‘If this is the titulus,’ he said, ‘then the identity of these other objects is undeniable. The nails that held Christ to the cross, the Crown of Thorns, the Lance of Longinus, and the Holy Grail.’
‘I thought the Grail—’ began Donaldson.
‘Was a jewel-encrusted goblet of gold?’ Max shook his head. ‘Jesus was a poor Jewish teacher born to a carpenter. This pottery cup is exactly the sort of thing the real Jesus would have drunk from at the Last Supper. I think this little trove is the real thing. Not even King Tut’s tomb matches this place. We’ve stumbled on the most important archaeological find in history. The question is, what do we do with it? We can leave everything here, just as we found it, and bring some archaeologists back here with us. Somebody who reads Hebrew and Aramaic for one thing. Or we can take some of it with us, to make sure it’s kept safe.’
Gerald decided it was time he took back control of the situation. After all, he thought, he was in charge of the patrol.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we have to take everything back to Cairo. As much as will fit in the cars. We’ve already dumped a lot here, there’s room for all this and more. If we leave them here, God knows what will become of them. We can bring Lieutenant Chippendale’s precious archaeologists back later, and let them loose. The war will be over before they even make a start on it. But I don’t have to tell you just how explosive this could be. Private Clark, get on back to the cars PDQ and fetch Leary and Skinner. Clear out some ammunition boxes and bring them here, as many as the three of you can carry.’
Max tried to protest.
‘Sir, don’t you think—?’
‘I’m not here to think. I leave that to Johnnies like you. You’ve just done your thinking, but I’m in charge here, and I’m making the decisions. If the Tuareg lay their filthy hands on these, they’ll probably chuck them in a bin somewhere, rip out anything that breaks off, and flog it all up in Ghadames for two bob apiece. They’re Muslims, none of this would mean a thing to them.’
At that moment, a sound came from the direction of the stairs down which they had entered, and when they looked round they could see a wavering light growing in intensity among the shadows.
‘I thought A’isha was scared of this place,’ Donaldson said.
But it wasn’t A’isha. Gerald let his torch beam play across the entrance to the crypt. A pair of feet came into view, followed by a dark-blue robe that came through the opening. A Tuareg man, fully veiled, appeared, hesitating as he tried to adjust to the flickering play of shadow and light, the whiteness of the sepulchres, and the figures of the four Englishmen standing among them.
It took a few seconds for Gerald to recognise the newcomer. Then he noticed the coarsely stitched leather wallets slung over his shoulder, containing a Qur’an and talismans. He lifted his left hand to shield his eyes from the light, and Gerald caught sight of the masbaha, the amber rosary hanging from his wrist. It was the Anislem, Shaykh Harun agg Da’ud. As he stepped forward, trying to escape the light, his right hand came forward, and Gerald saw he was carrying a gun, the service revolver he had given earlier to the headman.
‘Shaykh Harun!’ called Gerald. ‘Al-salam ‘alaykum. You have found us in a very strange place. A holy place. The tomb of the Prophet Jesus.’
Gerald had thought quickly, referring to the fact that the Qur’an honours Jesus, not as the Son of God, but as a mortal prophet, lesser only to Muhammad himself. If Shaykh Harun recognised this and could be persuaded that this was a holy site connected to one of Islam’s great prophetic figures, perhaps any looming trouble could be averted. He was to be disappointed.
‘This place does not belong to you. These are the tombs of our ancestors. This is the sacred city of Wardabaha; you have found the tombs of the king and queen of the city, but you have no right to be here. You have to leave this place and never return.’
‘This place was built by my people,’ declared Gerald impetuously. ‘It is a Christian place. It is as I just said, it is the tomb of the Prophet Jesus.’
The Shaykh took several steps forward among the ossuaries. The light in his left hand shook, throwing shadows on the amber beads. In his dark robes, he was invisible unless light fell on him, and even then only his suspicious eyes were visible.
‘Leave,’ he said. ‘Leave now or suffer the penalty.’
‘I think we should talk. My friend here has healed the son of Si Musa. We have shown our friendship towards the Kel Tamasheq. We have demonstrated our loyalty to the people of Ain Suleiman.’
The Anislem made a noise in the back of his throat, a light cough that seemed to sneer at what Gerald had just said.
‘Si Musa is dead. His wife, who helped you, is dead. They have been punished, and Allah will punish them in the next world. Si Musa allowed infidels to defile this place. His wife showed you to this sacred habitation belonging to our ancestors. A kafir defied the will of Allah when he saved the child from a certain death. I could not let so much go unpunished. I have taken charge of Ain Suleiman. If you leave now and swear on whatever you hold sacred never to return to this place, you may leave with your lives. Otherwise, not one of you will see his home again. Your bones will shine white in the sand for a little time before they return to dust.’
‘I told Si Musa why we came here. You need our help. If the Germans come here, they will massacre everyone in this oasis. I swear by this holy place and the sacred objects it contains that the Germans will bring great evil on the Kel Tamasheq. They have no mercy. Even if Si Musa and his wife and son are dead, you still need our help.’
The Shaykh lifted his right hand and pointed the gun at Gerald.
‘Put the gun down!’ Gerald shouted. He had not re-armed, there was nothing he could do.
The Anislem fired, a single shot that echoed wildly through the enclosed space, as though a stone had cracked open, or a tomb.
As the sound died away, everyone looked round. Gerald realised he was still standing and seemed to be unhurt. He looked round to see Max on his right and Donaldson a few paces away to his left. But when he turned, Clark had disappeared. Looking down, he saw the soldier lying on his back, tossed awkwardly across one of the tombs.
Shaykh Harun started to aim the gun again, but as he did so another shot rang out, louder than the first, if that was possible, knocking him back as though a mule had kicked him hard in the chest. His body crashed to the ground. Gerald stepped across to him and bent down.
‘He’s dead,’ he said.
Donaldson ran to Clark, but it was too late. The Anislem’s bullet had taken the boy in the throat.
The gunshot hung in the air for what seemed an age. Its reverberations had invaded every inch of the crypt, and its ringing echoed in their ears for longer than it took for the air to grow still and silence to make its presence felt once more in the narrow chamber.
‘I think it’s time we made ourselves scarce,’ said Max as he returned his pistol to its holster.
5
In the Bleak Midwinter
Woodmancote Hall
Near Bishop’s Cleeve
Gloucestershire
England
December 2008
The police had been and gone, two unmarked vans had taken the bodies away, the house party had been questioned, fingerprinted, and sent home. Throughout the day, three teams had remained at the hall, carrying out further forensic work in the library, and on doors and windows in its vicinity. Uniformed police, plain-clothes detectives, forensic specialists, and pathologists had passed in and out in an unending stream. Fingerprints had been lifted, everyone in the house had been fingerprinted, DNA samples had been taken from the room and the guests, everything in sight had been photographed and labelled, evidence bags had been filled with bits and pieces, and everyone above the age of three had been invited into the library to relate what they remembered of the night past.
Rather than hang around waiting to be questioned, several guests had taken on themselves the mournful task of taking down the C
hristmas decorations. The police had let them get on with it: the festive tree, the presents at its foot, the table laid for lunch, the lights, the candles, the nativity had all seemed the saddest things in the world, and no one could face them, not even the children. They’d questioned the parents first, so they could take their little ones off, along with their presents, to try to make some sort of Christmas for them, to find Father Christmas hidden somewhere at last, to forget the screams that had dragged them from their stocking-festooned beds in the bitter cold, greeted on the happiest morning of the year by adults weeping, and a sense of horror in a world of carols, angels, and midwinter lights.
The hall had been closed and sealed with police tape. The parish priest had come to pray at the door, as if his words and the tape together formed a ritual of closure. He too had gone on his sad way, wondering what to say to his evening congregation. Ethan and Sarah, barred from the hall, had taken themselves to the lodge, one hundred yards from the main building.
Outside, the snow continued to fall, and in the parish church, a diminished congregation bowed their heads and knelt and offered up thanks for the birth of God. In the darkling woods, birds shivered in their nests, foxes, badgers and squirrels huddled in their lairs, and silence clung to the trees. Smoke rose above the village, where wood fires crackled and spat, turkeys and geese roasted in hot ovens, puddings boiled, children played with new toys, and television screens flickered with inane shows beamed in from an array of satellites that, remote and unconcerned, circled a world of Christmases.
Ethan had sent Mrs Salgueiro off to stay with relatives. Her nerves had suffered a severe shaking, and the village doctor, who had been snatched with ill humour from his Christmas holiday, had given her a bottle of tranquillisers to ease them. She had not been the only one for whom he had prescribed that morning, but she had been Gerald’s housekeeper for twenty years (and some thought rather more than his housekeeper for some time), and she took his death – and the manner of it – badly.
Ethan made a last tour of the grounds. While he could not be part of the murder investigation, Bob Forbes, who headed it, had made him responsible for keeping a general eye on things. He went back to the lodge and returned to the small library on the ground floor, where he had spent time earlier. He was surprised to find Sarah in an armchair, reading. A bright log fire was burning in the grate; the flames danced like sprites, their reflections painting patterns of light and shade across the young woman’s face.
‘Good book?’
She looked up.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I picked it out at random. I just wanted to read something. After everything. I thought reading might help clear my head.’
‘And has it?’ he asked. ‘Has it helped?’
She shook her head. He noticed that she hadn’t fixed her hair or put on make-up since waking earlier. The smile he’d liked so much had vanished as if for good.
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ he ventured. ‘How long will it take you to get back to Oxford? To be honest, I thought you’d be gone by now. There’s been a lot more snow through the day. The roads are hard going.’
The smile returned for a brief moment.
‘I’m not driving back yet. I’ve got time on my hands, so I thought I’d hang on here as long as necessary.’
‘Necessary?’ He sat down on the chair on the other side of the fireplace.
‘Ethan, you’re not very bright, are you? You’ve decided to stay on at the lodge because you’re a policeman and can be trusted to look after the crime scene and see off any intruders. Haven’t you given any thought to yourself?’
‘Myself? I’m on leave till—’
‘That is such a male response. “I’m on leave.” I didn’t ask about your working arrangements, I asked about you.’
He reached over for the poker, stirred it among the flames, and added several fresh logs. They spat fiercely, sending bright sparks up into the wide chimney.
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I can look after this place on my own till Mrs Salgueiro comes back.’
‘You’re still avoiding my question.’ She closed her book and let it fall to the floor. ‘Without Mrs Salgueiro, you are alone in this lodge. Your bedroom here is just a stone’s throw from the room in which your grandfather and his friend were brutally murdered. Even though you have probably seen dozens of murder scenes in your time, and are probably inured to such things, you were badly shaken when you came out of the study this morning. Do you expect me to believe that staying here on your own will be a breeze, that you won’t sit and brood about this from morning to night?’
‘Sarah, I—’
‘Whether or not you’re willing to strain your emotions like that, I’m not going to let you. You have a companion for the duration. I will be your housekeeper. I will cook for you and eat with you, I will talk to you any time you feel like talking, I will go for long walks with you in the freezing cold, and I will read to you, play Scrabble with you, watch old movies on TV, or sit and listen to music. The only things I will not do are to wash your socks and underwear, put chocolates on your pillow last thing at night, or sleep with you. We might even get to know one another after all these years. Now, is this a deal or not?’
He sat for half a minute, totally bewildered. When he got his wits back, he ventured a smile.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m not a bad cook. Really.’
She grinned.
‘Really?’
The scepticism in her voice wakened memories of burnt toast and stringy scrambled eggs. He shook his head.
‘If I take care, I can do a mean baked beans on toast.’
She winced at the thought.
‘In that case, you should offer up a prayer of thanks, because I am a good cook. Cordon bleu is nothing to me. You were no doubt facing the prospect of beans on toast for breakfast, lunch, supper, and a late-night snack. The fact that you can’t cook is reassuring. I don’t like men who are cleverer than me. I may take pity on you and marry you after all. How come you never learnt—?’
She cut herself off, realising what she’d just said.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was stupid of me. I should have thought before opening my big mouth.’
‘That’s OK. It’s been eight years. You were only a teenager.’
‘But I remember Aunt Abi well. She was lovely. We were devastated when…’
‘We all were. It was devastating for everyone. The family. All her friends.’
‘You found her, is that right?’
‘Not exactly. But more or less. I identified her.’
Abi had been raped and murdered on a summer evening while jogging in a local park. Ethan had been the first detective on the scene, summoned by the patrol car that had gone to the secluded spot where she’d been found. He had gone there expecting to find a stranger, and looked down on the face of his dead wife, whom he’d last seen only two hours earlier, before he went on duty. Finding his grandfather hanging in his study had brought the whole thing back again. Despite his first reaction to her suggestion, he was glad Sarah had decided to stay. The murder investigation was already under way, ruining Christmas for scores of policemen and policewomen throughout the county. He desperately wished he could be one of them, but getting involved in a family case was out of the question. For all he knew, he was the prime suspect.
‘When do you want to eat?’ she asked.
‘How about now? I’m starving. I’ve only snatched a few handfuls of food all day. There were three families staying in the lodge, all with children, so the kitchen’s still stuffed with food.’
‘I’d forgotten about that.’ She frowned. ‘I hate to think of it all going to waste, especially today. Do you think some charity could make use of it? And what about the main kitchen in the hall?’
The armchair was too low and soft to leap out of, but Ethan struggled to his feet.
‘The hall could be more difficult, but I could speak to someone on the force. This one’s easier. I bet more
than one charity could put all this to good use. As long as they can get here through the snow.’
A couple of phone calls later and a shelter for the homeless in Cheltenham had promised to get a van over that evening. A police van would take what they could from the hall kitchen and pass it on to the Salvation Army. Ethan and Sarah headed for the kitchen, where they sorted out the food they would need to keep for themselves, and put as much of the rest into boxes as they could.
Sarah raided the cupboards and the large fridge. She found a box of carnaroli rice, large prawns, cheese, and a bottle of Pino Grigio.
‘Fancy a risotto?’ she asked. ‘I’ll have to use stock cubes, but otherwise there’s enough here to make something halfway decent.’
He nodded and offered to help.
‘Ethan,’ she said, ‘there is a simple rule in every good home kitchen: one chef is enough. Go and sit down over there and talk to me.’
She grabbed an onion and began to peel it. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at her. It was beyond him that someone so lovely should have emerged from his family, a tribe not well noted for the personal beauty of its members.
‘Tell me more about yourself,’ he said. ‘I’m not even sure what you do exactly. You’re a lecturer, I know that, and since you live in Oxford, I presume you teach there.’
‘Mostly I do research,’ she answered, her eyes watering in the fume from the onions. ‘And I do some teaching from time to time.’
‘Poor you. What’s your subject?’
‘Ethan, could you find a risotto pan? Something cast iron if there is one.’
He got to his feet again and started hunting through cupboards. Through wet eyes, she watched him. His movements relaxed her. He seemed at ease in his body, slow, capable, intent on what he was doing, yet clearly interested in what she had to say.
‘Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic,’ she said. ‘I’m based in the Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, out in Yarnton. Actually, my main field is documentary and epigraphic evidence for archaeology in the Holy Land. I go out on digs, and when anything turns up that needs to be deciphered, they whistle and I come running. I specialise in the Roman period. My thesis was about the destruction of the Temple. You’d be bored to tears. I’m really very dull, you know.’
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