Shadows on the Nile (51 page)

Monty was not sure he believed him but now was not the time to argue the point. The relationship between the three siblings
was clearly unusual and complex in a way that he didn’t totally understand, but his only aim now was to get Jessie to safety.

‘You should never have brought them out here,’ he said in a quiet undertone. ‘It wasn’t right.’

Tim jerked round, eyes wide. ‘They’re family,’ he said fiercely. ‘I couldn’t abandon Georgie. Of course it wasn’t right to bring him here. Don’t you think I am well aware of that? It’s been hard for both of us but …’ He stopped and stared down at the desert sand on his boots for a long moment. ‘He’s with me,’ he continued softly, ‘and he’s alive. It’s the best I could give him. I had no other option.’

‘And Jessie? Why drag her out here? Why all the clues?’

Tim stepped away from him, stiff-legged, like a dog preparing to defend its territory. ‘It was a risk, I know that. I love my sister and brother. To put them in danger is the last thing I would ever want to do, but I ran out of choices. I had to leave the Sherlock clues. I needed Jessie and I knew she wouldn’t let me down. We’re family – it’s that simple.’

But he must have seen Monty’s frown and sensed his anger because he continued rapidly, ‘When Scott first asked me to take part in this scheme of his, I refused. But when I reported it to the museum’s directors they called in the police. It was the police who asked me to go along with it. They wanted to discover the whole network that Scott was using in Egypt for transport and the illegal export of the ancient treasures, not just to arrest Scott himself.’

‘So you said yes.’

He nodded. ‘I couldn’t bear what Scott was doing.’

‘I sympathise with you there,’ Monty replied grimly.

‘So I went along with it, but Scott didn’t trust my change of heart. He drugged my drink at a séance to make sure that I complied, and insisted on bundling me out of the country quickly with no contact with anyone at all.’

‘Except Georgie.’

‘Georgie was my one condition.’

‘How did you manage to bring him here?’

‘On that Friday night after the
séance I was in no fit state to travel, so Scott kept me under close guard, but the next day he had his men drive me to snatch Georgie from the clinic. After that, we set off for Egypt. The journey was a nightmare for poor Georgie.’ He shook his head at the memory of it and said again, ‘I couldn’t abandon him.’

Monty was touched by the intensity of his statement:
We’re family – it’s that simple
. Part of him began to understand and he recognised in this young man’s passion for Egypt the same emotions he felt himself for Chamford.

‘So why the clues?’ he asked again, more warmly this time.

‘I didn’t trust Scott and I didn’t know how much I could rely on the Egyptian police. So Jessie was my lifeline. There was no one else who would come to get Georgie and myself out of trouble if things turned nasty with Scott. I knew she would come looking.’

My lifeline
.

Tim turned to look at Monty, his face tense. ‘That’s why I told Scott about McPherson, Hatherley, Hosmer and Phelps when I woke and found myself at his place on the Saturday morning. I pretended that I needed to inform them that I was leaving. Made a great fuss about it, so that he wouldn’t forget their names in a hurry.’

‘Scott told us that it was at the séance that you mentioned them.’

‘Well, Scott was lying. He couldn’t very well tell you the truth, could he? But I knew that when Jessie tracked him down, he would be eager to know who this foursome was and would ask her. Then she’d work it out.’

‘All fictional.’

‘Yes, but he didn’t know that, and it gave Jessie the clue for the Nile.’

They were clever, this pair.

Monty heard the slam of the truck’s bonnet behind them and he said quickly, ‘The Egyptian policeman, Ahmed Rashid, contacted me, and asked if I had any idea where you were. He claimed he didn’t know.’

Tim shrugged. ‘It doesn’t surprise me. I’ve got Scott’s briefcase now with all his contacts. I just hope Captain Rashid has put
his men in place when I take this lot downriver to—’

A bullet smacked into the windscreen of the truck.

The attack came out of nowhere. Bullets spat into the sand and ricocheted with a high-pitched whine off rocks, sending the workmen racing for cover, but there was none. They cowered behind the camels. Monty dragged Tim under the truck, his heart kicking damn great holes in his ribs, where they lay flat on their stomachs behind the shelter of the wheels. Gun in hand, he sought out the attackers.

A flash of black. He took precise aim. Pulled the trigger and heard a scream. Beside him Tim was firing off shots at random from Scott’s gun. Wasting bullets. It occurred to Monty that Tim had never been shot at before. Moving swiftly on his elbows and stomach, Monty shifted towards the back, determined to put a bullet smack in the middle of anyone who attempted to open the rear doors.

‘Save your bullets!’ he yelled at Tim.

The wild firing ceased. The sudden silence was worse. It felt like the silence in the tombs, a silence that sapped your strength and seeped through your eyes and your ears, deadening your brain. He scanned the bleak horizon, as much of it as he could make out from under the truck, and waited.

A thin eerie sound rose into the silence. It stopped his breath and made his skin crawl. It was as if the desert itself had cracked open and was screaming. But Tim, who had been so panicked by the bullets, showed no surprise at this.

‘Georgie!’ he roared. ‘Georgie, stop that noise!’

Georgie
.

That noise was coming from Georgie? It didn’t even sound human. Monty glanced at the truck above him and thought of Jessie in the darkness up there with that noise. He banged his fist on the underside of the truck to let her know he was here.

‘Timothy Kenton!’ The voice echoed bleakly across the sands.

Tim looked at Monty. ‘Fareed.’

‘Is that you, Fareed?’ he shouted out.

‘It is.’

Another bullet cracked through the air and Monty caught
sight of one of the bearded guards. He was huddled behind a kneeling camel and his rifle was firing at a fall of rocks over to the right of the truck, but at the sound of the sudden shot, the unearthly wailing grew louder and more piercing.

‘Timothy Kenton,’ Fareed’s voice had to fight against Georgie’s, ‘you and Scott and the treasures of Egypt are all I want. The rest can leave unharmed. I do not wish to harm my own people.’

Monty heard Tim draw in a sharp breath.

‘No, Tim, wait!’

But Tim was starting to wriggle forward.

‘Fareed,’ Monty shouted, ‘Scott is dead.’

‘How?’

‘Shot. By one of us.’

For a long moment there was nothing but the sound of Georgie’s scream and of the wind flinging hot air and a layer of dust over them.

‘Timothy Kenton, let me see you.’

‘No, Tim.’

Before the words were out of his mouth, Tim was rolling out from under the truck. He stood in the blazing sun, his hair gleaming gold, and Monty took aim at the ragged rocks from which Fareed’s voice seemed to come. He breathed out slowly and tightened his finger on the trigger. He waited.

‘Tell your friend under the truck to throw out his gun, and the foolish man with the rifle.’

Tim turned, but he could not see Monty’s face under the truck. ‘Monty,’ he said, ‘you’ll be safe. He only wants me. Please, throw out your gun. It’s the only chance the others have got.’

‘How good is his word?’

‘Monty, we have no choice.’

Monty felt acid burning in his throat. Either way Jessie would lose, because either way Tim was doing to die. He
dragged the dusty air into his lungs and with a curse, tossed out his gun. It hit the sand ten feet away with a soft thud and immediately the guard did the same with his rifle. Only then did Fareed stand up, followed by ten figures in black robes who all carried rifles.

Tim walked forward, his back straight and his head held ridiculously high, and only Monty could see the tremor in his hands at his sides. For a long moment Monty closed his eyes, the eerie cry still hammering in his ears, then he slid out from under the truck and went to stand in front of its rear doors. He folded his arms across his chest and watched Fareed in his black robe approach Tim. The Egyptian spat on the ground in front of Tim’s feet.

‘You pillage my country’s treasures,’ he said.

His black eyes burned with a passion that robbed Monty of any last hope that he could be reasoned with. Or bribed. Or bargained with. This was a man who knew what he wanted and only an act of God would deter him from getting it. And what he wanted was Tim’s head on a platter.

‘I am not stealing from your country, Fareed,’ Tim said solemnly. ‘I am working with your police to ensnare people like Scott and his organisation of accomplices, so that—’

Fareed barked an order in Egyptian and repeated it in English. ‘Kneel!’

Tim knelt on the stony sand.

‘You lie,’ Fareed said. ‘Your mouth is full of lies that you expect me to believe because you think you are the educated Englishman and I am the ignorant Egyptian.’

‘No, Fareed,’ Monty said and moved closer, until Fareed raised his rifle.

‘Near enough.’

‘Mr Kenton is telling you the truth. He is working with the police. Don’t jeopardise this. There are hundreds of tombs out in these hills, waiting to be found, and you need the co-operation of—’

Fareed fired a shot into the sand. ‘I need no Englishman’s cooperation.’ His voice was bitter and angry.

The shot caused Georgie’s cry to rise higher. Without a glance
at Fareed, Monty walked over and opened the back of the truck. The noise and the heat billowed out of it with such force that for a moment he jerked back, but when he saw Jessie’s expression and the way she was sitting rigid on the truck floor with Georgie’s head wrapped in a blanket and howling on her lap, he reached in and lifted Georgie down. Then he wrapped his arms around her and brought her to his side. He could smell the sweat on her and feel the tension in her muscles.

‘Stay calm,’ he warned, as she blinked in the sudden dazzling sunlight.

Immediately she caught sight of Tim on his knees. She saw the rifle. But she didn’t move. Just the faintest of moans passed her lips. Georgie had crouched in the dust, wailing more softly now and rocking back and forth. Gently Jessie adjusted the blanket to cover his head and face.

‘What is that?’ Fareed demanded.

‘He is my brother,’ Tim answered. Tears had started down his cheeks.

‘It is a monster.’

Fareed lifted his rifle and at that exact moment a cheerful voice called out loudly behind him.

‘Hello, gents! I hope you’re not thinking of shooting that poor boy.’

Fareed swung around. Monty’s jaw fell open and Georgie threw off his blanket.

It was Maisie. She was striding out of the hills with her umbrella aloft and Malak’s small figure trailing uncertainly behind with a camel. She was wearing her sunhat with the bright red peony and looked for all the world as if she were taking a stroll along the Corniche-el-Nil. Except that her stride was long and her energy high, and she covered the distance between the scree slope and the black figures at a speed no one expected.

‘Well, what the heck is going on here?’ she asked with an unflustered smile, but the sight of the rifle so ready for use in Fareed’s hand made her lower her umbrella and glance from Tim
on his knees to Monty ten paces away.

‘Maisie,’ Jessie called in a tight voice, ‘stay out of this.’

Maisie nodded but remained exactly where she was. ‘Do you intend to kill him?’ she asked in a cold tone.

‘Yes.’

Georgie

Egypt 1932

Do you intend to kill him?
she asks.

Yes,
he says.

You turn your head to look over your shoulder at
me. At me. Your eyes are huge blue seas of emotion in which I am drowning because for once I know what your expression is. It is sorrow. You are sorry.

I am sorry.

‘Tim!’ I scream your name and hurtle towards you.

Snick. Snap. Smack.

Bullets whine past me and kick at the sand, shooting up tiny tornadoes at my feet, but I do not stop. My limbs jerk and jump, pulling me in frantic directions because I cannot control them, the way a fly buzzes on a windowpane, but I reach out for you.

Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.

I scream.

But the rifle sweeps up and its black fetid eye points at your head
and I know I must die with you.

I scream your name.

The finger closes on the trigger. But the Man in Black gives a faint cough and from the middle of his chest protrudes the tip of a long thin blade and I scream again because how can a man grow metal out of his chest?

He coughs once more and there is blood in the air. He stumbles and falls to the ground, breath escaping from him in a soft hiss that I know now is the voice of death. Behind him stands the Tall Woman with the greyhound’s face and in her hand she holds the handle of a long thin sword. It is sticking in the man’s back. She steps away and vomits something brown and repulsive on to the sand. I grasp the sword-handle and pull at it but it clings to the body, unwilling to leave it, until I yank hard and it comes out in a rush with a wet slurping sound. I wipe it on the man’s robe until it is clean and then I offer it to the woman. That’s when I see that everyone is watching me. I start to shake.

‘Thank you, young man,’ the woman says and slides the blade back inside the cane of her umbrella.

I am impressed by the weapon.

Only then do I look at you.

They leave. They take their dead leader and leave, the fluttering men in the black robes go, and the desert feels empty when they have gone, though it is still full of sand. I don’t understand why they go. They do not touch us and they do not touch the treasure in the truck.

I ask you.

You say they didn’t want to touch us because they think this place is cursed. That the treasure is cursed and that we are cursed.