Lo
.
He repeated the question, got the same answer. And again when he threw out the name Zoser Freight. He was close to something, he could feel it. Very close. But he wasn’t getting there.
‘Can you tell me more about the boat you were on?’ he asked, trying another angle. ‘The one that brought you from Turkey.’
She bit her lip, her hand clenching and unclenching around the silver crucifix. Almost a minute passed before she eventually found her voice. Ben-Roi could tell from the creasing of the old man’s forehead that he was shocked by what he was hearing. More shocked than he had been by anything so far.
‘Dear God in heaven,’ he whispered. Then: ‘They were kept in a container. A shipping container. Thirteen of them. For four days. There was a grille to let in air. Mattresses, blankets, a bucket to relieve themselves. Each night some of them would be removed, taken to cabins so the sailors . . .’
The girl choked. Petrossian let go her hand and wrapped an arm round her shoulders, comforting her. At the same he caught Ben-Roi’s eye, lifted his brow to ask if the line of questioning was really necessary. Ben-Roi gave an apologetic half-nod to indicate that it was. Somewhere in Vosgi’s story, embedded like a needle in a haystack, was the information he needed, the piece that would complete the jigsaw and finally reveal the picture. And to find that piece he needed to sift the whole stack. Even if it meant forcing the girl back into the nightmare of her captivity.
‘Can you tell me about the ship itself?’ he asked, trying to help her, narrowing things down a bit. ‘Was it big, small . . . ?’
She hesitated, then spread her arms. Big.
‘A passenger ship? Fishing? Cargo?’
Fishing, she thought. Or maybe cargo. She hadn’t seen much of it. Just the ship’s side as they were taken on board, and then the container, and the cabin where they’d raped her.
‘What about the crew? Were they Egyptian? Arabic? Dark-skinned?’
Not the ones she’d seen – the ones who’d brought them food, and been with her in the cabin. They’d been pale-skinned. Russian, she thought. Rough. Very rough.
The monotone of her voice was starting to break up, chokes of emotion slipping through. Her body language, too, spoke of increasing distress: the intensity of her grip round the crucifix, the way her free hand had wrapped tight round her stomach as though to protect it. If there’d been any other way of getting the information, Ben-Roi would gladly have taken it. But there wasn’t another way. The girl knew something. And he had to get it out of her. Now. Tonight. Again, the thought struck him that he was little better than the men who’d used her. He pushed it from his head, ploughed on.
‘The people who put you on the boat in Turkey,’ he said. ‘Can you tell me anything about them?’
She couldn’t, beyond the fact that they’d been Turkish. She’d been driven to the ship, handed over to the crew, pushed into the container. There were already eight girls there. Another four had come later. That was all she could remember.’
‘What about when you got off the ship. At this dock place. What happened then?’
Her breathing was coming in rapid, fluttering gasps.
‘What happened at the dock, Vosgi?’
The reply was a tearful mumble, her chin pressing right down on her chest as if she was trying to hide. Petrossian translated, reluctantly, his expression signalling to Ben-Roi that he wouldn’t allow this to continue for much longer.
‘
They made us line up. They told us to take off our clothes. Everything. So that we were naked. Then to put our hands on our heads.
Detective, I really must—’
‘Just tell me what she’s saying,’ snapped Ben-Roi.
The old man drew the girl to him, whispered words of comfort.
‘
There was a car
,’ he continued. ‘
A big car. Black. There was a man inside. In the back. He said things. Gave orders. I didn’t understand. Then we got dressed again. There were three minibuses. They drove us away. All night. To the house
—’
‘The man in the car,’ cut in Ben-Roi, his tone sharp, insistent. ‘Tell me about the man in the car. What did he look like?’
She was weeping now, rocking back and forth. Ben-Roi repeated the question, hating himself for it, but sensing that this was it, this was the piece he needed.
‘
I couldn’t see him properly
,’ translated Petrossian, the words coming out in short bursts between the girl’s sobs. ‘
It was dark. There were lights pointing at us. He was sitting in the middle of the seat. Away from the window
.’
‘You must have seen something.’
She shook her head.
‘Something! There must be something!’
‘I see nothing,’ she cried, breaking into faltering, heavily accented Hebrew. ‘He not sit in window. I not see.’
‘What language was he speaking?’
‘I not know. I say you. I not know!’
Petrossian raised a hand to Ben-Roi, palm out, signalling him to stop. He ignored it.
‘Think, Vosgi! Please, think! There must be something you remember.’
‘No. Please. I tell truth!’
‘Think!’
‘Detective, this has gone far—’
‘Think, Vosgi! The man in the car. What did he look like?’
‘Detective!’
‘I not see face,’ she screamed. ‘I tell you! I tell you! All I see is arm. When he throw out cigarette from window. For one second I see arm with . . . with . . .’
She flapped her hands, keening, struggling to find the word she wanted.
‘With what, Vosgi? An arm with what?’
‘With . . . with . . .’
Her fists were clenching and unclenching. She lurched round, gazed wildly up at Petrossian, cried something in Armenian.
‘What?’ Ben-Roi shouted, his eyes blazing. ‘An arm with what? What did she just say?’
‘Tattoo,’ translated Petrossian. ‘The man had a tattoo on his arm. And that is all I am going to allow, Detective. I specifically asked you not to . . .’
His voice faded out as Ben-Roi’s mind zeroed in on something he’d seen four days ago. A prison, a cell, gold bling, jowly face, a man they called
Ha-Menahel
– the Schoolmaster. And on his forearm, in green and pink ink . . .
He came right forward on to the edge of the seat, his pulse racing, his body tense as a bowstring.
‘The tattoo, Vosgi. Was it of a –’ he curved his hands through the air, outlining a female form.
She hesitated, shivering, then nodded.
‘And was the woman –’ he levered open his hands, like a pair of spread legs.
A second nod.
Genady Kremenko all along.
‘Thank you, Vosgi,’ he said. ‘That’s everything I need. I don’t need to trouble you any more.’
She curled into Petrossian’s arms, trembling uncontrollably. Ben-Roi thought about going over to her, laying a hand on her shoulder, telling her he was sorry for what he’d just put her through. He sensed it wouldn’t do much good. That the last thing she needed right now was a bumbled apology from some bad-ass Jew cop. Instead, he stood, checked his mobile – still no message from Khalifa – and crossed to the front door.
‘I think you should stay here with her,’ he said as he started to draw the bolts. ‘I’ll let the station know you’re out, clear it with them. You can go back to the compound in your own time.’
He turned to Petrossian. The old man was staring at him. Hard to read his expression. Protective, maybe. Fatherly, even. Not angry, which was a surprise, given how far Ben-Roi had overstepped the mark. Their eyes held a moment. Then, with a tilt of the head – part thank you, part apology – Ben-Roi slid the last of the bolts and opened the door. He was about to step through when something occurred to him and he swung.
‘One last question, Vosgi. The picture you were drawing with Rivka Kleinberg. The woman with the blonde hair. Who was that? Someone you were trafficked with?’
The girl looked up. For a moment she was silent. Then she spoke to Petrossian in Armenian. He listened, nodded, conveyed her answer to Ben-Roi.
‘It wasn’t a real person. It was a picture. On the side of the boat she was taken on. A picture of a mermaid.’
‘Ah,’ said Ben-Roi.
He turned to the door. The archbishop’s voice called him back.
‘A last question for you too, Detective. You know where she is now. And you know her situation. May I ask what you intend to do?’
‘Right now, go straight down to Tel-Aviv to talk to a man named Genady Kremenko.’
‘You know what I mean. About Vosgi.’
Ben-Roi held the old man’s gaze, then shrugged. ‘I’m afraid you must be mistaken. I don’t know anyone called Vosgi.’
He winked, nodded and left the house.
T
HE
L
ABYRINTH
There was a child crying somewhere. Khalifa was absolutely certain of it. Somewhere in the mine a child was lost like him. It wasn’t in his imagination. It wasn’t a fantasy conjured up by the blackness. A child was in trouble.
‘Stay still!’ he croaked, his voice hoarse with thirst and exhaustion. ‘Stay still and I’ll find you. Don’t be scared. We’ll get out, I promise!’
He stumbled blindly, feeling his way along the stone walls, trying to get closer to the sound. It kept shifting. Sometimes it was ahead of him, sometimes behind, sometimes a long way off, sometimes tantalizingly close.
‘Please, stay still! If you move we’ll miss each other. Stay still and I’ll find you!’
Now it was coming from a tunnel to his right. A keening, terrified sob. Impossible to tell if it was a boy or a girl. A child, that’s all he knew. A lost child. And he had to find them. Because if
he
was scared, what must they be feeling? Poor kid. Poor helpless little kid.
‘I’m coming! Don’t be afraid! I’m coming!’
He fumbled his way down to the end of the tunnel, descended a set of steps, found himself in some sort of low room. Bats smacked into his face, shrieking; something was scurrying around the floor. A lot of things. Over his shoes, on to the hem of his trousers. He windmilled his arms and kicked his legs, drove forward through the black. He came to a wall, patted along it, found the mouth of yet another passage. A big one, by the feel of it. The child was somewhere down there.
‘Stay where you are! I’m coming. It’s going to be OK. I’m coming.’
He started along the passage. The sobs were clearly audible in the darkness ahead, although they were growing fainter.
‘Please!’ he pleaded. ‘Stay still. If you move I’ll never find you.’
He went faster, his desperation to get to the child overriding his fear that he might trip or smash into something. The passage was broad and high, its floor as flat as smoothed concrete. He broke into a stride and then a jog, powering heedlessly into the void, all else forgotten in the race to reach the little boy or girl before their voice was lost again. Now he was running, his limbs alive with a furious energy, a final frantic push as the voice faded in the distance, a last demented effort to get to—
His foot hit something. He stumbled, flailed his arms as if he was thrashing in water, half regained his balance, tripped on something else – the floor seemed to be scattered with small rocks or stones – sprawled and fell flat on his face. For a brief moment the child’s cries echoed in the far distance, and then they were gone.
Silence.
He lay for a while, his head and arms dangling over the edge of some sort of step, his ears straining. There were no more cries. No sounds of any description aside from the rasp of his own breath. Perhaps he had imagined it after all. Perhaps he was going mad.
‘God help me,’ he groaned.
He heaved himself on to his knees. Patting, he tried to find the next step down, get a sense of what was in front of him. He couldn’t feel one. Couldn’t feel anything. Just blank space. He leant forward, reached down, stretched out his arm. Nothing. He pulled back, felt along the tunnel floor, from wall to wall. It was the same all the way across. The floor just ended. In some sort of shaft. He swept his arm over the ground, found one of the stones on which he’d tripped (round, heavy, a hammer stone, maybe). He dropped it into the hole. There was a long pause before a distant clunk echoed back up to him as the stone hit the bottom. A very long pause. So long he’d started to wonder if there actually was a bottom. He winced, realizing how close he’d come to falling into it. Shivered too. Maybe the child’s cries had been a demon trying to lure him to his death.
‘Please God help me,’ he repeated.
He dropped another couple of rocks down, then threw one forward, trying to find out how wide the shaft was. There was a clack as it hit something solid – presumably the shaft’s opposite wall – and sometime later the echo of it hitting the shaft bottom. He threw another one, harder. This time there was a clattering sound as the rock skittered along a floor. The tunnel must continue on the other side of the shaft. Another throw, another clattering echo. A broad tunnel with a hole in the middle of it . . .
Suddenly he felt his head clearing, his pulse starting to race. Maybe it hadn’t been a demon after all. Maybe, just maybe, it had been an angel.
Fumbling around, he gathered a small heap of stones. One by one he started throwing them as hard as he could across the top of the shaft and into the continuation of the passage opposite. Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter . . .
Clank.
There was something down there. Just as he’d hoped there would be.
He launched three more rocks, got three more clanks. Not the sound of rock on rock. This was rock against metal. Echoing metal. Humming metal. Vibrating metal. Like some kind of . . .
Rail or track.
And unless there was more than one set of tracks in the mine, it meant somehow, against all the odds, he’d made it back to the main gallery.
He let out a croaking bark of joy. The sound had barely left his mouth before it faded and died.
Because he wasn’t back. Not quite. Between him and the way out was a hole. A big hole. The one he’d briefly glimpsed on his way down the gallery. The hole into which Samuel Pinsker had lowered two hundred feet of weighted rope and still not found the bottom.
He brought his hands up to his head, closed his eyes, tried to picture Pinsker’s notebook. What had he said about the hole? It was in a side-gallery about halfway down the main gallery. It was square, extended right across the passage – like the well shafts in some of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The Englishman had made measurements. Try as he did, Khalifa couldn’t remember the crucial one: the distance across the shaft. He thought and thought, clawed at his memory. It wasn’t there. He opened his eyes – for all the good that did – and started launching rocks again, trying to judge how far it was by sound. Somewhere between three and five metres was his best guess. Which was a big margin of error. Three metres he could probably just about jump. Five he couldn’t. The margin between life and death.