Again Mordechai Yaron’s parting words echoed in Ben-Roi’s head:
Rivka had an instinctive empathy for people who were in pain.
‘And you’ve no idea what they talked about?’
‘None at all, I’m afraid. Maria didn’t say anything about it afterwards and it wasn’t my place to ask. It was a private conversation and we respect that here. To be honest, I was just happy to see her connecting with someone. She was terribly traumatized, had a lot of bad stuff inside. Needed to let some of it go.’
‘Did Mrs Kleinberg say anything?’
‘Not really. Just that Maria had shared some of her experiences and that it broke her heart someone so young should have gone through what she’d gone through. Maria clearly made an impression on her. That’s why she called back a week later. To ask if she could come down and talk with her again. Ask some more questions.’
She was silent a moment, her fingertips flicking against the table, her head tilting slightly as though she was thinking, then: ‘Actually, she said she needed to talk to her
urgently
. Wouldn’t say what about. Just that she really needed to see her again. She was very concerned when I told her Maria had gone missing.’
The speed of Ben-Roi’s foot-tapping increased fractionally.
‘And this was when she started asking about the Egypt route?’
There was another brief silence as Hillel worked through the chronology, then she nodded.
‘Did Maria come in through Egypt?’
‘We never found out for sure,’ she said, slipping off the desk and going round to sit in the swivel chair behind it. ‘She refused to talk about it. Like a lot of the girls, she was suffering from a form of posttraumatic stress, had built a barrier in her mind between the present and the past in an effort to block out what had happened to her. We got a few details of her early life, but in terms of her trafficking experiences all we ever discovered was that she had been working out of an apartment down in Neve Sha’anan, and that she’d been in Turkey at some point. Which suggests she was either flown in, or shipped through Cyprus into Haifa or Ashdod.’
She sat back, running a finger to and fro along the edge of the desk.
‘That woman, by the way, the one with blonde hair – she was always drawing her. The only thing she ever did draw. We never found out who she was.’
Ben-Roi made a mental note to take another look at the picture in Kleinberg’s flat.
‘You wouldn’t happen to know
who
trafficked her?’ he asked. ‘Who her pimp was?’
She shook her head. ‘Like I said, we just deal with the damage, not the people who cause it.’
‘And there’s been no word of her? No indication of where she might have gone?’
‘None at all. We thought she might have drifted back to Neve Sha’anan. It happens with runaways – they gravitate towards the places they know, even if it means getting pulled back into the brothels. But no one’s seen anything of her down there.’
‘Do you have a photo?’
‘Sure.’
She reached down and switched on her computer.
‘Her real name’s almost certainly not Maria, by the way. The girls always take a different name, helps distance themselves from what they’re being made to do. Allows them to think it’s someone else who’s doing it, not the real them.’
She sat back, waiting for the machine to boot. Ben-Roi drained his coffee, which was now cold, then stood and wandered over to the window.
Outside everything was quiet and still and peaceful, bathed in the benign honey-glow of the sinking afternoon sun, a million miles from the world they’d been talking about. He gazed out over the ranks of dusty
shikunim
, then dropped his eyes to the pavement opposite. A ratty, greasy-haired man was standing there, leaning against the bole of a sycamore tree, staring across the street at the front of the shelter. The pimp Hillel had mentioned earlier. He was tempted to open the window and yell at him to fuck off, but decided the message would be more effective delivered face to face. Maybe accompanied by a little slap to drive the message home. He’d never liked pimps. Did so even less after everything he’d just heard. He stared at him, scowling, then dropped his eyes to the yard at the front of the shelter. There was a wooden picnic bench with a couple of ashtrays on it, a swing-seat, a clothes line and, in the corner, a Barbie scooter and a plastic pedal tractor. He hadn’t noticed them when they’d come in.
‘You’ve got kids here?’ he asked, surprised.
‘Five of them,’ came her voice behind him. ‘They’re out at school.’
‘The mothers are –’ he was about to say hookers, but stopped himself, realizing the word wasn’t appropriate – ‘staying here?’
‘Sure.’
‘The fathers?’
‘Pimps, clients.’ Her tone was offhand. ‘Not the ideal family dynamic but that’s the way it goes. When the girls are rescued the kids obviously come with.’
She continued clicking, searching for the picture. Ben-Roi gazed down at the toys. As a cop you developed a thick skin, a filtering mechanism that caught the really bad stuff before it got into your system. Every now and then, despite your best efforts, things slipped through. This was one of those occasions. The toys disturbed him more than everything else he’d heard at the shelter. More than everything else on the case so far. There was just something so desperately sad about them, about the helpless, damaged little lives they represented, ruined before they’d even started. He felt a lump rising in his throat, and with it a sudden urge to contact Sarah, let her know how much he loved her and the baby. He actually pulled out his mobile, but then Hillel called him over and the moment was gone. He stared down for a few seconds longer, then pushed the thought from his mind, returned the mobile to its pouch and crossed to the desk.
‘This is her,’ said Hillel, angling the screen towards him.
He leant forward, looking at the photo. It was a headshot, cropped a little too tightly just below the chin – a pale, solemn-faced girl with long black hair, full lips and enormous brown eyes. Young. Very young. She was staring straight into the camera, her expression at once both intense and curiously blank.
‘Can you print this off?’ he asked.
‘Sure. We’ve got another one – do you want that as well?’
‘Why not.’
She circled the mouse, double clicked. There was a pause, then a second photo appeared, also a headshot although less severely cropped than the previous image so that the girl’s neck and T-shirt were now visible.
Earlier that day, questioning Mordechai Yaron at his office in Jaffa, Ben-Roi had felt a buzz of adrenaline at the news Rivka Kleinberg had visited Mitzpe Ramon for her abortive Nemesis Agenda interview. He felt a similar buzz now, although much, much stronger. More of a jolt. A sharp electric jolt of recognition. Not at the girl’s physical appearance, but rather at what she was wearing round her neck.
‘This girl,’ he said, reaching out and touching a finger to the cross lying against her sternum – the flat silver cross with intricately patterned arms, each opening into a distinctive double tip. ‘Do you know where she was from originally?’
The answer came simultaneously, from both of them.
‘Armenia.’
It was the thing that had been troubling him from the outset – the lack of any apparent link between the scene of Kleinberg’s murder and every other lead the case had thrown up. Now, it seemed, he had the link. There was still a long way to go, but for the first time he felt he was starting to move forward.
L
UXOR
‘. . . only remains to clear away those final houses and you will enjoy a spectacular view from here where we now stand all the way to Luxor Temple, a distance of no less than two thousand seven hundred metres. One thousand three hundred and fifty individual sphinxes! I do not exaggerate, ladies and gentlemen, when I say that Sphinxes Avenue is truly the Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World.’
The tour guide pointed his sunshade theatrically to the south, out though the Tenth Pylon of Karnak Temple to where a sad huddle of mud-brick houses was being attacked on all sides by a ring of earthmoving machinery – the battered remnants of a ragtag army making its final, hopeless stand against a far more powerful invading force. There was a dull click and bleep as his tour group took pictures.
‘What about the people who live there?’ asked a large, sunburned woman in an ‘I Love King Tut!’ T-shirt. ‘What’s going to happen to them?’
‘Oh, for them it is very good,’ laughed the guide. ‘Not only do they receive compensation, but also beautiful new apartments, all modcons, much nicer than their old homes. I wish my house was being knocked down!’ He raised his arms to the sky. ‘Please, God, knock my house down so I can have a new kitchen and toilet with flush!’
The group tittered. They liked their guide. He was informative and polite, but also slightly buffoonish. The perfect Egyptian.
‘But seriously,’ he continued, ‘I can tell you as a fact that these people are happy to move so that this ancient wonder can be revealed. In Egypt we are very proud of our history. And very proud to share our history. That is why the avenue has been excavated in record time – so we can share it with the whole world. Our past is your past. Just as my heart is your heart!’
He winked at the sunburned woman, raising another laugh from the group. A little bit of clownish innuendo – they liked that as well. He started into an explanation of how the avenue dated from the reign of Pharaoh Nectanebo I and was used during the famous Opet festival, but Khalifa didn’t listen to any more. Lighting a cigarette, he moved out of the shade beneath the pylon – where he had been standing when the group arrived – and started back towards the centre of the temple complex. Part of him wondered if he shouldn’t have said something; told them that his own home had been demolished to make way for the avenue, and he was most assuredly
not
happy about it. But what was the point? They’d paid good money to come out here, and didn’t want to be troubled with his problems. Egypt’s past might have been their past, but its present was of no concern to them whatsoever. Pharaohs and queens, tombs and hieroglyphs – that’s what they were interested in. Not a two-bit detective whose world had collapsed around him in ruins. That was just . . . boring. Irrelevant.
He passed through the Ninth, Eighth and Seventh Pylons, and into the broad paved expanse of the Cachette Court. A crowd of children were having their photograph taken at the feet of the Middle Kingdom statues fronting the Seventh Pylon; a man was sitting cross-legged on the ground sketching the copy of Merenptah’s ‘Israel’ stela – the only text ever found in Egypt to mention the name Israel. Although the afternoon was pushing on and the shadows lengthening, the temperature was still into the high thirties – a dense, smothering blanket of heat only partially eased by the occasional wafts of breeze coming east off the Nile.
He’d spent most of the afternoon down here, after his lunch-hour excursion to the police rifle range. Some
talatat
blocks had gone missing from the secure magazine at the back of the complex – a couple of them carrying Akhenaten cartouches – and he’d been taking statements from all those with access to the store. He would put out some feelers, do the rounds of known antiquities dealers, but he didn’t hold out much hope of recovering the blocks. They could have been stolen months ago, years even – the magazine was rarely inspected, and it had only been by chance the blocks’ absence had been noticed. By now they were almost certainly gracing the mantelpiece of some millionaire collector on the other side of the world. Like the tour guide said, Egypt’s history was everyone’s history. Even if you had to steal to get a piece of it.
Dragging on his cigarette, he angled through the doorway in the court’s north-western corner and into the towering column forest of the Great Hypostyle Hall. A few hours ago the place had been all but empty, the unbearable mid-afternoon heat driving the tourists back to the sanctuary of their air-conditioned hotels. Now they were flooding back and the hall was rammed. He eased past a crowd of Japanese tourists – or were they Chinese? he could never tell – and made his way towards the Second Pylon and the temple exit. Halfway across the hall, he suddenly slowed and stopped, as if struck by a thought. He frowned, checked his watch, then, with a muttered ‘Dammit’, turned and retraced his steps. Back through the hall, out of the Third Pylon this time, past the rearing spike of the obelisk of Tuthmosis I, the Fourth Pylon, Hatshepsut’s obelisk, and so round into the vast, palm-dotted open space of the Sacred Lake enclosure. A gently rippling rectangle of murky green water stretched away in front of him, with beside it an awning-covered refreshments area and, at its far end, the ugly concrete grandstand from which tourists watched the nightly
Son et Lumière
show. A small rowing boat was sitting right in the middle of the lake, its gunwale dipped almost to the level of the surface as a plump, bespectacled man in overly tight blue overalls and a woollen hat leant over the side and held something into the water.
‘Thought you might be here,’ murmured Khalifa.
He waited as the man pulled out a large test tube, sealed it and stowed it in a box at the bow of the boat. Then, tamping his cigarette out on the bole of a palm tree and flicking the butt into a bin, he came forward on to the stone quay beside the lake.
‘
Salaam!
’ he called.
The man looked up, squinting behind his thick spectacles. For a moment he looked confused, then broke into a broad smile.
‘Yusuf!’
‘How are you, Omar?’
‘I’m in the middle of a lake sampling polluted water – couldn’t be happier! You want to come out? It’s a lovely day for rowing.’
‘Not in that, thanks. It looks unstable enough with one person in it.’
‘Nonsense!’ the man cried, standing and rocking the boat from side to side. ‘Look at that! Safe as the Nile ferry.’
He rocked harder to emphasize the point, only to lose his balance and lurch forward. The boat tipped dangerously to one side, sloshing water over the gunwale, soaking his feet and ankles.
‘
Khara!
’ Shit!
Khalifa smiled. ‘Fancy a Coke?’
‘A change of clothes would be more useful,’ muttered the man, slapping at his sodden overalls. ‘Go on then. I’ll meet you at the steps.’
He gave the overalls another slap, pulled off his gloves and manoeuvred himself backwards on to the boat’s seat.
‘Actually, make it a Sprite,’ he called, dropping the oars into the water and starting to row. ‘And I wouldn’t say no to a Snickers either. I’ve been out here for two hours.’
Khalifa raised an arm in acknowledgement and went into the cafe. He pulled a Coke, a Sprite and, in the absence of any Snickers bars, a Kit Kat from the upright fridge, then joined the queue at the till, taking up position behind a young Egyptian couple. By the time he’d paid and returned to the lake, his friend had reached the far end, tethered the boat and climbed the steps up to the quayside.
‘Forgive me, Yusuf,’ he said as Khalifa approached, holding up his hands apologetically. ‘That thing with the boat, I didn’t think. It was a stupid . . .’
Khalifa threw him the Sprite, the gesture saying no offence had been taken and no apology was necessary. The Kit Kat followed and the two of them embraced, the man kissing Khalifa once on each cheek.
‘How’s Zenab doing?’ he asked as they sat down on the quayside, legs dangling against the lake’s stone-block retaining wall.
‘Better every day,’ replied Khalifa, not entirely truthfully. ‘Rasha?’
‘Good, although she’s overworked at the moment. They’re short-staffed and she’s having to do double shifts. Can barely keep her eyes open, poor girl. Last night she didn’t get in till past midnight.’
Rasha al-Zahwi, Omar’s wife, was a paediatrician at Luxor General. Omar worked as a site analyst for the Luxor Water and Wastewater Company, with a special responsibility for water management around ancient monuments, which was how his and Khalifa’s paths had crossed. Over a decade ago now. They’d used to socialize a lot. Less so this last year.
‘How’s it looking?’ asked Khalifa, opening his Coke and nodding towards the surface of the lake.
‘Crap,’ replied Omar. ‘Literally. All the vibration from the earth moving they’ve been doing for the Avenue – it’s fractured the sewage main at this end of town. There’s piss and shit draining into the groundwater and then getting pumped into the lake whenever they top it up. I’ve been monitoring it for a month now and it’s been getting steadily worse.’
‘I can’t smell anything.’
‘Trust me, you will in a couple of weeks. No one’s going to be able to go near it, the thing’ll stink so bad. They’re going to have to drain the whole enclosure and refill it from the Nile. Oh bloody fuck it!’
A geyser of Sprite had erupted from his can as he pulled the tab, spraying all over his hands and overalls. He held the can away from him and pulled off his woollen hat.
‘I was dry till you came along,’ he grumbled, wiping the hat across his sodden overalls.
Khalifa shot him a mock-apologetic look and sipped his own drink. Behind them whistles started blowing, alerting visitors that it was closing time and they should start moving towards the temple exit. From further away came the rhythmic clank and thwack of piledrivers, the predominant backing-track to life in Luxor over the last couple of years.
‘Are you testing the water on site?’ asked Khalifa after a pause, swiping a fly away from his face and taking another swig of Coke. Omar shook his head.
‘We send the samples up to a lab in Assyut. We used to have an arrangement with the hospital lab, but there’s been so much testing needed since they started all this bloody building work, the hospital couldn’t cope any more.’
Khalifa kicked his legs for a moment, then: ‘Can I ask a favour?’
‘You can ask.’
‘I’ve been getting reports of wells going bad out in the Eastern Desert and I need some advice.’
He outlined the situation – Mr Attia, his cousin, Deir el-Zeitun – which, despite his best efforts to put it out of his mind, had continued to nag at him. There was something wrong, something going on, and even if he wasn’t half the detective he used to be, he was still enough of one to want answers when faced with a pattern of events that had no obvious explanation.
‘Could it be natural?’ he asked when he’d finished going through the story. ‘The wells going bad of their own accord?’
Omar took a thoughtful glug of his Sprite. ‘I very much doubt it. Wells dry up, for sure, and they go bad too, although when they do it’s almost invariably because of industrial pollution. Or occasionally sewage contamination like we’re getting here. But you say these are in the middle of the Eastern Desert?’
Khalifa nodded.
‘Then that’s much harder to explain. I’m assuming there’s no heavy industry nearby – cement factories, paper mills, that sort of thing?’
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
‘It certainly sounds suspicious. Very occasionally water sources go off because of subterranean movement, but we’re talking big movement, earthquake size, and that’s something we’d have heard about. And the fact that all the wells are Coptic-owned . . .’
He took another sip of his Sprite, then put the can down and started unwrapping his Kit Kat, methodically running a thumbnail down the foil between each ridge of chocolate.
‘You want me to look into it?’ he asked, snapping off a finger and handing it to Khalifa. ‘Take some samples and have the water analysed?’
‘Would you mind?’
‘Of course not. You’ve got me interested now.’
‘I could go out and get the samples myself, if that would help.’
‘It’s easier if I do it. Gives me a chance to look at the terrain, see if there’s any obvious geological explanation. It might take a few days.’
‘Whenever. There’s no hurry. I’ll pay for your petrol.’
Omar waved the offer away. ‘I owe you for the Kit Kat and Sprite,’ he said. ‘Call it quits.’
‘That doesn’t seem very fair.’
‘This is Egypt. Nothing’s fair. Like you getting one finger and me getting three.’
He winked at Khalifa and crammed the remainder of the Kit Kat in his mouth.
‘Even with Mubarak gone, there’s still so much injustice,’ he said, munching cheerfully. ‘It’s heartbreaking.’
Khalifa smiled and they fell silent, gazing out across the lake while behind them the whistles continued to blow, although less frequently now as the tourists got the message and drained out of the temple complex and into their waiting coaches. Khalifa finished his Coke, ate his Kit Kat finger and lit a Cleopatra, his eyes lingering on a patch of empty sky out beyond the towering rectangle of the Tenth Pylon. This time last year that same patch of sky had framed his old apartment building, one of a row of drab concrete rectangles that had risen above the north end of town like a line of weathered tombstones. Whenever he’d visited Karnak in the old days he’d always made a point of wandering out to the pylon and calling home on his mobile, getting whoever was there to lean out of the living-room window and wave at him. A childish game of which none of them had ever tired, particularly Ali, who on one memorable occasion had once hung a large sheet out of the window on which he’d painted the words ‘We love you, Dad’. He wished he’d taken a photo. There were so many things he wished he’d photographed. And now they were gone for ever, replaced by empty sky and a trench full of sphinxes. Progress? It certainly didn’t feel like it to him.