Shadows on the Nile

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘What is it,’ he asked, ‘that you want from us?’

  The man smiled courteously and sipped his mint tea, refusing to be hurried.

  Monty changed tack. ‘Who are you and what is your business?’

  More success this time. Ahmed Rashid leaned forward across the small wooden table, so that his voice need be no more than a whisper. Monty could smell the mint on his breath.

  ‘I am an officer with the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.’ He paused. ‘A police officer.’

  Monty felt the ground slide under his feet. His hand gripped his tea-glass tighter, but he did not react with anything more than a raised eyebrow. ‘Is that a fact, Mr Rashid?’

  ‘Captain Rashid.’

  ‘So why are you here?’

  Rashid leaned back in his seat, eyes fixed on Monty’s face, watching for any telltale tic or twitch. ‘Come now, Mr Chamford.’ Monty noted the error with his name. Either this man did not know as much as he implied or it was a deliberate insult. ‘We both know why I am here.’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘I am here because of Timothy Kenton.’

  Oh, Christ! Tim was about to be arrested and chucked into prison. Digging up Egyptian treasures without a licence. Stealing valuable antiquities. Exporting them without a licence. Travelling on a false passport. The list was horribly impressive.

  Monty smiled engagingly. ‘Well, that makes two of us. Do you know where he is to be found?’

  Rashid started to shake his head. He opened his mouth to speak, just as the ear-splitting sound of a gunshot crashed through the quiet room, deafening everyone in it and leaving a neat red flower on the white sleeve of Rashid’s galabaya. Monty dived to the floor, dragging the bleeding Egyptian with him, while others screamed and one man fell to his knees in loud prayer to Allah.

  Only then did Monty see the four men looming in the doorway. They wore black robes and the one in front held a gun in his hand. It was a very old Browning semi-automatic but Monty knew it was none the less deadly for all that. He tipped the table on to the floor for protection for Rashid and himself. Not much, but something. His knife was in his hand and he prepared to rush forward. If he was going to die, he would die fighting.

  Jessie. It was the only word in his head.

  The four men came for him. Him alone. Not Rashid. Nor anyone else in the café. He swung the knife. Cut twice. Saw blood. But they overpowered him with their numbers and hauled him out into the street, threw him on the ground where the one who carried a stick beat his back. The blows were well aimed.

  They left him. In the dirt. Alive.

  ‘Open door! Open door, please, Mr Monty sir bey. Quick, yes please.’

  Monty shuddered. He was standing under the shower taking the full force of the cold water on his back. He flinched as he stooped to pick up a towel and wrap it around his waist. Malak’s fist was banging on the door, waking up the whole damn corridor, otherwise Monty might have ignored the boy and stayed in the shower.

  ‘All right! Quiet down.’ He swung open the door. Outside in the corridor Malak looked small and frightened. ‘Get in here, boy.’

  ‘I did it, sir bey, I did it, yes.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Found special dead place, big secret, I did.’ His words were tumbling over each other and his eyes were darting all around the room, as if he feared to find someone else there.

  Monty stood, stunned. He stared at the boy, disbelieving. ‘You found the tomb?’

  Malak puffed out his skinny chest. ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I find your Dr Scott, so clever I am.’

  ‘You spoke to him?’

  A nod for reply.

  ‘We told you not to because he—’

  ‘Oh but I so clever, I help him much loading boat. I know him from Missie’s picture and I carry much I strong.’ He waved a puny arm at Monty to prove it. ‘I say I want much good work. He laugh at me, sir bey.’ He flashed his disarming smile around the room but was clearly jumpy.

  ‘What is it, Malak? What’s the problem?’

  The boy’s face crumpled unexpectedly and his huge black eyes filled with tears. ‘I go with Dr Scott, yes bey, to camp and tonight he kill a man I see yes. I see it.’

  ‘Oh, Malak.’ He put his arm around the small trembling shoulders. ‘You are a brave young man. Very full of courage. To walk right into the lion’s den.’

  The boy tilted his head back and looked up at him. ‘No lions, sir bey. Man shot.’ He mimicked a gun. ‘He enemy man. I not know more how he bad. Dr Scott shoot. In head. I see.’ Tears were rolling down his grubby cheeks.

  Don’t let it be Tim. He hugged Malak to him until the boy stopped shaking and then he walked over to the glass of whisky already standing waiting by his bed. But when he turned his back to pick it up, the boy squealed alarmingly.

  ‘What is …?’ Monty started, then stopped. He quickly snatched his shirt from the bed and, with a curse under his breath as he stretched out his arm, slipped it on. ‘It’s nothing, Malak.’

  ‘That not nothing, sir bey. That bad yes, very bad.’

  ‘Forget about it, Malak.’ He lowered himself on the edge of the bed and took a decent swig of the whisky. ‘Come here.’

  Malak shot to his side.

  ‘Let’s get this straight, Malak. You went to Scott’s camp.’

  ‘Yes sir bey.’

  ‘You travelled in his truck? Last night?’

  ‘Yes sir bey.’

  ‘With others?’

  ‘Two men. Egyptian donkey-heads, sir bey.’

  ‘You spent today working at the camp?’

  A nod. ‘I carry much. From dead place.’

  ‘The tomb?’

  ‘Yes sir bey.’

  Monty ruffled the boy’s filthy hair. ‘You, young man, are impressive. Tell me, was there a blond Englishman there?’

  ‘Oh yes, oh bey. He strange.’

  Monty smiled. ‘Well, what do you expect? He’s English. Did you speak to him?’

  ‘No, sir, no.’

  ‘We must go and tell Miss Kenton.’

  He didn’t want to ask the next question but he had no choice. ‘Can you lead us back to the camp?’

  Monty saw the boy hesitate, saw the battle in his young face between pride and fear. He didn’t urge him. Just let him make his own choice in his own time.

  ‘Yes, bey.’

  Monty pushed himself to his feet, his breathing shallow. He could hardly bear to use his lungs.

  ‘Let’s go see Miss Kenton.’

  It was one o’clock in the morning.

  ‘You tell her you bad back yes?’

  ‘No, Malak. Definitely not yes.’ He mimed a button on the boy’s lips. ‘No bad back. Just the tomb and the blond Englishman.’

  The boy rolled his eyes. ‘I show.’

  ‘Thank you, Malak. You’re a very brave boy.’

  Malak looked up at him. ‘You very brave man yes.’

  Jessie stared out of her hotel window at the vast night sky and imagined Tim out there somewhere, looking up at the same stars and the same moon. Did he know she was here? Had he seen her drawing on the truck? Was he feeling on his skin the same chill night breeze off the Nile?

  She had woken abruptly not long after midnight, feeling much better. Twelve hours’ sleep. Monty had been right. Her body had needed total rest to rid itself of toxins. Her hand was still sore but the swelling in her arm was much reduced, so that it looked almost normal and she could move it, no longer so stiff. The drumbeat was still in her head but as soon as she opened her eyes she was aware that Monty had gone. Where her hand touched the sheet, it was cold.

  ‘Back in the land of the living, I see.’

  ‘Maisie!’

  She was sitting in the chair beside the bed. Her hair was released from the grip of its tight bun at the back of her head and fell in soft waves around her narrow face, so that she looked much less intrepid. Wrapped in the soft camel-coloured folds of her dressi
ng gown with her umbrella at her side and her eyes drooping with tiredness, she looked worried.

  Instantly Jessie sat up. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. He asked me to watch over you. Said he’d not be long.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Over two hours.’

  Jessie swung her legs out of bed.

  ‘And where,’ Maisie said sternly, ‘do you think you’re off to, young lady?’

  ‘I have to get dressed.’

  ‘Now? I’m telling you, young madam, that you are going exactly nowhere.’

  But Jessie insisted on dressing and drinking glass after glass of water to rehydrate herself. She took two of her tablets and sat by the window. Ready and waiting.

  It was Maisie who answered the knock on the door. Jessie could hear words tumbling into the room, words about Tim and the tomb, about Scott and a gun, about Malak tramping through the desert hills on his own for hour after hour, navigating as best he could by the stars to find his way back to Luxor. Talk of police. Words that were important.

  Yet all she could see was Monty’s face. There was a darkness in his eyes and a tightness around his mouth. When she asked what was wrong, he gave her a laugh that wasn’t a laugh and said, ‘Everything.’

  Something had happened. In those two hours something had hurt him, and whatever it was, it made her sick to her stomach that he wasn’t telling her. She saw that his knuckles were skinned, and when he walked to the door to fetch his coat from his room and one of his jackets for Malak, he moved as though his bones were tied together with barbed-wire.

  Whatever had happened was bad.

  *

  They travelled through the middle of the night on camels provided by Yasser, just the three of them – Monty, Malak and herself. Maisie cursed Monty to hell and back because he refused to let her ride with them, but he would not budge.

  ‘The risk is too great,’ he said flatly.

  ‘The risk is of my own choosing, you camel-brained toff!’ Maisie shouted after him. He did not even look back.

  They rode in near silence, except for the hiss of the wind across the sand and the churning rumble of the camel’s gut as they moved on cushioned feet over the stony ground. Jessie was wrapped up with a long scarf around her head and neck, as well as an Arab robe against the icy night air, and she took a while to adjust to the odd pitching and rolling gait of her animal, but she urged it on ever faster, discarding her sling. It was when the lights of Luxor vanished behind them and the great sea of darkness that was the desert rose up around them that Jessie shuddered and moved her camel closer to Monty’s. The boy was up ahead, chirruping blithely and kicking his heels at his beast as he guided the way by moonlight.

  ‘Monty,’ she said softly. ‘What happened tonight? With the police.’

  She could make out the outline of his head, bulky in its scarf, and saw it lift from his chest on which it had sunk.

  ‘Nothing much. A policeman in plain clothes questioned me about Tim but I told him I knew nothing.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I had to leave the police officer for a few minutes and when I came back he had gone. I have no idea how he knew me.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re lying to me.’

  She heard him give a throaty chuckle. ‘It’s better that way.’

  They left it at that.

  47

  The desert shimmered in the first light of dawn and it seemed to sigh as if it were breathing. Silver skeins of mist wound in and out of the wadis, sliding down the smooth waves of sand and writhing through narrow gulleys. Jessie lay flat on her stomach alongside Monty on a low ridge, watching the dunes around them ripple away to where sand and rocks became a dark blur.

  ‘The desert plays tricks on you,’ she murmured. She didn’t trust it.

  They lay immobile, taking in the stillness and waiting for the three tents on the gravel flats below them to emerge from the darkness. The silence was intense. They had left the camels, frothing at the mouth, in the care of Malak about a mile back in the lee of a steep slope that would keep the animals’ mumblings out of earshot. It had taken a long ride for the boy to find the exact location of the camp again and at times they had to double back on themselves and retrace their steps in the sand to regain the correct direction. But they were here in time to see the first rays of the sun start to paint the desert blood-red.

  They lay close together, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, sharing their heat, keeping each other’s body warm. She could tell something hurt but he’d tell her when he was ready and until then she linked her hand with his, holding him safe. It occurred to her that he had changed. No longer the amiable English gent. No longer bubbling with charm and disarming smiles. Something darker lay beside her now, someone who possessed his own private torments and troubles that she could only guess at.

  But he trusted her. As she trusted him, and she valued that. It was something she had not been capable of before but, stretched out here in the cold desert dawn, she was willing to risk more than just her neck on these rocky slopes with him. But when he turned to look at her and his eyes in the shadows were so intent, so tenacious, she knew exactly what was coming.

  ‘No,’ she said before he asked.

  ‘You don’t know what I’m going to say.’

  ‘Say it then.’

  ‘Please, Jessie, will you stay here? Let me go down on my own.’

  ‘The answer is still no.’

  He made a despairing noise under his breath. ‘There is no point us both getting into trouble.’

  ‘I agree, Monty. So why don’t I go down on my own? They won’t take much notice of a stupid girl, one who has just come chasing after her brother. Let me …’

  ‘Forget that. I’m not letting you go marching down to those tents on your own, so don’t let’s waste breath discussing it.’ He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her so close against him that she could smell the stale odour of his robe and see the pulse at the angle of his jaw. Tucked against his ribs under the robe the outline of something metallic jarred against her.

  ‘A gun? Monty, no. If they see you with a gun they might …’

  ‘Hush, it’s just for show. Not for use. It was my father’s.’

  Jessie shivered. For a moment she buried her face in the damp material of his shoulder.

  ‘Very well, we do what we agreed,’ he said eventually. ‘Don’t worry so much.’ He gave a soft chuckle that almost sounded real. ‘Tim won’t let them hurt his big sister.’

  The mist was beginning to thin and the ridgepoles of the three tents rose above it, disembodied and ghostly. At that moment the flap of one of the tents flicked open and a large muscular Egyptian emerged, scratching his beard and scanning the horizon. Instantly Jessie recognised him as the driver of the truck and she felt Monty flatten her closer to the rocks. The man was wearing nothing more than a long undershirt and a gun holster. With a yawn that was audible up on the ridge he walked away from the tents, urinated, then squatted to defecate in the sand, and all the time he watched the slopes above him.

  The camp was well-placed. On a small flat pan at the foot of a cluster of rock-strewn hills that curved away to the north, barren and desolate, while to the west a sea of sand and gravel stretched to the horizon, rising and falling like sun-scorched waves. Jessie could just make them out in the dim light and her eyes turned away from the sight of them quickly. She found Monty watching her.

  ‘Do you know,’ she whispered, pointing at the canopy of stars that hung above them, ‘that Ancient Egyptians believed that stars were the souls of the dead?’

  He smiled at her and shook his head.

  ‘The souls,’ she continued, ‘are waiting in the darkness for the return of the sun-god Ra.’ She touched his cheek and let her fingers follow the line of his jaw. ‘That’s what I’ve been doing. All these years. Waiting in the darkness.’

  He kissed her mouth and she tasted the sour tang
of the desert on his lips. Two other men suddenly emerged from the tent into the semi-darkness, one with a large belly under his galabaya, and all three washed vigorously in a bowl of water, then proceeded to say their dawn prayers. Facing east, the shadowy figures went through the ritual of devotion, of standing and kneeling on their prayer mats, touching their foreheads to the ground and reciting their morning prayers.

  Jessie found the process oddly disarming. It was so calm. She wanted to shout to them, to call out, ‘Salaam, look at us, we’re part of creation too. Don’t shoot us. Just let me talk to my brother. Peace be upon you.’

  She even opened her mouth. But she allowed no sound to escape. It wasn’t the living that mattered here, it was the dead. And the treasure that was buried with them.

  48

  Georgie

  Egypt 1932

  Today is not a good day. It starts badly. You are not concentrating. You break the yolks when you are frying my eggs and they all run together, so that it looks like diarrhoea.

  ‘The eggs taste the same,’ you say. ‘I haven’t time to cook more. Just eat it, Georgie, please.’

  I would rather eat cat-sick.

  I cannot understand your face but I can hear in your voice that something is wrong.

  Usually your movements are slow and calm, as if to counter-balance my jerky ones, but today they are quick and impatient. You hurry in and out of my tent, all rapid words and long legs, and there are more people rushing around outside. I hear their deep voices. I feel small bubbles of panic start to fizz in my blood until they pop in my brain. I struggle hard to breathe quietly. I stay in my tent. I sit in my canvas chair which I like and I count silently in my head. It is the only way I can block out your words. I reach two thousand and eighty-four before you notice.