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of a smallish human figure.
    Protected by the sealed door, the corpse had rotted slowly, free of any covering. The body must have been totally naked for there were no clothes, no adornments, no headdresses or weapons or grave goods: it was stark naked. And it was, as Dan said, staked out.
    Hoops of metal fastened the wrists and ankles to the floor. Worst of all: the skull was screaming, locked in a rasping howl of pain, yellowy teeth grimacing. This person, this adolescent or young woman or man, had died in agony.
    ‘Dan!’ It was Jay, calling. ‘Dan, come and see!’
    They ran over. Another skeleton was staked to the floor along the side of the tomb, near the adobe wall.
    ‘Another girl, it looks like.’ Jay said. ‘No feet. Chopped off. Must be a human sacrifice, right? And here. Birds? Avian skulls. Vultures – must be vultures.’
    Jessica knelt by the skeleton. It was adorned with a necklace of some sort; she shone her flashlight. The necklace was maybe copper, and decorated with small, symbolic commas embossed into the metal. She had seen these before, many times, in Moche art. They were called
ulluchus.
No one truly knew what they were: stylized drops of blood, maybe; perhaps blood of the primary deity.
    But who was the god who demanded these strange rites? What kind of ancient faith demanded this horror?
    ‘Dan!’ Another shout across the tomb. This time it was Larry.
    The finds were coming fast. The tomb was littered with many skeletons, filled with precious grave goods: it was a rich and wonderful prize. Wooden weapons mouldered in the gloom. Broken vessels, in the shape of naked prisoners, squatted in the dust, next to little copper bottles for coca taking, and endless broken potsherds with the strange comma-shaped blood drops, more ulluchus, and then – quite wonderfully – a spray of tiny pink coral cylinders, still pretty after fifteen hundred years, where a glorious headdress had rotted away. This was a high-status tomb, a tomb of nobles surrounded by sacrificial companions.
    One especially high-status skeleton, possibly a princess, with a great owl headdress, featured another severed ankle, like the skeletons outside. Why? It was inexplicable. This couldn’t be a sacrificial hobbling to prevent a concubine or a slave from fleeing in the afterlife: this was a noble. Why would
she
have this bizarre amputation? And how did it fit with the puzzling aspects of the other severed limbs?
    The puzzle was too hard. Jess felt the throb of a headache as she walked carefully between the skulls and the ribcages.
    In the gloom of the Tomb 1 she could hear the others enthusing over this grand discovery. The worry of the last hour was gone; Larry and Jay and Dan were chattering excitedly.
    ‘Brilliant, just brilliant, this is excellent …’
    ‘We need to grid this, today – and we need Kubiena boxes.’
    ‘I’ll go back and grab the cameras.’
    Part of her was pleased for them: Jess could understand the excitement. But she just couldn’t share the elation. Because she couldn’t shake the primary image from her mind: that terrible first skeleton staked out in the mud floor, surrounded by the purple and green shells of a million skin beetles.
    The anguished, frozen, terrified howl of the skull told her one thing: the victim had surely been tied to the floor, then fed alive to the insects.

12
Morningside, Edinburgh
    ‘You’re
sure
he didn’t tell you any of this?’
    ‘Absolutely. Nothing. Nada.’ Nina gestured, angrily, chopping the air. ‘A break-in! And he was upset! So that explains why he felt menaced. Or watched.’
    Adam gazed down the silent hallway. The McLintocks’ apartment was so very hushed. Several doors gave off the hallway, which was decorated by black-and-white prints of old Edinburgh. Auld Reekie. The medieval city with its Luckenbooths and witch-burnings, the Stinking Style and the royal gibbet.
    From somewhere he got the peculiar sense of a clock, somewhere, having stopped. It was