The Jerusalem Puzzle (26 page)

Five minutes later the four of us were walking along the lane. The sandstone walls were about head height on either side. I can only assume that we had left the vehicles so we wouldn’t be heard approaching where we were going.

I wanted to walk faster, but Mark made a gesture for me to calm down. Their pace was agonisingly laid-back, almost as if we were all on a Sunday stroll.

We passed an old fashioned wooden gate, then a modern-looking one.

The rain had stopped, but the sky above was heavy with clouds. They had settled over the landscape like a blight. There was an earthy smell in the air too, as if the rain had exposed something.

Then, at a spot where the stone wall on the left was broken, our driver stepped over the wall and headed off, without any discussion. We walked on.

‘Where’s he gone?’ I asked.

‘He’ll watch the back of the target house, just in case anyone tries to make a run for it.’

‘Are you expecting trouble?’

‘We’re prepared for it, let’s just say that.’ Mark opened his jacket and turned to me. I saw a black holster. It was bigger than Simon’s and more modern-looking.

‘Do you think Susan and Isabel might be here?’

‘Maybe. This is the best lead we have.’

‘You have others?’

He shook his head. ‘Not really. The Israelis have been checking security camera footage from the area Susan was taken, but they haven’t come up with anything yet. This is our best bet.’

I was getting more anxious by the second. I wanted to rush to wherever we were going, break doors down, search for Isabel.

A minute later, we came to a gap in the lane to our left where the wall was set back. In the centre of the gap there was a tall set of gates with curls of barbed wire above them. The gates had animal heads, a goat and a snake and an eagle, embossed on them.

In front of the gate was a policeman in a navy blue uniform.

Were we too late? Had the place already been raided?

As we neared the policeman Mark said, ‘Sean, meet my old friend, Ariel, from the Israeli Immigration Police.’ I held out my hand. Ariel shook it. He had a firm grip.

‘We might as well do this now, Sean.’ Mark pointed at Ariel. ‘Tell my friend about your suspicion that an illegal immigrant is holed up here.’ He pointed towards the gates.

I stared at him. ‘What?’

Mark sighed. ‘Come on, tell him you think Isabel is in here,’ he said, in an exasperated tone.

I did as I was asked. The policeman took a black leather-covered notebook out of his pocket, checked his watch, a big old fashioned steel thing, and wrote something in the notebook.

‘Under the powers invested in me by the Entry into Israel Law 5763 I will now enter these premises,’ said the policeman in a low voice, as he put his notebook back in his pocket. He went over to the wall beside the gate, it was five foot high, and pulled himself up onto it surprisingly quickly. From the top he looked back at us. ‘I’ll need some witnesses,’ he said.

He grinned at us for a moment, as if he was enjoying himself, then he dropped down to the other side.

Xena and Mark followed him over the wall. I was right behind them. On the far side it looked as if we’d gone back in time. Stretching ahead of us was a stone path with palm trees on either side. Their trunks must have been five feet thick, at least. They looked ancient. Their crowns met about fifty feet above us.

The path curved away up the hill. We were walking fast, almost running. As we came to a bend the policeman turned and said, ‘Go to the right, Mark. You others stay here, then follow me in twenty minutes if you haven’t heard any gunfire.’

I knew all about taking orders. But I also knew about bending them. The policeman was gone only a minute when I walked slowly forward, following him. Xena, who was being very quiet, walked beside me.

As we turned the corner we came into a clearing. There was a two-storey building in front of us. Its walls were made of roughly shaped stones. Ariel was at the front door of the building.

The building had small windows with rusted iron bars in a grid protecting them. Its roof was flat. Wooden beams protruded on the left side. A veranda ran beneath them. Bushes and trees came close to the house, almost protectively.

A big white Toyota van sat in the driveway. It was covered in dust. We were in the right place. I could feel it. This was exactly the type of vehicle that could have been used to kidnap Isabel and Susan.

We were going to find them.

We were going to find Isabel.

Anticipation rose inside me. I walked forward quickly, half running.

I was going to find the bastard who’d taken her. If he’d done anything to her, anything at all, he was going to suffer.

A video of Isabel had been playing in my mind over and over since she’d disappeared. A memory of her smiling, laughing. I could feel the warmth from it, and a longing to see her. After the cold years grieving for Irene I wasn’t going to give her up. Ever.

I came up towards Ariel at the front door of the building. The door was wooden and had iron rivets in a circular pattern in its centre. It looked a thousand years old at least. Ariel pressed a brass bell at the side of the door as I arrived.

Then he turned to us. He didn’t look surprised. All he did was shake his head, as if only mildly disappointed.

‘I told you to wait,’ he said, softly.

‘Isabel might be in there. You can’t stop me coming.’

‘If you get shot, Mr Ryan, it’s your responsibility. Do you understand?’

I nodded. He turned back to the door. ‘And we don’t have time for any arguments.’ He knocked on the door with his knuckles and stepped to the side.

‘There’s probably a back door,’ said Xena. ‘I’ll have a look.’

Ariel had his pistol out of its holster. It was a small, black mini UZI. I waited on the other side of the door. There was a giant pot with a spiky cactus behind me.

‘To hell with this,’ I said.

I reached for the door handle, turned it, pushed at the door. It stayed closed.

‘Shoot the bloody lock off,’ I said. ‘Go on. Shoot it. Or I’m going to find something to break it with. If there’s anyone in there, they know we’re out here. They might be cutting Isabel’s throat right now, burning her.’

‘Stand back,’ he said.

I moved away from the door.

‘Further.’

I moved again. He pointed his gun at the lock. He was on my side of the door now. Any ricochets would hopefully go off in a different direction.

There was a loud popping noise. It echoed in my ears.

I stepped around him. There was a jagged hole where the lock had been. I pushed at the door. I knew I was putting myself in the line of fire, but I didn’t care. I tensed as the door swung open to reveal a narrow corridor. I walked straight in. Ariel was beside me, his gun pointing forward.

‘Let’s check upstairs first,’ said Ariel. ‘Stay with me, and don’t touch anything.’

There were four rooms on the upper floor. We checked them all, even under the beds, then went downstairs. I knocked over two wooden chairs in my haste. There was no sign of Isabel or anything amiss, except for the fact that there were no clothes or personal items in any of the rooms.

A bed was unmade upstairs and the bathroom upstairs looked as if it had been used recently.

Xena was inside when we got back down. We went in and out of all the rooms. The furniture was dark and heavy and the floors were tiled in red. There was a large sitting room with two heavy sofas and a big LCD TV, a room with only a table in it, and a kitchen at the back of the house with another dining table.

By the time I had finished going in and out of each room the disappointment was sickening.

The only thing that was odd downstairs, which made me think we were in the right place, was a big steel bowl on a tripod at the back of the building. In the bowl, it must have been three feet across, there was a thick pile of ash. I could feel the heat coming from them when I put my hand an inch away from the top of the thick grey crust.

‘Stay out here,’ said Ariel. He disappeared back into the building.

There was a bad smell coming from the bowl, as if God only knew what had been burnt out here.

Mark had reappeared by this time. He said he’d seen nobody on his travels all around the building. He joined me as I was looking for something to poke the ashes in the bowl with. I found a long white stick, started poking away.

‘Not our lucky day,’ he said. He was looking through unopened letters, ripping each one, examining the bills inside.

‘Who lives here?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. All these bills are more than six months old. They look like they’re from a previous occupant.’ He put the bills beside a steel bin nearby.

‘There are no recent letters at all?’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘Anything in there?’ he said, nodding towards the ashes.

‘No.’ That was, of course, the moment the stick hit something.

‘Maybe.’ I poked some more, leaned forward, and
pushed the hard thing I’d encountered towards the edge of the bowl.

The heat came up in waves off the ashes.

‘What’s that?’ he said. The ashen, curled edges of what could have been a book had appeared in the bowl. I pushed at it. It was a notebook. The top and bottom of the notebook were clumps of ash, but right in the centre of it, a part of it still hadn’t burnt.

‘Hold on,’ I said.

I put the stick under the notebook, pushed it out of the side of the bowl. It fell in a cloud of ash onto the rough red-tiled floor of the veranda.

‘I was thinking we should wait for proper equipment,’ said Mark.

‘There’ll only be a pile of ash soon,’ I said.

‘There’s not much more than that now.’

I bent down and poked at the ragged, ash-edged remains of the notebook. I turned pages. Some were empty. Some had handwriting on them. Many of the words were scrawled out. Whoever had put it in there, hadn’t gone long.

Mark bent forward, started sniffing. ‘I know that smell,’ he said.

He was right. There was a familiar, sickly smell in the air.

‘That smells like burning flesh.’ He pointed at the steel bowl.

‘I remember it from Iraq. I was in a village where every house was burnt. Thirty-two people died. I’ll never forget the smell.’ His face was twisted, his head shaking from side to side as if he wanted to throw something off.

I held my nose, peered close at the pages, and rifled through them. Some of the writing wasn’t in an alphabet I recognised. It was symbols; squares, circles, triangles, moon shapes, wavy lines.

‘That looks like a lot of magic bullshit,’ said Mark.

‘Someone’s into some weird stuff,’ I said. I took my phone out and took a picture of the ashy remnants of the book. Mark had his phone out too.

He was right beside me. ‘The Canaanites were overlords in this area after Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the first Jewish temple. They used symbolic magic to invoke their fire goddess.’

A shiver passed through me. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.’

‘This is a definite connection to what happened to Kaiser.’

‘I’m not stupid. I can work things out,’ I said.

The idea that Isabel was in the hands of some sick fire worshippers was almost worse than her being missing.

He stepped back. ‘We have to find her,’ he said, softly.

An edge of a page had caught my attention. I pushed it open quickly with my fingers, The paper was hot. A part of a hand-drawn map was still visible.

‘Look.’ The edges of the page were smouldering. As I watched, a piece of it burnt away. I took another picture.

It was a map of Jerusalem. I could make out the Tower of David and the Ottoman-era city walls encircling the Old City. There were two spots on the map. They had traces of a waxy substance on them, as if someone had spilled candle wax on the page.

‘Those spots are where the Via Dolorosa and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre are.’ Mark peered closer at the map. ‘They’re the most venerated Christian places in Jerusalem.’

‘In the world,’ I added.

I turned the other pages of the notebook. There were no other drawings or maps on any of them.

‘I bet this map is some ceremonial thing,’ said Mark. ‘There are a lot of superstitions about fire, you know, like blowing out candles and wishing for things.’

‘This wasn’t used at a birthday party,’ I said.

He shrugged, pulled the page with the remaining part of the map from the ashen notebook with one quick tug at its edge. He took a small see-through plastic bag from his pocket and slid the map page into it, sealing it and flattening it with one stroke. Half the Old City was burnt away now on the map.

‘Did you see a basement in there?’ I said.

‘No.’

‘What are you guys doing out here?’ said Ariel. He had just arrived.

‘Checking the barbecue out,’ said Mark.

‘You should get your forensics to go through all this.’ He pointed at the bowl, and at the ashen remains of the notebook on the tiles. ‘God only knows what’s in there.’

Ariel bent down. His hands didn’t stay still for long, I noticed. They were either out in the air, or at his face, or smoothing his hair, or picking dust from his jacket.

‘You said you traced a call from here.’ He looked at Mark.

‘We did.’

‘Who was it to?’

There was a tiny hesitation, then Mark said. ‘We didn’t get that far. The call was encrypted. All I can tell you is it was to someone in London.’

His expression was impassive. He’d have made a good poker player.

‘Did you find a basement in there?’ I said. I pointed at the villa.

‘No,’ said Ariel. He turned slowly on his heel taking the whole place in. ‘Not yet anyway. But you’re right. This sort of farmhouse should have a basement. Maybe the entrance is out here.’

‘Why don’t we have another look in the kitchen?’ said Mark. ‘That looked like a new floor in there.’

‘Don’t disturb anything,’ said Ariel.

I walked fast into the kitchen, bent down and started examining the tiled floor. Mark was tapping the walls. I was relieved to be doing something. I was thinking about digging the floor up when I noticed that the floor in the storeroom, at the back of the kitchen, was different. The tiles looked older. Why hadn’t they put new tiles in there as well?