by Talbot, Luke
“How spontaneous is Gail?” Ben asked. He almost corrected the tense of the verb, but quickly dismissed the thought.
George shrugged. “Sometimes, very. That’s why we got to Egypt in the first place.”
“But only after she’d been thinking about what to do for her dissertation for several months!” Ben countered. “The Gail I know is very deliberate.”
At this, George had to agree.
“Let’s ignore the Professor’s murder. I am certain Gail would not do that. Let’s also ignore the theft. I can’t see a reason for it, nor any capability in Gail to go through with something like that. The last part is her running from the Museum, and ending up in a canal, having run away from the airport. Imagine for some crazy reason she can’t find a taxi. She gets lost. The navigation on her phone is broken. Don’t you think she might have called you?”
“Yes,” he admitted. He remembered checking his phone on Tuesday morning, and there had been no missed calls. He had been having a bit of a get together with some friends on Monday evening, but he hadn’t drunk much; he would have realised if the phone had rung. “She didn’t try to call me at all after meeting the Professor.”
“And accepting that she did steal the books, and that she did run away randomly, isn’t it convenient that she is then robbed herself, and a body is found clutching pages torn from those very books during the struggle?” He stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry, George, I’m getting carried away. This isn’t what you need hear.”
George, however, continued where his friend had left off. “It does sound a bit convenient, doesn’t it? And Kamal seemed only too eager to take it all for face value; he didn’t seem interested in there being any alternative explanation.”
“And then there is the strangest fact of all,” Ben said, encouraged by George’s involvement in the debate.
“What?” he asked.
“That the Professor had to speak to Gail in person urgently, and that this Spanish guy, Martín, also needed to speak to her in person. It seems to me this guy was right, and that lots of people wanted to talk to Gail.” He looked at George. “He thinks that she was abducted, tells the policeman, and then all of a sudden they find her body, with evidence to prove she murdered the Professor. There are maybe thirty million people in Cairo, George. Hundreds of people go missing every day, and no-one even notices. Most bodies aren’t even found. And yet Gail’s turns up so easily?”
They sat contemplating the facts for about five minutes before Ben broke the silence with a curt laugh. “I can’t believe you punched a policeman. And a Captain at that!”
“It was something about the look on his face: so bloody satisfied, so content that he’d rounded up his case.” George explained. “I just couldn’t help myself. I’ve never even hit anyone before!”
Ben shook his head as he tried to imagine the scene in the morgue. “So, what did he do?”
“Nothing.”
“Surely you got fined, at least, for hitting a police officer? I would imagine that, given your circumstances, and the fact that you are foreign, a simple fine would be enough. Don’t tell me you got more than that?”
“Nothing at all,” George said quietly. “Not even a mention. I didn’t even apologise when I next spoke to him. He was so smug and disrespectful; it’s lucky I guess that I only punched him once.”
Ben looked at his friend in utter astonishment. “George, I have worked with the police. I have many friends who are still in the police. In Egypt you don’t simply punch a policeman and walk away. It doesn’t matter if your whole family has just been murdered. It just doesn’t happen.”
“Well,” George shrugged, “it did.”
“Then that is, you could say, the clincher. The only possible explanation for Kamal not charging you for your offence is that he would rather take that than have more enquiries into the case. He was probably relieved that it was all over; he had Gail’s body, and he closed his case. Your punch was like a full stop and he left it at that.”
George dried the last of his tears from his face. He felt a new emotion rising in the pit of his stomach; he felt the unmistakable heat of anger rising; anger that there may have been more to the story than he had already been told; anger at Kamal for not doing his job properly, or for doing it too well. Mostly, he felt angry with himself for not questioning it more, for letting Kamal get away with this. For failing Gail.
Ben looked at him, his face grim. “Don’t worry, George. I’ll join you and Martín for lunch, but before that, I am going to make a call.”
Chapter 50
Gail eyed this new man suspiciously as he entered the room. With his bald head, neatly-trimmed facial hair and thin-rimmed glasses, he looked every bit the James Bond villain. All he needed, she thought, was a white cat to complete the image.
So you’re Patterson.
He arrived at the foot of her bed and looked down at what she could only assume was her chart. From the way she was feeling, she guessed the arrow was pointing up: she was now able to move her head from side to side, even though the restraints stopped her from lifting it. He met her gaze briefly before pulling a chair up and sitting down beside the bed. He was within spitting distance.
She spat.
Without a word, he wiped his face with a towel taken from the bedside-cabinet, before cleaning his glasses methodically. Replacing them on his nose, he pulled a notepad out of his lab-coat pocket and jotted a few lines down.
Gail laughed out loud. “Subject spits!” she mocked.
He turned the notebook round and showed her what he had written.
Don’t say anything. I’m sorry for all this. I’m going to do my best to get you out of here.
She looked into his eyes and recognised genuine remorse. Though her blood continued to simmer nonetheless, she bit her tongue. There were so many words she had been playing with in her mind; snappy retorts, sarcastic comments, obscenities. Time had been against her in that respect. Had Patterson walked in an hour or two earlier, while the rage was still burning behind her teeth, he would have been confronted by a verbal barrage as soon as he had entered the room. But through the time lying restrained on her bed, she had whittled away the options, removed all the obscenities and sarcasm. Eliminated dark humour. She was a prisoner, held against her will and drugged-up to boot. There was only one thing she wanted to say.
“Let. Me. Go.”
Patterson nodded. After a brief pause, he leant forward and carefully unbuckled her head restraint. One by one he continued to remove the straps that held her down, until she was free.
As the final strap fell clear, Gail fancied she was floating above the bed, as if the will she had been held against was stronger than gravity itself. She felt her body moving up, and wondered at how easily she could lift herself, before realising that Patterson was using the controls of the hospital bed. She was now fully upright, and the sudden return of gravity to her stomach awoke a feeling she had not experienced for an age.
“You must be hungry,” he guessed.
She hesitated slightly before nodding. She thought of flight, but she was barely dressed and didn’t even know what was out there. There would be, she hoped, better opportunities. And anyway, Patterson appeared to be on her side; maybe she had been wrong about him.
He started to leave, but she called out to him.
“Where’s Mamdouh? Where’s the Professor?” Her last memory: a knock at the door, Mamdouh had just told her his story, and then she remembered nothing, except for a series of strange and extremely vivid nightmares. “Is he here too?”
Patterson stopped dead, but didn’t turn to look back. He stood there for what seemed like an age. “Professor Mamdouh was an old friend of mine.”
“Was?”
“I understand that there was unfortunately an accident, and he didn’t make it.”
She froze. “What?”
He tried to explain what had happened, though in truth he barely understood it himself. All he could think was that rathe
r than being collateral damage, the Professor had been silenced. Seth Mallus finishing off the cover-up he started ten years ago, he thought. Halfway through his explanations, the Wizard of Oz man came back, holding a tray of food.
Dr Patterson thanked him and put the food on a table next to the bed. She barely looked at it, or the other man.
“Mamdouh’s dead and I’m being held prisoner because of that book?” Gail asked, angrily.
He looked at her apologetically. “I’m as upset as you are about what happened to him, Dr Turner. And please, call me Henry.”
It didn’t matter how nice he was trying to come across, she refused. “I’m being as civil as I can. For all I know you’re only being nice to me so that I’ll cooperate more readily.”
“I had no idea you would be forced to come here, and I have no intention of helping anyone force you to cooperate,” he said. “But you’re right, I do need your help, and even if I had wanted to force you to come here, I would want you from now on to cooperate of your own free will.”
“What kind of psychological battle are you playing with me?” she exclaimed. “Abducting me, drugging me, then pretending that somehow you’re not at all involved in anything that’s happened to me? Are you the Good Cop?”
He motioned for her to talk less loudly.
“And who the hell is the Bad Cop?”
“You’ll find out in a moment, we’re going to see him after you’ve finished eating.”
She looked down at the tray; roast meat and vegetables and some kind of fluorescent dessert. She pushed the table away and it glided softly on its wheels to the foot of her bed
“I’ve finished eating,” she glared defiantly.
Henry Patterson liked Gail Turner; it was something about her defiance. It was ironic that he be attracted to a woman for her attitude, when it was exactly that trait that would make most men think twice.
And attracted he was, from her long dark hair and full lips down to her cute southern English accent that made her pronounce all of her Ts perfectly. He had been smitten before they had met, too, having done a fair bit of research on her profile online since Mallus had advised she would be joining him.
So when he had seen her restrained and drugged in the facility in which he worked, an urge to protect her had overwhelmed him, and even made him have a direct confrontation with Mallus, something he would have been far more cautious about had he been in complete control of his emotions.
It was towards Seth Mallus’ office that they now walked. Somehow, despite the fact that he was walking ahead of her, Gail was setting the pace and they moved briskly down the long bleach white corridor. They walked in silence, mainly because Gail didn’t seem to want to talk to him, but also because he didn’t know what to say to her anyway.
He stopped in front of an inauspicious door set flush with the wall. She positioned herself so that she was standing next to him in front of the door. He caught the look in her eyes, decided against saying anything, then knocked.
“Come in,” came the muffled reply from within.
He let Gail enter, though he somehow felt that even if he had moved first she would still have entered before him.
“Ah! Dr Gail Turner!” he heard Mallus say with glee.
“Ah! Dr Gail Turner my arse,” she exclaimed angrily. “Where the hell am I, who the bloody hell are you and what the bloody hell do you want with me?”
Henry Patterson couldn’t resist a wry smile as he closed the door behind them, if not for the vehemence of her assault on the mighty Mallus, then purely for the way that she pronounced arse.
Chapter 51
Ben hadn’t liked Captain Kamal from the moment George had described him. It wasn’t because he was a policeman: some of his best friends were. It was simply a gut feeling that something was wrong with the situation surrounding Gail’s death and that of the Professor.
Kamal had been quick to put forward an unquestionable explanation of the events, which made him suspicious. It also struck him as being odd that he hadn’t heard anything about Gail’s death in the news. He hadn’t even known that there had been another death in Professor Mamdouh al-Misri’s murder case!
His first step, however, was not finding out what was being covered up, it was confirming for sure that there was a cover up in the first place. He may have had a gut feeling, but if he was wrong, then he wanted to get that out of the way now so that he, and in particular George, could mourn in peace.
“Salaam,” he said as the phone answered. “May I speak with Captain Kamal please? It’s Farid Limam, from the British Embassy.” There was a pause, a brief click and then ringing. He was being put straight through.
Ben loved his country. He was extremely proud to be Egyptian and to come from Egypt, with its vast cultural heritage spanning more than seven thousand years. Coming to his country was, for many, the trip of a lifetime, and an unattainable dream holiday to so many more. There were so many reasons to be a proud Egyptian.
But being Egyptian, Ben was not blind to corruption; for so long it had run so deep it was next to impossible to eradicate.
For the most part, he could understand it. Tourism Police, underpaid, looking for extra money to feed their families by taking people on unofficial ‘tours’ of areas normally closed to the public; hotels in cahoots with taxi drivers to artificially increase fares from the airport; tour guides charging a hundred times the going rate to take tourists to see pyramids, claiming that taxis are simply too ‘dangerous.’
That didn’t really harm anyone: people needed to make a living somehow, and if you’d travelled halfway round the world to see Egypt, you could probably afford it.
The problem with corruption was that once you accepted it, there was pretty much no stopping it. Embezzlement of funds, rigged elections and conflicts of interest were all commonplace in Egyptian politics. Everyone had their price.
That fact notwithstanding, it was no less true that in Egypt bribery and corruption of a member of the police force, especially a Captain of the Cairo Police Department, was illegal. Under recent laws aimed at trying to reduce bribery and corruption, there was technically no cap on what punishment could be levelled by the State if someone was found guilty. More importantly, while in the past there was a tendency to focus on all parties involved, which led to few denouncements, new guidelines were to focus on the corrupt official first and foremost.
Ben knew this. Captain Kamal would too.
“Salaam,” Kamal answered the phone.
“Captain Kamal, it’s Farid Limam here, from the British Embassy. I work with the Consul on legal situations involving British Citizens in Egypt.”
“Yes? How can I help?” Kamal sounded impatient already.
“I have had some concerns brought to me from a British Citizen in Cairo currently. His wife was murdered several days ago, you will certainly remember the case.”
“Gail Turner.”
“Indeed,” Ben paused briefly and shuffled a pile of letters and utility bills on his coffee table. Office paperwork, he thought as he flicked through the paper noisily. “There seem to be some irregularities concerning the findings of your case, for instance –”
“What are you talking about?” Kamal interrupted. “This was an open and shut case. Mrs Turner murdered Professor al-Misri, one of Egypt’s pre-eminent Egyptologists. If she had not been found dead, she would be facing a possible death sentence, British Citizen or not.”
Ben cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Captain, but Mr Turner has highlighted to us some facts that lead us to question this. For instance, she was found in the canals to the west of the city, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you have reason to believe that she ran there from the Museum after killing the Professor, with a clutch of books?”
“Yes. We have this on CCTV footage.”
“How many books were stolen, Captain?”
There was a brief pause. “Eleven. Among them some of the most valuable prints in the Museum.�
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“And how far, if I may, is the canal her body was found in from the Museum?”
“Roughly two kilometres.”
“She ran the whole way? With eleven books in her arms?”
A sigh from Kamal. “She ran at least several hundred metres. We have this on three different cameras outside the Museum.”
“Ran?”
“At quite some speed, in fact.”
“Filmed at night?”
“It is most certainly her. The cameras are the highest possible quality with night vision: they protect the Egyptian Museum, Mr… Limam is it?”
Ben had his tablet computer open in front of him. “Mr Limam, indeed. Captain Kamal, I do appreciate your assistance in this. Please appreciate that I have a British Citizen here who is quite distressed by what has happened.”
“I understand,” Kamal softened slightly. “Is there anything else?”
“Well, Captain, there is. You see Mr Turner has a problem with your assessment that Mrs Turner ran nearly two kilometres with eleven books under her arm. I’m afraid I also find it hard to believe.”
“She can easily have taken a taxi once out of view of the Museum. Because of the number of un-licenced vehicles operating in Cairo, as I’m sure you are aware, there is simply no way of knowing if that occurred.”
“But even, Captain, several hundred yards seems unlikely.”
Kamal clicked his tongue. “Now, why exactly would that be unlikely?”
Ben looked at his tablet computer closely. “Because, Captain, Mrs Turner always travelled by Taxi, from door to door. She practically never walked on the open streets in her home town in the United Kingdom, let alone in Cairo.”
“On this occasion, she did.”
“Captain, I must insist that this was not possible.”
Kamal’s tone had now changed from mildly annoyed to angry. He wanted this conversation over. “Listen, Mr Limam, unless you have some kind of proof that I haven’t seen, in which case I recommend you disclose that information now, you are wasting Police time. That is, I remind you, also an offence.”