The Deceit (16 page)

‘Bit blowy out there?’

‘Freezing!’

‘Yes. You get used to it, up here on the moor.’ She smiled. ‘Actually that’s a lie, you don’t. January is a shocker, every time. Here we go.’

The door was opened from the inside by a tall security guard: once again, Karen showed her police credentials. She was escorted to a desk in an open-plan office, and introduced to a senior staff nurse, Nurse Hawley, a thin woman with an even thinner smile. They shook hands. Nurse Hawley invited Karen to sit: and got straight to it, opening a file.

‘Alicia Rothley, twenty-seven years old, white female, brought in by Bodmin police two days ago: she was in a café in Bodmin town centre, raving, throwing coffee.’

‘At customers?’

‘Everywhere, but mainly over herself. Swearing and cursing, tearing her clothes. A classic and severe psychosis. She has been officially sectioned, under the Mental Health Act. She is very …’ For the first time, the thin, efficient woman hesitated. ‘Well, she is very
unbalanced
, put it that way. Unstable. Labile. We can only give you a few minutes. Much of the time we are having to sedate her, and sometimes restrain her. She is unmedicated at the moment, so you can talk to her.’

‘She’s suicidal?’

‘Quite possibly. She’s certainly intent on self-harm. Please don’t give her anything, not even a pen, that she might use – that way.’

‘Has she said anything about … why she is like this? What brought her here?’

‘Not really, no. Nothing comprehensible, at any rate. Perhaps you will have more luck than us. We are having her assessed for long-term care this week. But I’ll show you to her room.’

‘Room’ was the wrong word, Karen thought, as she was guided down yet another corridor with a series of doors on either side. These weren’t rooms, they were
cells.

A card opened the electronic lock, like a hotel keycard; the door swung open. Alicia Rothley was huddled at the end of her spartan bed, her knees to her chest, staring at the two women framed by the door.

‘Just a few minutes,’ Nurse Hawley said. ‘There’s a panic button right here – for staff, not patients.’ She spoke these last words very quietly. ‘
The code is three three four
.’

The door was closed. Karen was alone with Alicia Rothley.

The first thing she noticed was how pretty this girl was: she had fine, actressy cheekbones, dark hair, even darker eyes. The staff had dressed her in a white T-shirt and old jeans, no shoes, socks, no belt. A pair of white slippers sat neatly paired on the carpeted floor but the clean room was otherwise devoid of decoration or distraction. A small CCTV camera was positioned unreachably high in the top corner, a red light showing that it functioned.

The walls were padded. The single chair, which Karen sat in, was soft and plastic, like something from a kindergarten. The only window was high and barred: revealing the high branches of leafless trees outside, clawing at a very white sky.

‘Hello, Alicia. I’m Karen.’

The girl said nothing though her eyes said a lot: fear, confusion, horror. Now that she was closer, Karen noticed there were tiny pink scratches on her face. From the cats? The scratches were all across her neck, and under her chin. Odd.

‘Why are you here, Alicia?’

Nothing.

‘What happened to you in Bodmin? Do you remember that? Why did they …? What happened to you a few days ago?’

The girl averted her face, and shut her mouth tight, like a three-year-old refusing food.

This was pointless. Karen tried again, sensing her few minutes ticking away, but each question got the same blank, mute response. The frustration rose inside her; they really needed this girl to open up. Her elder brother, Mark Lucas Rothley – Luke Rothley to his friends – was possibly the key to all this. A few hours’ research had told her Rothley was the son of a diplomat, from a fairly wealthy family. His father was dead, his mother retired to Spain. Rothley had attended Marlborough College, where he was ‘popular and liked’, though perhaps a little arrogant. He’d then refused a scholarship to Cambridge and instead gone north to Durham University, because of the more challenging rowing on the Wear, or so everyone said; he was definitely quite an athlete. He was also an impressive student: after taking a first in neurobiology and psychology, Rothley had gone on to do his postgraduate degree at Yale, where he had also excelled, if not quite so superbly. There were rumours of some drug use in America, as there were rumours that he had dabbled in the occult at Durham.

But then, his friends claimed, he had changed. He used the inheritance from his father to go backpacking for a couple of years – India, China, Egypt, southeast Asia. He went through a Buddhist phase, then a vegan phase, and then a phase of hard partying in Thailand. And then, finally, he’d disappeared off the screen, moving into a kibbutz in Israel. That was the last place any of his old friends claimed to have heard from him. His Facebook page had stopped updating nearly two years ago. His mother said she got the odd email, supposedly from Israel.

Yet he was not in Israel.

Karen gazed at his sister. ‘Alicia?’

Nothing.

‘You can talk to me, it might help. We need help. A young man has died.’

Nothing.

Karen sighed. Although the UK Border Agency had no record of Luke Rothley re-entering the country, that was hardly a surprise: they didn’t record the movement of UK citizens, as a rule. The only conclusion was that Rothley
had
surreptitiously slipped back into the country at some point in the last couple of years. But why? To do what? Just to torch all the cats in West Cornwall? Why? And where was he getting his money?

Rothley had, of course, used cash to rent the Lodge, so they couldn’t trace him by his plastic. He also, apparently, owned no car, and no mobile – at least, not under his own name – so that route to his whereabouts was also blocked. Consequently their best and possibly only hope of finding him swiftly was his sister, Alicia. Who was struck dumb with madness. Or terror.

Karen pulled her plastic chair closer to the bed. ‘OK, Alicia, let’s try again. We need your help. Really. We think people might be in danger – your friends, the friends who were with you in the cottage. The night you burned the cats.’

The girl closed her dark eyes, and lowered her face, clutching her knees even more tightly to her chest. The interview was going nowhere. The girl was locked in: literally and emotionally. Karen had seen this before. But she couldn’t give up.

‘That was you, wasn’t it? Alicia? You were up there, on Zennor Hill, that night? You burned the cats?’

Was that a shake of the head? A tiny response? Was she opening up?

‘Alicia, tell me. Did you burn the cats? Did you?’

Silence.

‘Did you? Did you burn all those cats to death?’

‘Cats.’

A tiny little voice, girlish and sad; but she had spoken.

‘What? Alicia? Tell me about the night, when you killed the cats.’

‘Didn’t.’

‘You didn’t kill them?’

‘He killed them. Burning them, all night.’

‘Your brother Luke?’

Alicia raised her face, and gazed hard and fierce at Karen. The policewoman got a sudden and intense sense of
threat.
Reflexively, she pushed her chair back. But the girl came closer, and now she was on all fours on the bed, her voice a low growl. ‘He killed them, the Devil killed them.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘The Devil, my brother is the Devil. He killed the cats. The Devil came and entered him. Fuck you!’

The girl was almost snarling now. Karen tried to calm her. ‘Alicia, it’s OK, we just want to—’

‘He will kill you, bitch. Luke will smell your fear. He will kill you.’

‘Alicia?’

The girl was muttering.

‘Lal Moulal. Ananias, Azarias—’

‘
Alicia?
’

Her voice rose again. ‘He did it! He killed all the cats one by one. They screamed. He did it, the magic, the Araki magic, the fucking Egypt magic. And they burned!
Atha atha atharim!
They fucking shrieked and he made us all do it!’

‘We just—’

‘He is the devil, he is. You think you can catch him, silly bitch! Luke will
rape you, he will rape the fucking smile off your face
.’

Karen stepped up, inching towards the alarm.

‘He fucked me like a dog, made me pregnant,
atha atharim
, he is the Devil now!’

Karen was furiously pressing the panic code. The girl came across the room; she was on Karen in a second, tearing at Karen’s jeans, trying to kiss her. Karen thrust her away, horrified and nauseated. Alicia Rothley was licking Karen’s face; laughing, and licking—

Quickly
,
thought Karen.
Quickly quickly quickly!

The girl’s hand was inside Karen’s bra, thrusting like a man, groping, her fingers were clawing in Karen’s groin, forcing their way inside; her pungent saliva was wet on Karen’s face—

The door swung open and two security guards rushed in. A doctor grabbed Alicia by the waist and dragged her away from Karen, onto the bed. Straps were flourished, and tied around her wrists. The girl began howling, like a tortured dog.

‘
Atha atharim, atha atharim!
’

Her heart thumping with horror, Karen stepped outside the cell. For some reason she thought of her mother, burning. The crematorium. The flames burning the flesh.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. Slowly, she did up her unbuttoned jeans, and her shirt, as best she could; one shirt-button had been ripped away entirely. Seeing a hand sanitizer on the wall, she grabbed it, pressed the button and rubbed the gunk on her hands and on her face.

She felt violated. She felt violated
by a girl.
The girl’s tongue had licked her face. Like a dog.

The noise behind the cell door had subsided. Karen paused, inhaled, exhaled, then summoned her composure and made her own way back to Nurse Hawley’s office.

The thin-lipped nurse gave her a sad and sympathetic nod. ‘I was watching on CCTV.’

‘You were
watching
?’

‘I’m sorry. I sent security right away. You are all right?’

Karen sat down. And gazed at her trembling hands. ‘Yes. I think so.’

The nurse picked up the file on
ROTHLEY, ALICIA.

‘As I said, it is an unusually pure and dramatic psychosis. We usually give her hefty dosages of anti-psychotics. The police at Truro, Sally Pascoe, gives me to understand she was involved in some Satanic rite? Some ritual?’

‘Yes.’

Nurse Hawley opened the file. ‘Whatever it was, it probably tipped her over into psychosis. Of course she may have been schizotypal anyway; but she needed a catalyst. And she got it. Did she give you any useful information?’

‘No … not really. It was … sorry, I’m a bit shaken. She said her brother was the Devil. They did some magic, she said he got her pregnant. Just crazy stuff, I think. Then she went for me.’

‘Yes.’

Karen closed her eyes, trying to forget. Then she remembered she had a job to do, and answers she needed. ‘What are those scratches on her chin, and her neck? Have you checked them? Must be from the cats, right?’

Nurse Hawley shook her head. ‘Well, no. Not exactly.’ A slow pause. ‘Many of the scratches are from, uh, shaving. She resists but we have to do it.’

Karen sat forward. ‘What?’

‘Yes. We have to shave her. Every day. Like a man.’

Ryan yawned. He was exhausted from the flights and car rides and nerve-shredding army checkpoints that had brought them here, right across Egypt, to the middle of the great reedy Nile Delta and the smoky modern city of Zagazig, with the ruins of Tell Bastet on its outskirts.

Helen’s frown was visible in the darkness.

‘How can you film down here?’ Ryan asked. ‘You can barely see the rat in front of your face.’

She laughed, briefly. ‘Sense of humour? That is good. I have a portable light here, in my bag. It will be good enough. I just need to set it up. This will take two minutes.’

Ryan sat back, in the piles of dust. Exactly what kind of dust it was, what comprised this dust, he had no idea, and did not especially care to speculate.

They were deep in the dark heart of the great cat necropolis, a labyrinth of tombs: surrounded by tiny three-thousand-year-old mud tunnels, each dotted with thousands of little niches in the walls. Almost every niche contained a mummified animal: a desiccated little corpse of a cat, wrapped diligently in special linens, and preserved with nitrates. Other niches probably contained jars of internal cat organs. A few most likely contained the mummies of less revered animals.

‘OK,’ said Helen, in the unsavoury darkness. ‘Nearly ready. One more second …’

‘Where is Albert?’

‘He is still with the guards, bribing them, making sure we have time and that no one interrupts us. We need to be quick though. Half an hour, I think. OK, start by telling us what you have discovered about the papyrus.’

‘Wait, you want to spend half an hour down here?’ Ryan stared around. The idea of lingering for more than a few minutes in this stifling maze of tunnels was grotesque. The air was acrid with death. Ryan wondered how many ancient diseases were preserved here. He thought of his wife and child, dead of malaria, an infection bred here, in the Delta.

‘Really, Helen. Can’t we film up above ground? Just do an intro?’

‘But here is better!’ Her smile was brief but sincere. ‘It is so atmospheric in a necropolis! A catacomb. Even the name is good. The catacombs of Bubastis. It will really work, trust me.’ She looked at him, smiled again. ‘
Please?
’

She’d said
please
. For the first time ever.

Ryan nodded and obeyed. He rubbed dirt from his face and turned to the dazzling light that Helen held aloft. Shadows danced beyond the cone of light, the shadows of little cat corpses, as he spoke.

‘We are now closer to unravelling the mystery of the Sokar Hoard. By comparing our pages with similar documents, in the archives of the Monastery of St Apollo, outside Akhmim, we now know a lot more about our papyrus. It appears to have been written in the late sixth century by a Coptic scholar from Akhmim named Macarius. Quite possibly, judging by the vocabulary we have translated, Macarius was a follower of Gnostic Christianity, certainly a scholar of religion. The papyrus seems to be an investigation into faith, in the form of a journey across Egypt, a very early travel book, if you like. These are not unknown in the ancient world. But most of this we have yet to translate. Yet we have already deciphered some of his sentences. For instance …’ Ryan coughed some of the endless dust from his mouth. The dust of dead cats. ‘For instance, in the very first passages, he says “I went to Alexandria, but there I found nothing, for there the great knowledge had been destroyed by the invaders. But it did not concern me as I had read all the books which came from Egypt. And so I went to …”’ Ryan paused, and turned his notebook to show the camera. ‘Here, Macarius uses hieroglyphics, as he often does when citing a place name. These hieroglyphics say Pr-3BST. As it happens, this is easily decipherable. Ironically, the demotic hieroglyphics are easier to translate than the obscure, archaic Coptic dialect. So. Pr-3BST is Per-Bast, the House of Bast. In other words, he means
here
, Bubastis, the city where the cat goddess Bast was famously revered.’