by Paul Sussman
'Your father work here?' His English was heavily accented.
'Yes,' she said. 'Professor Michael Mullray.'
'Excellent!' The man smiled broadly. 'Everybody know the Doktora. He most famous Egyptologist in world. He my good friend. He teach me English. I take you dig house myself.'
He came round to the other side of the taxi and slipped into the passenger seat, giving instructions to the driver.
'My name Hassan,' he said as they moved off. 'I work here at main teftish. You very welcome.' He extended a hand, which Tara shook.
'I was supposed to meet my father at the airport,' she said. 'I think we must have missed each other. Is he here, do you know?'
'I sorry, I only just come. He probably in dig house. You look like to him, you know.'
'Like him,' smiled Tara. 'I look like him. You don't need the "to".'
The man laughed. 'You look like him,' he said carefully. 'And you are good teacher like to him too.'
They followed the road up to the top of the scarp and then turned right onto a bumpy track that ran along the edge of the desert plateau. The step pyramid was behind them now, with two other smaller pyramids nearby, both ruined and slumped, so that Tara had the impression they were all images of the same pyramid in different stages of collapse. To the right the patchwork fields of the Nile plain shimmered in the morning heat; to the left the desert rolled and bumped off towards the horizon, barren and empty and desolate.
A hundred metres along the track they passed through the middle of a small settlement and Hassan signalled the driver to stop.
'This teftish,' he said, indicating a large yellow building to the right. 'Saqqara main office. I stop here. Beit Mullray, your father dig house, more further. I tell driver how go there. If you have problem you come back here.'
He climbed out, said something to the driver and they moved off again, continuing for another two kilometres before pulling over beside a low, one-storey house standing on the very edge of the escarpment.
'Beit Mullray,' said the driver.
It was a long, ramshackle building, painted a dusty pink and arranged around three sides of a sandy courtyard, in the centre of which stood a huge wood and wire excavator's sieve. A rickety wooden tower with a water tank on top stood at one end of the building, a pile of wooden crates at the other, with a mangy dog dozing in the shade beside them. The windows were all closed and shuttered. There seemed to be no-one around.
The driver said he'd wait, arguing that if her father wasn't there he could take her back to Cairo, where he knew lots of good hotels. She declined the offer and, removing her bag from the boot, paid the fare and set off towards the house, the taxi reversing behind her and driving off in a cloud of dust.
She crossed the courtyard, noticing what looked like a row of painted stone blocks beneath a tarpaulin in the corner, and hammered on the front door. No response. She tried the handle. The door was locked.
'Dad!' she called. 'It's Tara!'
Nothing.
She walked around to the rear of the house. A long shady terrace ran its full length, with pots of dusty geraniums and cacti, some gnarled lemon trees and a couple of stone benches. There were fabulous views eastwards across the green Nile plain, but she was oblivious to them. Removing her sunglasses, she went up to one of the shuttered windows and peered through the peeling slats. It was dark inside and apart from the edge of a table with a book on it she could see nothing. She looked through another shutter further along, making out a bed with a pair of battered desert boots tucked beneath it, and then walked round to the front of the house and hammered on the door again. Still nothing. She walked back out onto the track, stood looking to left and right for a few moments, then returned to the terrace and sat down on one of the concrete benches.
She was worried now. Her father had let her down on numerous occasions – too many to remember – but she sensed that this time it was different. Perhaps he had been taken ill or had had some sort of accident? Scenarios flicked through her head, each more upsetting than the one before. She stood up and banged on the shutters again, more out of frustration than hope.
'Where are you, Dad?' she muttered to herself. 'Where the fuck are you?'
She waited at the house for almost two hours, wandering around, peering through the shutters, occasionally hammering on the door, beads of sweat bubbling across her forehead, eyes heavy with exhaustion. A group of children playing in the village beneath spotted her and came scrabbling up the dusty slope at the back of the building, shouting, 'School pen! School pen!' She took some pens out of her bag and handed them round, asking if any of them had seen a tall man with white hair. They didn't seem to understand and once they had their pens they disappeared down the escarpment again, leaving her alone with the flies and the heat and the silent, shuttered house.
Eventually, when the sun was at its zenith and she was so tired she could barely keep awake, she decided to go and look for Hassan, the man she'd met earlier. She knew if her father had just been delayed somewhere he would be angry at her for making a fuss, but by now she was too concerned to care. With her one remaining pen she scribbled a note explaining what she was doing and wedged it in the front door. She then set out back along the dusty track towards the distant serrated bulk of the step pyramid, the sun burning down on her, the world silent apart from the crunch of her footfall and the occasional whirr of a passing fly.
She had been walking for about five minutes, head bowed, when something caught her eye away to the right, a momentary glint. She stopped and looked in that direction, shielding her eyes. There was someone standing over there, about two hundred metres out into the desert, on top of a sandy hillock. They were too far away, and the sun too bright, to make out much about them, except that they seemed to be extremely tall and dressed in white. There was another brief glint and she realized they must be looking through binoculars, the sun reflecting off the lenses.
She turned away, assuming it was just a tourist exploring the ruins. Then the thought struck her that perhaps it was an archaeologist who might know her father. She swung back again, intending to call out, but whoever it was had disappeared. She scanned the undulating mounds of sand and rubble but there was no-one there and, after a moment, she continued on her way, uncertain whether it wasn't just something she had hallucinated in her exhaustion and worry. Her head had started to swim and her temples were throbbing. She wished she had some water with her.
It took her another twenty minutes to reach the teftish, by which point her shirt was damp with sweat and her limbs ached. She found Hassan and explained what was going on.
'I sure everything OK,' he said, ushering her to a chair in his office. 'Perhaps your father go out walking. Or to excavation.'
'Without leaving a note?'
'Perhaps waiting in Cairo?'
'I've called his flat and there's no reply.'
'He knew you come today?'
'Of course he knew I was coming today,' she snapped. There was a moment's silence. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I'm tired and worried.'
'I am understanding, Miss Mullray. Please, be very calm. We find him.'
He picked up the walkie-talkie lying on his desk, pressed a button on the side and spoke into it, carefully enunciating the words 'Doktora Mullray'. There was a crackle of static and then several other voices, one after another, responded. The official listened, spoke again and then laid the walkie-talkie down.
'He not at excavation and no-one see him. Wait here please.'
He went into another room across the hall. There was a low murmur of voices. He was back within a minute.
'He go Cairo yesterday morning, then come back Saqqara in afternoon. No-one see him since then.'
He picked up the phone. Again he held a brief conversation, emphasizing the words 'Doktora Mullray'. He was frowning when he replaced the receiver.
'That Ahmed. He driving taxi for your father. He say your father tell him come Beit Mullray last night, take him to airport, but when A
hmed come your father not there. Now I worried too. This not like the Doktora.'
He was silent for a moment, tapping his fingers on the desk, and then, opening a drawer, he pulled out a set of keys. 'This spare keys to dig house,' he explained. 'We go see.'
They left the office and he pointed towards a battered white Fiat parked outside. 'We take car. Quicker.'
He drove fast, the car bumping and jolting along the uneven track, skidding to a halt in front of the house. They walked down to the front door, where Tara immediately noticed that the note she had left was gone. Her heart surged and, rushing forward, she tried the door handle. It was still locked and there was no reply to her frantic knocking. Hassan selected a key from the ring, slipped it into the lock and turned it twice, throwing the door open and walking in. Tara followed.
They were in a long whitewashed room, with a rectangular dining table at the end nearest them and at the other a couple of moth-eaten sofas and a fireplace. Other rooms opened off to left and right, in one of which Tara could make out the edge of a wooden bedframe. It was dark and cool, with a faintly sweet aroma in the air, which she realized after a moment was the smell of cigar smoke.
Hassan walked across and threw open a window. Sunlight spilled across the floor. She saw the body immediately, slumped against the far wall.
'Oh God.' She was choking. 'Oh no.'
She ran across and fell to her knees, seizing his hand. It was cold and stiff. She didn't bother trying to revive him.
'Dad,' she whispered, stroking his unkempt grey hair. 'Oh my poor Dad.'
7
LUXOR
As Inspector Khalifa stared down at the corpse, he was reminded of the day they had brought his father's body home.
He'd been six at the time and hadn't really understood what was going on. They had carried the body into the living room and laid it out on the table. His mother, weeping and tearing at her black robes, had knelt at its feet, while he and his brother Ali had stood side by side at its head, holding hands, staring at the pale, dust-covered face.
'Don't worry, Mother,' Ali had said. 'I will look after you and Yusuf. I swear.'
The accident had happened only a few blocks from where they lived. A tourist bus, going too fast for the narrow streets, had spun out of control and slammed into the rickety wooden scaffolding on which his father had been working, bringing the whole structure down. Three men had been killed, his father one of them, crushed beneath a ton of bricks and wood. The tour company had refused to accept responsibility and no compensation had ever been paid. The people in the bus had escaped unharmed.
They had lived in Nazlat al-Sammam in those days, at the foot of the Giza plateau, in a cramped mud-brick shack from whose roof you could look directly out over the Sphinx and the pyramids.
Ali had been the older by six years, strong and clever and fearless. Khalifa had idolized him, following him everywhere, mimicking the way he walked and the things he said. To this day, when he was annoyed, he would mutter 'Dammit!', a word he had learnt from his brother, who in turn had picked it up from a British tourist.
After their father had died, true to his word, Ali had left school and gone to work to support them. He had found a job at the local camel stables, mucking out, repairing the saddles, taking the camels up onto the plateau to give rides to the tourists. On Sundays Khalifa had been allowed to help him. Not during the week, however. He had begged to be allowed to work with his brother full time, but Ali had insisted he concentrate on his studies instead.
'Learn, Yusuf,' he had urged him. 'Fill your mind. Do the things I can't. Make me proud of you.'
Only years later had he discovered that every day, as well as buying them food and clothes and paying their rent, Ali had put aside a little of his meagre earnings so that when the time came he, Khalifa, would be able to afford to go to university. He owed his brother so much. Everything. That was why he had named his first son after him – to show that he recognized the debt.
His son, however, had never seen his uncle, and never would. Ali was gone for ever. How he missed him! How he wished things could have turned out differently.
He shook his head and returned to the business in hand. He was in a white-tiled room in the basement of Luxor general hospital and in front of him the body they had found that morning was stretched out on a metal table, naked. A fan whirled above his head; a single strip light added to the cold, sterile atmosphere. Dr Anwar, the local pathologist, was bent over the body, poking at it with his rubber-gloved hands.
'Very curious,' he kept muttering to himself. 'Never seen anything like it. Very curious.'
They had photographed the corpse where it had washed up beside the river and then zipped it into a body-bag and brought it back to Luxor by boat. There had been a lot of paperwork to fill out before they could get it examined and it was now late afternoon. He had sent Sariya to make enquiries about any person reported missing within a radius of thirty kilometres, thus sparing his deputy the unpleasant business of witnessing the autopsy. He himself was finding it hard not to gag. He was desperate for a cigarette and every now and then reached instinctively into his pocket for the packet of Cleopatras, although he didn't take them out. Dr Anwar was notoriously strict about smoking in his morgue.
'So what can you tell me?' asked Khalifa, leaning against the cool tile wall, fiddling with a button on his shirt.
'Well,' said Anwar, pausing for a moment to think. 'He's definitely dead.' He let out a guffaw of laughter, slapping his belly appreciatively. Anwar's bad jokes were as notorious as his dislike of smoking. 'Apologies,' he said. 'In very bad taste.'
Another chuckle escaped him and then his face straightened and he was serious again. 'So what do you want to know?'
'Age?'
'Difficult to be precise, but I'd say late twenties, possibly a bit older.'
'Time of death?'
'About eighteen hours ago. Maybe twenty. Maximum twenty-four.'
'And he's been in the water all that time?'
'I'd say so, yes.'
'How far could he have floated in twenty-four hours do you think?'
'Absolutely no idea. I'm interested in bodies, not currents.'
Khalifa smiled. 'OK, cause of death?'
'I would have thought that was obvious,' said Anwar, looking down at the mutilated face. It had been cleaned of mud and looked, if anything, even more grotesque than when Khalifa had first seen it, like a badly carved joint of meat. There were lacerations elsewhere on the body, too – on the arms and shoulders, across the belly, on the tops of the thighs. There was even a small puncture mark in the scrotum, which Anwar had taken great delight in pointing out. Sometimes, Khalifa thought, the man was just a little too enthusiastic about his job.
'What I meant was . . .'
'Yes, yes, I know,' said the pathologist. 'I was being facetious. You want to know what caused the injuries.'
He leaned back against the examination table and ripped off his gloves, the rubber making a snapping sound as it peeled from his hands.
'OK, first things first. He died from shock and loss of blood, both a result of the injuries you see before you. There was comparatively little water in his lungs, which means that he didn't drown and then receive the injuries afterwards. This happened to him on dry land and then the body was dumped in the river. Probably not that far away from where it was found.'
'It couldn't have been a boat propeller, then?'
'Absolutely not. You'd have a completely different type of wound. Less clean. The flesh would have been more churned up.'
'Crocodile?'
'Don't be stupid, Khalifa. This man has been deliberately mutilated. And anyway, for your information, there are no crocodiles north of Aswan. And certainly none that smoke.' He pointed at the man's arms, chest and face. 'Three burn marks. Here, here and here. Cigar probably. Too big for a cigarette.'
