by Paul Sussman
She pulled a tab of chewing gum from her pocket and popped it into her mouth, wondering if she should go forward to the checkpoint and flash her press ID, try to speed things up a bit. She'd just be wasting her time, though – press card or no press card, it didn't change the fact she was a Palestinian. She gazed at the scene a while longer, then turned away and started back the way she had come, shaking her head wearily, the ground beneath her feet trembling as a pair of Merkava tanks rumbled past on the opposite side of the road, blue and white Israeli flags fluttering from their turrets.
'Kosominumhum kul il-Israelieen,' she muttered.
LUXOR
Dr Ibrahim Anwar, chief pathologist at Luxor Hospital, had many annoying habits, not the least of which was his refusal ever to let work get in the way of a good game of dominoes. Anwar's passion for what he referred to as 'the board game of the gods' had delayed many an investigation over the years, and it did so again with the Jansen case. He had carried out an initial examination of the body at Malqata and then sent it back over the river to the morgue at Luxor General. Rather than performing an autopsy that same evening, however, as Khalifa had hoped he would, the pathologist had instead postponed it so he could participate in an interdepartmental dominoes competition. The upshot was that it was almost noon the next day before he finally called the police station to inform Khalifa that the post-mortem results were ready.
'About time,' snapped the detective, angrily stubbing out his fifteenth cigarette of the day into an already overflowing ashtray. 'I was hoping I'd get them last night.'
'All good things to those who wait,' said Anwar with a cheerful chuckle. 'Interesting case, by the way. Very . . . thought-provoking. Anyway, my secretary's just finishing typing up the report. I can send it over to you, or you can come down here and pick it up yourself. Your choice.'
'I'll come down,' said Khalifa, knowing that if it was left to Anwar he might wait days for the report. 'Just tell me if it was an accident or foul play.'
'Oh, definitely foul play,' replied the pathologist. 'Extremely foul, although not perhaps in the way you imagine.'
'What the hell does that mean?'
'Let's just say it's a complicated story, and one with a bit of a sting in the tail. Come on over and all will be revealed. I think you'll find I've excelled myself on this one, Khalifa. Really excelled myself.'
The detective let out an exasperated sigh and, telling Anwar he'd be at the hospital in twenty minutes, hung up.
Mohammed Sariya walked into the office.
'That damned pathologist,' grumbled Khalifa. 'He's a disgrace.'
'He's finished the autopsy?'
'Only just. The man couldn't move slower if he was a bloody tortoise. I'm going over to get the report now. Any progress?'
While Khalifa had stayed in the office waiting for Anwar's call, Sariya had spent the morning following up the leads his boss had found in the dead man's house the previous night.
'Not much,' he replied, crossing to his desk and sitting down. 'Banque Misr are faxing over copies of his statements for the last four quarters and I've been on to the phone company for a breakdown of his calls over the same period. I also managed to track down his housekeeper.'
'Anything?'
'About the best way to cook molochia, more than you could ever want to know. About Jansen, almost nothing. She came in for a few hours twice a week, cleaned, did his shopping. He cooked for himself. She never went in the cellar, apparently. Wasn't allowed.'
'His will?' asked Khalifa. 'Did you speak to his solicitor?'
Sariya nodded. 'He definitely made one because the solicitor witnessed it. He hasn't got a copy, though. Said Jansen kept one for himself and gave another to some friend down in Cairo.'
Khalifa sighed and, standing, removed his jacket from the back of his chair.
'OK, start looking into Jansen's background, will you? How long he's lived in Egypt, where he was from originally, what he was doing when he lived in Alexandria. Anything you can dig up. There's something wrong about this guy. Or at least something not right. I can feel it.'
He pulled on the jacket and started across the room. When he reached the door he turned.
'By the way, you didn't happen to find out where the name Arminius comes from, did you?'
'I did actually,' said Sariya, looking pleased with himself. 'I did an internet search.'
'And?'
'Apparently it was some ancient German guy. Bit of a national hero, apparently.'
Khalifa clicked his fingers in recognition.
'I knew I'd heard the name before. Good work, Mohammed. Very good work.'
He stepped through the door and set off down the corridor, hands thrust into his pockets, wondering why on earth someone from Holland would want to name his dog after a German national hero.
True to form, Anwar wasn't in his office when Khalifa arrived fifteen minutes later. While a green-uniformed nurse went looking for him the detective stood at his window gazing down into the hospital grounds below, where a group of workmen were digging a trench across a stretch of lawn, the rhythmic thwack of their tourias echoing dully up to him. His lungs ached for a cigarette, but he resisted the temptation. Anwar was fiercely anti-smoking, and aching lungs, however uncomfortable, were infinitely preferable to one of the pathologist's 'If-you-want-to-poison-yourself-go-right-ahead-just-don't-do-it-anywhere-near-me' lectures. He nibbled his nails instead and, heaving open the window, leant out with his elbows on the sill, staring down at a child chasing a butterfly around the hospital car park.
There was something wrong here. He'd tried to tell himself he was just imagining things, reading too much into the situation, but it made no difference. Each little element, each fragment of the picture – the dead man's cane, his hatred of Jews, the house beside Karnak Temple, the strange feathered hat – all had added to his growing sense of unease, so that what had started as a faint pulse of uncertainty had now expanded into a corrosive panicky ache deep in the pit of his stomach.
True, he always experienced an adrenalin rush at the start of a case, a furious overworking of the mind as he struggled to master all the elements of the problem and arrange them into recognizable patterns. This, however, was different, for what was troubling him now was not so much the current investigation, but rather a previous one, years ago, right at the start of his police career. A murder, the first one he had ever worked on, horrible affair, brutal. Schlegel. That had been her name. Hannah Schlegel. Israeli. Jewish. Dreadful case. And now, suddenly, from nowhere . . . echoes. Nothing concrete. Nothing he could clutch on to with certainty. Just coincidences, momentary flashes in the blackness of the past. Cane, Jew-hater, Karnak, feathers – the words kept ringing in his ears like a mantra, boring into his skull.
'This is crazy,' he muttered to himself, nibbling on his thumbnail. 'It was fifteen years ago, for God's sake. It's finished!'
Even as he said it, however, he sensed that it wasn't finished at all. On the contrary, he had the uncomfortable feeling that something was only just beginning.
'Damn you, Jansen,' he growled. 'Damn you for dying like this.'
'My sentiments exactly,' came a voice behind him. 'Although of course if he hadn't died I wouldn't have had the satisfaction of solving the case for you.'
Khalifa turned, annoyed that his thoughts had been disturbed. Anwar was standing in the doorway holding a steaming glass.
'I didn't hear you.'
'I'm not surprised,' said the pathologist. 'You were miles away.'
He sipped his drink and raised the glass, staring at the pale yellow liquid inside.
'Yansoon,' he said with a smile. 'The best in Luxor. One of the matrons brews it for me. Marvellous stuff. Very calming. You should try some.'
He winked at Khalifa, then crossed to his desk and sat down, balancing the glass on one corner while he burrowed his way into the snowdrift of paperwork that was heaped up in front of him.
'Now, where the hell did I put it. I had it only . . . a
h, here we are!'
He sat back, brandishing a thin typewritten document.
'Report of autopsy findings for Mr Piet Jansen,' he said, reading out the title at the top of the document. 'Another Anwar triumph!'
He looked up at Khalifa, smirking. The detective reached towards his pocket for his cigarettes, an involuntary motion he aborted halfway through, laying his hand on the windowsill instead.
'Go on then,' he said. 'Talk me through it.'
'With pleasure,' said Anwar, settling back in his chair. 'To start with, I can tell you that our man was murdered.'
Khalifa leant forward slightly.
'I can also tell you that I'm pretty certain I know the identity of the guilty party. They were, I suspect, acting in self-defence, although that in no way reduces the enormity of the crime, nor the fact that Jansen would have died an extremely unpleasant and painful death.'
He paused for dramatic effect. He's been rehearsing this, Khalifa thought to himself.
'Before I reveal the murderer's name, however, I think it might be instructive to remind ourselves of the precise circumstances in which Jansen's body was found.'
Khalifa opened his mouth to say that he remembered the circumstances perfectly well, but then shut it again, accepting from long experience that Anwar was going to do this at his own pace and no amount of complaining on Khalifa's part was going to change that.
'In your own time,' he muttered, waving his hand in weary resignation.
'Thank you. I don't think you'll be disappointed.'
The pathologist took another long, slow sip of his drink and set the glass down again.
'So,' he resumed, 'the scene. Our man's body, you will remember, is found lying face down in the dirt with a rather unsightly iron spike jammed through his left eye socket. As well as massive trauma to zygomatic, sphenoid and lachrymal bones, and to the entire left side of the brain – his cerebrum, frankly, looked like a bowl of mashed aubergine – he had also suffered a sizeable laceration to the right side of the skull, just above the level of the ear, clearly caused by an agent other than the spike. In addition there were minor lacerations to his left palm' – the pathologist held up his hand to illustrate the point – 'and left knee, as well as an area of discolouration and swelling around the base of the right thumb, just below the first synovial joint. You probably didn't notice this because that particular hand was positioned beneath the body. There were also traces of dried mud beneath the fingernails of the same hand.'
He drained the last of the yansoon and, with a slight burp, set the glass aside.
'Three metres from the corpse,' he continued, 'there were signs of disturbance to the desert surface, as though it had been the scene of a struggle of some sort, and also a lump of rock with traces of blood on one edge. Two hundred metres beyond that the deceased's bag and walking cane were discovered beside a section of painted mud-brick wall that he was evidently in the process of dismantling. To achieve this it would appear that he loosened the bricks with hammer and chisel, then prised them out with his hand, hence the mud-traces beneath his nails.'
He brought his elbows up onto the table and clasped his hands in front of him.
'So much for the scene-setting. The question is, how do all these different parts of the picture actually relate to one another?'
Again Khalifa's hand, as if independent of the rest of his body, reached for his cigarettes. Again he diverted it at the last minute, thrusting it into the pocket of his trousers.
'Do tell me.'
'I most certainly will,' replied Anwar. 'Let's look at each piece of the jigsaw separately, shall we? First, the metal spike. The injuries it inflicted were, of course, fatal. It was not, however, the cause of death. Or rather, Jansen would have died anyway, irrespective of whether or not he had fallen on it.'
Khalifa's eyes narrowed. Despite himself, he was interested.
'Go on.'
'The laceration on the side of the head is likewise a red herring. It was certainly caused by the bloodstained rock. It was in no way life-threatening, however, even to a man as old and frail as Jansen. There was no damage to the skull beneath, and no significant deep bruising. It was a nasty flesh wound, no more.'
'So if he didn't die from a blow to the head, and he didn't die from having his brain pulped by the spike, how the hell did he die?'
Anwar slapped a hand against his chest.
'Myocardial infarction.'
'What?'
'Heart attack. The man suffered a massive coronary thrombosis and subsequent cardiac arrest. Chances are he was dead before he even hit the spike.'
Khalifa came forward a step.
'So what are you saying? Someone sliced him across the head with a rock and his heart gave out?'
The pathologist grinned, enjoying the game.
'No-one sliced him over the head with the rock. The laceration was an accident.'
'But you said he was murdered!'
'And so he was.'
'Then how?'
'He was poisoned.'
Khalifa slammed his hand against the wall in frustration.
'Dammit, Anwar, what the hell are you talking about?'
'Exactly what I say. Piet Jansen's murderer poisoned him, and that poison, either directly or indirectly, precipitated a heart attack which subsequently killed the poor man. I really can't put it any clearer than that. What exactly is it you don't understand?'
Khalifa gritted his teeth, determined not to be provoked by the pathologist's patronizing tone.
'And who precisely is this mysterious poisoner?' he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. 'You said you knew who he was.'
'Oh, I do.' Anwar chuckled. 'I most certainly do.'
Again he allowed a pause for dramatic effect, then, leaning forward, he held out his hand palm-side upwards. He bunched it into a fist, extended the first finger and, with a sharp jerking motion, curled the finger back in on itself.
'The villain's name,' he announced portentously, 'is Mr Akarab.'
He repeated the strange jerking motion, jabbing the index finger in towards his palm.
'Akarab,' repeated Khalifa, bemused. 'You mean . . .'
The pathologist smiled. 'Exactly. Our friend Jansen was stung by an akarab. A scorpion.'
He curled the finger one more time, mimicking the action of a scorpion tail, then collapsed backwards into his chair, guffawing.
'I told you it was a story with a sting in the tail!' he roared. 'Just wait till I tell the boys about this one. The Tale of the Malqata Poisoner! Or should that be the Tail of the Malqata poisoner? Ha, ha, ha!'
'Very funny,' grunted Khalifa, smiling despite himself. 'I presume the swelling beneath his thumb was—'
'Where he got stung,' Anwar spluttered, trying to catch his breath. 'Exactly. Judging by the colour and extent it was a pretty severe sting, too. An adult scorpion rather than a nipper. Unbelievably painful.'
He got to his feet and, still chuckling to himself, crossed to a washbasin in the corner of the room, turned on the cold tap and poured himself a cup of water.
'My guess is that things happened roughly like this. Jansen goes out to Malqata to pilfer some decorated mud bricks. He loosens one with his hammer and chisel, puts his hand into the cavity to pull it free and bang! Gets walloped by Mr Scorpion. In too much pain to bother about his bag and cane he staggers off towards his car, presumably intending to drive for help. After a couple of hundred yards the shock provokes a monumental heart attack and he keels over, in the process grazing his hand and knee and cutting his head on the rock, although it's conceivable he suffered the coronary after falling over. Either way he scrabbles around on the ground for a bit, somehow manages to get up, staggers another few metres and again keels over, this time skewering his eyeball on the peg. Bye-bye Mr Jansen.'
Khalifa mulled the sequence of events over in his head. He felt annoyed at the ease with which Anwar appeared to have solved the case. Relieved as well, though. No murder meant no criminal investigation,
and although the antiquities in Jansen's cellar obviously required looking into, there no longer seemed any necessity to delve too deeply into the man's past. Which was good news, because if he was honest with himself Khalifa had been terrified of what he might find in that past.
'Oh well,' he said, letting out a deep sigh, 'at least that clears that up.'
'It certainly does,' said Anwar, draining his cup of water and crossing back to his desk, where he picked up the autopsy report and passed it across. 'It's all there, along with a few other observations that might be of interest.'
Khalifa flicked through the pages.
