The Deceit

by Knox, Tom

  Albert and Helen retired to the town in the afternoon; Ryan kept working. Then at last he commuted back to Akhmim in the dark, safe from sight, and slept in the quiet clean house. That night there were no bad dreams.

  On the second day, he returned to the monastery at first light, when the old mud bricks were cold to the touch and the desert cliffs tinted a pale tangerine. This day, he began to examine their papyrus in particular, but it was desperately difficult: so much was illegible, erased and defaced, the peculiar sub-Akhmimic alphabet so intractably old and unusual. At moments he felt he was close to a breakthrough, but it didn’t come.

  The starlit drive back to Akhmim that night was melancholy. He sat alone in the kitchen and ate fuul and flatbread for supper, staring at a Coptic calendar on the walls, thinking about the boy and trying not to think about what he had said; remembering his wife and trying not to remember her death. Rhiannon.

  His lonely meal was interrupted by Helen. She sat down opposite, over a beaker of water. And spoke.

  ‘Tell me your story, Ryan. What happened to you? Why did you disappear?’

  This was Helen’s manner, of course: abrupt, but not necessarily rude. Just dispensing with preliminaries and seizing the information. He was getting used to it.

  Ryan exhaled, and gazed in her almost flawless blue eyes. ‘It ain’t pretty.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He told her. How he had met and fallen in love with a young woman when he was studying under Sassoon in London, at the beginning of his glittering career, after leaving Harvard. This was when Ryan Harper was the coming man – Sassoon’s successor, the brilliant new Egyptologist.

  He said the word ‘brilliant’ with an ironic grimace. Helen nodded. ‘And so? Then?’

  A deep long pause. ‘We moved to Egypt. Working in Saqqara. We were very happy, the happiest I had ever been. What does Freud say is the key to happiness? Work and love? Well, I had both. Then Rhiannon got pregnant, and we were both overjoyed, literally, beyond joyous.’ He swallowed some fuul and flatbread, swallowed the choke of grief. ‘She died in childbirth. A local infection, perinatal malaria, from the Delta. And the baby … My daughter went first, she died too. And that’s when … well …’

  The silence in the kitchen was morbid. Ryan picked up his plate and took it to the sink and washed it, noisily.

  Helen spoke behind him. ‘That is terrible.’

  Ryan scrubbed the plate clean, and stacked it. ‘My parents were Baptists, but I was never ever religious. And yet, what happened to Rhiannon and the baby – that killed something in me, killed the hope. I hated everyone, resented everyone. Then I stopped hating the world and began hating myself. Blaming myself. Should I have brought Rhiannon to Egypt? Unsanitary Egypt? Maybe I made a mistake?’ He shrugged. ‘Then I stopped caring. And started drinking. I got into fights, messy arguments, insulting important people. In Egypt, as you know, you have to play the politics. Kiss the babies of bureaucracy. I didn’t. I was sacked. They were right to sack me. I drifted for a bit, a succession of demotions. By the time I was twenty-nine I’d had enough: I gave up the academic work and got a simple job as a charity worker in Abydos, trying to save the temple there, the Oseirion, from drowning. They have terrible problems with the water table, because of Aswan.’

  ‘You raised some money for this cause?’

  ‘Sometimes. Mostly I just got stuck in – physical labour, digging ditches. Hard yakka, as the Australians say. I enjoyed not having to think.’

  Helen gazed at the table, then at his face. Then she said, ‘I did notice your hands. They are tough, bruised, not the hands of a scholar.’

  ‘Well I’m not, not any more.’

  ‘And also you look like a …’ A brief, embarrassed smile. ‘When we were swimming, you are … stammig as we say in Germany. More like a worker on a farm.’

  Ryan looked at Helen. This was different. ‘I also did a bit of teaching, to keep my income vaguely bearable. Bored American kids get to know their Anubis from their Horus. It’s a Study Abroad programme. But the kids have stopped coming, there’s hardly any work anyway. Because of the troubles.’

  He stared at his glass of water. A few years ago it would have been whisky. But in the end he’d realized that hard physical work killed the pain better than any alcohol. Ryan sipped the water and looked at the German woman with her severe and high-cheekboned beauty. She had a hint of Nefertiti about her, the famous bust in the Berlin Museum. A slightly sad and Nordic Nefertiti. He decided to copy her curtness. ‘So. You? What’s your story?’

  She was unfazed. ‘Not as sad as yours, but it has pathos. My father is an academic, quite well known, he still teaches politics at Heidelberg. Mother: hausfrau. We come from rural Catholic Bavaria – it is a little like your Deep South, very religious. My sister is – was …’ She blinked, the blue eyes blinked, twice. ‘She was the favourite, the star, the bright one, not me. She was the beautiful daughter and so clever, musical, a brilliant concert pianist, she had the great career … the Germans worship music.’

  Helen poured herself a glass of mineral water. ‘She had a stroke, aged twenty-five. Ischemic. We do not know why. It can happen in teens and young adults, as well as old people. It can happen any time.’

  ‘She died?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  Ryan shook his head. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘She lies in hospital in Heidelberg today, in a coma. Persistent vegetative state is the precise medical term. Is she alive or dead? Maybe God knows, I do not know. I know she will never recover, not now.’

  ‘You believe in God?’

  ‘No. But the reflex is there, I suppose. This is why I work now, work so hard. My parents were broken by Anna’s stroke, so now I try to be her, the successful daughter. I am not, I fail, but I try. I do not have a husband, I rarely have boyfriends, I just work. I work to be someone else, to replace someone who has gone. There. My story. The End.’

  Ryan sighed profoundly. ‘I am very sorry.’

  ‘Yes,’ Helen said, lifting her glass. ‘But at least we both understand. This is good. You know something, Ryan? Sometimes I do not quite trust people who have no tragedy in their lives. Now I can trust you.’

  He lifted his water, they chinked.

  The faintest sad smile on her lips.

  ‘Prost.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Ryan drank the last of his whiskyless water. And said, ‘But do you trust Albert Hanna?’

  Helen shook her head. ‘Ah. Of course not, he is a serpent. But an amusing serpent. And we have no choice, we need him. And now I say good night. I hope it goes well for you tomorrow.’

  Tomorrow came very early. He got up at dawn and crept outside, and got in the waiting old taxi, and drove through the surreal shadows of the dawnlit desert. Then he worked for six hours without a break, eyes straining in the darkened old library with the flickering lamplight.

  Then at last he sat back, massaging his aching neck. He had a bulging notebook, literally full of notes. He picked it up and stepped out of the creaking library, emerging into the stark desert sun of the monastery courtyard. He was almost content: he hadn’t cracked the code, but he had definitely made a start. A very good start.

  Helen and Hanna were sitting on a stone bench. Helen gazed at him – tense and waiting. Ryan regarded them both, and declared, ‘The guy who wrote it is called Macarius. He’s a sixth-century Copt. It’s all about religion.’ He paused. ‘And we have to get going.’

  Hanna shook his head. ‘Why? Why can’t you stay here and translate it all?’

  Ryan had his answer. ‘Because many times Macarius says I went to this place and I saw this here. But he doesn’t describe it; therefore, we have no idea what he’s talking about. How it fits in. We cannot solve the puzzle without following his logic – and his route.’

  Helen was half-smiling. ‘This is good. We will make a better film!’

  ‘Or get arrested,’ Hanna said.

  A silence settled on them all. Th
e sunlight glittered on the lake-pool beyond the open monastery gates.

  Hanna broke the silence. ‘Very well. The die is cast. Where then, Mr Harper, where are we going first?’

  ‘To Bubastis.’

  Hanna nodded. ‘But of course. Bubastis. The city of cats.’

  19

  Bodmin, Cornwall, England

  The winter weather up here was significantly worse than the drizzliness of the Cornish coast: the fierce wind carried flurries of snow and Dozmary Pool was showing shoulders of ice. The great granite outcrops that made Bodmin Moor visible from thirty miles away – Rough Tor, the Minions – sheltered the huddled, grey little sheep from the worst of the piercing gales.

  Karen braked, slowed, and took a right turn off the A30, making her careful way down a narrow and sombre lane lined with high blackthorn hedges. The road was muddy, but the mud was frozen.

  It was a suitably bleak landscape, a suitable place for a lunatic asylum. Except of course it wasn’t called the Cornwall County Lunatic Asylum any more – it was now the Bodmin PCT Psychiatric Hospital and Mental Health Unit. But the Cornish still referred to it as they had always done: anyone who went mad, anyone who was sectioned and sent here, was said to have ‘gone up Bodmin’.

  The car park was empty. The car indicators blinked, obediently, as she locked her Toyota and walked towards the main asylum buildings. The architecture was a mix of ambitious Victorian Gothic and some 1980s wards and offices. The new bits were not ageing as well as the gloomy, redbrick grandeur of the old stuff. The Victorians built to last: they liked to incarcerate their lunatics in style.

  The wind was biting. Karen was relieved to get inside the warm, brightly lit reception, where a sweet, plump nurse took her credentials and led her down maybe seventeen corridors to a large reinforced glass door with an elaborate system of locks.

  The sign beside it read, SECURE UNIT and WARNING.

  The nurse keyed a code, and they waited for something to happen. With nothing to do, the nurse made small talk, glancing at Karen.

  ‘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 du
mb 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!’