The Cairo Diary

by Maxim Chattam

  Brother Damien did not hide his disagreement with this idea of coming here and proceeding this way in order to learn about the region, but all the same, he complied.

  Marion easily found the newsmagazines she remembered: the Gazette de la Manche, the Petit Journal, and L’Excelsior. She didn’t bother with the first one; it was too local.

  She picked up the heavy piles and made small heaps of the publications corresponding to the era she was looking for, the first part of 1928. All the issues from January to April of that year, she put on one side. Sitting cross-legged between two high walls of books, she sorted out everything she wanted to dissect.

  Then she moved on to the search proper. Page after page, she skimmed all the copies piled up between her legs. From time to time, Brother Damien came over and showed her an article, asking her if it interested her, and if he ought to put it on one side. Marion nodded politely and returned to her reading.

  The part devoted to international news was essentially slanted toward politics, with the addition of a few comical snippets and major scientific news. The morning elapsed to the rhythm of words printed on pages turned brown by time.

  After three hours of reading, Marion looked up and noticed that she was just next to the spot reserved for foreign languages. The place where she had discovered Jeremy Matheson’s personal diary.

  She checked that it really was in the pocket of her trench coat, with the same anxiety as a mother watching her child playing far away in the park. The rough touch of the cover reassured her.

  At half-past twelve she abandoned Brother Damien, who repeated that he was fasting, and went to order a seafood salad in the café opposite the town hall. There, she read Ouest-France, which was still running her story on page one.

  That crazy story that had exiled her here.

  Far from home, from her family, and from her few friends.

  It was nine days since her arrival on the Mount. She wasn’t really missing anybody. Except her mother. Particularly the telephone calls, in fact—exchanging news, sharing opinions on the events of the day. Hearing the sound of her voice.

  Her work colleagues were not vital to her equilibrium. She had known that for a long time. They had never really gelled together. Some were too pedantic, others too superficial, or too systematically intellectual. No, she had never really felt at home among them. And her childhood friends had for the most part remained in Lyon, her native city; they had lost sight of one another over the years.

  Marion ran a finger over her upper lip. The scar was fading; soon it would be no more than a memory.

  The memory of the bluish green neon lights in the parking lot of her apartment building.

  Of that man on his motorcycle, one evening when she was returning from the movies, alone in her basement parking garage. He had braked right in front of her.

  The bike had revved, several times, by way of a warning. Behind his dark visor, the man had stared at her from less than a yard away. His right hand kept on twisting the throttle, to make the engine roar.

  Marion saw him raise his hand, almost in slow motion. And yet she hadn’t managed to run away.

  His fist landed on her mouth, cutting her lip on her teeth.

  She fell backward, more shocked than really in pain.

  And the motorcycle started moving in circles around her. Tight circles; the notched wheels brushed her ankles, her fingers.

  Marion couldn’t get up. She rolled up into a ball.

  And the engine roared in her ears, yelling at her, insulting her, threatening her, promising her the most terrible torments.

  Suddenly the front wheel lifted up, then came down again less than four inches from her head.

  Marion wept.

  She was unable to leap to her feet.

  That was the worst thing of all; that weakness.

  More even than the attack, it was her terrified reaction that had traumatized Marion. Pure, incapacitating terror.

  The wheel that had come crashing down on her hair loomed over her, the motorcycle roaring again and again.

  Then it moved slowly back, before roaring away and disappearing.

  It took a quarter of an hour for Marion to manage to sit up, and another ten minutes to get to the elevator and reach her apartment. As soon as the motorcycle had stopped in front of her, she had realized that this wasn’t just some random delinquent, but a messenger.

  A messenger carrying a warning, when she had thought he was bringing her death.

  As the DST told her, she wasn’t just disturbing things, she was shaking them up. And people were going to make her understand that.

  The DST could come to her assistance, as long as she agreed to disappear. Those she had harmed had cruel methods.

  Either she kept silent, or they would take it upon themselves to silence her.

  As long as she refused to put herself under the DST’s protection, she would be in danger.

  Marion asked the DST agent—not without a certain effrontery—why they didn’t kill her if the others were as determined as all that.

  The man smiled. “We’re not in a film,” he replied. Killing somebody was complicated. And the risks were so great that they weren’t worth the bother.

  But her case was different. People would perhaps attempt to frighten her.

  And … it might go further than that. It would start with telephone calls in the middle of the night—nothing said, just the sound of breathing. Then the letter box would be regularly forced open and emptied of its mail. One day her car would be ransacked. Then her apartment. It was even possible to pay one or two dropouts to set up a rape. That had already been seen. The people she had shaken up were powerful—and determined.

  And however improbable it might seem, murder could be the ultimate step in their policy of silence.

  The DST knew them, but remained powerless. It would take all the power of the whole system to keep Marion safe. The law, the police, public opinion, and the media. The media was the easiest. The others took longer. A few weeks. A few months. They didn’t know how to answer her. And even then, she would have to be cautious; anything was possible, after all. Even famous men disappeared sometimes. Divulging the matter to the press could only protect her if it was accompanied by every precaution. How many men had fallen mysteriously in recent years? Had Pierre Bérégovoy really committed suicide? Then what had become of his precious notebook, which never left him? Had François de Grossouvre really fired a bullet into his head without anybody hearing, right in the middle of the Elysée, while the autopsy had brought to light “a frontal dislocation of the left shoulder and a surface bruise” on a man who was found sitting at his desk? Had Jean-Edern Hallier really fallen off his bicycle all on his own and shattered his skull in the gutter?

  Anything was possible.

  Marion had always regarded herself as a strong woman. A woman with a resilient character, who knew what she wanted. And at the most crucial moment of her existence, when she should have shown her strength, struck that motorcyclist, run away to save her life, she had collapsed.

  The next day she called back her DST contact to accept their protection and disappear. It was the best thing to do, he repeated. The safest.

  She didn’t have the means to hire her own bodyguards and the DST didn’t work like that. Their method was more expeditious, and safer: to make her vanish for as long as it took to prepare for her return, and her future safety.

  Marion folded up Ouest-France and paid her bill before returning to find Brother Damien, who was sitting contemplatively in a corner.

  “I was meditating,” he explained.

  To curtail any explanation, Marion smiled back at him and went straight off to sit between her mini-mountains of newspapers. She resumed her research with an issue of L’Exelsior dated March 1928 and its rather fuzzy photographs.

  She exhausted the pile devoted to this title in an hour and a half, and moved on to the Petit Journal and its illustrated supplement. Brother Damien had been particula
rly silent since she returned from her lunch break. She wondered if she had annoyed him by avoiding his presence. She had her answer shortly afterward, in the form of a gentle snore. He had fallen asleep.

  Around three o’clock in the afternoon, the lines started to merge as she skimmed them, the headlines didn’t mean much, and she realized that she was spending a lot less time on each page than she had done with the first issues.

  Yet it was at that point that her eyes halted on an evocative headline: TERRIBLE DISCOVERY IN EGYPT—MURDERED CHILDREN!

  Her hands gripped the paper and she pulled it closer to her face.

  The discovery, two days ago, of the lifeless corpse of a Cairo boy brings to four the number of victims of an infamous monster who is terrorizing the beautiful Egyptian city. The local police, assisted by a British inspector, are making every attempt to apprehend the bloodthirsty maniac who prowls the narrow streets of the northeastern suburbs. According to the spokeswoman for a fashionable women’s club in the city, “So far, this sick individual has only attacked children from the outlying districts, but who knows if tomorrow he may not haunt our squares and the most famous streets in Cairo!” This sad affair is beginning to worry the English and French families, of which, as we know, there are many, and the governor, Lord Lloyd, may well issue an official communiqué to reassure them in the coming days. Once again, the charms of the land of the pharaohs are associated with the blood and mysteries that seem inseparable in the shadow of the pyramids.

  Besides the emphatic tone of the article, Marion was appalled by the distance and lack of compassion that emerged from it. Particularly on the part of that woman who was unmoved by the dead children but was worried in case the expatriates’ offspring might be potential victims. Marion had difficulty believing that anyone could be so detached. It must surely be a quotation taken out of context, or distorted by distance.… Marion attempted to convince herself as best she could.

  Beyond this observation, she now possessed the proof that Jeremy Matheson’s diary was not the fruit of a delirious mind.

  You knew that. It’s too personal, too well constructed to be an invention.…

  The article finally enabled her to base her credulity on solid foundations. Each line of this private diary was now even more redolent of the scent of life gone by.

  Jeremy Matheson was real.

  And perhaps he was even still alive, somewhere.…

  26

  March 1928.

  Alcohol fumes still hung in the air of the bedroom, heady and sickening. Jeremy opened one eye, and his consciousness attempted grimly to extract itself from the tenacious limbo of sleep. Little by little, light forced its way into his brain.

  The smell overwhelmed the detective, and a violent spasm shook his stomach.

  He lunged forward, so as to vomit on the floor and not on himself, but nothing emerged from his furred-up mouth.

  The beating of his heart began to be echoed by the heavy, obsessive pounding in his forehead.

  It was as if all the alcohol he had drunk the previous night had accumulated behind his eyes after drying out his body, swirling around until it sucked in his eyeballs and his brain in one uncontrollable movement.

  He clawed at his hair, groaning.

  A black patch appeared where he had expected only an expanse of fuzzy whiteness, facing the window. He blinked hard until he managed to focus on it.

  A man was standing there, and had already been talking to him for some moments.

  Jeremy propped himself up on one elbow.

  The face acquired greater contrast, and features appeared against the backlighting.

  “Azim?” asked the Englishman in a cavernous voice.

  “Get dressed, we must talk.”

  Jeremy grumbled.

  “Come on, on your feet,” ordered Azim roughly.

  “What time is it?”

  “Time to talk.”

  Jeremy raised an eyebrow, and straightened up. He disappeared into the bathroom where Azim heard him grousing as he took a cold shower.

  A few minutes later, Jeremy was combing his hair clumsily while his companion sat at his desk.

  “Well?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Jeremy stopped, the comb still in his hair. “Tell you what?”

  “Don’t take me for an idiot on the pretext that I’m not English—or worse, because I’m an Arab! I know why you wanted this investigation at all costs! I know!”

  “Oh, no, Azim, you don’t know anything—”

  “The murder in Shubra. The same violence, the inhuman rage, and the same manifestations of perverse pleasure. You were there, you conducted the investigation! I have read your report.”

  Jeremy tossed the comb onto a lacquered table. He turned around, slowly, then went to fetch his cigarettes and lit one.

  “Tell me why you’re angry,” said Jeremy, suddenly calmer.

  “You had evidence that could be material to our investigation. You should have shared it with me!”

  “Nothing conclusive. I had nothing that could help us. I would have told you; I needed a little time.”

  The Englishman had recovered his serenity. He gazed at Azim through the cloud of smoke that enveloped him, trying to sound him out.

  “Are we partners or competitors?” demanded the Arab. “If we are working together, I would like us to be able to share everything. I do not hesitate to keep you informed of my wildest deductions—this story of the ghul bears witness to that. In return, I expect the same openness, Mr. Matheson.”

  Jeremy breathed out two tendrils of smoke. “I am sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  He held out his hand, with the cigarette held between index and middle fingers, and indicated the sofa. The two men sat down facing each other. Jeremy rubbed the nape of his neck with his free hand, seeking the right words with which to begin.

  “The murder in Shubra was the slaughter of a poor guy, a vagrant. When I arrived on the scene, it was … worse than after a bombardment. The vagrant had been broken in half, literally. The jaw had been dislocated, to make it easier to smash his teeth and tear out his tongue. He was in pieces. That day we were short-staffed, and I had to do everything on my own. Including collecting up the bits of his corpse in the middle of that filthy hovel.”

  Jeremy paused to draw on his cigarette.

  “It was a crime that passed understanding. A kind of savagery the like of which I had never seen. A totally gratuitous murder. I questioned the locals; people knew the victim vaguely by sight—a local vagrant who had no links with anyone, and absolutely no property that anyone might have coveted. He had purely and simply been torn to shreds for pleasure. Anyway, I did my job, looked for clues, witnesses: nothing. The whole thing was done with complete anonymity. I found nothing. The investigation had reached a dead end.”

  He took a final drag and crushed the cigarette butt in a dirty glass that had been sitting on the table since the previous night, then went on, “When I heard those two coppers talking in the corridor about the slaughter of a child, describing pretty much the same thing I’d been confronted with a month earlier, I saw red. Because I hadn’t been capable of tracking down that … madman, a child had endured the same unspeakable torments.”

  For the first time since the beginning of his confession, Jeremy looked Azim straight in the eye.

  “It is up to me to find whoever did this. I have to sort this thing out quickly, I and nobody else. If I could have nicked that piece of filth just after the vagrant’s murder, those four children would be alive now.”

  The metallic echo of a train passing close by filled the long silence that followed.

  “We will have him,” Azim said at last, “I assure you that we will. Now, you say you found absolutely nothing at the first crime that might help us?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Very well.”

  Jeremy recovered his composure. He took a second cigarette, which he held between his fingers without light
ing.

  “We are invited this evening to the home of the foundation’s patron,” he said. “That swine has obtained a copy of your report. He now knows everything about our investigation to date.”

  Azim appeared vexed by this news. “Really? Is he as influential as that?”

  “He is rich. And he has been in Cairo for a long time. Two cards that ensure he wins every game.”

  “I think you are going to have to go there alone; I have already planned my time. Since this story of the ghul seems insane to you, I have taken it upon myself to deal with it and carry out a little more research.”

  “Meaning?” asked the Englishman.

  “I have two or three little ideas to look into. But I would prefer to keep them to myself, unless they come to something.”

  “Azim, don’t waste your time on this wild-goose chase.”

  “Let us keep a clear head. We have nothing at the moment, and I am no use to you, so I shall do as I see fit.”

  Jeremy opened his mouth to insist, but realized how determined his colleague was, and that it was pointless going on. “Very well then, if you have nothing better to do.…”

  “What about you? How are you going to occupy your day?”

  “Delving into Keoraz’s past.”

  * * *

  While Azim was pounding the streets in the eastern districts, Jeremy was visiting his various sources, beginning with a few journalists in whom he had absolute confidence. He then headed for the British Embassy, where he gained access to the archives without having to make use of his address book.

  Methodically, he assembled all the possible information about Francis Keoraz.

  Born into a moneyed London family, Keoraz had studied at Oxford before taking the reins of a family import business. He had not fought in the Great War. While others were dying at the front, he had met his first wife, who became one of the last victims of the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1919, just after giving birth. Immediately, Keoraz left for Cairo with his baby son, fleeing England and his grief. He had taken over as head of his father’s bank, and made it prosper as the years went by.