The Cairo Diary (11 page)

“Mr. Matheson?” he said. “Are you sure you want to stay here?”

Jeremy breathed out slowly and nodded. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes. I want to stay.”

The two men with tarbooshes contemplated him without judging, too deeply affected themselves.

In turn, Jeremy stared at them. “Right,” he said, regaining a little substance and trying to steady his voice. “Have you obtained any particular clues?”

“No,” replied the first man, “there was too much movement in the sand. It's impossible to say what is old and what is recent, not to mention the dragoman's footsteps and our own. On the other hand we have not really examined the area around,” he said, indicating a circle around the lifeless body.

“And what about the dragoman? Where is he now?”

“We took down his details and…”

“And?”

The man twitched nervously, foreseeing trouble. He raised an eyebrow and a shoulder at the same time, ill at ease. “And he left…”

Jeremy opened his mouth when Azim—who was still holding his arm—loosened his grip. “Don't dwell on it,” he whispered, “it's pointless, what's done is done.”

Jeremy breathed out for a long moment, without taking his eyes off the two men in front of him. “Very well,” he said finally. “Stay at the entrance to the alley, and watch for the arrival of the stretcher-bearers.”

He spun around to confront the extent of the carnage once more. “Nobody touches the body,” he commanded after a moment's silence. “The doctor will take care of it. We shall search the sand and everything else, in search of clues.”

He and Azim divided the area around the body between them, and started to walk around it gradually, examining each inch of the ground and the walls.

The shadow cast by the tombs had protected the site from the sun, and the bodily fluids had not had time to be absorbed or totally assimilated by the earth. There were still long, brown trickles, between which they had to step with care.

Jeremy opened the top buttons of his shirt to allow a little air to his chest. He was not breathing well.

One long track had not been erased by his predecessors' footsteps: two times five parallel lines, running for two yards from one corner to the little body.

The child had dug his nails and his entire fingers into the sand to hold on while he was being dragged backward.

Toward a greedy mouth.

Jeremy drove this image from his mind.

He would have none of it. It was a parasite to considered thought. What mattered was to concentrate here, now. Nothing else. No mad images.

He went back to inspecting the scene, taking all the time necessary not to omit any detail. There were too many humps and hollows in the sand to deduce anything from them; it was complete chaos.

“I may have something here,” said Azim in his singsong voice.

Jeremy joined him, facing the decrepit old wall. Azim was hanging a yard from the top, his feet balanced in holes he had managed to find.

He pointed to a fresh gash in a brick just under his nose, at the top, which was less than nine feet up. The gash was shallow and was a little more than one inch long and less than one wide.

“How did you find that, Azim?” exclaimed the English detective.

“It's my job,” replied his companion joylessly. “It looks like a claw mark.”

Azim exclaimed something in Arabic. “There's another one here,” he pointed out immediately.

The second, which was similar, was about eight inches away. Both were close to the top of the wall.

The sun was beginning to illuminate this part, covering the textures with its rough brilliance; its rays were so pure and hot that they brought out the shadows, while dulling the brightness of the colors.

A glint of quartz or gypsum caught Jeremy's eye. It was coming from the end of the gash.

“What's that?” he asked.

“I just saw it, too. Wait…”

Azim steadied himself with one hand and freed the other to extract the shining object delicately.

His expression darkened.

“What is it?” demanded Matheson, suddenly impatient.

“I don't know.… It looks like a bit of ivory … a pointed bit.”

“Let me see.”

Azim jumped down beside him and held out the white fragment.

It was triangular and sharp. Its material was reminiscent of slightly damaged horn. Jeremy raised his face to the claw marks in the brick.

Something made of horn had grazed the top of the wall, in much the same way as it had eight inches away.

Suddenly, Jeremy placed his hand on his colleague's abdomen to prevent him from moving anymore. He scanned the ground attentively.

Among the multitude of minuscule dunes that had formed, he swiftly detected one hole that was much deeper than the others.

At first, he showed Azim two other depressions just in front of him. “Look.”

“I made those, sir,” replied Azim. “When I jumped down from the wall. My feet sank in and left those hollows.”

“Yes, I know, precisely! Now look at this other hole, here.”

He pointed to the one he had spotted. “And this sort of jumbled mass of sand beside it, about eight inches away, must have been its twin before it was wiped away.”

Azim nodded his understanding. Someone had jumped from the top, an adult to judge from the depth.

“He was balancing at this height when he jumped,” explained Jeremy, pointing to the holes. “He leaned on the brick to propel himself, and scratched it because he was holding a weapon made from horn, apparently in both hands; that's what caused these marks.”

“In both hands? Not practical for jumping.”

“That is true. That being said, I can scarcely believe that his nails could make such gashes!”

Jeremy immediately started scaling the masonry. “The child was caught unawares, terrified even, to judge by the color of his hair. He must have seen his attacker at the last moment, standing or crouching in this very spot,” he said, reconstructing the scene as he hoisted himself up.

He took the time to find his balance and stood up slowly to look down on the alleyway from a height of almost nine feet. Then he turned to look from the other side, which hid the multicolored wall.

“Do you see anything?” Azim wanted to know. “Wait, I'm coming up—”

“Pointless! You might break your neck, the bricks aren't well joined together, it's very old. There's a level a few feet lower down.”

Before Azim advised caution, Jeremy had already jumped to the other side. His shoulders rose above the top of the wall, and he bent forward to signal to him; all was well. And he started to search.

Down below, on the other side, Azim could see only the upper part of the Englishman moving about, sometimes disappearing completely when he kneeled down. Detective Matheson gritted his teeth and shook his head somberly as he combed the roof of what must be a mausoleum.

Suddenly, after a few minutes, he stopped. He bent forward and briskly stood up, a hand in front of his mouth. He stroked his chin.

“Something?” inquired Azim.

The Englishman nodded.

“Do you want me to come up?” Azim continued.

“No.” The word was brusque, yet spoken with a disconcerting softness. “No, I don't think there's any need for you to,” added Jeremy in the same almost inaudible tone, as though confiding a secret.

“So what is up there?”

Jeremy bent forward to look down on the whole area. He gazed at the towers, the fortifications, and the cupolas that gave this place such an original aspect. Because of the sun he was obliged to screw up his face in order to see without closing his eyelids completely.

His words were spoken so faintly, as if to himself, that Azim had great difficulty in catching them all. “We are dealing with a hunter, Azim. A hunter without pity, a hunter whose trophies are children…”

What came next, if anything did, was lost for all eternity among the tombs.

13

It was midnight.

Marion laid down the diary on the edge of the sofa.

The gin and orange juice was starting to make her head spin.

She gazed about the dimly lit room, asking herself what she was doing there. The décor resumed its place in her memory quite quickly.

The afternoon's break-in was no more than a bad memory, clouded by the alcohol.

She felt disoriented, thrown totally off-balance by what she had just read.

Thinking about it, she hadn't really read it; that was the problem. She had
lived
the discovery of the dead child. The power of the words.

They are a door.

They are the magical incantation.

The source of spells.

A gateway to the imaginary world.

They had carried her off into the film of the past, and she had got lost there.

Marion groaned as she stretched.

She was tired.

“And you're a little bit drunk, my dear,” she commented out loud.

She went up to the bedroom and just as she was about to get undressed, she remembered that she had left the black book downstairs. She hesitated; she had no desire to go back down, and yet she wanted to keep it with her, very close. She sighed and went to fetch it.

Darkness was cradling the village beyond the picture window.

Marion stood still in the darkened living room, gazing out at the roofs and lifeless windows. Then she went back to her bedroom and took off her clothes. While she was placing her clothes in the little bathroom that adjoined it, she noticed the reflection of her figure in the mirror.

She still had magnificent legs. She turned around.

Her backside wasn't bad either, she told herself.

A modest greed was bringing roundness to her belly, which had still been flat not so long ago. Her breasts weren't as firm as they used to be, but all the same they were fine, she reckoned. It was her arms that displeased her most in the end. That elasticity under the triceps, that ribbon of flabby skin under the biceps.

She knew this inventory by heart.

The mirror was of no more use to her than the prompter in a theater.

The most difficult thing to accept was not this body, which was ripening in the face of everything, despite the absence of regular sexual activity, despite her peculiar way of life, or the fact that it had never served to carry or build life; no, the hardest thing was her face.

The furrows of existence that grew more insistent with the years, the complexion that was fading without the unrestricted use of the institute's ultraviolet facilities, the sandy blond of her hair, which was losing ground in favor of the white of resignation.

And yet the overall sight wasn't an unpleasant one. Marion had nothing to complain about; she was still a beautiful woman. Her features were soft, and the lines merely emphasized a degree of wisdom …

Marion burst out laughing. Her thoughts were wandering; it was time to sleep, to forget about her body and about questioning herself. Women agonized over the idea of withering and consequently losing the love of their husbands or the admiring looks of men in the street and she, Marion, feared she might never overcome her solitude. Before you could hope to keep something, you had to win it.

“You're talking nonsense,” she murmured, noticing that her breath smelled of alcohol. “You're drunk.”

She slipped between the cold sheets on the bed, without bothering to put on pajamas or a nightshirt, and she closed her eyes.

Her hands slid down her hips. One slipped beneath her hip, and brushed against her pubis.

Her fingers lightly caressed the hollow of her sex.

And she rolled onto her side, holding onto the covers so as to pull them right up to her neck. Not tonight. She was too tired.

The sun of Egypt was still shining, somewhere in a corner of her thoughts.

The heat cradled her.

Jeremy Matheson was holding her by the shoulders, and tenderly smoothing her hair.

He smelled so good.… Virile, almost bestial. Attractive, as if he exercised an irresistible charm. Magnetic.

Marion saw his mouth approach hers.

Her hand tightened again about the covers.

She slept.

*   *   *

Marion sorted the books in the attic of the library in Avranches along with Brother Damien all day Wednesday; these were their last hours of toil in the stacks.

She almost asked him questions about what each member of the brotherhood had done the previous afternoon, to try and ferret out the prowler who had broken into her house, but she decided to say nothing so as not to arouse the monk's curiosity.

She returned home around five o'clock, and the telephone rang almost immediately. She was expected at the abbot's residence in order to meet Brother Serge, who was the head of the brotherhood.

Marion climbed the external great stair and crossed the Châtelet to arrive at the long and imposing façade of the residence.

Sister Agathe was waiting for her at the entrance. The sister was younger than she was, relatively insignificant in terms of physique, and almost spectral in her discretion. She led Marion through the corridors and staircases and knocked at an arched wooden door.

Brother Serge opened it and invited Marion to enter. Sister Anne was there too.

The man was in his fifties. A large, twisted nose and several dark moles marked his face. Beneath his thick, brown eyebrows, his eyes formed two placid, elongated lakes that reflected no emotion. Looking at him for the first time, Marion found herself comparing him to Robert De Niro, only less charismatic and more drained.

“I am pleased to be able to make your acquaintance at last,” he said by way of introduction. “You have been here a whole week, and I have scarcely had a moment to myself. Do please take a seat.”

Marion did so, not far from Sister Anne, who kept a benevolent watch on her. The monk's voice was familiar to her, but she couldn't quite identify it.

“Are you becoming accustomed to your quarters?” Brother Serge wanted to know.