The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  But that was now just a question of time.

  Jeremy paid for his coffee and called in at the police station to make sure that there were no messages for him. The agitation was at its height; separatists were going around the city, performing various acts of vandalism, and all fit men had been summoned as reinforcements to contain the rioters.

  For years, demonstrations had been degenerating into violence and there had been a succession of political deaths, but no agreement could be found that would satisfy all the factions.

  Jeremy dodged the call-up and headed for Cairo’s eastern districts, taking care to make a broad diversion via the north, in order to avoid confrontations in the streets of the city center.

  He searched for an hour, the time it took to find the dragoman who had helped him the previous day to converse with the natives. He paid the guide in exchange for a service: to list and locate all those who had helped Azim to track the monster on the night of his disappearance, in order to tighten the net around the ghoul’s lair. He must begin with the imam he had met the previous day, as he must know most of the local inhabitants. He would be a perfect point of departure. Among the witness statements, there might be clues to glean, and with luck, something enabling him to unearth the creature’s lair. The dragoman must ask all the questions, and if he obtained interesting results, he would receive a commensurate reward.

  Jeremy had dinner in the area by the railway station, where the riots seemed to have had no impact.

  Then he went home, his eyesight affected by the heady vapors of the wine he had drunk.

  Night was falling over Cairo.

  He was not drunk, far from it; just a little tipsy, enough to warm his heart and give himself courage.

  All the same, when he stepped under the awning that adjoined his carriage, it took the detective five steps to halt after realizing that there was an unusual object in his field of vision.

  A cardboard tube had been laid on a chest, just beside the entrance. It was about sixteen inches long, similar to those used to store maps in libraries.

  Jeremy opened it and took out a piece of papyrus. A note from Dr. Cork accompanied it.

  It was not yet completely dark, and by bringing it right up to his nose, Jeremy managed to decipher it.

  This is an administrative document dating at first sight from the thirteenth century. It deals with the upkeep of the basements of a palace and expenditure on the construction of Sultan Qalawun’s hospital. Mention is made of stopping up the underground passageways linking the small palace to the grand palace. My friend also sent me an explanatory note; these underground passageways are situated approximately between the present-day Huisein mosque and al-Azhar University. They have never been discovered, but several archaeologists are working on it. And do you know what? In the list of these archaeologists that my friend gave me is the name of one of our clients: Frederick Winslow, the poor fellow murdered by a bullet a month and a half ago, your “shitty investigation” as you called it. He claimed to have found a way in to these underground passages, it seems, just before he was killed. Call me tomorrow morning or drop in to see me.

  Best wishes, Dr. Cork

  Jeremy was about to crumple up the note but prevented his fingers from giving free rein to his anger. The wine made his head spin for a brief moment.

  Winslow was not only an archaeologist murdered in haste, he was a personal acquaintance. Jeremy and he had often chatted at the city’s high-class soirees. Winslow did not have a good reputation; he was known as a “handyman,” willing to arrange discoveries to give them even more value. He did not respect protocols, and went off on his own. He didn’t dig on behalf of any museum, and liked to offer his services to the highest-paying collectors. It was a “shitty investigation” all right. Jeremy had not failed to emphasize the number of suspects it was possible to find. Between Winslow’s corrupt colleagues in the world of archaeological mercenaries, who were ready for anything, and some crazy fanatic obsessed with the preservation of ancient sites, the leads could go off in all directions, and Jeremy had still found nothing when he set aside the case to take on that of the slaughtered children.

  Jeremy swiftly took his bearings.

  Now, even the most obtuse magistrate could not deny his conclusions. There was more than one link between him and his murders. Everything the killer did was carried out with the intention to do him harm. To focus on him.

  Once again reality went further than fiction. No sham, nothing but a perpetrator who had been obvious since the start and whom time had eventually confounded. No final revelations, like in an Agatha Christie novel. Nothing but the simplicity of the clues, the sad evidence of reality. Keoraz was his first suspect, and at the end of the day he was the guilty party.

  In a novel, the medical examiner would have committed the crime, Jeremy decided. He lived among blood, and he was an old soldier, traumatized by the war.… He knew the children through the foundation, and might have encountered the ghoul one day when treating him at the hospital. And it was he who had autopsied the archaeologist, Winslow. He could then have broken into his home to consult his notes.

  And in a novel written by a woman, Jezebel would have been the perfect culprit. An unbalanced woman, without real roots; an orphan in search of points of reference.…

  All sorts of mad theories.

  Jeremy carefully rolled up the papyrus and put it in his jacket pocket.

  He was about to enter the carriage when his foot slipped and he came to a sudden stop.

  The door was open. He hadn’t noticed that when he arrived.

  The alcohol flowed back down from his consciousness to his guts, freeing up an extra part of his attention.

  Just in time to hear the soft padding sound of footsteps, carefully withdrawing across the carpet.

  42

  Francis Keoraz.

  Marion was almost disappointed. The culprit seemed too obvious. And yet, as Jeremy emphasized, reality was often as simple as that. No last-minute revelations, no diabolical machinations, nothing but one individual’s banal trajectory that progressively veers toward drama. Through her experience as a secretary at the Institute in Paris, she knew that criminal investigations all centered essentially on the same thing: a story of jealousy, greed, and desire. JGD. The majority of violent deaths came down to the same culprit: JGD. Jealousy, greed, desire.

  One or the other guided the hand, if not the mind, of all murderers in our world.

  Except serial killers.

  They were different. They could not be compared with the other offenders. Notions of a quest or of personal development, balance, survival, came into play in their macabre mechanics.

  But almost all the crimes committed outside these atypical monsters reflected in one way or another the presence of JGD.

  JGD speaks.

  Man acts.

  Keoraz was of a quite different kind. Marion amused herself characterizing him according to her own jargon. From a compulsive sadist, he had become an obsessive plenipotentiary in the pay of an ambition devastated by his own successes. One and the other had become confused, to the point where they had given birth to the destructive pervert.

  The terms were perhaps a little strong, but Marion was proud of her analysis. She put herself in mind of novelist Patricia Cornwell, who had worked in a morgue before using what she had learned and heard to create her own stories.

  I’m less talented, and a lot less wealthy!

  Finally, Jeremy Matheson had sensed from the start who was responsible for these crimes. For a second, Marion was tempted to conduct her own investigation, to go on the Internet and find out how it had all ended. She rejected this idea immediately. She still had a few pages to read. Who better to tell the epilogue to this turbulent drama than the man who had had a ringside seat?

  Another twenty or so pages and she would know.

  And what could you say about that … ghoul?

  Marion had allowed herself to be carried away by the tale, not really
asking herself questions except through Jeremy, not looking herself for the answers to the various riddles when she was in a position to solve some of them. Then she took the time to focus on the problem.

  The ghoul.

  It was a man, of course, not a demonic creature. A man suffering from an affliction that had eaten away his skin. At the start, Marion had thought of leprosy, as suggested in Jeremy’s tale, but that didn’t last the course. Then she had remembered the name of that sickness that continued to ravage bodies today, notably in Africa.

  Noma.

  Suffering in its purest state.

  A gangrenous affliction that eats away the tissues of the mouth and face. Marion remembered it in particular after she had seen a television program about this plague. She had typed a long report on noma in the form of a memo to all hospitals and medical-legal departments in the country, after an infant was found to have died from the illness in a vile squatter’s house on the outskirts of Paris.

  The scientific name came back to her.

  Cancrum oris.

  Still little known by the general public, and yet so nightmarish. The illness was not contagious, and only affected very poor communities with appalling levels of nutrition and care of the mouth and teeth; beyond a very few immigrants, the affliction was never encountered in France. Nevertheless the experts had grasped the full horror of its physical mutilations and deformities, and of all the psychological and social consequences.

  In the 1920s, suffering from this illness meant social exclusion, rejection, and hatred. This man, already sapped by infection, had been jeered at, persecuted, and bullied—to the point where he had gone into exile, forced to hide himself away. This was an individual who had been totally taken apart psychologically.

  Marion imagined the life he had led.

  His acts of barbarity against children were intolerable. And yet the most dramatic aspect as far as Marion was concerned was to understand where this capacity to destroy innocence had come from. He certainly felt nothing but hatred for other men, all the more so for the children who must have mocked him as much as they feared him in the street. Jeremy had figured him out very well. The hunter had briefly but precisely exposed the process of creating the monster within the monster.

  The investigation was on the point of being wrapped up.

  Marion resumed her reading, pulling the blanket over her legs to warm herself up.

  The storm had ebbed away, but outside the wind continued to express itself with a degree of rage, reaching deep inside the abbey the moment an opening presented itself.

  A high-pitched moan rose up from the building’s entrails, swelled in the spiral staircases as though they were celestial flutes, and the whole of the Merveille began to whistle.

  Suddenly the wind dropped.

  The stone pipe-work emptied, the spaces underneath doors that served as mouths became silent, and the wind ceased to grind away at the beveled edge of the steps.

  And during this interval, Marion heard the click of the lock, which someone was attempting to muffle.

  She stiffened.

  Was she being locked in? It was the door opposite, on the raised passageway, the very same she had entered through, an hour and a half earlier. Marion remembered then that she had locked it behind her.

  Someone was opening it.

  Very slowly, so as not to be noticed. Taking advantage of the wind to conceal their presence.

  There was someone on the other side; someone who wanted to approach without Marion noticing.

  The mysterious hooded presence. Without a doubt.

  The resemblance between it and the ghoul who had prowled the streets of Cairo in 1928 would have had an ironic flavor if the circumstances had been completely different.

  Marion put down her book on the blanket and stood up without making a sound.

  She was not in a police investigation; it wouldn’t be sufficient for her to glean clues gradually in order to unmask the person who was spying on her.

  She must take the initiative. Make things happen.

  Walking on tiptoe, Marion made her way between the columns, then climbed the stair to the passageway and halted in front of the door.

  She held her breath and knelt down.

  Her mouth was producing too much saliva.

  She swallowed.

  Marion laid her hands on the door, and brought her eye up to the lock.

  The hole was black.

  She scanned the darkness.

  Without noticing the shape that was softly appearing behind her.

  A robed shadow moving along with the hood pulled down over its face. Cleaving the space in the Salle des Chevaliers.

  Marion could not make out anything; all she had was the certainty that there was no key in the hole, and yet she could not make out what lay beyond it. She prepared to open the door, as rapidly as possible.

  To play on the effect of surprise.

  If Brother Gilles really was behind this, he would be caught red-handed.

  Behind her, the shadow was walking quickly.

  Marion placed her hand on the iron door handle.

  She heard the rustle of fabric.

  Her eyelids lowered as she worked it out.

  Behind …

  She swung around.

  The strange apparition was less than three feet from Marion’s things. She realized that it definitely was her stalker when it stretched out a gloved hand toward the diary.

  “Hey!” shouted Marion.

  The hand closed on the black book and drew it into the folds of the robe.

  “Drop that right now!”

  Marion hurtled down the steps.

  The silhouette that so closely resembled the Grim Reaper spun around and lunged forward.

  Marion saw it running just ahead of her, reaching a postern gate at the northwestern corner.

  Marion was on its heels.

  The individual ran down a spiral staircase, heading for the storeroom. Its pursuer slowed down so as not to miss a step and risk falling. She came out in the vast chamber on the lower level. No trace of the fugitive.

  One half of a double door was just closing, letting in the daylight and the cool November wind.

  Marion pushed it open and saw the silhouette, sprinting through the gardens down below. It was establishing a considerable lead.

  Furious, Marion strode over the first steps and jumped the remainder, landing on the winter-shriveled grass. She rushed off in pursuit of the thief, who zigzagged between the trees in the garden, plowing through bushes and trampling on clumps of flowers. This person knew perfectly well where they were going.

  Marion forced herself to run faster, with every ounce of her strength.

  Despite everything, the fugitive was getting farther away, and changed direction with great agility.

  Then came a long straight line, at the foot of the Merveille. Marion closed her eyes for a second to give herself energy.

  She concentrated on her breathing. On the way her arms pumped back and forth, whipping the air with her hands. On the rhythm of her thighs.

  Lift your knees, bring your heels up to your backside.

  Her target did not enjoy the same freedom of movement, since its legs were hampered by the long robe.

  And little by little, Marion caught up.

  Instead of bringing her to life, the oxygen was burning her lungs.

  Then the fugitive halted in front of a door at the end of the esplanade, took a bunch of keys identical to Marion’s from the folds of the robe, and started looking for the right key.

  Her keys. In the confusion, Marion hadn’t brought them. If the other person succeeded in locking the door behind them, it was finished; she would lose her quarry for good. And the black book along with it.

  She forced herself to breathe out as far as she could, and greedily took her fill of fresh air.

  She sped up a little more. She was on the point of collapse, she could feel it.

  And the silhouette raised a key
to its eyes before sliding it into the lock.

  43

  Marion was nearing the end of the chase at top speed.

  She was going much too fast. She must slow down.

  The door opened.

  The thief was about to disappear.

  Marion did not slow down; on the contrary, she put everything she had left into one desperate gallop.

  The wall rose up suddenly.

  The silhouette withdrew the key from the lock, preparing to cross the passageway.

  Marion saw the stonework fill her field of vision, far too rapidly.

  She just had time to fold her arms in front of her to protect herself.

  And she crashed straight into the individual who was attempting to flee.

  The impact was so hard and so sudden that the two bodies were thrown together, violently crushing the fugitive against the stone.

  Marion fought for breath, all the air suddenly expelled from her chest. Her thief acted as a buffer, absorbing most of the impact and crashing into the wall.

  The bunch of keys fell to the ground. And so did the book.

  All the same, Marion was groggy, and she staggered, instinctively drawing back. The hooded figure grabbed the door handle so as not to fall over. With a clumsy grab, it retrieved its keys. Marion was recovering slowly. She realized that the other person was in no better state than she. It was groping around with its gloved hands, in search of the book.

  Her head still spinning, Marion approached.

  “No, you don’t,” she managed to gasp. “Oh, no … if you want … the book … you … you’ll have to ask me for it, face-to-face.”

  She came closer.

  Immediately, she sensed panic in the figure, which leaped forward and slammed the door shut behind it.

  Marion recognized the sound that followed as the sound of the key relocking the door.

  The thief was escaping.

  And the irregular pounding of footsteps sounded on the other side of the wall. The figure was having difficulty in getting away, still suffering from the recent collision.

  The thief had escaped.

  All the same, he or she had had to abandon the book in order to do so.