by Elise Noble
With no sign of Black, I put on a pair of flip-flops and hurried after Zena. Following wasn’t tricky—up ahead, I could hear the exclamations of “Hey, was that a rabbit?” and “Do they allow pets here?” and by the time I got to the pool, Crash was eating leftover lettuce off someone’s plate while Zena peered at a bikini-clad blonde’s camera.
“Over here.” Zena grinned and waved. See? She was happy. “This is Danielle, and I underestimated. She actually took four hundred photos.”
Now I was smiling too.
“I got a new camera,” Danielle explained when I pulled up a spare seat. Ah, a fellow Brit, complete with a Geordie accent and a terrible case of sunburn. “And I’ve been trying out all the settings. Although I didn’t think for a second that I’d find anything interesting on that bloody quad-bike trip. I didn’t even want to go, but my boyfriend insisted. If I hadn’t tied a scarf over my face, I’d have choked to death on dust, and in a year, it’d be my skeleton people were finding up there.”
“I hear those excursions can be kinda rough.”
“I should’ve stayed at the beach bar. They serve the most amazing cocktails. You should try the Devil’s Sunset.”
Try it? After drinking six of the damn things in a row the night before the hotel’s opening party, I’d been the one to name it. Satan gave one hell of a hangover.
“Thanks for the tip—I’ll be sure to do that. I hear a rumour you might have more pictures of the bones?”
“Sure do. Your sister here says you’re a massive true-crime fan?”
Sister? My self-appointed accomplice gave me a not-so-subtle wink and pointed at the camera. Why me? I already had one genuine sister plus another pseudo-sister who actually belonged to an ex-boyfriend but had stuck around to drive me crazy ever since. I didn’t need another. But with little other choice, I had to go along with the story.
“Oh, a massive fan. I listen to every podcast going, even that one where the host has a really droney voice.” I managed a giggle. “I can’t believe there might have been a real-life crime just down the road from here. Kinda creepy, right? I hear the bones were a little way from the path? Behind a rock?”
“Sort of a big boulder. Oh my gosh, I nearly peed on the skull. My boyfriend said I should hold it until I got back, but honestly, I’d drunk four cups of coffee because we left at an insane time in the morning, and I just couldn’t.”
“Been in that situation plenty of times myself. Any chance we could download the pictures onto my laptop? It’s got a bigger screen.”
“Oh, sure, sure. Where is it?”
“In my room. Want me to bring it over?”
“Nah, I could do with getting out of the sun for a bit. I’m turning into a lobster.”
CHAPTER 14 - BLACK
IN THE TIME it took Black to find a case of water, Emmy had managed to round up another woman with no concept of privacy and get ahold of the photos Khaled had been busy failing to obtain all morning.
Now there were two females plus the rabbit formerly known as dinner intruding in Emmy and Black’s villa, and he forced a neutral expression to override his annoyance before he crossed the threshold. He didn’t mind his friends back home hanging out in his house, but virtual strangers invading his personal space tried his patience, even if they did come bearing gifts. So much for spending time alone with his wife.
“That’s a scapula,” Zena announced.
Since when did Bob’s granddaughter know about anatomy? From what Bob had said over a late beer last night, she was a problem child who’d been expelled from two schools so far, had wasted a significant amount of police time when she tried running away from home last year, and who drove Lynn around the bend.
But when Black peered at the picture in question, he had to concede Zena was right. It was a nearside scapula. What else did they have? The skull, mandible, both femurs, part of the pelvis, the sacrum, several ribs… Not so many of the smaller bones, but that wasn’t surprising. Animals would have carried those off.
“How big an area were the bones scattered over?” he asked the blonde, who was lounging on the sofa flicking through a dog-eared copy of Homer’s Iliad. Her glance at his ring finger didn’t go unnoticed.
“Uh, fifty metres? A hundred? Something like that. Do you really read this stuff? It’s so boring.”
“No, I just leave it out on the coffee table to make myself look smarter.”
The sarcasm was wasted on her. “Really? That’s a great idea. I’m gonna do that when I get home.”
“Somewhere between fifty and a hundred metres…” Fifty-five to a hundred and ten yards, if they were talking American. “That’s a pretty big margin of error.”
“I’m not so good at measuring, and I didn’t find all the bones myself. Once I saw the first one, the other quad bikers helped to search. Except for Wayne. He’s a lazy arse, so he just sat in the shade and smoked.”
“How many people in your party?”
“Uh, eight? No, seven, because Tracey didn’t come on account of her hangover. Plus the guide, and there was another Egyptian bloke at the back to make sure no one fell off.”
So the crime scene, if indeed it was a crime, had been contaminated by at least nine people before the police even arrived. Fantastic.
Emmy had already uploaded the photos to Blackwood’s network, so Black retired to the dining table to review the whole set in peace before Khaled arrived. What did they have? Bones picked clean with little evidence of weathering, a dusty blue T-shirt with dark reddish-brown stains and tears that looked too sharp to be due to simple wear. Were they from a knife? And were the stains blood? The shirt was undoubtedly with the police now, so that would be another question for Khaled.
How long had the body been there? Even for an experienced anthropologist, it was difficult to tell. Factors such as temperature, moisture content, and pH of the soil all came into play, and then there were the individual elements. The weight of the victim, their age, their state of dress, whether they were buried or simply dumped—all were variables that impacted on decomposition time. And all were unknown. In the Florida heat, Black had seen a body skeletonise in as little as two weeks. In cooler climates, protected from wild animals, the process could take years. The only certainty so far was that this person had died before Carmela.
Black’s biggest question: was there a connection between the two deaths? He didn’t believe in coincidences, and two bodies turning up in one small town in such a short space of time rang alarm bells. Of course, they’d need to identify the victim before they could ascertain whether there was a link, which was easier said than done.
Hmm.
Or perhaps not…
Black zoomed in on another of the pictures, this time showing the humerus, or upper arm bone. Nothing funny about it if you broke that bone, which Black had done as a child when he fell off the roof of the old stables at Riverley Hall, the estate in Virginia where he’d grown up. He’d inherited the place after his parents died, and the stables were Emmy’s domain rather than his now. But the broken arm was something Black had in common with victim number two. A metal plate was screwed down one side of the bone, and Black zoomed in close.
Not a recent injury—the bone had grown around the screws—but the plate looked complex enough to be custom. Black searched back and forth for different angles and finally hit pay dirt with the fourth shot. The vacuous blonde went up a notch in his estimation. She may have had no appreciation of literature, but at least she’d bought a decent camera.
He quickly attached the picture with the manufacturer’s logo and serial number in an email to Daniela di Grassi, his number two in Blackwood’s investigations division.
Dan,
I need to know where this was implanted, and who it was implanted into.
Black
Her reply came almost instantly.
Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?
Yes, he was. Thanks for the reminder.
The dead have no respect for my s
chedule.
Black held off on updating Emmy while they had company. The less information flying around, the better. The rumour mill would undoubtedly start turning soon, and if the killer of either victim was still in town—assuming for now that some poor asshole hadn’t wandered into the mountains and died alone by accident—then Black didn’t want to tip his hand too early.
Instead, he closed his laptop, then stuffed half a dozen bottles of water into his backpack and the same into Emmy’s.
“Ready to go? Our friend’ll be waiting outside by now.”
“Going somewhere good?” the blonde asked.
“Just into town. One of the bars is showing a billiard match on TV this afternoon.”
“Oh.” Unsaid: boring. “Tell me if you hear any more about the skeleton, won’t you? I love a good gossip.”
Mental note: don’t tell her anything at all.
“What about me?” Zena asked. “I love billiards.”
“This is adults-only billiards.”
“Really? Too bad. I’ll have nothing better to do than stay here and join in with the gossiping.”
Black recognised that smile. It was one he’d seen on his own wife when she was Zena’s age. Overly sweet. Worryingly confident. A hint of happiness because she knew she had his balls in a vice. And cunning. Call Black a glutton for punishment, but he admired that trait in a woman.
Plus he really didn’t want Zena talking. One word to the blonde, and everyone in the hotel would know everything by breakfast the next morning.
“In that case, I’m sure we can find a way for you to join us.” Black looked pointedly at her flip-flops. “You might want to change into suitable billiard-watching attire.”
“What about the rabbit?” Emmy tried. Oh, that glare shouldn’t have turned him on, but it did. “Who’ll take care of her?”
“She’s tired,” Zena said. “She’s just gonna sleep this afternoon.”
“You need to check with your mother that it’s okay to come.”
“She won’t care. Besides, she went sightseeing in Nuweiba with Chris and left me behind.”
“I’ll call Bob,” Black said. “Explain the situation.”
Bob would agree to anything if it meant he avoided getting saddled with a teenager for the rest of the day. And having Zena with them wouldn’t be a bad cover story. Their snooping would be less obvious if they claimed they were on a family hike in the mountains with their Egyptian guide. Khaled would just have to keep his mouth shut.
Emmy’s phone buzzed, and as Black showed the blonde to the door, his wife crawled halfway under the sofa with a flashlight in her hand. What the hell was she doing?
“Got them!” She held up a pair of hiking boots. “Bradley guessed where they were. The man’s a genius.”
A genius with a decorating problem. If they got back to the US and found another pink bathroom…
“Well, hurry up and put them on. The daylight won’t last forever.” He pointed at Zena and then at the door. “You too. Five minutes, and we’re leaving. Don’t forget your sunblock.”
Fuck. Now Black sounded like his mother.
CHAPTER 15 - BLACK
KHALED LED THE way as the group of four trudged up the dusty path into the mountains. If one needed a visual of the landscape, Planet Tattooine from Star Wars bore a remarkable resemblance. Pitted and rocky, the route barely seemed wide enough for the quad bikes that had roared along it not so long ago, yet somehow, the police had driven a truck that way to collect the bones according to Khaled. Judging by the smooth rocks on either side, the track had once been an old water channel, not large enough to be a river, but perhaps a stream.
On past visits, Black had hiked in these hills with Emmy, and today’s pace was unbearably slow.
“Did you find Carmela’s autopsy report?” Emmy asked Khaled. “The toxicology results?”
“The folder is in the captain’s desk drawer. I saw him put it there.”
“Great. Did you take a copy?”
“The drawer is locked.”
“So?”
“I don’t have a key.”
“So?’
Khaled turned to look at her, panting slightly in the heat. Seemed going to the gym wasn’t part of his daily routine.
“Then how am I supposed to get it open?”
“Uh, pick the lock?” Emmy said.
“I don’t know how to do that.”
“Really?”
Sometimes, Emmy forgot that picking locks wasn’t a rite of passage for all teenagers. She’d learned out of necessity to survive on the streets of East London, while Black had taught himself from a book he found in his father’s study. The skill came in useful when playing pranks and carrying out other little tasks at the elite prep school he’d attended as a teenager. To this day, the principal didn’t know who’d sat at his computer and forwarded half a dozen emails from his mistress to his wife. Black had been of the opinion that the woman deserved to know, and so had James, his best friend at the time, who’d acted as lookout. Of course, there’d been questions, but even back then, Black had been an excellent liar. James too. It was no surprise when he went into politics.
Behind them, Zena snorted, then tried to cover it up with a terrible fake sneeze. Black turned to her. “Do you know how to pick locks?”
“They didn’t teach us that in high school. But I wish they had. It’d be a lot more useful than art and trigonometry. I mean, who needs to know about tangents and cosines?”
Snipers, that was who. Calculating range, compensation for bullet drop, wind, and angles when shooting on a slope. And art was pleasing to look at.
“Right, tonight when we get back to the hotel, I’ll teach you both how to pick a lock,” Emmy said. “A desk drawer won’t have anything heavy duty. All you need is a couple of paper clips and practice.”
“But the captain—” Khaled started.
“Think of this as part of the investigation, yeah? Bypassing the occasional lock is a useful skill for any detective, and if you do it carefully, the captain’ll never know.”
Khaled didn’t look totally convinced by her argument, but Emmy wouldn’t back down. They needed those reports, and Khaled said he wanted training, didn’t he? Every good PI cut a few corners now and then.
“How about the rest of the information?” Black asked. “Did you get anything?”
The notepad came out again. “Yes. I got the phone number and the registration details of Youssef’s pickup.”
So he had a vehicle. “What about his friends and family?”
“He has one younger sister and his parents at home. No brothers. After he met Carmela, he stopped going out so much, but he’s friends with Ashraf from the Seahorse Dive Centre.”
Hmm. A diver may have known the profile of the sea wall at the first dump site. Only luck had snagged Carmela’s bag on an outcrop of coral, and if her body had sunk to the bottom, Black would be fucking his wife in an air-conditioned bedroom rather than climbing this godforsaken hill. Sweat dripped down his back as Khaled bent over, hands on his knees while he caught his breath.
“Any previous girlfriends?” Black asked.
“Nobody serious. He always chased after foreign girls, but none of them lasted long except for Carmela. Probably dreaming of a European visa like so many other Egyptian men our age.”
“Are you one of them?”
Khaled shook his head and started walking again. “Dahab is my home. I want to keep the town as a paradise, not run away. How is it you say? The grass is always greener?”
Black understood Khaled’s attitude, and not only that, he shared it. That was why he’d spent the past twenty-seven years serving his country rather than taking his billions and buying a really big yacht.
“Yes, the grass is always greener. Except it isn’t. Your world is what you make of it. The question is, what did Youssef make of his?”
“I will find out more,” Khaled promised. “But so far, there is nothing bad. The chicken shop is a suc
cessful business. I also spoke to the bus driver who brought him back from Cairo, and Youssef told the truth about his journey.”
“Can anyone confirm he was in Cairo for the whole time he says?”
“Nobody I’ve found. Not yet.”
On paper, Youssef made a great suspect. Dating the victim, fond of getting his own way according to Aurelie, adept at chopping up dead meat, and his alibi was shaky. Black had found him evasive, forceful with declarations of love that had no emotion behind them. But that could fit in with Khaled’s theory that Youssef had been using Carmela to get a European visa. In which case, why would he kill the goose that could deliver the golden egg? That was the problem with Youssef as a suspect—no clear motive.
“Are we nearly there yet?” Zena asked.
She hadn’t complained much so far, just the occasional grumble about her boots rubbing and her shirt getting sweaty. When Black spoke to Bob, he’d been only too happy for his granddaughter to go hiking with them. Okay, so Black may have left out the part about visiting a crime scene, but having that discussion would’ve wasted time, and they didn’t have much of that left as it was. Nobody wanted to get stuck on a mountain after dark. Well, Dahab’s version of a mountain. In any other country, it would be called a large hill.
“Another ten minutes, inshallah,” Khaled said. “Maybe fifteen.”
Make that twenty. Black recognised an outcrop from Danielle’s photos, signposting the spot where the skull had been found on her impromptu bathroom break. She sure had walked a long way off the beaten path. Khaled saw the outcrop too and began to scramble over the crumbling red granite that was the basis of most of the rock formations in the region.
“Stop,” Black ordered. “Think.”
Khaled halted mid-stride. “This is part of the crime scene?”
“We haven’t yet ascertained whether foul play was involved. But if it was, then yes, this is part of the crime scene.”
Where it wasn’t solid rock, the sandy ground was covered with so many footprints they became meaningless—everything from smooth-soled flip-flops that probably belonged to the tourists to the chunky soles of police boots that matched Khaled’s.