The Cairo Diary (33 page)

Francis Keoraz had proved that he knew history, that he loved it,
thought Jeremy,
once again.

The detective signaled to a group of men he trusted and ordered them to ensure that the autopsy was carried out that same night, by Dr. Cork; by him and nobody else.

Jeremy returned to the vehicle that had brought him there and, without waiting for his driver, took the wheel and drove at top speed toward the ancient wall that was supposed to protect Cairo.

Once back at Cairo's central police station, he rushed to the office where Azim had worked and sat down on his creaking chair. He opened each file that lay within arm's reach and inside the drawers; he analyzed each of his colleague's recent notes, but found nothing.

Their direct superior, Calvin Winscott, crossed the central aisle that cut the large room in two. He changed trajectory immediately when he spotted Jeremy sitting at one of the desks and came straight toward him.

“Matheson, we've been looking for you everywhere for an hour, there's a panic on here, damn it! They're waiting for you downstairs, move yourself!”

Jeremy, who was finishing flicking through Azim's diary, did not answer.

“The two of us must have a little private talk,” continued Winscott. “This case is far-reaching now, there's no question of you being on your own anymore. I'm going to put an entire battalion of men on the case. I want to know where we are. Are you listening to me?”

Matheson nodded vaguely.

“For the love of God, are you going to pay a little attention to what I'm trying to say to you?” raged Winscott. He seized him by the shoulders, forcing him to look at him. “Jeremy, we have just found out that the whole of Heliopolis is in a state of siege. Every officer is being rounded up.”

Winscott grimaced nervously, revealing his teeth, before adding, “Keoraz's son was abducted this afternoon. Mr. Humphreys, from the Keoraz Foundation, is waiting for you downstairs. He wishes to speak to you personally.”

39

Humphreys was waiting in a room next to the reception area, his voluminous chest stretching his shirt under a tailored waistcoat. He was running his fingers through his long beard, like a comb. When Jeremy entered, he jumped up faster than if he'd sat on a spring.

“Detective—”

Jeremy signaled for him to follow without a word. They left the building and went to a café kept by a Greek, a little farther on. The place was frequented only by Westerners. There, Jeremy asked for two whiskeys and, with a nod, ordered Humphreys to sit opposite him.

“I have come on behalf of Mr. Keoraz,” began the director. “You know that his son was abducted this very afternoon. Mr. Keoraz wishes to assure himself that you are going to put everything in motion to find his son in the shortest possible time. The child is frail and—”

“Why is your boss addressing his questions to me?” There was not a hint of compassion in the detective's voice; he was as cold as a stone.

“Mr. Keoraz fears that the abduction may be linked to these murders you are investigating. First they involved pupils from his foundation, now it is his own chi—”

Jeremy stopped him with a gesture of the hand. “The killer attacked those children because they were right under his nose. They represented enviable and easy prey.”

“How can you say that? It's imposs—”

“Not at all!” cut in Jeremy. “I can say it because we know that the killer is someone close to the foundation. It is someone who knows those children, who can approach them without frightening them. He broke into the foundation one night to secretly consult the pupils' files, to find out as much as possible about them, and he knew the premises. He didn't break down any doors other than the ones that led to those files—I have that on your own admission, Mr. Humphreys.”

“You suspect one of our own people?” demanded the director indignantly, clapping a hand to his beard.

“Someone who knows me.”

“That makes no sense!”

Jeremy put down his glass just as he was about to raise it to his lips. “Whoever did it took care to select children who had attended my reading classes.”

“You think that I, or even … Mrs. Keoraz could do such a thing! You are completely wrong!”

“No, it is a man, which excludes Jezebel, and it is not you, either; you have the keys to the foundation, you wouldn't have taken the trouble to break down the doors to come and consult the children's files. It's someone well-organized, who has sufficient power to have access to information relating to my work. It's someone who would know that a violent crime committed in Shubra on a day when I was on duty would be entrusted to me, and that sooner or later I would make the link with the slaughter of the children, the same barbarous scenario. Someone who has orchestrated everything since the start, in minute detail, in order to drag me into this chain of events. Someone who wants to implicate me as much as possible in these murders; who wants me to know that he's addressing me, that it's done partly for me, against me. He has spun a web of blood, in which Jezebel is also ensnared. I can only see one person who fits.”

Humphreys shook his head vigorously, refusing to believe in this absurd theory.

“You are losing your reason! Mr. Keoraz's
son
has just been abducted! In broad daylight, while he was returning alone by train from Cairo, at a busy time that was supposed to guarantee his safety. His piano teacher saw him into the streetcar, and his governess was to collect him on arrival. It is a Machiavellian network that is behind this, and you—you are accusing his own father! What kind of investigator are you?”

“On the contrary, there is no network behind this abduction, just one individual. One individual who knows the child. So that the child agrees to follow him without attracting attention. The trip is a long one between Cairo and Heliopolis, there are many stops, they could have got off anywhere. The fact is that I called your boss this afternoon. Do you know where he was? In town. Looking for a surprise for Jezebel. For two hours, at least. What better alibi than that? All he needed to do was visit a store quickly, buy his gift, and go off to fetch his son and leave him somewhere, probably a house he had bought or rented under an assumed name. He will claim to have strolled from shop to shop, knowing that the salesgirls will have had so many customers that they will be incapable of saying whether they saw him or not. When people of the stature of Keoraz are concerned, the balance of doubt is always in their favor.”

“You are talking nonsense!”

Jeremy charged at Humphreys and seized him by the beard, flattening his own face against the director's perspiring features. “You will go back and see your adored patron and tell him that I am going to make him pay for what he has done,” Jeremy warned him in a whisper. “Sooner or later he will make a mistake.”

He leaped to his feet and left the café without a backward glance.

*   *   *

It was nearly midnight.

In the hospital basement, Dr. Cork moistened his cracked lips with a thick tongue.

“Why is it always me?” he asked, in a voice imbued with a tiredness that was not physical.

Jeremy came straight back with, “Because I trust you. There aren't many doctors in Cairo who carry out good autopsies.”

“There aren't many detectives in Cairo who order an autopsy for every one of their investigations.”

Jeremy nodded and lit a cigarette. “We make the ideal couple,” he commented in the cloud of smoke that enveloped him. “So, what about Azim?”

The doctor folded his arms across his chest before moistening his lips once more.

“Slow death, probably took a few hours. Phenomenal agony. This stake was inserted into his anus.”

He indicated the piece of wood, about four and a half feet long and at least two inches in diameter, which was lying on a table. Half of the shaft was covered with half-dried blood.

“Penetration was forced by striking the end of the stake that remained outside the body, until—little by little—it perforated the intestines, the stomach.… In short, until the pain immobilized him completely. The torments were such that Azim was incapable of moving once he was impaled, that is for sure. Which signifies that the torturer did not have to stay around to wait for his death.”

Seeing Jeremy's impassive expression, the doctor went into more detail: “The guilty party did that to this unfortunate man in the middle of the tombs, and once he had carried out his crime, he was able to go away, leaving Azim to suffer, as hemorrhaging emptied his body of every drop of blood. The murderer did not need to be at the scene for more than five minutes, I would say. Afterward, every shudder must have traveled right down to Azim's guts, forcing cries of pain or tears from him; I don't really know what a man might do at that stage. It is unthinkable that he got up, or even tried to remove the stake. His hands were tied behind his back and, again, I must stress: The stake went all the way up to a point beneath his sternum. The slightest movement would have made him mad with pain.”

“So he waited to die…”

Jeremy spat out the smoke from his cigarette.

“Just a moment!” he exclaimed in astonishment. “If the killer didn't stay there, then why did Azim have his head buried in the sand?”

Cork brandished an index finger in his face.

“Because Azim did not wait for his last breath. I think that after an hour, his suffering was so extreme that he attempted to speed up the process. Unable to move his body, he must have started by striking his head against a stone. I've been told that there were two large stones beside him, with a little blood on them. And he opened up his forehead and right temple. A little more and he would have broken through the cranium. He gave up just before that happened. He probably waited another while, and tried something else out of despair.”

Cork's somber gaze was fixed on Jeremy. “Azim pushed his face into the sand, by crawling I imagine, in order to suffocate himself.”

The doctor stressed the point with a nod.

“That is what finally killed him. Oxygen deprivation. He has all the symptoms.”

Jeremy sighed, and brought his attention back to the sticky-looking length of wood.

“Another thing,” added the doctor. “The poor devil was brought to us as he was found, without his trousers. On the other hand he still had his jacket on, and from it I removed his wallet and … a sort of rolled-up papyrus. It is written in Arabic.”

This time Jeremy did not hide his surprise. “A papyrus?”

“Yes, small and in very poor condition. It must be really old.”

“Can I pick it up?”

Cork shrugged.

“Of course, except that at the moment it is in the hands of a colleague. Oh, don't worry, he is a trustworthy man! He works with the American University; they call him whenever they find skeletons in the digs. He's an anthropologist, and he has assured me he will swiftly obtain a translation of the text for me. I shall give it all to you the minute it comes back to me.”

Jeremy nodded and seemed on the point of leaving when he laid a hand upon the doctor's shoulder.

“Doctor, when you did the autopsy on the body of that young boy, you recognized him, didn't you?”

Cork opened his mouth and a gurgling sound rose up from his stomach and escaped. But no words emerged, just a long, weary breath.

“He was one of the children you medically examined on behalf of the Keoraz Foundation, wasn't he?” persisted Jeremy.

“He was indeed a child I knew. And … I gave you to understand that, Detective.”

Jeremy gave him a sad smile.

“And my words should not be taken lightly,” added Dr. Cork. “When you find whoever did it, put a bullet in him from me. Personally, if I have the opportunity, I won't hesitate for a second.”

40

Marion's morale matched the color of the coffee she was stirring.

Why did she have to go and lower her guard the previous evening? A nice evening with a friend, a touch of melancholy, the feeling that she was all alone, too alone, and she had revealed it all.

Béatrice knew everything.

Marion hardly knew her; her trust was based on only the most random of instincts. As she had confessed everything, she had imagined that she would feel better afterward; she'd hoped that sharing her secrets would lighten her load. But it wasn't anything of the kind. It was worse, even.

Not only was she no stronger, and felt no better supported; what was more, her paranoia was resurfacing. And what if Béatrice had already told the Mount's other inhabitants everything? Worse, what if she had alerted the newspaper editors in order to sell the identity of their mysterious informant to the highest bidder?

And, since misfortunes never came singly, she couldn't get the chorus of Johnny Hallyday's song “Black Is Black” out of her head:
“Noir c'est noir, il n'a plus d'espoir…”,
which she had heard on the radio while having her shower.

She no longer knew what to do. Her cover was blown, as they said in spy novels. Should she call the DST and ask them to come and fetch her? What was she going to tell them by way of explanation? That one evening when she was tired, she had divulged everything? Beyond humiliation, that testified to massive negligence. Wouldn't they be within their rights to reply that they were going to abandon her, that she would be impossible to protect if at the end of ten days she fell into a depression and revealed everything to the first person who came along?

Marion was tired.

Since October, her life had been nothing but unremitting anxiety, watchfulness; those who wanted her to shut up had tracked her down—they were sufficiently powerful and organized to do that—to the point of sending a motorcyclist to her underground parking lot to terrorize her. They hadn't suspected she was in contact with the DST at that point, a state of affairs that had certainly changed since. Her enemies had to track her down, sound out each possibility, to find her. If that was the case, in future they would be less lenient, thought Marion; they wouldn't take any more risks, and would stake their all, by killing her.