‘Zenab,’ he called. Then, louder: ‘Zenab!’
Someone touched his wrist. He swung, thinking it was her, but it was the man at the next table.
‘Over there,’ said the man, pointing across the way. Khalifa followed the line of the man’s finger. She was standing up against the railings surrounding the pleasure garden, gazing through at the children inside, her hands clasping the bars as though she was looking out of a prison cell.
‘Oh Zenab,’ he murmured. ‘Oh my darling.’
Throwing some money on the table, he jogged across to her. Her shoulders were heaving. He wrapped an arm round her and gently pulled her back and away, cursing himself for not having kept a closer watch.
‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m here now.’
She swung into him and buried her face in his chest, sobbing uncontrollably.
‘I miss him, Yusuf. Oh God, I miss him. I just can’t bear the silence.’
The town was alive with sound – laughter, music, the blare of car horns, the clatter of carts – but he knew exactly what she meant. Without Ali, there would always be a corner of their lives that was unnaturally quiet, like a deserted house.
‘It’s OK,’ he repeated, holding her tight, ignoring the looks of passers-by, the mutters of those who disapproved of such public displays of closeness between a man and a woman. ‘We’ll get through this. I promise you, Zenab, we’ll get through this.’
They stood for a while, locked together, oblivious to the crowds eddying around them, closed off in their own private world of grief. Then, taking her hand tight in his, he led her home, his conversation with the Raissoulis utterly forgotten.
T
HE
N
EGEV
Since childhood she’d been alert to noises in the night, and the moment she heard the unfamiliar footfall outside – too heavy for Tamar; too slow and lumbering for either Gidi or Faz – she was wide awake and reaching beneath her pillow for the Glock. The footsteps stopped, started again, came right up to the door. She could hear breathing – low, feral, like some sort of prowling animal – then the handle started to turn. She levelled the Glock, sighting down the barrel. One turn, testing the lock, then another, harder, more insistent. The lock gave on the third turn and the door began to open, heavy oak panels easing back with a creak of unoiled hinges.
‘Get away,’ she hissed, finger tightening around the trigger. ‘I’ll kill you. Get away.’
‘I just want to talk.’
‘You never want to talk! Get away! Get away!’
‘Don’t make me force you, Rachel.’
She yanked the trigger. It stuck. She tried again, and again, acid rising in her throat, her heart thudding so hard she thought it was going to crash right through her ribcage. The Glock wouldn’t fire. She kicked out, flailed her arms. He was on the bed now. A hand pushed beneath the cover, started to work her legs open.
‘Oh no, please don’t . . .’
‘Sssshhh.’
‘You’re hurting me. Please, stop, you’re hurting . . .’
‘But I’ve paid. All that money.’
‘It hurts. It hurts.’
‘Sssshhh.’
‘Stop! It hurts. You’re tearing . . . Oh God, please don’t . . .’
She jerked awake.
For a moment she lay there, the scene so vivid in her mind that it was only slowly she was able to transition from dream to reality. Then, struggling into a sitting position, she fumbled on the bedside lamp and drew her knees up to her chest, sobbing.
It was always the same dream. Night after night. The details varied – sometimes he came into the room, sometimes he’d already be there; sometimes she’d recognize him, sometimes it would be a stranger. The essence of it, though – the breathing, the weight, the sickening shock of penetration: that never changed. Hadn’t changed for as long as she could remember. Every night she went to sleep pleading for a different movie. Every night her sub conscious played out the same unbearable rape flick. With her as the star. She wiped her eyes and pressed her legs tight together, her vagina aching even though nothing had actually happened down there.
Several minutes went by. Slowly her sobs subsided, her heartbeat eased. She looked at the clock. 2.17 a.m. She thought about going into Tamar’s room, curling up beside her, seeking shelter in the warmth of her body, but she was awake now, knew she wouldn’t be able to settle. Instead, leaning across, she swung the laptop off the bedside table and switched it on. A screensaver of a tall glass-and-steel building came up, its windows glinting in the sunlight – Barren Corporation headquarters in Houston. She entered the log-in she’d extracted from Chad Perks and recommenced her trawl through the hard drive, searching for something, anything that might be considered incriminating. That could help skewer the company. The ache between her legs subsided as her entire being focused in on the mission.
J
ERUSALEM
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m sorry if I give that impression.’
‘You know who the girl is.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘You know
where
she is.’
‘Again, I’m afraid . . .’
‘And Rivka Kleinberg thought the same thing. That’s why she called you three weeks before she was murdered.’
‘Sadly I can’t recall the details of the conversation.’
‘Sadly I don’t believe you.’
‘I’m sorry for that.’
‘Where’s the girl?’
‘I couldn’t tell you.’
‘Why did you lie about your alibi?’
‘I merely forgot to mention that I went for a walk.’
‘Why did you say you were guilty of Rivka Kleinberg’s murder?’
‘I said I was
culpable
of her murder. It was me who ordered the late opening of the cathedral, after all. Had I not done so, she would not have been killed in there.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You’re entitled to your opinion.’
‘You’re hiding something.’
‘If you say so.’
‘You’re afraid of something.’
‘We’re all afraid of something, Detective.’
‘Where’s the girl?’
‘I couldn’t tell you.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I’m sorry if I give that impression.’
Ben-Roi’s fist clenched in frustration. It had been the same for the last forty minutes, like a tape on endless repeat – round and round, back and forth, to and fro, getting nowhere. The same for the last twenty-two hours, by all accounts. The archbishop wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t admitting to anything, and with forensics drawing a blank in his private apartments, Baum’s case was drooping like a flaccid cock. Which is why he’d finally relented and granted Ben-Roi his interview. A last, desperate throw of the dice before the twenty-four-hour holding period expired and a ton of egg slammed into his face. If Ben-Roi was frustrated, it was nothing to what his beloved chief superintendent must have been feeling at that current moment.
He glanced at his watch – 8.40 a.m. – stood and walked up and down the cell a few times, stretching his legs, clearing his head. The archbishop sat in meditative silence, a faint smile playing across his lips. Not cocky or mocking, like the smiles you got from career scumbags like Genady Kremenko. This was a different sort of expression – calm, stoic, assured. Pious almost. The smile of someone who believes they are doing the right thing and is more than happy to suffer whatever consequences that belief might bring with it. A martyr’s smile, it struck Ben-Roi. And if he knew one thing about martyrs it was that they never broke, however hard you hammered at them. He returned to the table, sat down, picked up the photo of Vosgi.
‘OK, let’s go through it again. Do you know this girl?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
‘Why are you lying?’
‘I’m not lying.’
‘What are you afraid of?’
‘As I said, we’re all afraid of something, Detective.’
And so on and so on, same questions, same evasions for another thirty minutes until eventually he gave up, accepting that he was banging his head against a brick wall. Whatever the archbishop knew, it was locked inside him and no amount of poking and prying was going to force it out. Ben-Roi stood, went over to the cell door, smacked on the metal to get someone to open it. The archbishop remained where he was, his hands clasped in front of him, his ring of office glowing purple in the cell’s harsh lighting. Still with that smile on his face.
‘You know, right at the beginning of this case a friend of mine told me that nothing happens in the compound without you knowing about it –’ said Ben-Roi as he waited for the door to be opened.
The archbishop gazed up at him.
‘– He was wrong. I don’t think you have the least idea who killed Rivka Kleinberg. And I sure as hell don’t think you did it yourself.’
‘I’m gratified to hear it.’
‘But you do know what’s happened to the girl,’ continued Ben-Roi.
‘And by withholding that information you’re not only obstructing a police inquiry, you’re allowing a killer to walk free. Possibly to kill again. Does that sit easy with your conscience, Your Eminence?’
Although the smile remained, there was the faintest movement in Petrossian’s eyes, a fractional tightening of the irises. It might have been a flicker of doubt, it might have been nothing more than the reaction to a speck of dust. Either way, it was gone almost immediately.
‘In my experience, matters of conscience are never as simple as they seem,’ said the archbishop. ‘They invariably throw up dilemmas and unintended consequences. The man who gives his life fighting a corrupt regime leaves behind a family who are then persecuted by that regime. The believer who burns at the stake for his religion sets an example of suffering that others feel compelled to follow. Conscience is a tricksy master, Detective. In this instance, however, so far as it possibly can be, mine is clear. Now if you wouldn’t mind, I would beg a few moments to pray.’
Behind Ben-Roi the cell door opened. He stood a moment watching as the old man lowered his head and started to murmur, then stepped out of the cell.
‘Well?’
Chief Superintendent Baum was waiting for him at the end of the corridor, pasty-faced and fretting. Ben-Roi shook his head, provoking an eruption of expletives and wall-kicking. A small consolation for the fact that the interview had been a complete waste of time.
L
UXOR
When Khalifa arrived at the police station on Monday morning, a visitor was waiting for him in the foyer – Omar al-Zahwi. The two friends exchanged
sabah el-khirs
and embraced.
‘Rasha well?’ asked Khalifa, waving at one of the constables to bring them tea and leading Omar on to the stairs.
‘Good, thanks. Zenab?’
‘Better every day.’
For the first time in nine months, Khalifa was able to say it without feeling he was telling an outright lie. He’d feared the incident last night – the tears outside the pleasure garden – would set his wife back. Instead, it seemed to have provoked some sort of shift within her. This morning she’d risen before everyone else and prepared breakfast – something she hadn’t done for a long time – and had then insisted on being the one to walk Yusuf to school. The grief was still palpably there – shadowing her eyes, etched into her face, dulling her voice – but alongside it there was a suggestion of purpose that Khalifa hadn’t seen before. When he’d set off on the ten-minute walk to the police station, he’d felt better than he had done in ages.
‘I’m guessing business rather than social,’ he said as the two men climbed.
‘Extraordinary powers of deduction,’ quipped his friend, brandishing the briefcase and rolled-up map he was holding.
‘The water test results?’
‘The very same. Sorry to have kept you waiting.’
The apology was unnecessary. Since he’d started looking into the Samuel Pinsker story, the curious case of the Coptic well poisonings had receded to the very back of Khalifa’s mind. There’d been no reports of further incidents, all was quiet out at the Attia farm. So far as it
was
still on his radar, he’d all but settled into the view that the whole thing was a storm in a tea glass.
‘You’re going to tell me they went bad naturally, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘Nothing of the sort,’ replied Omar. ‘The wells were poisoned, no question. All seven of them.’
‘Three,’ corrected Khalifa.
‘Seven. I did some trawling around and on top of the ones you gave me, I turned up another four that had also been affected.’
Khalifa stopped. Suddenly it was the Labyrinth of Osiris that had receded.
‘You sure about this?’
‘Absolutely. And those are just the ones that have been reported. There could well be more. No pun intended. You know – well,
well
. . .’
Khalifa ignored the joke.
‘All Coptic?’
‘Four of them are.’
‘According to my maths that leaves another three.’
‘On the ball as ever,
sahebi
.’
‘And?’
‘Those are Muslim-owned. One’s a Bedouin watering hole over near Bir el-Gindi, one a smallholding down towards Barramiya, and the other one . . . I can’t remember precisely where that was – I’ve got the details in here.’
He lifted his briefcase. Khalifa’s mind was clicking, trying to adjust itself to a picture that appeared to be showing something very different from what he had initially imagined it to be showing.
‘It’s been interesting,’ said Omar. ‘Very interesting. Important, actually. I think we should talk. Shall we . . .’
He motioned up the stairs. Khalifa led the way up to the fourth floor and along the corridor to his office, only to find Ibrahim Fathi sitting in there with his feet on the desk, crunching
torshi
and chatting on the phone. The neighbouring room was free and they went in there instead.
‘I’ve done a brief summary of the situation,’ said Omar, once the door was closed, opening his case and handing over a stapled bunch of papers. ‘Preliminary Report on Regionalized Hydro-geological Anomalies in the Sahara al-Sharqiya’ read the title page. ‘But it’s probably easiest if I just talk you through the whole thing. If you wouldn’t mind clearing a space there.’
He started unrolling the map while Khalifa made room for it on a nearby desk, helping his friend to flatten it out and weighing the corners with, respectively, a mug, an ashtray, a hole puncher and
The Complete Manual of Egyptian Policing
– the first time in twenty years Khalifa had ever found a use for the last. Unlike the map on the wall in Khalifa’s office, which showed the whole of Egypt, this one covered just a small segment of the country: the rectangle of desert framed by the Nile to the west, the Red Sea to the east and Routes 29 and 212 north and south. Within the confused filigree of
wadis
, tracks,
gebel
and contour lines, seven small crosses had been marked in red ink. The poisoned wells, presumably. Khalifa lit a Cleopatra and the two men bowed over the desk.