The Repenting Serpent Read online

  The couple’s argument next door penetrated the paper-thin walls. It was distracting to say the least. Reminded of Jessica’s and Preston’s screaming, Tezcacoatl pushed his half-full plate away.

  While chewing on the chunk of burnt meat still in his mouth, and trying to ignore the shouting and cursing, he examined his pallid hand. Alabaster skin wasn’t surprising after twenty-four hours of fasting; he should have taken more of his supplements. He swallowed, knowing that the iron in the meat would go to work on his pale skin soon.

  The argument next door continued. Over the last few weeks, the relationship had been worsening. They’d regularly argued but had always made up and enjoyed each other’s company again. Tezcacoatl had heard some of those more intimate moments too. To hear both sides was a good thing. Pleasure and pain were inextricably linked, and Tezcacoatl had the right to experience both. Recently though, the arguments had taken over and raged, sometimes for hours, sometimes days.

  He leaned back in the Ipcalli, resting his tired head on the high back, and admired his kitchen. There was so much colour. Dark colours. Blue walls, black surfaces, purple kitchen utensils and red plates. He felt at ease; whiteness sometimes made him feel empty.

  On his black dinner table, besides a red plate topped with blackened flesh, sat a portable television. The screen showed tragedy. Blown-up bellies and washed-out faces. Starving African children melting away to nothing. Increasing the volume, seemed to intensify the stench of decay and the crushing heat, rather than just the sound of desperation. A reporter described the great drought that had plagued this village, before the image changed to show the rains pouring on the village. Tezcacoatl leaned forward in his Ipcalli. Against all predictions, rain had come. Villagers, who had the energy, stood admiring the rainfalls. A few even danced.

  After turning the television off, he noticed that the argument had stopped.

  He slid the picture of a young woman, which sat by his plate, closer to him. Gillian Arnold had been at the cemetery visiting her father’s grave when he took this photo. He traced the sadness that creased the corners of her eyes with his finger.

  As they journeyed up the M1 to Leeds, Ewan stared out of the window at the traffic in the other lane, wondering if any of these people had experienced the senselessness he was currently experiencing. And, if they had done, how had they coped with the sudden hollowness inside? Had they run away, as he was currently doing, or had they stood tall?

  ‘I wish you’d put Freddy away,’ his grandad said, ‘just while I’m driving, you know?’

  Ewan stroked its back. ‘Why? He won’t do anything.’

  ‘Still … a snake, a motorway? Not a great combination.’

  Ewan sighed and slipped the snake into the backpack. ‘See you for dinner, Freds.’

  ‘Anyway, how you holding up buddy? Still in the mood for that ice cream?’

  ‘Not really,’ Ewan said. ‘Do you think they’ll catch whoever did this to Mum?’

  ‘Of course. But you don’t need to worry about that. Not right now.’

  ‘Well, what am I supposed to worry about?’

  His grandad paused for an answer. ‘Well … you need to be thinking about how you are going to keep an old man company for the next couple of days.’

  ‘Have you got an Xbox?’

  ‘Can’t help you there?’

  ‘We could go running?’

  ‘You know my arthritis is bad.’

  ‘We’re going to struggle then!’

  ‘You haven’t seen my DVD collection in over a year, Ewan. We’ll be fine.’

  His grandad’s phone started ringing and he answered with a button on the dash. His dad’s voice came over the speaker. ‘Everything good?’

  ‘Fine,’ his grandad said.

  ‘Great,’ Ewan said.

  ‘Shit … how to say this?’

  ‘Say what?’ Ewan said. ‘And don’t swear.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ewan, to give you more news like this, but your grandmother died this morning.’

  His grandad indicated to come off at the next junction.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ewan … for everything.’

  ‘It’s not your fault.’ But Ewan knew that his dad wouldn’t believe this. ‘Maybe, I should just come back?’

  ‘I’m sorry about that too Ewan, but you need to trust me. As soon as you get to Grandad’s, call me. I’ve got to head into the nursing home.’

  ‘Love you, Dad.’

  ‘You too, Ewan. And you, Dad.’

  ‘Love you, son.’

  Ewan looked out of the window at the passing cars again.

  Running away, he thought.

  That’s all this is.

  After some work on the internet, they’d identified the peculiar colourful picture from the crime scene as being an image of an Aztec deity. So, opposite Yorke, Topham and Gardner, sat Gary Utter, a graduate in Mesoamerican studies. Despite a studious appearance with a perfect side parting, expensive glasses and a buttoned shirt, he brought an edge to his look with an ear lined completely with piercings. Yorke worried that Topham, ever the enemy of subtlety, would come straight out and ask how it was possible to squeeze so many rings in so small a space.

  ‘I apologise that we cannot be any more detailed than that,’ Yorke continued. ‘We believe that the person we are looking for accidently dropped this picture, and we really need to know what it is.’

  He pushed the picture found at Preston’s parent’s holiday cottage across the table and then flipped open his notebook to start taking notes.

  It didn’t take Utter long. ‘That is an image of Tezcatlipoca, the Lord of the Smoking Mirror.’

  Yorke looked at Topham, predicting, and guessing correctly, that his eyebrows would be raised.

  Utter continued, ‘He is an Aztec deity. One of the most important in fact; he is the god of fate.’

  ‘Okay, so what does it mean to you that the person we are looking for had this particular picture?’ Yorke said.

  Utter looked confused. ‘It doesn’t really mean anything. I’ve seen the image thousands of times, as will many of the other students on the same course. He’s a popular Aztec deity.’

  ‘Okay,’ Yorke said, ‘Tell me more about Him.’

  ‘He has a jaguar for a companion spirit. He is also associated with leadership and often features in coronation speeches and prayers. Does that help?’

  Not a great deal, thought Yorke.

  ‘Do people still worship this deity?’ Topham said.

  ‘Yes – and other gods too, of course.’

  ‘Do you?’ Topham said.

  Utter looked taken aback by the question. ‘Is that relevant right now? I thought you were asking for my help?’

  ‘Of course,’ Yorke said, glaring at Topham. ‘Ignore that question. Being in England, far from Mexico, we are all a bit rusty on Aztec history. As you can see? Maybe you can fill us in on some more of the background.’

  Utter nodded and continued.

  5

  TEZCACOATL’S EYES FLICKED open when the first ray of light touched his bedroom window. He sat upright on the mat, turned his head and looked at the rising sun.

  He never missed it.

  Not only did it reassure Tezcacoatl that the gods were still happy, but it also reminded him of his mother, who used to hold him close on a bench outside, with a blanket wrapped around him to fend off the cold. He remembered tracing the scars and bruises on her face with his finger as she told him that this first light signalled a new day, and a new day was indicative of hope.

  He lay back down on his mat, and for the next hour, vowed to keep working to keep hope alive.

  Then, naked, Tezcacoatl rose from the mat. Goosebumps covered his body. He walked through to his adjacent room for morning-prayer, reaching out to adjust the metre-long wooden sword on the wall. He touched one of the eight cold obsidian blades glued into the grooves along the edges. He gazed at the thong protruding from the bottom; here, the warrior would secure his hand. The Spanish had b
een in awe of the Maquahuitl which could take a horse’s head from its body with one stroke.

  He couldn’t see, so he flicked on the lights and a red glow settled over the room. The windows were covered with black shrouds which afforded him immediate separation from the outside world. It took him a few minutes to build a small wooden fire in the stone basin by his altar and once he had stirred up a natural light, he switched the artificial one off. He ensured the grill was in place over the basin to stop any stray sparks setting fire to the tapestries he had pinned up on the walls. Then, he heated the charcoal tablet to burn the incense.

  His eyes were drawn to a large picture of the island city of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, on the wall. Rich in colour and detail, Tezcacoatl was not in the least surprised that the Spanish conquistadors had been stunned when they arrived in 1519. Not in a million years had they ever expected to find such an exercise in architecture on such a bleak side of the world. It was so often compared to Venice, but Tezcacoatl felt that did not give enough credit to this grand expression of Aztec beliefs.

  The artist provided a bird’s eye view of Tenochtitlan. Long causeways ran from the Great Pyramid in the centre and connected the city to the mainland; it resembled a giant cross that divided the city into symmetrical quarters. Tezcacoatl traced the southern causeway with his finger. It was the route by which the Spanish first entered Tenochtitlan. He then traced the western causeway; here, four of the eight bridges had been missing, so the Spanish had used a portable bridge to escape the Aztecs after a fierce battle. Thousands of warriors had come alongside them in canoes and slaughtered them with arrows, darts and stones. It was a site of great carnage, but the Aztecs had allowed them to escape. A mistake. When the Spanish returned, the Aztec Empire had fallen.

  Tezcacoatl ran his eyes over the crisscrossing canals that allowed the people to travel around by boat and gave the warriors access to Lake Tetzcoco to fight nearby enemies. His attention lingered on the carefully drawn houses; the small, rectangular houses with adobe walls and thatched roofs for the macehualtin, the lower classes, and the raised, colorful homes of the pipiltin, the upper classes - which often consisted of several buildings surrounding a courtyard.

  He reached out to touch the sacred precinct at the heart of the city, where the mountainous dual pyramid, the Great Temple, stood tall. Two shrines gleamed in the sunlight; to the south, Huitzilopochtli’s red-painted shrine; and to the north, Tlaloc’s blue-painted shrine.

  Underneath the picture was a poem from Cantares Mexicanos, a 16th century collection of Nahuatl poems. Tezcacoatl read the poem out loud.

  Keep this in mind, oh princes,

  do not forget it.

  Who could possibly conquer Tenochtitlan?

  Who could possibly shake the foundations of heaven?

  He turned to his altar and approached the statue of Lord Tezcatlipoca, the deity he served above all others, he spoke His many titles in Nahuatl, ‘Ruler of the North … the Realm of Darkness … Lord of the Smoking Mirror …’

  The statue was carved from obsidian and showed Lord Tezcatlipoca in profile. He had two spears readied in one hand and a spear-thrower in the other. A head dress of raised eagle feathers connected Him to the sun and showed He was primed for hunting and war. ‘Lord of the Near and Night …’

  The smell of Copal was strong enough for him to begin. He sucked in a deep breath through his nostrils. From a tepetlacalli on the altar – a stone box depicting a fire serpent - he took hold of a maguey thorn. He held the end of his penis and speared the point of the thorn through an old scab on his foreskin, and with the tips of his fingers he forced out some droplets of blood into a jade bowel.

  Morning briefing. The atmosphere in the room was so thick that it felt as if you were moving through tar. Door-to-door around Preston’s parent’s cottage had thrown up nothing. Yes, the white van was seen, and there were even a couple of flashes of it on CCTV around various locale as it had journeyed away (almost ending Jake and Yorke’s existences in the process). However, the bastard had left the REG plates to fester in the winter mizzle, and identifying it was proving impossible. Granted, Preston’s body had been identified from dental records, but DNA of the killer and evidence of him ever being there – assuming it was a he – were practically non-existent. Just that one picture. The picture of an Aztec deity called Tezcatlipoca.

  At least the whiteboard covering the entire right side of the room was developing at an incredible rate – it helped mask how slow ‘Operation Restore’ was really progressing. Gardener had done a fantastic job, but when the bodies were piling up faster than clues, you knew you were in trouble. Permanent ink had been used to scar the board with information because this room got busy and shoulders could easily take out an important fact.

  Gardner had placed a picture of Jessica, looking young and happy, at the top. It gave everyone a focal point when they got sick to the stomach of looking at the photo of her remains just beneath it. Around her were names and pictures of friends, family members, work colleagues; all accompanied with little titbits of information. Nothing negative. Jessica had been a kind, humorous and popular individual and leads down that path were running dry.

  And Preston? Well, responses to his existence had been anything but positive. His own family didn’t even like him. The wealth of names spreading out from the photo of his corpse, were taking up far too much police time. Numerous women were aware of his predatory nature and that he ‘snapped’ them when he thought they were ‘unawares.’ There were definitely many people with motive.

  To make matters worse, Yorke was not fit to work. Several bottles of Summer Lightning, hours of Google research, and a brief, fitful sleep dreaming of Aztec sacrifice on a grand scale were not the recipe for a productive day. He was also conscious of the strangeness of his next task – to brief the team on Mesoamerican beliefs. He looked down at his notes.

  But why not? They had very little else to go on.

  He began by handing out a photocopy of the picture of Tezcatlipoca left by the killer and then taking them through his discussion with Utter yesterday. He kept this brief. Utter had been thorough with them, discussing the history of the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlan and how it had evolved into the place now known as Mexico City. To win his audience, Yorke knew, he would have to link everything he said to concrete facts in the case.

  ‘So, Aztecs sacrificed humans, we all know that,’ Yorke said. ‘I’m not concluding that Jessica was sacrificed, but there are some striking similarities with the methods that have been used.’

  He threw out another image that he had found online the evening before. He didn’t look at it again. He didn’t really need to because he’d been dreaming about it all night.

  ‘This kind of sacrifice is called Tlacamictilztli. Excuse the mispronunciation. I’ve written it beneath the image too.’

  In this image, a small man was face up on a stone, while a tall and goggle-eyed man, almost twice his size, split his chest open with a knife that was almost the same size as the doomed man’s leg. Blood gushed like a geyser from the opening. The priest, depicted as a kind of cartoon character, had no emotion on his face, his teeth were bared, and he had a quiff that looked like three raised snakes.

  Yorke noticed everyone exchanging glances. Even Jake and Gardner, which was disappointing. He continued regardless. ‘Tlacamictilztli means heart extraction. This is what happened to Jessica, albeit by more modern methods, and is the first link I want to make.’

  DC Collette Willow’s hand went up and Yorke nodded.

  ‘I obviously know about human sacrifice, but not really why they did it?’

  Yorke was grateful for the curiosity, even if it was laced with scepticism.

  ‘Well, the Aztecs believed that the gods had sacrificed themselves in order that they could live, and that they need to continue to sacrifice in order to honour them.’

  He waited for Willows to nod in understanding before continuing, ‘The other link I want to hi
ghlight is the missing flesh from Jessica’s thighs. After sacrificing, Aztec nobles would consume flesh from the sacrifices.’

  Before the looks could begin again, Yorke jumped to his feet and strode over to the board to put his finger on the photograph of Jessica’s body.

  ‘So, we have a picture, possibly left by the killer, of an Aztec deity. We have a murder than resembles a traditional Aztec sacrifice and we have the possibility of cannibalism - another Aztec ritual. It is an angle we will pursue. I am bringing Utter in again, later today, to assist with the investigation. His knowledge is limited on the investigation, but his knowledge of Aztecs is anything but. If I’m right, which I think I am, we can use him to profile the killer. He will, of course, be enlightened to the specifics of the case but will sign a non-disclosure agreement. Assignments are typed up on the board. We will continue with existing investigations, including Preston’s web of disgruntled folk; but, in addition, I have assigned some officers to investigate forums online. Many people still practise this religion, usually within the confines of the law. But, we will contact all these forums to determine if there are any indications of their clientele taking it further. I have also assigned team members to trawl through cold cases in the UK which may carry a hint of Aztec sacrifices. There were alternative methods of sacrifice, so these are clearly listed in today’s briefing notes.’

  He excused himself to go to the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face and looked at his tired eyes. Eyes that had spent the night bathing in shocking images. Jessica had died in a dreadful way, no doubt about that, but when he considered the sheer number of people who had died in that same way, albeit a long time ago, he felt his blood run cold.

  80,400 humans were sacrificed over a four-day period during the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid in 1487. Fourteen sacrifices a minute.