The Labyrinth of Osiris (6 page)

‘Can we get some tea?’

The farmer nodded, struggling to recover himself. ‘Of course. Forgive me, I should have offered. I’m not thinking straight. Come.’

He led the way over to the house and spoke to his wife. She disappeared inside while the two men sat on a bench against the wall, shaded by a corrugated-iron awning. The children remained where they were: barefoot, grubby-faced, watchful. There was a clank of pots, and then the sound of a running tap. Khalifa listened a moment to the hiss of splattering water, then frowned.

‘You’re still using the well?’

‘No, no,’ replied the farmer. ‘That’s just for irrigation and the buffalo. Our own water we pump up from Bir Hashfa.’

He pointed to a blue plastic hose that looped out of the ground nearby and ran around to the back of the house.

‘The village has got a mains supply,’ he explained. ‘They bring it in from Luxor. I pay them to connect to it.’

‘And these are the people you think have done this?’

Khalifa indicated the dead buffalo and yellowed crops.

‘Of course they’ve done it. We’re Christians, they’re Muslims. They want us out.’

‘It seems a lot of trouble to go to,’ said Khalifa, swiping a fly away from his face. ‘Coming all the way up here, poisoning your well and fields. They could have just cut your water supply and have done with it.’

The man shrugged.

‘They hate us. When you hate, nothing is too much trouble. And anyway, if they’d stopped the water I’d have found somewhere else to get it from. Brought it up in bottles, if necessary. They know me. I’m not afraid of work.’

Khalifa finished his cigarette and ground the butt beneath his shoe.

‘And you didn’t see anyone?’ he asked. ‘Hear anything?’

The man shook his head. ‘They must have done it at night. You can’t stay awake all the time. Two, three days ago. That’s when the buffalo started getting sick.’

‘She’ll get better, though, won’t she, Daddy?’

The question came from the little girl. Leaning over, the man lifted her on to his knee. She was pretty, only about three or four, with large green eyes and a tangle of black hair. He wrapped his arms around her and rocked back and forth. The elder of the two boys stepped forward.

‘I won’t let them take our farm, Dad. I’ll fight them.’

Khalifa smiled, more sad than amused. The boy reminded him of his own son, Ali. Not physically – he was too tall, his hair too short. But the defiance, the boyish bravado – that was pure Ali. He reached for his cigarettes only to remember he’d given them to the farmer. He didn’t like to ask for one, not having made a gift of them, and so instead folded his hands in his lap and sat back against the wall of the house, watching as Mohammed Sariya came trudging up the track towards them. Despite the heat he was wearing a heavy jumper over his shirt. You could stick Sariya in an oven and he’d still be cold. Good old Mohammed. Some things never changed. Some people never changed. There was comfort in that.

There was a clinking sound and the man’s wife emerged from the house carrying a tray: three glasses of tea, bowls of
torshi
and
termous
beans and a plate of pink sugar cake. Khalifa accepted the tea and took a handful of beans, but declined the cake. They were a poor family and he’d rather it was kept for the kids. Sariya came up and took a seat beside them, also accepting a glass of tea. He reached for the sugar cake, but Khalifa gave him a look and he diverted his hand towards the
torshi
bowl. They understood each other like that. Had always understood each other. Solid, dependable, on the level – had it not been for Sariya he probably wouldn’t have got through those nightmarish first few weeks back at work.

‘You’re not going to do anything, are you?’ said the farmer once his wife had returned indoors, taking the children with her. His tone was more resigned than accusing. The tone of a man who was used to being ill-treated and accepted it as the natural course of events. ‘You’re not going to arrest them.’

Khalifa stirred sugar into his tea and sipped, avoiding the question.

‘My cousin said I shouldn’t bother with the police. He didn’t.’

Khalifa looked up, surprised. ‘This happened to him as well?’

‘Three months ago,’ said the man. ‘Four years he worked that farm. Turned the desert into a paradise. Fields, a well, goats, a vegetable garden – all ruined. I said to him, “Go to the police. This is not Farshut – they’ll listen. They’ll do something.” But he wouldn’t, said it was a waste of time. Moved out, took his family up to Asyut. Four years and all for nothing.’

He spat and fell silent. Khalifa and Sariya sipped their tea. From behind them, inside the house, came the sound of singing.

‘Someone’s got a good voice,’ said Sariya.

‘My son,’ said the man. ‘A new Karem Mahmoud. Maybe one day he will be famous and none of this will matter.’

He grunted and drained his glass. There was a silence, then: ‘I won’t leave. This is our home. They won’t drive us out. I’ll fight if I have to.’

‘I hope it won’t come to that,’ said Khalifa.

The man looked across at him. ‘You have a family?’ he asked, his gaze searching, intense. ‘A wife, children?’

Khalifa nodded.

‘Would you protect them if they were in danger? Do whatever you had to do?’

Khalifa didn’t answer.

‘Would you?’ pressed the man.

‘Of course.’

‘So, I’ll fight if I have to. To protect my family, my children. It is a man’s greatest duty. I might be poor, but I am still a man.’

He stood. Khalifa and Sariya did the same, finishing their tea and returning the glasses to the tray. The man called and his wife came out, the children too, the five of them standing together in the doorway of the house, arms around each other.

‘I won’t let them drive us away,’ he repeated.

‘No one’s going to drive you anywhere,’ said Khalifa. ‘We’ll go down to the village, speak to the headman. We’ll sort this out. It’ll be OK.’

The man shrugged, clearly not believing him.

‘Trust me,’ said Khalifa. ‘It’ll be OK.’

He looked at them, his eyes lingering on the eldest son, then thanked them for the tea and, with Sariya at his side, walked down to their car, a battered, dust-covered Daewoo. Sariya went to the driver door, Khalifa took the passenger side.

‘I would,’ said Sariya, climbing in and adjusting the mirror so he could look back at the family still standing in the doorway.

‘Would what?’

‘Do whatever I had to to protect my family. Even if it broke the law. Those poor kids.’

‘It’s a hard life,’ acknowledged Khalifa.

Sariya re-angled the mirror and started the engine.

‘I left a few pounds in the field,’ he said. ‘Underneath a rock. Hopefully one of the kids will find it.’

Khalifa looked over at him. ‘You did?’

‘Maybe they’ll think it was left by a genie.’

Khalifa smiled. ‘You make the world a better place, Mohammed.’

Sariya shrugged and put the car in gear.

‘Someone’s got to,’ he said as they bumped off down the track. Beside him Khalifa rifled the glove compartment in search of a spare pack of cigarettes.

J
ERUSALEM

Once Schmelling had finished his preliminary examination of the body, it was bagged up and loaded into a Hashfela ambulance for the ride down to the National Centre for Forensic Medicine in Tel-Aviv – Abu Kabir as it was popularly known. Leah Shalev and Bibi Kletzmann headed back to the station. Ben-Roi hung around for another twenty minutes going through the woman’s clothes and bag before he too got on his way, leaving the CITs to continue their fingertip examination of the chapel, a task that would most likely keep them occupied for the rest of the day.

‘You want me to get some beers sent in?’ he asked as he left the room.

‘For God’s sake, man, this is a crime scene!’

Ben-Roi smiled The CITs were renowned for two things: their obsessive attention to detail, and their complete lack of anything remotely approaching a sense of humour.

‘
Blintzes?
’ he called. ‘
Falafel?
’

‘Piss off!’

Chuckling, he made his way back through the cathedral and out into the cloister, where he picked up his Jericho and slotted it into its holster. The rain had stopped and the sky was starting to clear, scattered streaks of blue now breaking up the cloud cover like sea-channels through Arctic ice. He stared up, breathing in the fresh air. Then, with a glance at his watch, returned to the glass-fronted office at the entrance to the compound. The three men in flat-caps were still sitting inside, grouped around their CCTV monitor. Nava Schwartz was still leaning over behind them. He put his head through the door.

‘How’s the footage coming?’

‘Still running it off,’ said Schwartz. ‘They’ve got over thirty cameras around the compound so it could take another couple of hours.’

Ben-Roi stepped into the office and looked at the screen. A dozen images were displayed of various parts of the compound: courtyards, alleys, doors, staircases, tunnels – a city within a city, a world within a world. In one shot a group of young men in black robes were moving across the cobbles of a huge square. They disappeared from view, then reappeared in the shot of the vaulted passage in front of the office. Ben-Roi looked up as they trooped towards him and out of the gate, presumably heading for the seminary further down Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate.

‘How many people live here?’ he asked once they were gone.

‘Within the compound itself, three or four hundred,’ replied one of the flat-caps – a large man with a stubbled chin and nicotine-stained fingertips. ‘Another few hundred in the streets around.’

‘And this is the only way in and out?’

The man shook his head. ‘There are five gates, although we only ever use two of them. One down there –’ he waved a hand towards the south-west – ‘for the schoolchildren. That’s open between seven and four. And this one.’

‘Which closes . . . ?’

‘Ten p.m. sharp. After that no one can go in or out till morning.’

Ben-Roi looked at the heavy, iron-studded wooden door, then back at the screen. In the cathedral entrance one of the uniforms was talking to a priest in a black robe and pointed hood. They seemed to be arguing, the priest tugging at the line of police tape and gesticulating. Priests, monks, rabbis, imams – they got it in the neck from all of them. One of the joys of policing the world’s holiest city.

‘The cathedral closes at ten as well?’ he asked.

‘Usually it’s only open for services. Six thirty to seven thirty in the morning and two forty-five to three forty-five in the afternoon.’

‘Usually?’

‘For the last month His Eminence Archbishop Petrossian has instructed that the doors should be left open until nine thirty.’

Ben-Roi frowned. ‘Why is that?’

The man shrugged. ‘So the faithful have more time for prayer.’

His tone was blank, displaying neither approval nor disapproval of the archbishop’s edict.

Ben-Roi stared at the screen, watching as another priest in a pointed hood came into shot and joined the argument in front of the cathedral door. More policemen moved in to support their man, and the confrontation looked set to escalate. He wondered if he should go back and help defuse the situation, but decided he had enough crap on his plate as it was. Asking Schwartz to get the footage over to Kishle as quickly as possible, he made his way out of the compound and headed back towards the station, leaving the uniforms to deal with things as best they could. It was what they were trained for, after all.

The traffic on Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate seemed to have thinned out now that the rain had stopped and he covered a hundred metres before a large Bezeq telecommunications van forced him off the road and into the doorway of the Armenian Tavern, where he had sheltered earlier. Its door had been closed then. Now it was open. The Bezeq van passed and he moved back on to the street, only to glance at his watch, turn and enter the tavern. Leah Shalev had called a unit meeting for 11.15, which gave him thirty minutes. He might as well make use of them.

Inside, a stairway led down into a vaulted basement restaurant just below street level. Its decor, like that of the cathedral, was cluttered and ornate, with a tiled floor, icon-covered walls and brass lamps dangling from the ceiling. There were glass cabinets full of dusty jewellery – necklaces, bracelets, earrings – a pair of fake elephant tusks and, at the bottom of the stairs, a small bar, its shelves stocked with the usual array of Metaxa, Campari, Dubonnet and Jack Daniel’s, as well as more exotic-looking bottles in the shape of elephants and horses and cats. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, a young man in jeans and an overly tight Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt emerged through the swing-doors of a kitchen area in the corner of the restaurant.

‘Hey, Arieh,’ he called.

‘
Shalom
, George.’

They shook hands and the man showed Ben-Roi to a table beside the kitchen’s serving hatch.

‘Coffee?’

Ben-Roi nodded and the man relayed the order through the hatch. An elderly woman – George’s mother – gave a sour smile and set about boiling water. George sat astride a chair opposite Ben-Roi and lit an Imperial cigarette, ignoring the no-smoking sign on the wall behind him. His prerogative, since his family owned the place.

The tavern, and George Aslanian, had come to occupy a special place in Ben-Roi’s heart. In a past life it was where he and Galia had eaten on their first date. He’d been coming ever since, sometimes just for an Armenian coffee or a beer, sometimes for food as well – the
soujuk
and
kubbeh
were mouth-watering. He and Sarah had dined here often, which at first he had found unsettling, given the associations. After a few visits his unease had receded. Half of the Old City – half of Jerusalem – sparked memories of one sort or another and he couldn’t just ring-fence those places as out of bounds. In a curious way it was actually appropriate that he and Sarah should come here – she was, after all, the only woman he had ever loved quite as much as Galia. And the
soujuk
and
kubbeh
really were addictive.