Herring on the Nile (23 page)

‘Sorry,’ I said, for no better reason than because it was the way I began most conversations with Annabelle.

‘I think you’ve been very brave,’ she said, placing her hand gently on my arm.

I wondered which of my actions she was referring to. Probably not the bit where I hid under the bed. I tried to look brave but modest.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Annabelle.

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

‘You seemed to be pulling some sort of face.’

I tried to look brave but normal. ‘I’m just tired,’ I said. ‘I didn’t get much sleep.’

‘Nor did we,’ said Annabelle, in the tone she usually used about my snoring.

‘Sorry,’ I said again.

Annabelle seemed to be heading for a snort of derision, then checked herself and took a deep breath. She gave me a tight-lipped smile.

‘Thinking about it,’ she said, ‘you saved the
Khedive
and everyone on it.’

‘Did I?’

‘Oh yes. Most certainly. You cleverly got the terrorists away from the boat by . . . by . . . being frightfully clever. Then you spotted that they had put the bomb in the briefcase.
Cleverly. You shouldn’t be so modest, Ethelred.’

Though I felt this was much closer to the truth than Herbie Proctor’s earlier assessment of my conduct, there was nevertheless something in Annabelle’s tone that putme onmy
guard.

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ I said, this time avoiding pulling any sort of face.

‘I admire bravery in a man,’ said Annabelle. ‘Particularly the man that I am planning to spend the rest of my life with.’

Just for a second I wondered whom she could have met on the boat who had impressed her so quickly. Then I realized that that wasn’t quite what she had meant. But I had been led to believe
that particular deal was dead in the water.

‘Me?’ I said.

She pulled me closer to her, encircling my arm with her own. ‘When they . . . when they took you away last night, I suddenly realized I might never see you again.’

‘When we last discussed the matter, Annabelle, that was your preferred option. You did mention meeting up again when hell froze over, but I didn’t put it in my diary.’

‘One says things in the heat of the moment,’ said Annabelle. She was looking over the river and into the distance, as though seeing a future that was still shrouded for me.

Out on the Nile, the fishermen were hauling in a net that kicked and pulsated with its slippery silver contents. Their early-morning work, using age-old techniques, had borne fruit.

Annabelle rested her head on my shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m so sleepy.’

‘Me too,’ I said, without thinking.

‘Maybe we should go back to our cabins and have a nap before the day really begins,’ said Annabelle, though she did not release my arm as a necessary preliminary.

‘Good thinking,’ I said.

‘They’ve given me quite a large cabin,’ said Annabelle. ‘It has a really comfortable double bed.’

‘Mine too,’ I said. ‘Brilliantly comfortable.’

‘Your place it is, then. Get your coat, Ethelred, you’ve pulled.’

‘But . . .’ I said.

This too was an arrangement that I had imagined had been terminated. Since our last conversation in England had precluded ever meeting again, I had assumed it must rule out sleeping together.
Apparently not.

‘You mean a lot to me, Ethelred,’ said Annabelle, giving me a little kiss on the cheek. ‘Of course, you have your faults, as you must be aware. You can be rather pedantic. You
are self-pitying to an extent that I had not believed possible. Your demeanour is usually that of a lost puppy. You think that it is endearing, possibly even normal, to wear a twenty-year-old
Barbour jacket that is fit only for the compost heap. You snore. You refuse to accept the idea that you are going bald. Your idea of disposing of dental floss is to put it on top of something else
then forget about it. You refuse to eat any marmalade that isn’t the colour of treacle. You are, under most circumstances, completely spineless. You cannot remember when your own birthday is,
let alone other people’s. You go on and on and on and on and on about wanting to write a great literary novel, but you never do write one. You do not trim the hair in your ears. You neither
wear nor throw away your old ties. You squeeze the toothpaste tube at the
top,
for God’s sake. You are completely under the domination of your literary agent, who you should have
sacked years ago. You see the best in everyone. In spite of that, you have no friends with whom any sane person would wish to associate. You are untidy. You have no ambition. You apologize all the
time, regardless of whether you have done anything wrong.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. Then: ‘Were you going to add a “but”?’

‘
But
in spite of all of that I still love you,’ Annabelle concluded graciously.

I’d hoped Annabelle might have noticed one or two good points to list in the credit column. Maybe she’d tell me about those later, perhaps in that distant future she had been
contemplating.

Once we were safely in the cabin Annabelle drew back the curtains as though to check that my view was not better than I deserved. Outside, the men were at work again on the water, beating away
with their sticks and convincing the fish that being caught was the wisest option. She slowly closed the curtains again and turned to me, a significant glint in her eye. She slipped off her shoes
and started to approach me with stealthy steps.

‘Of course,’ I smiled, as she wrapped her arms round me, ‘all of this makes no difference to my decision to sell Muntham Court.’

‘Meaning what?’ She unwrapped her arms and took half a step back. There was no note of seduction in her voice any more. None at all.

‘Meaning, we can’t possibly afford to keep it on.’ I had started to unbutton my shirt, but I too stopped, my fingers still holding the fabric.

‘And you still think I get no say in this? In spite of the fact that this is our future we are talking about? In spite of the fact that Muntham Court is currently my home?’

‘We talked it through logically when we were in Sussex . . .’

‘
Logically
. . .’ she sneered. There was something about the word that displeased her.

‘If we try to hang onto it, the cost of maintaining it will bankrupt us within a year.’

‘Something will come up. We could run the house as a conference centre in the meantime.’

‘We went through all of this before. I explained it all to you. We’d have to employ staff. We’d have to make alterations to the building to meet health and safety regulations.
We’d have to advertise. And there’s Wiston House just down the road catering for conferences already. We’d just be bankrupt even faster.’

‘I bet you can’t go bankrupt faster than a year whatever you do,’ said Annabelle, probably correctly. ‘And if you’re going to go bankrupt it might as well be for a
lot as a little.’

‘Annabelle, I’m
not
doing it,’ I said.

‘You are completely useless,’ said Annabelle, possibly summarizing, or more likely adding to, my list of faults.

‘If you would just think it through sensibly,’ I said.

She didn’t like the word ‘sensibly’ either.

‘Just get out of my cabin,’ said Annabelle.

‘It’s my cabin,’ I said.

‘Then get out of your cabin,’ said Annabelle.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

I wondered whether it was too late to ask her what my compensating good points were, but decided that I’d probably missed my chance. I turned towards the door. As I was leaving my cabin I
noticed that Annabelle had failed to draw the curtains completely. Through the gap I could still see the fishermen pulling in the last of their net. One fish, luckier than the rest, had managed to
flip itself up into the air and over the side of the boat. From where I was, I observed a small splash and saw the fisherman turn briefly towards the escaper. Then, without further delay or
comment, they resumed their work.

Twenty-seven

It was mid-morning by the time the two tugs arrived. Lines were attached, with much shouting and many elaborate nautical precautions, and we were eventually inched carefully
away from the sandbank and into deep water. After some repositioning of the cables, the tugs set off upstream, with the
Khedive
following in their wake, ignominiously at the wrong end of a
tow rope and with various bits of greenery still decorating the stern, but at least now pointing in the right direction. There was no question of running our own engines until a number of parts had
been replaced.

As at Edfu, the party eventually split up to pursue our own inclinations. This time I stuck by Ethelred’s side. There was no sign of rocks falling from anywhere, but I reckoned Ethelred
could be trusted to be right underneath if any did fall. And I had no wish to give Annabelle a chance to take him to one side. It wasn’t only the possibility of her killing him that I was
worried about.

Ethelred was however for some reason rather moody. We might have continued in silence round the entire temple complex if his phone had not rung.

‘Yes?’ he said. Then he was quietly attentive for a long time as somebody told him something. ‘I see,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t think there are crocodiles
in this stretch of river though. Really? OK. Thanks for letting me know. I assume I can tell the others? Good. I’ll see you in Luxor then.’

‘On behalf of the others,’ I said, ‘who was that?’

‘That was Masterman. The Egyptian police intercepted the terrorists’ boat yesterday on its way back to wherever they were going. There was a bit of a fight and Mahmoud and Majid were
both killed. Masterman says he’s certain that one or other of them shot Purbright, but now we’ll never know for sure which of them it was. Anyhow, as far as the Egyptian authorities are
concerned, the case is effectively closed. They’ll be issuing a press statement later today saying that the terrorist group who killed the British secret service man were swiftly and
effectively brought to justice. Masterman wants to meet up with me when we are back in Luxor, but otherwise we are free to enjoy the rest of our trip in whatever way we wish. Oh, and they’ve
recovered your iPhone, along with everyone else’s.’

‘Have they found Purbright’s body?’ I asked.

‘No. Masterman doesn’t think it will ever be recovered – he mentioned crocodiles, but really there aren’t any below the Aswan dams. Even so, I can see that, unlike
Osiris, he may never show up now.’

It was a grim conversation to be having in the warm winter sunshine, with flocks of tourists milling around, snapping each other and having fun.

Ethelred seemed to cheer up slightly after the call, his cheerfulness mainly taking the form of trying to interest me in ex-pharaoh-related stuff. After a bit, I decided retaining my own sanity
was more important to the world of publishing than Ethelred’s possible death or seduction at Annabelle’s hands. The reading public were hardly going miss the odd crime writer. So
Ethelred was allowed to wander the temple by himself.

‘But you’re still not convinced they were the killers, are you?’ I concluded.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Whoever it was, he or she is still with us on the boat. I’m certainly going to be locking my cabin door tonight and I would suggest you do too, or we may
find ourselves in the position of being People Who Know Too Much For Their Own Good.’

‘Except,’ I said, ‘that that isn’t really how serial killers work. Serial killers kill basically because that’s what they enjoy doing. Think of it as a vocation
– a bit like writing but more respectable. They rarely need to do it because their subsequent victims know too much. Most subsequent victims know too little – that’s how they
become subsequent victims.’

‘The terrorists who took Ethelred were convinced that they had fellow travellers on board the
Khedive
.’

‘They were not entirely truthful with Ethelred on some other matters. That could have been a ploy too.’

‘It fits in with what they actually did though, doesn’t it? Why they didn’t blow us up at first, but then changed their minds?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Then we need some means of getting the real killer to give themselves away.’

‘How?’

‘Let’s see what we can do over dinner,’ said Tom. ‘Isn’t that how Agatha Christie would have done it?’