play the video he watched at one a.m., as he was lying on the floor, dying. Here it is… on Boundstuds. com. Big Daddy’s Dungeon Party. I’m guessing this is not Teletubbies.’

The video buffered for two seconds, then burst noisily into life. The sound from the speakers was intensely loud. On the laptop screen a man in a leather coat, a leather mask and a leather jockstrap, was whipping a chained and naked young man, whipping him hard. The boy screamed. The man shouted abuse. The noise filled the entire house — and beyond.

Ibsen turned the video off.

Larkham was staring at the speakers. ‘So that’s it. That’s what our witnesses heard? They heard the first 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.