The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  There had been no rape, but there were traces of a sexual nature.

  The investigation was entrusted to an inspector named Azim Abd el-Dayim, a native of Cairo who knew el-Abbasiya district well: the very least that was needed in order to work there without running the risk of being cut into pieces in such a place. He found no witnesses, no convincing clues.

  On March 2, a six-year-old girl was found in a sordid alleyway in el-Huseiniya. She was not broken in two, but her state was horrible in other ways. Five men had seen her, and not one had managed to retain his dignity; all had dissolved into tears, some had vomited, and others had nightmares for several nights.

  Samir was the third innocent to be wiped out.

  His head lying flat on the stone of a tomb in the cemetery of Bab el-Nasr.

  The link between these crimes was in no doubt. The violence was different each time, but exercised with such ferocity that one might doubt the human nature of the culprit.

  The three children came from poor areas, from families without resources.

  The three children were around the same age.

  The three children had been tortured to death, clawed, bitten until pieces of flesh were torn away.

  The three children had been sullied.

  In less than two weeks.

  Jeremy Matheson had picked up his phone, and then got moving. He abandoned his investigation into the murder of an archaeologist carrying out excavations in the basements of Cairo; the case wasn’t coming to anything anyway.

  And he obtained the investigation into the dead children.

  Azim Abd el-Dayim became his colleague, because he spoke Arabic and because he didn’t have the same color skin.

  Three days later, on March 14, 1928, the telephone rang.

  And Jeremy Matheson’s life was turned upside-down forever.

  12

  Marion rested the black book on her knees and drank the last mouthful of gin and orange juice, before pouring herself a second glass.

  The alcohol was still burning her throat, producing a bitter aftertaste. A taste that echoed many others, among the pages of the notebook she was reading.

  Her fingers began stroking the cover.

  For a private diary, it was pleasant to read—the start, anyway.

  The author had started writing a little after the beginning of the facts he related. This introduction to the subject was a kind of long flashback.

  In the first sentences the melancholy came through. Jeremy Matheson was a wounded man, stanching his suffering with words on paper bandages. Contrary to what he stated in the prologue, his writing felt much more than just an account written for the purposes of information. He was emptying his overflowing soul.

  The other element that disturbed Marion was that he very seldom said I. Instead, he preferred to include himself among other people so as to say we, using the police, the English, men, and other groups as often as possible.

  On the other hand, the events heralded in the latest pages she had read were highly disagreeable to Marion. The murders of those children.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  And yet there was this feeling of curiosity.

  She bent over her alarm clock to check the time.

  11:12.

  She didn’t feel particularly tired. The intrusion into her home had shaken her up too much. The fear and the anger had evaporated with the tale.

  She glanced briefly at the sloping roofs of the village.

  Then the book fell open in her hands again.

  * * *

  As soon as he had hung up, Jeremy Matheson informed Azim, his colleague, and they headed for the sharia* Muhammad Ali, which they drove along before forking off eastward, beneath the ramparts of the Citadel. They left the city, crossing an ancient cemetery to reach the Tombs of the Caliphs.

  In the vehicle, they went over Azim’s investigations to date. Managing everything on his own, he had delegated as much as possible, in order to gain time. Police officers had gone to take statements from each family, while others went from door to door, to ask the inhabitants of the districts concerned if they had seen or heard anything unusual on the nights of the murders. Azim centralized the reports, went over them with a fine-tooth comb, and attempted to identify a lead, without success. He had made hardly any progress since the first day; all he had was a clear conscience, knowing he had done his work to the best of his ability.

  Three victims, perhaps four today.

  Children just a few years old, living in the same area, northeastern Cairo, all from very poor families. That was all they had.

  A tarred road ran parallel to the necropolis, and they were able to park alongside the vehicles that were already there; Jeremy and Azim covered the rest of the distance on foot, along the fringes of the desert.

  It was late morning, and the temperature was around eighty-five degrees. The heat seemed to emerge from the ground itself, weaving blurred wreaths in the air, which climbed toward the heavens, obscuring the horizon. The tall minarets of the tombs cast their shadows on the sand, outlining a calm path, inviting others to walk in their footsteps, like a religious message filtered beyond the stone.

  Roofless walls followed one another in successive waves, their multicolored bricks forming pink, red, and white battlements around the cells. The domes and towers rose up all around, in buzzing hives beneath the one eye of Ra.

  Richard Pallister, the police photographer, was at the entrance to a blind alley, seated on a small boulder, his hat on one knee and his camera bag at his feet. He was mopping his brow with a handkerchief, less from the heat than from the shock.

  And yet the heat was unusually powerful for the season.

  Pallister lifted his head to look at the new arrivals; his eyelids were swollen and red, his gaze vacant.

  Pallister looked for a landmark. The one that distinguished men from beasts, the landmark that shines permanently like a red boundary stone on the verge of consciousness, and that looms up in front of it when thoughts go too far.

  His face was colored with a transparent film that slid little by little from his hair to his chin, in salty droplets, leaving pallid skin in its wake. His lips were trembling.

  When Jeremy reached him, the photographer murmured something, but it was the emotion in his eyes that made Jeremy understand. He was begging him not to go there.

  Nevertheless, Jeremy entered the narrow alleyway. He heard Pallister begin to sob.

  The right-hand wall belonged to a tomb that looked above all like a house with a flat roof, white and blind. Opposite, the wall was much older; it had been crumbling for a long time. Its skeleton of bricks was as black as charred bone, a loose mesh with the purple hues of the desert grew between each stone, similar to dried blood; the construction was now no more than a geological corpse, conferring upon the alleyway a suffocating appearance and a smell of dust.

  It ran on in this way for twenty yards.

  Two natives of Cairo, wearing cheap suits and tarbooshes* were standing right at the end, their hands on their hips. The two men stood in silence, avoiding looking at the ground.

  As soon as they spotted Jeremy Matheson they came to meet him, only too happy to be able to distance themselves for a moment from this cursed place.

  “A dragoman† found it this morning, while preparing his itinerary,” reported the first man with a pronounced accent that made him roll his rs. “They thought about telling you straightaway; it’s too much like the previous ones.…”

  Without a word, Matheson laid a hand on the man’s shoulder to move him out of the way. He approached what was spattering the beaten earth and the walls of the alley.

  A child aged around ten.

  Bled-out and distorted, as if by an all-powerful giant who had discovered this strange toy, and manipulated it until it was worn-out and broken, kneading it, shattering it, bursting it; and now the child was lying like a shapeless parcel, its only remaining human aspect its arms and legs, and a swollen head whose h
air had turned white with terror.

  Matheson swallowed his saliva, and it went down his throat with a moist echo.

  There were pins and needles in his legs. He closed his eyes to concentrate on his breathing. Swiftly he noticed how fast his heart was beating.

  Calm down. Breathe.

  Azim took hold of his arm gently.

  “Are you going to be all right?” he asked in a reassuring, almost maternal voice.

  Almost white, Jeremy turned to look at him.

  Azim was wearing the traditional turban, and a Western shirt and trousers. His finely shaped, ebony-black mustache danced on his upper lip. He carried his excess weight with grace, ever serene, his movements always catlike.

  “Mr. Matheson?” he said. “Are you sure you want to stay here?”

  Jeremy breathed out slowly and nodded. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes. I want to stay.”

  The two men with tarbooshes contemplated him without judging, too deeply affected themselves.

  In turn, Jeremy stared at them. “Right,” he said, regaining a little substance and trying to steady his voice. “Have you obtained any particular clues?”

  “No,” replied the first man, “there was too much movement in the sand. It’s impossible to say what is old and what is recent, not to mention the dragoman’s footsteps and our own. On the other hand we have not really examined the area around,” he said, indicating a circle around the lifeless body.

  “And what about the dragoman? Where is he now?”

  “We took down his details and…”

  “And?”

  The man twitched nervously, foreseeing trouble. He raised an eyebrow and a shoulder at the same time, ill at ease. “And he left…”

  Jeremy opened his mouth when Azim—who was still holding his arm—loosened his grip. “Don’t dwell on it,” he whispered, “it’s pointless, what’s done is done.”

  Jeremy breathed out for a long moment, without taking his eyes off the two men in front of him. “Very well,” he said finally. “Stay at the entrance to the alley, and watch for the arrival of the stretcher-bearers.”

  He spun around to confront the extent of the carnage once more. “Nobody touches the body,” he commanded after a moment’s silence. “The doctor will take care of it. We shall search the sand and everything else, in search of clues.”

  He and Azim divided the area around the body between them, and started to walk around it gradually, examining each inch of the ground and the walls.

  The shadow cast by the tombs had protected the site from the sun, and the bodily fluids had not had time to be absorbed or totally assimilated by the earth. There were still long, brown trickles, between which they had to step with care.

  Jeremy opened the top buttons of his shirt to allow a little air to his chest. He was not breathing well.

  One long track had not been erased by his predecessors’ footsteps: two times five parallel lines, running for two yards from one corner to the little body.

  The child had dug his nails and his entire fingers into the sand to hold on while he was being dragged backward.

  Toward a greedy mouth.

  Jeremy drove this image from his mind.

  He would have none of it. It was a parasite to considered thought. What mattered was to concentrate here, now. Nothing else. No mad images.

  He went back to inspecting the scene, taking all the time necessary not to omit any detail. There were too many humps and hollows in the sand to deduce anything from them; it was complete chaos.

  “I may have something here,” said Azim in his singsong voice.

  Jeremy joined him, facing the decrepit old wall. Azim was hanging a yard from the top, his feet balanced in holes he had managed to find.

  He pointed to a fresh gash in a brick just under his nose, at the top, which was less than nine feet up. The gash was shallow and was a little more than one inch long and less than one wide.

  “How did you find that, Azim?” exclaimed the English detective.

  “It’s my job,” replied his companion joylessly. “It looks like a claw mark.”

  Azim exclaimed something in Arabic. “There’s another one here,” he pointed out immediately.

  The second, which was similar, was about eight inches away. Both were close to the top of the wall.

  The sun was beginning to illuminate this part, covering the textures with its rough brilliance; its rays were so pure and hot that they brought out the shadows, while dulling the brightness of the colors.

  A glint of quartz or gypsum caught Jeremy’s eye. It was coming from the end of the gash.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I just saw it, too. Wait…”

  Azim steadied himself with one hand and freed the other to extract the shining object delicately.

  His expression darkened.

  “What is it?” demanded Matheson, suddenly impatient.

  “I don’t know.… It looks like a bit of ivory … a pointed bit.”

  “Let me see.”

  Azim jumped down beside him and held out the white fragment.

  It was triangular and sharp. Its material was reminiscent of slightly damaged horn. Jeremy raised his face to the claw marks in the brick.

  Something made of horn had grazed the top of the wall, in much the same way as it had eight inches away.

  Suddenly, Jeremy placed his hand on his colleague’s abdomen to prevent him from moving anymore. He scanned the ground attentively.

  Among the multitude of minuscule dunes that had formed, he swiftly detected one hole that was much deeper than the others.

  At first, he showed Azim two other depressions just in front of him. “Look.”

  “I made those, sir,” replied Azim. “When I jumped down from the wall. My feet sank in and left those hollows.”

  “Yes, I know, precisely! Now look at this other hole, here.”

  He pointed to the one he had spotted. “And this sort of jumbled mass of sand beside it, about eight inches away, must have been its twin before it was wiped away.”

  Azim nodded his understanding. Someone had jumped from the top, an adult to judge from the depth.

  “He was balancing at this height when he jumped,” explained Jeremy, pointing to the holes. “He leaned on the brick to propel himself, and scratched it because he was holding a weapon made from horn, apparently in both hands; that’s what caused these marks.”

  “In both hands? Not practical for jumping.”

  “That is true. That being said, I can scarcely believe that his nails could make such gashes!”

  Jeremy immediately started scaling the masonry. “The child was caught unawares, terrified even, to judge by the color of his hair. He must have seen his attacker at the last moment, standing or crouching in this very spot,” he said, reconstructing the scene as he hoisted himself up.

  He took the time to find his balance and stood up slowly to look down on the alleyway from a height of almost nine feet. Then he turned to look from the other side, which hid the multicolored wall.

  “Do you see anything?” Azim wanted to know. “Wait, I’m coming up—”

  “Pointless! You might break your neck, the bricks aren’t well joined together, it’s very old. There’s a level a few feet lower down.”

  Before Azim advised caution, Jeremy had already jumped to the other side. His shoulders rose above the top of the wall, and he bent forward to signal to him; all was well. And he started to search.

  Down below, on the other side, Azim could see only the upper part of the Englishman moving about, sometimes disappearing completely when he kneeled down. Detective Matheson gritted his teeth and shook his head somberly as he combed the roof of what must be a mausoleum.

  Suddenly, after a few minutes, he stopped. He bent forward and briskly stood up, a hand in front of his mouth. He stroked his chin.

  “Something?” inquired Azim.

  The Englishman nodded.

  “Do you want me to come up?” Azim continued.<
br />
  “No.” The word was brusque, yet spoken with a disconcerting softness. “No, I don’t think there’s any need for you to,” added Jeremy in the same almost inaudible tone, as though confiding a secret.

  “So what is up there?”

  Jeremy bent forward to look down on the whole area. He gazed at the towers, the fortifications, and the cupolas that gave this place such an original aspect. Because of the sun he was obliged to screw up his face in order to see without closing his eyelids completely.

  His words were spoken so faintly, as if to himself, that Azim had great difficulty in catching them all. “We are dealing with a hunter, Azim. A hunter without pity, a hunter whose trophies are children…”

  What came next, if anything did, was lost for all eternity among the tombs.

  13

  It was midnight.

  Marion laid down the diary on the edge of the sofa.

  The gin and orange juice was starting to make her head spin.

  She gazed about the dimly lit room, asking herself what she was doing there. The décor resumed its place in her memory quite quickly.

  The afternoon’s break-in was no more than a bad memory, clouded by the alcohol.

  She felt disoriented, thrown totally off-balance by what she had just read.

  Thinking about it, she hadn’t really read it; that was the problem. She had lived the discovery of the dead child. The power of the words.

  They are a door.

  They are the magical incantation.

  The source of spells.

  A gateway to the imaginary world.

  They had carried her off into the film of the past, and she had got lost there.

  Marion groaned as she stretched.

  She was tired.

  “And you’re a little bit drunk, my dear,” she commented out loud.

  She went up to the bedroom and just as she was about to get undressed, she remembered that she had left the black book downstairs. She hesitated; she had no desire to go back down, and yet she wanted to keep it with her, very close. She sighed and went to fetch it.