The Deceit

by Knox, Tom

  ‘However—’

  Ryan didn’t give Helen a chance to interrupt. ‘Remember also that Macarius said this arson didn’t matter, because he had read all the books, all the books which came from Egypt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He means it literally. All of the New Testament came from Egypt. It’s true. Let’s play a game.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Open up your computer. Name a book of the New Testament.’

  Helen tapped some keys. ‘Gospel of John.’

  ‘What’s the earliest surviving copy or even fragment of John?’

  She tapped again. ‘Uh. Papyrus … uh … 52. From the second century. It is now kept in Manchester, England.’

  ‘And where was it found?’

  She typed for a few moments, then scrutinized the screen. ‘Discovered in 1920, in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt.’

  ‘Try another. Let’s try Luke, the Gospel of Luke.’

  ‘OK.’ She typed, and then replied, ‘Gospel of Luke, earliest extant copy is … written in Alexandrian Greek. Now kept in … the Bibliothèque Nationale, in Paris.’

  ‘And it was discovered in?’

  ‘Coptos, Egypt.’

  ‘How about Thessalonians?’

  She tapped. ‘Papyrus 92. Third- or fourth-century fragment found in … Cairo, Egypt.’

  Albert intervened. ‘The Book of Revelations.’

  A pause. ‘Papyrus 115. Third century. Now in the Ashmolean, Oxford, England – but found in Oxyrhynchus. In Egypt.’

  Albert tried another. ‘Gospel of Matthew.’

  ‘Papyrus 67. Late second century. Found in Egypt.’

  The café was silent. Helen thrust her chair back. ‘I do not believe it.’

  ‘But it’s true! It’s almost miraculous. Try one more.’ Ryan was verging on gleeful. ‘Let’s try something different: say, the Second Epistle of John.’

  She keyed the names, then read the answer. ‘The earliest surviving copy of the Second Epistle of John is a fragment of Greek script, on parchment, known as Uncial 0232.’ She paused. ‘It was found in Antinopolis, near Besa, in central Egypt.’

  ‘You see? Every single book of the New Testament is first found in Egypt, and it’s not just because they simply found one big copy – though the first surviving copy of the entire Bible is also Egyptian, from Sinai, the Codex Sinaiticus – but the first and earliest fragments and copies and papyri are all Egyptian. The entire Christian Bible was written and compiled in Egypt, mainly in Alexandria.’

  ‘So Macarius was right?’

  ‘Yes. And this is his big and frightening secret. Christianity was invented by Gnostic and Jewish scholars, slaving away in Alexandria, consciously inventing a new religion, taking elements of recent Jewish history: the story of some criminal magician, some local prophet, a suitably obscure rabble-rouser called Jesus, to ensure the Jews liked the new religion. But they wanted to spread the good news, they wanted Gentiles to believe too: this was a global faith they were writing, so they sprinkled in the Egyptian magic, added in the Nativity, the Virgin, the son of God, the miracles and the Resurrection, especially anything to do with the most popular goddess of the day, Isis. In it went. All of it derived from Egyptian sources. The ankh, the praying, everything. They even took the halo from the Egyptian sun symbol, positioned over the head of an Egyptian deity.’

  Helen looked crestfallen. ‘So. It is all a lie …’

  Albert spoke, ponderously. ‘Well, Helen, not so much a lie. More like a remake.’ He was smiling. ‘Christianity is a glamorous remake of a provincial original. Like, shall we say, a little European art movie turned into a Hollywood blockbuster?’

  Helen’s frowning face was illuminated by the glowing computer screens. ‘OK. OK. I do get it. This … this secret would terrify fundamentalists, Jewish or Christian, it would destroy their faith, or much of it – but it doesn’t explain everything. It does not explain what is happening to the Zabaleen – why are they supposedly bewitched? And it does not explain what that quote about the Beast means, and it cannot explain what the Greek word riddle means.’

  Ryan shrugged, exuberantly. ‘Does it matter? We’ve just debunked Judaism and Christianity!’ He chuckled. ‘That’s not enough, before lunch?’

  ‘It’s quite enough,’ said Albert. ‘Very impressive, exhilarating even … And now you must, I am afraid, accompany me.’

  ‘What?’

  He was holding something in his hand. Ryan stared down at it.

  ‘I feel like a gangster. But there we are. Let us take a small but exciting drive. And then you can hand over the papyrus.’

  ‘Albert—’

  ‘If you do not, I am obliged to shoot.’

  The gun was levelled at Ryan’s stomach. Albert’s hand was trembling. But his voice was quite firm.

  ‘Now.’

  41

  London

  The steps were so narrow that Karen had to descend them like ships’ stairs, face to the rungs, carefully placing one foot beneath the other. What was she going to see at the foot of these steps? Her emotions spiralled but she closed them down.

  Karen reached the bottom and turned around. She was in a kind of musty brick vault with a low wooden ceiling. It was empty, lit by the melancholy yellow light of a dozen little bulbs strung along the ceiling on dangling wires.

  ‘Eleanor?’ Karen called. ‘Eleanor?’

  Her voice echoed, and died. The only noise she heard was a dog barking along the passageways. The vault ended at a wall of thin red bricks, old and mossed, and then a further low door, barely four foot high, which, from what she could dimly perceive, led into another stone chamber.

  It must be medieval, she thought. The whole of this corner of London was medieval in origin, threaded with narrow passages and wine cellars and storage vaults: that was one reason it was favoured by gold and silver merchants into the twenty-first century: they could store the bullion safely in stone-built chambers.

  Her thoughts disappeared into the horror of reality. Where was her daughter?

  Ellie’s voice had seemed to come from directly beneath her, when she was in the room above. And yet – not.

  He was still playing tricks.

  Karen didn’t even bother looking for the speaker. She knew it would be here somewhere, secreted in the dripping stone work, concealed behind a loose, five-hundred-year-old stockbrick.

  ‘Mummy.’

  It was Eleanor again. Beckoning. Muffled yet near, distant yet needy.

  ‘Mummy, help me!’

  The voice was inviting her into the next chamber, through the tiny stone door. Karen wondered, for a slice of a second, if she should resist, turn back, give up, refuse to play her ordained role in this satanic charade; but of course she couldn’t. She had to go on. Rothley was probably elsewhere, with Eleanor, dead or alive. Yes. Halfway across London, halfway across the world, and this was all a joke. Yet the tiny scintilla of a chance that it wasn’t a joke, that Eleanor might be down here, forced her to go on.

  ‘I’m coming!’ Karen called. ‘Eleanor, I’m coming!’

  ‘Mummy I’m in here, the door thing, help me. I’m scared, I, Mummy—’

  Karen crouched through the door, having to kneel and squeeze left and push through sideways, the door was so small.

  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 sm
all 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.

  42

  London

  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.

  43

  Aswan, Egypt

  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.’