The Deceit
Page 23
Ryan and Helen climbed the stairs. Their room washot, stuffy and plagued by mosquitoes so big they wheeled, serenely, like condors. Helen wrapped herself with sheets to keep them away; but when it didn’t work, she wrapped herself tighter. ‘Do you think this is how mummies evolved? People just wrapped themselves in sheets to keep the damn mosquitoes away, then they wrapped themselves so tightly someone died. God.’
Ryan laughed. Helen was funny; beneath her stern exterior, her brusqueness, she was funny. He knew very well by now that he was falling in love with her. Quite passionately. As gently as he could, he kissed her wounded shoulder. And then he turned her over and kissed her properly.
They were back in the car before dawn and drove the last miles through a silent Aswan. The Nile shone like metal, the broad-shouldered rocks of Elephantine Island glistened darkly, the sails of the feluccas furled and sleeping.
Onwards they drove to the pier that led to the Philae temple on its little island: raised from the deluge that created Lake Aswan in the 1950s, when the Nile was finally stopped, after five million years, by the second Aswan Dam.
The sun was coming up. Birds swung in the violet air, snatching the last of the night’s mosquitoes. It was beautiful and quiet and yet the emptiness was also menacing. There were no tourists, of course; but there were no people either. One of the great tourist sights of the world was desolate.
Just one Nubian man was sleeping in his little boat, which was tethered to the pier. His djellaba was filthy and his teeth were white and his skin was darker than black; his sneakers were fake Adidas. Albert woke him by the shoulder, and spoke. The Nubian frowned, hawked some spittle into the lakewater, and shook his head.
‘Dammit,’ Ryan cursed. ‘The site is closed. The police have shut down everything. Too much trouble to keep it open with no tourists.’
‘So he is not going to take us?’ Helen said. ‘But we have to get there! Macarius says Philae is the key. We have to get there, we must!’
Ryan whispered, ‘Hold on … Look.’
Dollars were passing between the two men on the pier. Then Albert returned, a shine of sweat on his forehead. ‘I just about managed to persuade him. But he says it’s dangerous. The police come every day: they are desperate for bribes. If they find us they will arrest us again, and if we get arrested again, ah, then it will not be so easy to extricate us from trouble.’ He looked hard at Ryan. ‘They will surely have our names, on a list, after what happened in Luxor. In the temple. And the tombs.’
‘Then we have to hurry.’ Helen had made the decision. She marched down the pier and jumped into the boat.
The little wooden vessel puttered across the glittering lake. The sun was rising now, and slanting through the great pillars of Philae, the mighty kiosk of Trajan, the walls where the last true hieroglyphs in history were written.
Philae.
‘We need hours.’ Ryan said. ‘This temple is vast.’
Albert shrugged. ‘The boatman says he will just give us ten minutes.’
‘What?’
‘Or we are stuck on the island. He will leave without us. He is terrified of being caught by police. And, likewise, we mustn’t be stranded, it would be calamitous.’
Hanna was, of course, entirely right. If they waited they’d be swiftly arrested by the first tourist police patrol of the day. But swimming to escape would be way too dangerous: there was bilharzia in these Aswan waters: horrible parasites, the lake was notorious for it; and also water snakes, maybe even crocodiles. Swimming was insane.
‘Ten minutes it is,’ said Helen, grabbing Ryan’s notebook. She pointed at the page, and showed him. The process was the same as Luxor. A series of turns and directions.
‘OK?’
Albert said he would wait by the boat. He was hot and tired.
They ran through the mighty, silent pillars of the most beautiful temple in Egypt, utterly alone. Ryan yearned to linger: this was a unique experience, precious and memorable. Alone in Philae!
Eight minutes left: they passed the Nilometer. Six minutes: a glimpse of the Birth House. Four minutes: they saw the defaced images of Isis. Ryan had been here before but he’d never noticed it properly. Everywhere in Philae the face of the goddess Isis was brutally erased, chiselled out: by Copts, of course. And the inner halls were embossed with brutal Coptic crosses.
Ryan knew the history: in the fifth century the Copts had turned the abominable pagan temple, to the goddess of magic and fertility, into a proper Christian church. In doing so they had angrily chiselled out the visage of Isis herself, the mother of Horus, the tutelary deity of the entire Mediterranean. Isis the Beloved. Erased.
‘Two minutes!’ cried Helen.
Ryan searched the hieroglyphs in the Inner Sanctuary. This was the place. But where exactly? Where was it? What did Macarius come to see? Philae was the last place their scholar had visited, where he made his final conclusions. Tantalizingly yet predictably he had not written them down, not explicitly. But Ryan was sure he was on the very edge now, standing on the precipice. He was ready to make the leap of faith and discovery.
‘One minute!’
But he couldn’t find it. There was nothing here. He’d lost his chance.
Helen was tugging him. ‘We have to go!’
‘No—’
‘Ryan! Please! If they find us – we cannot risk it!’
He stepped close. What was this? He reached up a hand. What was this?
‘Ryan! We have to go!’
That had to be it. Right above Isis.
But what did it mean? Ryan turned, and nodded, half-despairing, half-exulting. He was so close. Helen sighed with relief and he followed her, climbing over soft limestone pedestals and fallen capitals, sprinting for the boat.
Albert was waiting at the temple pier, his face twisted with anxiety. The boatman looked angry, he was revving his outboard motor, the cordage was curled, the boat was unmoored: he was ready to go.
‘Alors. Get in the boat!’
They jumped in. The boatman kicked the wooden piles of the jetty and fended off, thrusting them into the deeper lakewater. He leaned on the tiller and they puttered out, breasting the waters; Ryan stared at the lake, so beautiful in the rising sun. The sun that died, and was born again. Every day.
Helen cried out: ‘The police!’
A police boat was crossing the lake ahead of them: in a few seconds they would be seen. And stopped.
Albert grabbed Ryan and Ryan grabbed Helen, and they threw themselves onto the damp planking of the hull, out of sight. Crouched and waiting, praying and waiting.
The boat crossed Aswan Lake. Ryan stared at Helen’s tense and beautiful face, her virginal blonde hair. Beautiful Isis the Beloved.
Of course. Isis was key, Isis! She was the ankh that unlocked the secret. The strange bewitching smile of the goddess, that had shone across the ancient world, was still radiating today, from the Pillars of Philae, to all of humanity.
Ryan exulted, He had deciphered the hieroglyph. He had unlocked the Macarius puzzle. And he felt a surge of pride. He hadn’t needed the missing documents, let alone the Arab gloss or the French concordance.
The few precious papyrus sheets rescued by Helen had been enough. Ryan had used the clues, and seized the prize.
And the answer wasn’t remotely what he had expected.
38
London
Karen Trevithick told nobody about the email from Rothley. The necessity for silence, and secrecy, was a physical pain: another ache to add to the anguish that was her separation from Eleanor.
But she told no one. She just slipped out of the office at five, into the sleeting darkness and January traffic, and got a Tube home. It was the first time she had been there since the evening she had come back to Muswell Hill to find Eleanor gone. It was, of course, a scene of crime now. But it was also her home. And she needed stuff. But, nonetheless, she had to fight her own mind to get past the fear of crossing the door.
She didn’t want to
be here; the last place on earth she desired to be was in this place, with its intensity of reminders about Eleanor. And memories of that night.
Summoning all her resolve, she put her key in the lock. And heard a noise inside.
Eleanor?
Stupid hopes devoured her. Karen rushed into the hall, slapping on the lights, and pushed open Eleanor’s door … The bedroom was empty. Of course. But the window was open: one of the Scene of Crime Officers must have lifted the sash window, left the curtain flapping.
Nothing, no one, nothing. Get a grip, please.
Karen pushed the window down and closed the curtain. She had to stay in control. So she didn’t look left as she exited the bedroom, and she didn’t look right, either: she didn’t want to see the toys, the books, the clothes, the old plastic Thomas the Tank Engine bib that Eleanor used when she was a toddler; the tears were rising in her throat again, like bile.
‘Get this done,’ she said, to herself, aloud. ‘Come on.’
Karen went into the bathroom and slipped off her clothes and showered, quickly, turning her face to the hot, hot water. Eyes closed. Think of nothing. Just get through, just do it.
But what exactly was she DOING?
It was impossible to exile these thoughts from her mind. Was she being insane? Going to meet Rothley? On her own? Perhaps it was crazy, but this entire scenario was mad, and cruel. Like one of those modern stories with an unhappy ending, where you left the cinema with an empty space in your stomach and a sense of grim despair.
Foisting off the emotion, she towelled herself down and then went for her clothes. She had to do this. She was being sensible, this could save Eleanor. Somehow.
But what should she wear? Karen opted for jogging bottoms and tennis shoes, two T-shirts, a zip-up top. Clothes for action, to give herself mobility. She was fit, she liked to run, she had done some karate: maybe she could tackle this guy. As she went for the jeans, her attention was snagged by a red hooded top, badly folded, waiting to be washed, ten sizes too small. It was Eleanor’s. From the London Aquarium. It had a picture of a dolphin on it, smiling and drinking a cocktail.
Her reaction was reflexive. Karen’s hand grabbed the top and hungrily, urgently, she pressed the fabric to her nose and inhaled the perfume of her daughter like a drowning scuba diver taking oxygen, deeply, deeply breathing Eleanor’s life, her aliveness—
Karen hurled the top onto the floor.
No.
Zipping her top, she picked up her small rucksack and ran to the door, then sprinted to the Tube. She exited Temple Station at 6.45 p.m. Ten minutes later she approached 102 Chancery Lane.
Five minutes to the rendezvous.
Professional and adept, Karen checked the building, scanning it visually. Apart from the police tape marking the Scene of Crime it looked identical to the day she’d been here with the site manager and found the body of the girl with the severed fingers in her mouth. The windows were black sockets. The nicotine-yellow walls needed paint and cleaning. Classical motifs and capitals gave the place a bogus, faded grandeur. The ground floor was surrounded by the palisade of builder’s plywood and KEEP OUT warnings. How would she get in?
Karen crossed the unbusy road. At night this part of Central London was deserted. No one lived in this tiny, mainly medieval quarter of lawyers’ offices and bullion merchants. Five hundred yards away, there was active life, and bustling pubs, but here there was just the splash of an occasional taxi in the cold and the sleet.
Which meant it was a good place to choose if you were a criminal like Rothley. The idea that a villain returned to the scene of the crime was such a cliché that police now commonly ignored it: what villain would be that stupid? An obviously intelligent enemy like Rothley would not be stupid. Which meant that stupidly returning to the same place was actively smart. A double bluff. This was the last place cops would expect him to go. Especially to enact some elaborate ritual.
Karen found the wire door she had used before. It was open.
She paused for a moment and looked at her watch: 6.59. Should she go in? Was she just playing Rothley’s sadistic game? What did she have that he wanted? She didn’t know. Luke Rothley had all the power. She’d never met him but he scared her: his ability to enter and exit without trace, to take and do exactly what he wanted, to persuade a girl to bite off her own fingers. And how did he know she had worn the same clothes twice?
Karen thought of Crowley. It was said that in the streets he could make himself invisible; others claimed that he was throbbing with so much magical power that his coat once burst into flames.
Rothley was Crowley. He was. The only difference was that Rothley was worse. He was doing the Abra-Melin ritual properly: sacrificing the life of a child. An act of evil at which even Crowley had shied. And now he was drawing Karen into this stupid and obvious trap, and yet she could not resist. Because it was her child he was going to sacrifice.
Karen Trevithick pushed the wire door and it swung open. She stepped inside and turned on her torch. The big dusty hallway was mute. Silent shadows fled across the wall, as if alarmed, when she flicked her torchlight down the hall. But it was empty. Then she tilted the beam at the iron banisters. Nothing. The silence was beyond funereal. Maybe there was no one here, in this vile old building. Maybe it was just a cruel joke, maybe Eleanor was being kept elsewhere. But Rothley had said to come to the basement.
‘Come on,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Come on, you can do this, come on come on come on …’
The stairway to the basement was at the end of the ground-floor hall. Karen stepped over a fallen chandelier, and walked the length of the hallway and then looked down. Her torch beam followed her gaze, down the stairs. The light was swallowed by the darkness. There seemed to be a door at the bottom of the stairs. A black and dusty door.
Still, she could hear nothing – nothing but her own heartbeat, and her own breathing.
Karen went down the steps, counting them as she did. Trying to stay calm. ‘One, two, three, four …’
The doorknob was slightly greasy. The hinges squealed in complaint, but the door opened. Her torchlight flashed up and down, left and right. The beam illuminated another narrow hallway, leading into darkness, with at least half a dozen doors that she could see. The dust was thick down here, and it smelled very bad. Rats, probably. Karen approached the first door, and listened. Eleanor could be locked behind any of these doors. Or she could be somewhere else entirely. Or she might already be dead.
‘Eleanor,’ Karen whispered. ‘Mummy is here.’ She wanted to shout it, loudly, as loud as she had ever shouted; but she didn’t.
Enough. Karen turned the old ivory doorknob and kicked the door open. The room was bare and reeking and empty. A rat scuttled into darkness.
The next door. She kicked it open. Exactly the same: the nasty skitter of a rat-tail, whipping on floorboards.
She moved on, opening each door in turn. Speeding up.
Door three. Room three.
Empty.
Door four. Room four.
Empty.
Door five. Room five.
‘Mummy!’
The blood in her heart stopped pumping. That was Eleanor’s voice. It was loud and it was near.
‘Mummy! Help me! He’s hurting me! Mummyyyy!’
It was Eleanor in panic, in horrible pain, an Eleanor she hadn’t heard before: agonized, desperate, terrified.
‘Mmymymymuummyy help me!’
It was too much. Karen swallowed the sobs of anger and despair. The voice, her daughter’s scream, was coming from the end of the corridor. Karen turned, and jumped over a heap of something, maybe carpet, old carpet, something rotten and damp and blackened and stinking, burned even, and then she found a turning – more doors, even more doors.
‘Mummmy …’
The scream ended and died, in sad whimpers.
It was this door here. Door seven. Room seven. Light was visible at the bottom of the door. This was it. Eleanor was in here.
39
Chancery Lane, London
Karen’s eyes adjusted. The room was apparently empty. Eleanor was not here. The only obvious presence in the room was that dazzling white glare, emitted by a professional camera light on a tripod: and adjusted so that it shone directly at the door.
‘Ellie?’ Karen said. Then she shouted, loudly: ‘Eleanor?’
Nothing. There was no one in the room. There was maybe no one in the building. Karen worked the logic. Rothley was surely tricking her, if not taunting her: that was certain. But how was he doing it? There had to be a speaker, concealed in the room: that was the only answer. A speaker relaying Eleanor’s voice. So where was it?
Shielding her eyes from the intense glare, Karen walked to the camera light, and knocked it to the left. Urgently she scanned the walls, the grubby cornicing, the picture rail. Spiders shrank away in the corners. It was so dark and dirty, up there, she could hardly see anything. Maybe there wasn’t a speaker?
She tried just one more time. ‘Eleanor! Ellie! It’s Mummy!’
A spider fell to the floor, near her feet, and fled into the shadows under the window.
These windows, Karen noted, were barred with black and rusted iron. What was out there? Some kind of basement stairwell, perhaps, leading up to the drizzly, empty, lamplit street. Perhaps Eleanor had been here and Rothley had taken her out that way. But how could he have done it so quickly? It was all mad, and it was cleverly menacing.
Karen stepped to the old sash window and looked out: it was indeed a stone stairwell. A wet, bleached pink copy of the Financial Times wrapped itself around the iron railings. The window-bars were flaking paint. And the glass of the window seemed to smell. Of what? How could glass smell?