The Cairo Diary (23 page)

“Tell me why you're angry,” said Jeremy, suddenly calmer.

“You had evidence that could be material to our investigation. You should have shared it with me!”

“Nothing conclusive. I had nothing that could help us. I would have told you; I needed a little time.”

The Englishman had recovered his serenity. He gazed at Azim through the cloud of smoke that enveloped him, trying to sound him out.

“Are we partners or competitors?” demanded the Arab. “If we are working together, I would like us to be able to share everything. I do not hesitate to keep you informed of my wildest deductions—this story of the
ghul
bears witness to that. In return, I expect the same openness, Mr. Matheson.”

Jeremy breathed out two tendrils of smoke. “I am sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

He held out his hand, with the cigarette held between index and middle fingers, and indicated the sofa. The two men sat down facing each other. Jeremy rubbed the nape of his neck with his free hand, seeking the right words with which to begin.

“The murder in Shubra was the slaughter of a poor guy, a vagrant. When I arrived on the scene, it was … worse than after a bombardment. The vagrant had been broken in half, literally. The jaw had been dislocated, to make it easier to smash his teeth and tear out his tongue. He was in pieces. That day we were short-staffed, and I had to do everything on my own. Including collecting up the bits of his corpse in the middle of that filthy hovel.”

Jeremy paused to draw on his cigarette.

“It was a crime that passed understanding. A kind of savagery the like of which I had never seen. A totally gratuitous murder. I questioned the locals; people knew the victim vaguely by sight—a local vagrant who had no links with anyone, and absolutely no property that anyone might have coveted. He had purely and simply been torn to shreds for pleasure. Anyway, I did my job, looked for clues, witnesses: nothing. The whole thing was done with complete anonymity. I found nothing. The investigation had reached a dead end.”

He took a final drag and crushed the cigarette butt in a dirty glass that had been sitting on the table since the previous night, then went on, “When I heard those two coppers talking in the corridor about the slaughter of a child, describing pretty much the same thing I'd been confronted with a month earlier, I saw red. Because I hadn't been capable of tracking down that … madman, a child had endured the same unspeakable torments.”

For the first time since the beginning of his confession, Jeremy looked Azim straight in the eye.

“It is up to me to find whoever did this. I have to sort this thing out quickly, I and nobody else. If I could have nicked that piece of filth just after the vagrant's murder, those four children would be alive now.”

The metallic echo of a train passing close by filled the long silence that followed.

“We will have him,” Azim said at last, “I assure you that we will. Now, you say you found absolutely nothing at the first crime that might help us?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Very well.”

Jeremy recovered his composure. He took a second cigarette, which he held between his fingers without lighting.

“We are invited this evening to the home of the foundation's patron,” he said. “That swine has obtained a copy of your report. He now knows everything about our investigation to date.”

Azim appeared vexed by this news. “Really? Is he as influential as that?”

“He is rich. And he has been in Cairo for a long time. Two cards that ensure he wins every game.”

“I think you are going to have to go there alone; I have already planned my time. Since this story of the
ghul
seems insane to you, I have taken it upon myself to deal with it and carry out a little more research.”

“Meaning?” asked the Englishman.

“I have two or three little ideas to look into. But I would prefer to keep them to myself, unless they come to something.”

“Azim, don't waste your time on this wild-goose chase.”

“Let us keep a clear head. We have nothing at the moment, and I am no use to you, so I shall do as I see fit.”

Jeremy opened his mouth to insist, but realized how determined his colleague was, and that it was pointless going on. “Very well then, if you have nothing better to do.…”

“What about you? How are you going to occupy your day?”

“Delving into Keoraz's past.”

*   *   *

While Azim was pounding the streets in the eastern districts, Jeremy was visiting his various sources, beginning with a few journalists in whom he had absolute confidence. He then headed for the British Embassy, where he gained access to the archives without having to make use of his address book.

Methodically, he assembled all the possible information about Francis Keoraz.

Born into a moneyed London family, Keoraz had studied at Oxford before taking the reins of a family import business. He had not fought in the Great War. While others were dying at the front, he had met his first wife, who became one of the last victims of the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1919, just after giving birth. Immediately, Keoraz left for Cairo with his baby son, fleeing England and his grief. He had taken over as head of his father's bank, and made it prosper as the years went by.

Keoraz was famous for his phenomenal rages, and his taste for power and domination. The few unwary people who had deliberately got in his way had been swept aside, trampled on; and in his fury at not being obeyed without question, Keoraz had unrelentingly hounded them to ruin and even dishonor.

He was the kind of individual who made vindictive enemies.

His remarriage had silenced rumors that he was homosexual—despite his son—for he was not known to have made any feminine conquests since his arrival in Egypt. All he had needed was to meet Jezebel Leenhart.

Keoraz had only to ask and he could have every influential person in the city at his dinner table, including members of the government.

He loved, or rather had loved polo, which he had played until he tired of it, as he had done with the majority of his pursuits. Keoraz was a nomad when it came to his passions; settling down—whether it applied to his moods, his hobbies, or his life in general—was not his style. Once he had acquired and mastered something, it invariably became dull in his eyes.

That was what had fascinated him about Jezebel, Jeremy realized.

Nothing and no one was more versatile than Jezebel.

Nor less capable of being tamed.

She represented a challenge of which he would never tire.

Keoraz was one of those people whom common mortals regarded with hatred. He had been born into opulence, made use of it in order to find his own way, and whatever he had attempted, the outcome had always been success. Many people called him “rich” and “born lucky” behind his back, but he justified his successes with just one word:
work.

Through having everything, Keoraz had lost pleasure in everyday things. This could explain why he had turned to charity. Once a man of his ilk had conquered everything he had desired, and lived a life centered on himself, he turned toward others.

He was looking for new satisfactions.

New pleasures.

Jeremy read his notes, summing up what he knew. Keoraz would set himself up as a role model, despite his volcanic nature and his domineering temperament.

Jeremy reread the last few sentences.

And a sly smile appeared on his face.

A role model.

Or—why not—a man who had broken down the last barriers that resisted him on the planet. The barriers of morality.

Because of his thirst for power, his tyranny and permanent success, he had slipped, losing control of his desires and ambitions, listening to the last facet of his character that he had never satisfied: the predator. For once in his life, he had abandoned full control of his being. Allowing the beast—the hunter!—to express itself.

He had come down from his luxurious villa to roam the anonymous alleyways of the poor districts, swathed in a black cape.

And the first vagrant who came along had served as a temple.

In which to house faith in his violence, which he had held back for so long.

A temple wherein he could liberate his rage.

A transitory temple, whose beauty lay in disappearing as his inadmissible passions unwound; a temple that crumbled, carrying away what could not remain, which must not remain. This shameful offering.

And for the first time, the game had caught hold of Keoraz.

Far from being sated or relieved, he had the
need
within him.

The need to begin again.

This time, he had crossed the last frontier, attained the very purity of horror, the quintessence of destruction.

Children.

And because he was no longer in command, because the monster within him was guiding his pleasures, he could no longer stop. This would never end. Never.

Except in blood.

Jeremy closed his eyes, pondering the clarity of this argument. How could it be ignored? Was he himself in a state of grace, enabling him to see how all the elements fitted together? No, nobody could argue that jealousy was blinding him, absolutely not. The logic of this study was far too coherent.

One afternoon.

That was all it had taken him to see right through Francis Keoraz.

27

A bird was twittering on the window ledge.

Marion opened her eyes.

Immediately she felt the warmth at the base of her belly, between her thighs. The ghost of a man left her skin, slipped under the sheets and melted away with the last vestiges of night.

Marion blinked several times.

Her breasts were tense, and she felt as light-headed as if she had just made love. Her body was needy. Her buttocks contracted and shifted gently, in search of vanished pleasure.

She had been dreaming. About him.

Jeremy had come to visit her.

To make love to her.

The memories of the last pages she had read came back to her.

The detective's deductions about Francis Keoraz's personality.

That perversion cultivated by a life of excess and never-ending success.

Marion's muscles relaxed, and her excitement ebbed away. She pushed aside the sheets to let the cool morning air play over her naked body.

She needed a good shower. To warm her up, wake her up, and wash away her nocturnal escapades and their salty taste on her skin.

As she sat down with her cup of coffee and a slice of toast with honey, Marion was still accompanying the English investigator in his quest.

He was gifted with insight into the criminal mind. “The hunter's mind,” as he called it. Nevertheless, Marion thought he was rather too sudden in deducing that Keoraz was the child-killer. True, the sadistic light that Jeremy had thrown on his personality could only confirm this suspicion, yet she thought he was too hasty. Despite his denials, was there not a certain unhealthy jealousy that, knowingly or not, had led him to view Keoraz as the ideal culprit?

However, his reasoning about what the millionaire was like deep down completely held water.

Marion had often talked to investigators from the judicial police who were passing through the institute, and she remembered a conversation with a young cop who was really keen on detective stories and criminology. He had explained to her how criminal research had taken a giant leap forward in thirty years, with computers, digital fingerprint files that could be consulted from anywhere in the country, plus the contribution made by science and DNA, not to mention the olfactory techniques that were in development. Nowadays, investigations relied on concrete facts, tangible proofs, whereas before a case might be sewn up on the basis of an unstable alchemy of personal conviction and the “balance of probability.” On the basis of an abstraction, men and women had been sent to prison, and sometimes sentenced to death.

In the old days, an investigation was conducted on the strength of testimonies, and above all confessions. In the absence of either, only the inspector's logical deductions could enable a suspect to be identified.

That was what Jeremy was doing. Without material clues, he had only his own reasoning to help him find a culprit, to halt the massacre of children as swiftly as possible.

In the absence of tangible proof, he had to reassemble the facts and find a credible candidate, using only his intuition and experience.

Had Jeremy rushed toward the Keoraz solution because it was the only one at the time, or did he have a great detective's instinct for getting so quickly onto the right track?

Marion couldn't wait to read the next part.

“First of all, go and get some air,” she said out loud. “It'll do you good.”

She wrapped herself up in her trench coat, again taking care to bring the black book with her. It was settled; she wasn't letting it out of her sight again.

The bird she had heard when she awoke was still there, two yards above her, on the little wall of the cemetery terrace. She didn't know what species it was. White and black, or maybe blue.… A brave bird to face winter on the Mount.

You mean a disoriented bird … who should have left here ages ago.

“We can judge the state of our planet from their behavior,” said a man behind her.

The warm, steady voice could only belong to Joe.

Marion turned to greet him.

“Hello, Marion.”

“Hello.”

“When the earth is not faring well, her children start doing curious things. The birds don't migrate at the right time anymore, females stop feeding their little ones, and sometimes the world's belly itself grumbles and strikes our civilization. Notice how there is never any hatred in it, nothing but a warning shot across the bows, a flash of the teeth. Hatred belongs to humans.”

“A warning shot that sometimes kills thousands of men, women, and children.”

“A drama, a trauma for us. The merest flick of a finger on the scale of life. It is man in his individuality and in the present moment who creates intense emotion. The death of a human being is appalling, but when you talk about ten thousand deaths in the year 1500 and something it seems almost less serious. In appearance … everything is a question of scale.”