The Babylon Rite. Tom Knox

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      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?’