The Babylon Rite. Tom Knox

and then paused, thinking about Tomb 1 of Huaca D. She remembered the insect shells shining gaudily, like discarded fairground trash, in her flashlight, gathered grotesquely around a staked-out corpse.

      What was the link between that discovery and El Brujo? Maybe there wasn’t one. And yet maybe there was.

      They now knew the sacrifice ceremony had really happened. They also now had a sense the Moche really fed people to insects: hence their reverence of insects, depicted on the pottery as flies dancing around prisoners and skeletons. What, then, about the severed ankles and wrists of the skeletons they had also unearthed in Huaca D?

      A few days ago Jess had sent another sample of these bones to Steve Venturi. Now she waited for his second verdict. If Venturi confirmed that her hunch was right on the amputations, then the clues began to form a narrative. But what narrative, precisely?

      Jess pulled out her cellphone, and squinted at the little screen, in the dusty light, wondering idly when Steve would ring, or maybe Dan. But naturally there was no signal, not out here in the wilderness. She wouldn’t be disturbed by good or bad news, by any news at all, for the next few hours.

      This was good, maybe. Fewer distractions meant she could concentrate on the task at hand: recording the murals.

      Another scramble, up another flight of mud-brick steps, brought Jess to the Second Enclosure, where another large mural showed the concluding rites of the sacrifice ceremony.

      Finding an angle to best catch the light, she took her photos of the row of prisoners, painted in vivid red. But the sea-wind was brisk up here on the higher levels and it kicked at her hair, which fluttered over the lens. Irritatedly she pushed her hair back, and considered what she was seeing.