by Paul Sussman
'Good morning, Inspector,' he puffed, setting the box down at Khalifa's feet. 'Shoeshine?'
Khalifa smiled. 'You never miss a trick, do you, Ibrahim?'
The old man chuckled, revealing two rows of uneven gold teeth. 'A man has to eat. And a man has to have clean shoes, too. So we help each other.'
'Go on, then. But be quick. I've got business on the other side and I don't want to hang around when we land.'
'You know me, Inspector. Fastest shoeshine in Luxor.'
He pulled out rags, a brush and polish, and slapped the top of his box, indicating that Khalifa should put his feet up. A young boy sat silently in the stern working the outboard, his face impassive.
They slid forward through the glassy water, the Theban Hills looming ahead, their colour changing from grey to brown to yellow in the growing light of day. Other launches were crossing to either side of theirs, one, away to the right, carrying a group of Japanese tourists. Probably going for a balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings, thought Khalifa, to see the sunrise. It was something he'd always wanted to do himself, although at three hundred dollars a go he couldn't afford it. Probably never would, police wages being what they were.
They came in to the western shore, sliding into a gap between two other launches and riding up onto the gravel with a crunch. The old man gave Khalifa's toecaps a last swift buff and clapped his polish-stained hands together to show he'd finished. The detective handed him two Egyptian pounds, gave the same to the boy and leaped down onto the shore.
'I'll wait for you,' said the boy.
'Don't bother,' he replied. 'See you soon, Ibrahim.'
The detective turned and climbed to the top of the bank, where a large crowd was waiting for the ferry. He wove his way through the throng, squeezing through a gap between a wall and a rusty chain-link fence and setting off along a narrow dirt track beside the river. Farmers were out working in the fields, harvesting their maize and sugar cane, and two men were up to their waists in an irrigation ditch clearing weeds. Groups of children in neat white shirts hurried past him on their way to school. The heat was rising. He lit another cigarette.
It took him twenty minutes to reach the body, by which time the buildings of western Luxor had receded to a distant blur and his newly polished shoes were white with dust. He emerged from a forest of reeds and there in front of him was Sergeant Sariya, squatting on the shore beside what looked like a bundle of wet rags. He stood as Khalifa approached.
'I've called the hospital,' he said. 'They're sending someone over.'
Khalifa nodded and descended to the water's edge. The body was lying on its front, arms splayed, face buried in the mud, its shirt ripped and bloodstained. From the waist down it was still in the water, the lapping of the waves causing it to roll back and forth like someone rocking in their sleep. A faint odour of decay wafted upwards to his nostrils.
'When was it found?'
'Just before dawn,' replied his deputy. 'Probably floated down from upriver and got caught in a boat propeller, which is why the arms are all cut up.'
'It was like this when you got here? You haven't touched anything?'
Sariya shook his head.
Khalifa squatted beside the body, examining the ground around it. He lifted the wrist, noting a tattoo on the middle of the forearm.
'A scarab,' he said, smiling faintly. 'How inappropriate.'
'Why inappropriate?'
'To the ancient Egyptians the scarab was a symbol of rebirth and renewal. Not something that's going to happen to our friend here by the looks of things.' He laid the wrist down again. 'You've no idea who reported it?'
Sariya shook his head. 'Wouldn't give his name. Called the station from a payphone and said he'd found it when he came down here to fish.'
'You're sure it was a payphone?'
'Pretty much. He cut off mid-sentence, like he'd run out of money.'
Khalifa was silent for a moment, thinking, and then, lifting his head, nodded towards a clump of trees fifty metres away, beyond which could be seen the roof of a house. The thin black line of a telephone cable was clearly visible beneath its eaves. Sariya raised his eyebrows.
'So?'
'The nearest payphone's two kilometres away, back in town. Why didn't he just call from there?'
'I guess he was in shock. It's not every day corpses wash up along these shores.'
'Precisely. You'd have thought he'd want to report it as quickly as possible. And why wouldn't he leave his name? You know what people around here are like. Never miss a chance to get in the news.'
'You think he knew something?'
Khalifa shrugged. 'It's just strange. Like he didn't want anyone to know it was him who'd found the body. Like he was scared.'
There was a loud splash as a heron took off from among the reeds, rising clumsily into the air and arcing off downstream. Khalifa watched it for a moment, then, with a shake of his head, turned his attention back to the corpse. He worked his hands into the trouser pockets and removed a penknife, a cheap lighter and a slip of soggy paper, folded. He laid the last on, the corpse's back and carefully opened it out.
'Train ticket,' he said, leaning close to examine the faded writing. 'Return to Cairo. Dated four days ago.'
Sariya handed him a plastic bag and he dropped the objects into it.
'Come on, give me a hand here.'
Together they squatted beside the body and, getting their hands beneath it, rolled it over onto its back, the mud squelching beneath their feet. As soon as he saw the face Sariya staggered away, retching violently.
'Allah u akbar,' he choked. 'God almighty!'
Khalifa bit his lip, forcing himself to look. He had seen bodies before, of course, but never one as badly mutilated as this. Even beneath its mask of mud it was clear there wasn't much of the face left. The left eye-socket was empty, the nose a mass of ribboned flesh and cartilage. He stared at it for a while, struggling to connect it with something that might once have been alive. Then, coming to his feet, he went over to Sariya and laid his hand on his shoulder.
'Are you all right?'
Sariya nodded, putting a finger against one of his nostrils and blowing hard so that a glob of mucus flew out onto the sand. 'What happened to him?'
'I don't know. Maybe a propeller, like you said, although I don't see how a propeller could have taken the eye out, or caused those sorts of wound.'
'You're saying someone did this deliberately?'
'I'm not saying anything. Just that a propeller would churn the flesh up, not slice it like that. Look how the skin has . . .' He could see his deputy was about to retch again and stopped mid-sentence, not wishing to upset him more. 'We'll wait for the autopsy,' he said after a pause.
He lit a couple of cigarettes and handed one to Sariya, who took a deep drag before throwing it aside and scrambling up the bank to be sick again. Khalifa turned away and wandered back to the river's edge, gazing over to the far shore. A procession of Nile cruisers was lined up along the bank, with beyond them, just visible, the first pylon of Karnak Temple. A felucca crossed his line of sight, its giant triangular sail cutting across the sky like a blade. He flicked his cigarette into the water and sighed. It was, he suspected, going to be a while before he got a chance to work on his fountain again.
As Inspector Khalifa stood beside the river, a group of tourists on donkeys were winding their way up into the hills behind him. There were twenty of them, Americans mostly, moving in single file, with an Egyptian boy at their head to guide them and another at the rear to make sure no-one got left behind. Some clung nervously to their saddles, uncomfortable on the precipitous path, grimacing at every bump and jolt. One in particular, a large woman with sunburnt shoulders, was not enjoying the experience.
'They never said it would be this steep,' she kept shouting. 'They said it would be easy. Oh Christ!'
Others, however, seemed more relaxed, turning from side to side in their saddles to take in the spectacular views. The sun was up now a
nd the plain beneath them throbbed and shimmered in the heat. Far off could be seen the winding silver ribbon of the Nile, with beyond it the jumbled mass of eastern Luxor and beyond that a blur of desert and mountains, no more than a rumour against the white-blue sky. Their guide stopped every now and then to point out some of the sights below: the Colossi of Memnon, small as toys from that distance; the broken ruins of the Ramesseum; the vast compound of Ramesses III's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. Those who were not too nervous lifted their cameras and snapped a photo. Apart from the crunch and clatter of donkeys' hooves and the voice of the woman with sunburnt shoulders, they climbed in virtual silence, awed by the scenery.
'Beats the shit out of Minnesota,' muttered one man to his wife.
Eventually they came up onto the summit of the hills and the path widened and flattened out, running evenly for a while before dipping away again into a broad rocky valley.
'That is Valley of Kings in front,' shouted their guide. 'Hold tight. Path down is very steep.'
'Christ!' came a shrill voice from behind him.
They had just started across the ridge, the donkeys zigzagging their way between scattered rocks, when a man suddenly leaped up from the shadow of a boulder where he had been lying. His djellaba was filthy and ragged, and his matted hair came down well below the level of his shoulders, giving him a wild, unkempt look. In his hand he carried something wrapped in brown paper. He hurried over to them.
'Hello hello good morning good night,' he jabbered, his words all running together. 'Look here please friends. I have something good I know you like.'
The donkey guide shouted at him in Arabic, but the man ignored him and went up to one of the tourists, a young woman in a large straw sunhat. Lifting the object in his hand he pulled back the brown paper to reveal a cat carved out of dark stone.
'You see lady very very lovely carving. You buy you buy. I very poor need eat. You beautiful lady you buy!'
He thrust the carving towards her with one hand, while lifting the other to his mouth in an eating motion.
'You buy you buy. I no eat for three days. Please you buy. Hungry. Hungry.'
The woman stared fixedly ahead, taking no notice of him, and after stumbling beside her for a few metres the man gave up and turned his attention to the rider behind.
'Look look mister lovely carving. Very good quality. How much you pay give me price give me price.'
'Ignore him,' called the guide over his shoulder. 'He's mad.'
'Yes yes mad,' laughed the ragged man, twirling round a couple of times and slamming his foot on the ground in a sort of dance. 'Mad mad. Please you buy no food I hungry. Best quality give me price mister.'
The man too ignored him and the ragged figure began to scuttle up and down the line, his cries becoming increasingly hoarse and desperate.
'You no like cat I have other carvings. Many many carvings. Please please you buy. Antiquities? I have antiquities. Three thousand per cent genuine. You need guide I very good guide I know all these hills every little bit. I show you kings valley and queens valley very cheap. I show you tomb very beautiful. New tomb no-one else know. I need eat. No eat for three days.'
By now he was at the back of the line and, urging his donkey forward, the boy at the rear barged him out of the way, kicking him in the ribs as he passed. The ragged man fell to the ground in a swirl of dust and the tourists moved on.
'Thank you thank you thank you!' he cried, rolling around like a wounded animal, his hair flying from side to side. 'So kind lovely tourist to help me. No want cat no want see tomb no want guide. I die! I die!'
He screwed his face into the ground, weeping, hammering his fists on the sand.
The tourists, however, did not see him, for they had already passed round an outcrop of rock and begun their descent into the Valley of the Kings. It was steep, as the guide had warned them, with a near-vertical drop away to their right. The woman with sunburnt shoulders clutched the neck of the donkey and trembled, too frightened even to complain. The wails of the madman gradually grew fainter until they disappeared altogether.
6
CAIRO
Tara waited at the airport until past ten a.m., by which point her eyes were red from lack of sleep and she was dizzy with tiredness. She had called her father every half-hour, wandered round and round the arrivals hall, even taken a taxi over to the domestic terminal in case he'd gone to the wrong place. All to no avail. He wasn't at the airport, he wasn't at his dig house, he wasn't at his flat in Cairo. Her holiday had gone wrong before it had even started. She clambered onto her seat for the umpteenth time and gazed around the concourse. So many people were now milling to and fro, however, that even if her father had been among them she wouldn't have seen him. She jumped down, went over to the payphone and called the dig house and flat one last time. Then, swinging her bag over her shoulder and slipping on her sunglasses, she went outside and hailed a taxi.
'Cairo?' asked the driver, a burly man with a thick moustache and nicotine-stained fingers.
'No,' Tara replied, sinking wearily into the back seat, 'Saqqara.'
Her father had been excavating at Saqqara, the necropolis of the ancient Egyptian capital Memphis, for the best part of fifty years.
He had dug at other sites around Egypt, from Tanis and Sais in the north right down to Qustul and Nauri in upper Sudan, but Saqqara had always been his first love. Each season he would take up residence in his dig house and remain there for three or four months at a stretch, painstakingly working over a small area of sand-blown ruins, uncovering a few more metres of history. Some seasons he wouldn't dig at all, but would spend his time in restoration work or recording the previous year's finds.
It was a frugal existence, monastic almost – just himself, a cook and a small group of volunteers – but it was the one place in the world, Tara believed, where he was truly happy. His infrequent letters revealed, in their minute descriptions of the progress of his work, a sense of contentment that seemed wholly absent from the other areas of his life. That's why she had been so surprised when he had asked her out to stay with him – this was his world, his special place, and it must have taken a leap of faith on his part to invite her into it.
The journey from the airport wasn't a comfortable one. Her driver seemed to have no concept of road safety, thinking nothing of overtaking on tight corners and in the face of heavy oncoming traffic. On one stretch of road, alongside a foetid green canal, he pulled out to go past a small truck only to see a lorry approaching from the opposite direction. Tara assumed he would pull in again. Far from it. He hammered his palm on the horn and pressed his foot to the floor, moving slowly past the truck which, in response, started to go faster, as though racing. The oncoming lorry grew larger by the second and Tara felt her stomach knot, convinced they were going to crash. Only at the last minute, when it looked as if a head-on collision was inevitable, did the driver yank his wheel to the right, swerving in front of the truck and missing the front of the lorry by what looked like a matter of centimetres.
'You frightened?' he laughed as they sped on.
'Yes,' Tara replied curtly. 'I am.'
Eventually, and much to her relief, they turned right off the main road and, after following a smaller, tree-lined road for a few kilometres, came to a halt at the foot of a steep sandy escarpment, above which peeped the upper courses of a step-shaped pyramid.
'You get ticket here,' said the driver, pointing to a ticket window in a building to the right.
'Do I need one?' she asked. 'My father works here. I've come to visit him.'
The driver leaned out and shouted something at the man sitting in the window. They held a brief conversation, in Arabic, and then another man, young, came out of the building and bent down to the taxi, looking at Tara.