The Deceit (33 page)

The next chamber was bigger. Wider and longer, and it had several doors. It was also empty. The ceiling was stone and low, Karen could not stand upright but had to bend and shuffle through. She looked left, down one yellow-lit passage. Water dripped. Shadows capered.

‘
Lal moulal shoulal
.’

That was him.
Rothley.
The chanting was distinct; it seemed to be real. Just a few yards away, inside one of these doors.

Karen began to cry. She was bewildered and broken: it was too much: she was beaten. Rothley had beaten her. Maybe this was what he wanted. He desired her like this: defeated and sobbing, and then kneeling on the floor, tormented into submission.

The dog barked again. She looked right, and saw it: a small black dog, running across the doorway, down yet another passage, glimpsed and then gone. What the hell was a dog doing down here? Karen stepped through this door. The light was even dimmer here; there were passages leading on, some lit by yellow bulbs, others dark.

‘Mummy …’

She could see something. The voice was coming from a bundle in the next dingy brick chamber. Karen stepped inside.

The bundle was a roped and rolled tartan rug, lying on the damp stone floor. The voice was coming from the bundle. It was the shape and size of Eleanor: she was in here! Her daughter was here, wrapped in this rug!

‘Mummy help me. I … Mummy!’

She leapt at the bundle. But it was roped and tied. And as soon as she lifted it, she realized that whatever was inside it was stiff.

Karen felt the dread creeping inside her. Stiff. She didn’t believe in God but now she fiercely prayed it wasn’t Eleanor. She would give her human soul for this not to be Eleanor. What was in this thing? Some dead dog? Some slaughtered animal? With trembling hands, Karen undid the knots. The thin grey ropes fell away and the rug at last fell open, and revealed a child’s face.

It was Eleanor’s face.

And it was as white as two-day-old ashes. The lips were faintly purpled. Eleanor was dead, stiff and cold. The eyes were half open but rigor mortis had set in. She’d obviously been dead for hours.

Karen clutched the body of her daughter to her breast. And now she wept, and wept, and wept, rocking back and forth, lunatic in her grief.

‘Eleanor, Ellie, Eleanor, I was too late I was too late, I tried I tried I tried.’ She kissed her daughter’s cold lips, her cold face, her coldness. The stiffness was unbearable. Everything was unbearable now. From now and forever.

‘Eleanor … Ellie …’

The feeble yellow lights glimmered above her.

The police arrived at the same time as the ambulance. Within ten minutes of Karen’s phone calls, Chancery Lane was chock-full, from end to end, with police cars. Officers were streaming into the building, down the stairs and into the basements.

Karen’s boss, CS Boyle, came straight over to her. She was sitting on the pavement, Eleanor’s body in her lap. Stiff, cold, wrapped in the tartan rug.

‘Jesus, Karen.’ He sat down beside her, on the cold wet pavement. ‘I don’t – I just – I don’t know what to say.’

Karen said nothing. She hoped he wouldn’t cry. If he started crying she would cry again: she had already wept for untold minutes, before summoning what was left of her senses and ringing for assistance, drawing half the police officers in central London to 102 Chancery Lane. Half the cops, and one big ambulance.

The paramedics approached her cautiously. They had a stretcher. The young ambulancemen were in green hospital uniforms and they leaned forward to take Eleanor’s body.

‘No,’ said Karen. ‘No.’

‘Karen …’ CS Boyle put a hand on her shoulder, speaking very gently. ‘Come on. They have to. It’s their job. They need to … You know what needs to happen.’

‘They don’t have to pronounce her dead.’ Karen snapped the words. ‘I already know that she’s dead.’

‘Please, Karen, let them take her … Please. You can go in the ambulance, I’ll come with you.’

‘No. No! I’ll go on my own.’ She stared at Boyle, his kind fatherly face, his now-polished buttons. She wanted to hug him and she wanted to punch him, punch her dead father, punch
someone
. She was alone now. No mother no father no child. As solitary as a human could be. The cold winter rain was falling ever heavier.

‘Miss Trevithick?’

Reluctantly, hatefully, grievously, Karen acceded: she lifted up the heavy bundle, the rug that contained her daughter’s body; and the paramedics stooped and took Eleanor’s body and put it on the stretcher. Karen followed them into the ambulance. The last thing she saw as they shut the ambulance doors was Boyle sliding through the wire door, entering the scene of crime. Where her daughter had been killed, or left for dead. Or whatever had happened. What did it matter? Nothing mattered any more.

The ambulance driver put the siren on, but it was only for show.

St Bart’s was the nearest hospital. Grand old St Bart’s, by Smithfield Market. The staff were kind and efficient: the doctor who pronounced Eleanor dead smiled in the saddest way imaginable, trying to be empathetic. The same doctor found bird feathers in Eleanor’s mouth, and said she had probably been asphyxiated. So that was how Rothley had done it. He had put those little dead birds in her mouth until she choked.

Karen smothered her grief. She sat and stared at her fingers. Then she put a finger in her mouth – the knuckle of her index finger – and bit down. She wanted to hurt herself, to obscure the mental pain with physical pain. She closed her eyes and bit and bit hard, until the blood began to run from her knuckle and she tasted iron and she opened her eyes to see a doctor, in his white coat, staring at her, perplexed.

Karen trembled, and cried. The doctor came over and called for a nurse and the blood was wiped away. The same doctor offered Karen medication: a bottle of benzos for the grief. Rohypnol. Anything. She refused.

For several hours she stayed in St Bart’s by her dead daughter’s silent bedside. Quite, quite numb. Her finger hurt where she had bitten into the flesh. This was welcome. The pain was good. Nothing mattered. She wondered desolately when they would take Eleanor to the morgue. Or would they do the postmortem in here?

At midnight she could bear it no longer. The silence, the silence of her daughter not breathing at midnight. She called Julie and was told they still had no news of Alan. And then she cut Julie off before she asked too much about Eleanor, and left the hospital. She took the Tube home, walked into her own flat and she sat on the sofa and stared at a switched-off TV.

The flat was so quiet. Hushed. Prayerful. Pin-drop and penitent. The silence had followed her from the hospital. All would be silent, now. Karen looked at the silent ceiling and then back at the silent TV. She realized she hadn’t eaten in a day. But what did it matter? Why buy food just for herself? Why bother with anything if it was just for herself?

There were sharp knives in the kitchen. Very sharp knives. Karen gazed at her own wrists. Then she remembered the vodka in the kitchen cupboard. And all the many sleeping pills in her bedroom. Twenty would be enough.

Ryan drove the old Chevrolet north along the corniche, along the magnificent Nile, north out of Aswan, taking the Al Khatar road, leaving behind the towers of Elephantine and the mausoleum of the Aga Khan, perched absurdly on the opposite cliffs.

Albert sat in the back, his eyes bulging. Checking the mirror, Ryan could see there was something wrong with him: he was sweating, and wincing, as if at some inner pain. Ryan recalled the other symptoms: Albert’s headache at the hotel the night before, his complaints of tiredness in Philae. Was he ill? The hand that clutched the gun was trembling; but Albert still had that gun. And it was still levelled at Ryan’s neck, and sometimes at Helen, where she sat in the front passenger seat beside him.

‘Albert, what’s the point? Why are you doing this?’

The Copt smiled forlornly, and stroked his goatee. Then he caught Ryan’s gaze in the mirror. ‘It isn’t obvious? Think about it.’

Even his voice was quavery. Not the confident and eloquent man of before; he was liverish, nearly croaking. But he still had the gun.

‘You are going to sell it to the Israelis,’ said Helen. ‘You did all this for them. What was the point? You could have just taken it by force a month ago, saved yourself all this.’

‘No.’ Albert tutted. ‘Not the Israelis. Disappointing.’

Helen tried again. ‘Then who? Who? Why are you doing this? We have been through so much, we have helped each other, why turn on us?’

Albert did not reply, he just turned to stare out of the window, sweat trickling down his face, squinting hard, as if looking for something. It occurred to Ryan that Albert was seeking somewhere quiet, to kill them.

They were on an empty road now, the road north to Daraw, Edfu and Luxor. The last blue Co-op fuel station receded into the dust; a Bedouin man drove a camel alongside the road, whipping the beast with a merciless stick. Dogs yapped at nothing as they raced through the farmlands, past cane fields and wooden shacks. Ryan slowed the car to avoid a couple of kids, chasing the dogs.

‘Keep going,’ said Albert. ‘Go faster.’

They sped up. The countryside blurred. Only the Nile stayed with them. The old man of Egypt, sluggishly ferrying its Ethiopian silt to fertilize the fields of the north, to feed the millions of the Delta. The Nile built the Pyramids. The Nile was responsible for everything.

‘Here,’ said Albert. ‘Stop here.’

It was an oasis of nothingness, just anonymous riverside countryside. A good place to shoot people. Coconut palms sheltered a broken-down car; there wasn’t a human habitation to be seen. Vultures fussed and flustered over the corpse of a water buffalo that lay, bloated and grinning, on the riverbank. The smell was putrid. A small wooden boat drifted on its tether; lashed to another palm tree.

‘Give me the p-papyrus.’ Albert was stammering. ‘Give me, give, give me the papyrus. And get out of the … car.’

They got out. Helen dragged her bag with her; Ryan picked up his.

Albert stood in front of them. He smiled, but the smile was twisted. He touched his hand to his face again, as if he were protecting a broken tooth. Tiny specks of froth smeared his lips, like a cocaine addict overtalking; and his breathing was laboured and slow. But he still had the gun.

Albert stared at the sky just above Ryan. ‘Give me the p-p-papyrus. Now. Give. Give it. To me.’ Every word was an effort. Albert was blinking fast, shaking his head. ‘No!’

Albert was shouting. For no good reason. What the fuck was wrong with him?

Now he seemed to gain a modicum of control; he levelled the gun once more at Ryan’s legs. ‘I will kill you, I will. Give me it. Now.’

What options did they have? He was going to shoot them anyway. Ryan reached into his rucksack and pulled out the file containing the precious Macarius papyrus.

‘Why?’ said Helen, as Ryan sorted the fragile sheets. ‘Why do you want them?’

‘Because. You. Insult God.’

‘What?’

Albert coughed his answers, his eyes swivelling, left and right, leery and panicking. ‘You insult God. I am. Copt. A Copt. Copt. You insult, insult my faith. Give it.’

‘No,’ said Ryan.

The bullet streaked past Ryan’s face. He actually saw its burning course, or the flash of sun on the metal.

The gunshot agitated the vultures feasting on the corpse of the buffalo. They clapped and flustered, flapping into the air; dirty airborne rags with talons.

‘Give me now.’

Ryan yielded. He took the documents and handed them in their folder to Albert. Who reached for it. And missed. Albert’s hand clutched at air, at nothing; then he reached again, and this time grabbed the file successfully and took it from Ryan.

He couldn’t see it properly.
Ryan realized that Albert was ill in some way, mentally or physically ill, in a fashion that affected his speech and
blurred his sight.
That was why he’d been staring at the sky above Ryan’s head.

Slowly and quietly, Ryan stepped sideways, then moved forward to take the document back, but Albert shot again. This time the shot missed by ten metres at least. He had shot at the last place he’d heard Ryan speak: he really was going blind,
but he still had the gun.

‘Ryan?’

It was Helen. Albert twisted violently and shot at the sound of her voice, the bullet missing her by mere inches. Now people were
gathering: a boy on a moped had stopped to watch; a taxi was slowing down, the taxi driver gawping, quite terrified, at the scene.

The facts dawned on Ryan. They didn’t
need
the papyrus. What were they doing, waiting to get shot?
They had the movie in the camera.
They had the solution in their hands. They couldn’t get to the car – Albert was in the way – but they could get to that wooden boat.

‘Come on!’ Ryan dragged Helen by the hand towards the riverbank.

Clutching their bags, they scrambled down to the Nile. Swiftly, desperately, Ryan unloosed the tether of the little motorboat and they jumped in. Up on the riverbank Albert sent two more shots into the air, but he was on his knees now, his hands shaking. The bullets went everywhere and nowhere.

Albert had dropped the papyrus. Three or four cars had pulled over.

Ryan yanked the starter rope of the decrepit outboard motor. One tug, then two: it coughed into life. Helen kicked the boat vigorously away from the muddy riverbank and they were away, fleeing downstream.

Peering through the river-haze Ryan could see the fallen figure of Albert surrounded by cars and people. Was that a policeman, trying to handcuff him?

They were too far away to tell. For ten minutes neither he nor Helen spoke; they motored north in horrified quietness, trailing silvery plaits of brown river water, meandering around the vast corners of the riverine shore.

Peasant fishermen gazed, mildly confused, then uninterested. Two tourists on a boat on the Nile? Probably lost. Life was too difficult to worry about such a thing. Back to work.