by Paul Sussman
He fumbled in his pocket and removed a bag of cashew nuts, offering them to Khalifa. The detective refused.
'As you like,' said Anwar, tipping his head back and pouring a rush of nuts into his mouth. Khalifa watched, wondering how he could eat with that ripped face only a few metres away.
'And what about the cuts? What caused those?'
'No idea,' grunted Anwar, chewing. 'Some sort of metal object, sharp obviously. Possibly a knife, although I've seen all manner of knife injuries and none that looked quite like this.'
'How do you mean?'
'Well, the wounds aren't neat enough. It's hard to explain. More a gut feeling than proper science. It was definitely a sharpened blade of some sort, but not one with which I'm familiar. Look at this, for instance.' He pointed to a slash on the man's chest. 'If a knife had done that the wound would have been narrower and not quite so . . . what's the word . . . chunky. And look, it's slightly deeper at one end than at the other. Don't ask me to be more precise, Khalifa, because I can't. Just accept that we're dealing with an unusual weapon here.'
The inspector pulled a small pad from his pocket and scribbled a couple of notes. The room echoed to the sound of Anwar's chewing.
'Can you tell me anything else about him?'
'Well, he liked a drink. High levels of alcohol in the blood. And he would seem to have had an interest in ancient Egypt.'
'The scarab tattoo?'
'Exactly. Not the most common of designs. And look here.'
Khalifa came closer.
'You see this bruising around the upper arms? Here, and here, where the flesh is discoloured. This man has been restrained, like this.'
Anwar went behind Khalifa and grabbed his arms, his fingers digging into the flesh.
'The bruising on the left arm is more extensive and extends further round the arm, which suggests he was probably being held by two people rather than one, each gripping him in a slightly different way. You can see by the depth of the bruising that he put up quite a struggle.'
Khalifa nodded, bent over his notebook. 'At least three altogether, then,' he said. 'Two holding, one wielding the knife or whatever it was.'
Anwar nodded and, crossing to the door, put his head out into the corridor and shouted to someone at the far end. A moment later two men appeared pushing a trolley. They lifted the body onto it, covered it with a sheet and wheeled it out of the room. Anwar finished his nuts and, going to a small basin, began washing his hands. The room was silent apart from the purr of the fan.
'I'm shocked, frankly,' said the pathologist, his tone suddenly devoid of its usual jocularity. 'I've been doing this job for thirty years and I've never seen anything like it. It's' – he paused, soaping his hands slowly, his back to Khalifa – 'ungodly,' he said eventually.
'I didn't have you marked down as religious.'
'I'm not. But there's no other way to describe what happened to this man. I mean they didn't just kill him. They butchered the poor bastard.'
He turned off the taps and started to dry his hands.
'Find who did this, Khalifa. Find them quickly and lock them away.'
The earnestness of his tone surprised Khalifa. 'I'll do my best,' he said. 'If any more information comes up, be sure to let me know.'
He put his notebook away and started towards the door. He was halfway through it when Anwar called after him.
'There is one thing.'
Khalifa turned.
'Just a hunch, but I think he might have been a sculptor. Doing carvings for the tourists, that sort of thing. There was a lot of alabaster dust underneath his fingernails and his forearms were very built up, which might indicate he used a hammer and chisel a lot. I might be wrong, but that's where I'd start making enquiries. In the alabaster shops.'
Khalifa thanked him and set off down the corridor, pulling his cigarettes from his pocket. Anwar's voice echoed after him.
'And no smoking till you're out of the hospital!'
8
CAIRO
'He hated cigars,' said Tara.
The embassy official glanced across at her. 'Sorry?'
'Cigars. My father hated them. Any form of smoking, in fact. He said it was a disgusting habit. Like reading the Guardian.'
'Ah,' said the official, perplexed. 'I see.'
'When we first went into the dig house there was a smell. To start with I couldn't place it. Then I realized it was cigar smoke.'
The official, a junior attaché named Crispin Oates, returned his eyes to the road, honking loudly at a truck in front of them.
'Is that significant in some way?'
'As I said, my father hated smoking.'
Oates shrugged. 'Then I guess it must have been someone else.'
'But that's the point,' said Tara. 'Smoking was banned in the dig house. It was an absolute rule. I know because he wrote to me once saying he'd sacked a volunteer for breaking it.'
A motorbike overtook on the inside and swerved in front of them, forcing Oates to slam his foot on the brakes.
'Bloody idiot!'
They drove in silence for a moment.
'I'm not sure I see what you're getting at,' he said eventually.
'Neither am I,' sighed Tara. 'Just that . . . there shouldn't have been cigar smoke in the dig house. I can't get it out of my mind.'
'I'm sure it's just . . . well, you know, the shock.'
Tara sighed. 'Yes,' she said wearily, 'I suppose it must be.'
They were on a raised carriageway coming into the centre of Cairo. It was almost dark and the lights of the city spread off into the distance around and beneath them. It was still hot and Tara had the window wound down so that her hair fluttered behind her like a streamer. She felt curiously detached, as though the events of the last few hours had all been some sort of dream.
They'd waited with her father's body for an hour until a doctor had arrived. He had examined the corpse briefly before telling them what they already knew – that the old man was dead, probably from a massive coronary, although more tests would be needed. An ambulance had arrived, followed shortly afterwards by two policemen, both in suits, who had asked Tara a series of perfunctory questions about her father's age, health, nationality, profession. ('He's a sodding archaeologist,' she had replied irritably. 'What the hell else do you think he was doing here!') She had mentioned the cigar smoke, explaining, as she was later to explain to Oates, that smoking was banned in the dig house. The policemen had taken notes, but had not seemed to consider the matter especially important. She hadn't pursued it. At no point had she cried. Indeed, her immediate reaction to her father's death had been no reaction at all. She had watched as his body was carried to the ambulance and had felt nothing inside her, nothing whatsoever, as though it was someone she didn't know.
'Dad's dead,' she had mumbled, as though trying to elicit some sort of response from herself. 'He's dead. Dead.'
The words had made no impression. She had tried to recall some of the good times they had spent together – books they had both enjoyed, days out at the zoo, the treasure trail he had laid for her fifteenth birthday – but had been unable to make any emotional connection with them. The one thing she had felt – and had been ashamed of feeling – was a sense of acute disappointment that her trip had been spoilt.
I'm going to spend the next fortnight filling out forms and making funeral arrangements, she had thought. Some fucking holiday.
Oates had arrived just as the ambulance was pulling away, the embassy having been informed of her father's death as soon as it was discovered. Blond, chinless, late twenties, quintessentially English, he had offered his commiserations politely but without real conviction, in a way that suggested he'd been through all this many times before.
He had spoken to the doctor – in faltering Arabic – and had asked Tara where she was staying.
'Here,' she had told him. 'Or at least that was the plan. I suppose it's not very appropriate now.'
Oates had agreed. 'I think the best thin
g would be to get you back to Cairo and booked into somewhere there. Let me make a couple of calls.'
He had pulled a mobile phone from the pocket of his suit – how on earth can people wear suits in this heat, Tara had thought – and wandered outside, returning a few minutes later. 'Right,' he had said, 'we've got you into the Ramesses Hilton. I don't think there's much more to do here, so whenever you're ready . . .'
She had lingered in the dig house for a moment, gazing around at the bookcases and moth-eaten sofas, imagining her father relaxing here after a day at his excavation, and had then joined Oates in his car.
'Funny,' he had said, starting the engine. 'I've been in Cairo for three years and it's the first time I've ever been to Saqqara. Never been much interested in archaeology, to be honest.'
'Me neither,' she had said sadly.
It was dark by the time they reached the hotel, an ugly concrete skyscraper rearing beside the Nile, on the edge of a tangled intersection of busy roads. The interior was brightly lit and gaudy with a cavernous marble foyer, off which various bars, lounges and shops opened and through which a constant stream of red-uniformed porters bustled with armfuls of designer luggage. It was cool – cold almost – which Tara found a relief after the heat outside. Her room was on the fourteenth floor: spacious, neat, sterile, facing away from the river. She slung her bag on the bed and kicked off her shoes.
'I'll leave you to settle in then,' said Oates, hovering at the door. 'The restaurant's quite good, or else there's room service.'
'Thanks,' said Tara. 'I'm not really hungry.'
'Of course. I quite understand.' He put his hand on the door handle. 'There'll be various formalities to go through tomorrow, so if it's all right with you I'll pick you up at, say, eleven a.m. and take you over to the embassy.'
Tara nodded.
'One small thing. Probably best not to go out at night, not on your own. I don't want to alarm you, but it's a trifle risky for tourists at the moment. There's been a bit of fundamentalist activity. Attacks, you know. Better safe than sorry.'
Tara thought of the man she had met at the airport by the baggage carousel. 'Sayf al-Tamar,' she said, remembering the name he had mentioned.
'Al-Tha'r,' said Oates, correcting her. 'Al-ta-ar. Yes, it does seem to be his lot. Bloody lunatics. The more the authorities try to clamp down on them the more trouble they cause. Parts of the country are now virtual no-go areas.' He handed her his card. 'Anyway, call me if there's anything you need and have a good night's sleep.'
Rather formally he shook her hand and then opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.
Once he was gone Tara fetched a beer from the mini-bar and threw herself onto the bed. She called Jenny in England and left a message on her answer-phone, telling her where she was, and asking her to call back as soon as possible. There were other calls she knew she ought to make – to her father's sister; to the American University, where he had been Visiting Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology – but she decided to leave them until tomorrow. She wandered out onto the balcony, gazing down at the street below.
A black Mercedes had just drawn up alongside the hotel, partly blocking the road, so that the cars behind were forced to pull out and around it, something they weren't too happy about to judge by the distant sounds of hooting.
Initially Tara didn't take much notice of the car. Then the passenger door opened and a figure stepped out onto the pavement and suddenly she tensed. She couldn't be certain it was the man she'd seen at Saqqara – the one who had been watching her as she walked along the escarpment – but something told her it was. He was wearing a pale suit and, even from that height, looked huge, dwarfing the pedestrians around him.
He leaned down and said something to the driver of the Mercedes, which moved off into the traffic. He watched it go and then, suddenly, turned and looked up, straight at her, or at least she imagined he was looking straight at her, although in reality he was too far away for her to see precisely where his eyes were directed. It lasted only a moment and then he dropped his head again and strode towards the hotel's side entrance, raising his hand to his mouth and puffing on what looked like a large cigar. Tara shuddered and, stepping off the balcony, closed and locked the sliding doors behind her.
THE RIVER NILE, BETWEEN LUXOR AND ASWAN
Froth churned from the bow of the SS Horus as she made her way slowly upriver, her lights casting an eerie glow across the water. Shadowy reed forests slipped past on either bank, with here and there a small hut or house, but it was past midnight and there were few people left on deck to see them. A young couple cuddled on the prow, faces nuzzling, and beneath an awning at the back of the cruiser a group of old ladies were playing cards. Otherwise the decks were deserted. Most of the passengers had either retired to bed or were sitting in the saloon listening to the late-night cabaret – a paunchy Egyptian man singing popular hits to a backing tape.
There were two explosions, almost simultaneous. The first came near the bow of the boat, engulfing the young couple. The second was in the main saloon, blasting tables and chairs and fragments of glass in all directions. The cabaret singer was thrown backwards into his PA, face grilled black by the heat; a group of women near the stage were lost in a hail of splintered wood and metal. There was weeping, and groaning, and the screams of a man whose legs had been ripped off below the knees. The lady card-players, unharmed, sat motionless beneath their awning. One of them started to cry.
Away from the river, beyond the reeds, squatting on a small rocky hummock, three men gazed at the boat. The glow from its flaming decks lit their bearded faces, revealing a deep vertical scar on each of their foreheads. They were smiling.
'Sayf al-Tha'r,' whispered one.
'Sayf al-Tha'r,' repeated his companions.
They nodded and, rising to their feet, disappeared into the night.
9
CAIRO
As they had agreed, Oates met Tara in the foyer of the hotel at eleven a.m. and drove her to the embassy, which was ten minutes away.
Despite her exhaustion she hadn't slept well. The image of the huge man had stayed with her, leaving her inexplicably edgy. She had eventually drifted into a light sleep, but then the phone had rung, ripping her awake again. It was Jenny.
They had talked for almost an hour, her friend offering to catch the next flight out. Tara had been tempted to let her come, but in the end had told her not to worry. Everything was being taken care of, and anyway she'd probably be home in a few days once all the formalities had been completed. They had agreed to speak the next day and rung off. She had watched TV for a while, flicking aimlessly from CNN to MTV Asia to BBC World, before eventually dozing off.
It was deep in the night when she had woken for a second time, suddenly, sensing something was amiss. The world was silent and the room thick with shadows, although the moon was gleaming through a narrow gap in the curtains, casting a ghostly sheen across the mirror on the wall opposite.
She had lain on the bed trying to work out what was troubling her and then rolled over to go back to sleep. As she did so she had caught a soft creaking coming from the direction of the doorway. She had listened for several seconds before she realized that it was the sound of her door handle turning.
'Hello!'
Her voice had sounded unnaturally shrill.
The creaking had stopped for a moment and then resumed. Heart pounding, she had crossed to the door, where she had stood gazing at the handle as it inched carefully down and up, as if in slow motion. She had thought of shouting out again, but had instead just grabbed the handle and held it. There had been a brief resistance on the other side and then a swift padding of feet. She had counted to five and opened the door, but the corridor had been empty. Or rather almost empty, because one thing at least had lingered: a smell of cigar smoke.
