The Lost Army of Cambyses (9 page)

wall.

'Oh God.' She was choking. 'Oh no.'

She ran across and fell to her knees, seizing his

hand. It was cold and stiff. She didn't bother try-

ing to revive him.

'Dad,' she whispered, stroking his unkempt grey

hair. 'Oh my poor Dad.'

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7

LUXOR

As Inspector Khalifa stared down at the corpse, he

was reminded of the day they had brought his

father's body home.

He'd been six at the time and hadn't really

understood what was going on. They had carried

the body into the living room and laid it out on the

table. His mother, weeping and tearing at her

black robes, had knelt at its feet, while he and his

brother Ali had stood side by side at its head,

holding hands, staring at the pale, dust-covered

face.

'Don't worry, Mother,' Ali had said. 'I will look

after you and Yusuf. I swear.'

The accident had happened only a few blocks

from where they lived. A tourist bus, going too

fast for the narrow streets, had spun out of control

and slammed into the rickety wooden scaffolding

on which his father had been working, bringing

the whole structure down. Three men had been

killed, his father one of them, crushed beneath a

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ton of bricks and wood. The tour company had

refused to accept responsibility and no

compensation had ever been paid. The people in

the bus had escaped unharmed.

They had lived in Nazlat al-Sammam in those

days, at the foot of the Giza plateau, in a cramped

mud-brick shack from whose roof you could look

directly out over the Sphinx and the pyramids.

Ali had been the older by six years, strong and

clever and fearless. Khalifa had idolized him,

following him everywhere, mimicking the way he

walked and the things he said. To this day, when

he was annoyed, he would mutter 'Dammit!', a

word he had learnt from his brother, who in turn

had picked it up from a British tourist.

After their father had died, true to his word, Ali

had left school and gone to work to support them.

He had found a job at the local camel stables,

mucking out, repairing the saddles, taking the

camels up onto the plateau to give rides to

the tourists. On Sundays Khalifa had been allowed

to help him. Not during the week, however. He

had begged to be allowed to work with his brother

full time, but Ali had insisted he concentrate on his

studies instead.

'Learn, Yusuf,' he had urged him. 'Fill your

mind. Do the things I can't. Make me proud of

you.'

Only years later had he discovered that every

day, as well as buying them food and clothes and

paying their rent, Ali had put aside a little of his

meagre earnings so that when the time came he,

Khalifa, would be able to afford to go to university.

He owed his brother so much. Everything. That was

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why he had named his first son after him – to show

that he recognized the debt.

His son, however, had never seen his uncle, and

never would. Ali was gone for ever. How he

missed him! How he wished things could have

turned out differently.

He shook his head and returned to the business in

hand. He was in a white-tiled room in the base-

ment of Luxor general hospital and in front of him

the body they had found that morning was

stretched out on a metal table, naked. A fan

whirled above his head; a single strip light added

to the cold, sterile atmosphere. Dr Anwar, the

local pathologist, was bent over the body, poking

at it with his rubber-gloved hands.

'Very curious,' he kept muttering to himself.

'Never seen anything like it. Very curious.'

They had photographed the corpse where it had

washed up beside the river and then zipped it into

a body-bag and brought it back to Luxor by boat.

There had been a lot of paperwork to fill out

before they could get it examined and it was now

late afternoon. He had sent Sariya to make

enquiries about any person reported missing

within a radius of thirty kilometres, thus sparing

his deputy the unpleasant business of witnessing

the autopsy. He himself was finding it hard not to

gag. He was desperate for a cigarette and every

now and then reached instinctively into his pocket

for the packet of Cleopatras, although he didn't

take them out. Dr Anwar was notoriously strict

about smoking in his morgue.

'So what can you tell me?' asked Khalifa,

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leaning against the cool tile wall, fiddling with a

button on his shirt.

'Well,' said Anwar, pausing for a moment to

think. 'He's definitely dead.' He let out a guffaw

of laughter, slapping his belly appreciatively.

Anwar's bad jokes were as notorious as his dislike

of smoking. 'Apologies,' he said. 'In very bad

taste.'

Another chuckle escaped him and then his face

straightened and he was serious again. 'So what

do you want to know?'

'Age?'

'Difficult to be precise, but I'd say late twenties,

possibly a bit older.'

'Time of death?'

'About eighteen hours ago. Maybe twenty.

Maximum twenty-four.'

'And he's been in the water all that time?'

'I'd say so, yes.'

'How far could he have floated in twenty-four

hours do you think?'

'Absolutely no idea. I'm interested in bodies,

not currents.'

Khalifa smiled. 'OK, cause of death?'

'I would have thought that was obvious,' said

Anwar, looking down at the mutilated face. It had

been cleaned of mud and looked, if anything, even

more grotesque than when Khalifa had first seen

it, like a badly carved joint of meat. There were

lacerations elsewhere on the body, too – on the

arms and shoulders, across the belly, on the tops

of the thighs. There was even a small puncture

mark in the scrotum, which Anwar had taken

great delight in pointing out. Sometimes, Khalifa

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thought, the man was just a little too enthusiastic

about his job.

'What I meant was . . .'

'Yes, yes, I know,' said the pathologist. 'I was

being facetious. You want to know what caused

the injuries.'

He leaned back against the examination table

and ripped off his gloves, the rubber making a

snapping sound as it peeled from his hands.

'OK, first things first. He died from shock and

loss of blood, both a result of the injuries you see

before you. There was comparatively little water

in his lungs, which means that he didn't drown

and then receive the injuries afterwards. This

happened to him on dry land and then the body

was dumped in the river. Probably not that far

away from where it was found.'

'It couldn't have been a boat propeller, then?'

'Absolutely not. You'd have a completely differ-

ent type of wound. Less clean. The flesh would

have been more churned up.'

'Crocodile?'

'Don't be stupid, Khalifa. This man has been

deliberately mutilated. And anyway, for your

information, there are no crocodiles north of

Aswan. And certainly none that smoke.' He

pointed at the man's arms, chest and face. 'Three

burn marks. Here, here and here. Cigar probably.

Too big for a cigarette.'

He fumbled in his pocket and removed a bag of

cashew nuts, offering them to Khalifa. The

detective refused.

'As you like,' said Anwar, tipping his head back

and pouring a rush of nuts into his mouth. Khalifa

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watched, wondering how he could eat with that

ripped face only a few metres away.

'And what about the cuts? What caused those?'

'No idea,' grunted Anwar, chewing. 'Some sort

of metal object, sharp obviously. Possibly a knife,

although I've seen all manner of knife injuries and

none that looked quite like this.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, the wounds aren't neat enough. It's hard

to explain. More a gut feeling than proper science.

It was definitely a sharpened blade of some sort,

but not one with which I'm familiar. Look at this,

for instance.' He pointed to a slash on the man's

chest. 'If a knife had done that the wound would

have been narrower and not quite so . . . what's

the word . . . chunky. And look, it's slightly deeper

at one end than at the other. Don't ask me to be

more precise, Khalifa, because I can't. Just accept

that we're dealing with an unusual weapon

here.'

The inspector pulled a small pad from his

pocket and scribbled a couple of notes. The room

echoed to the sound of Anwar's chewing.

'Can you tell me anything else about him?'

'Well, he liked a drink. High levels of alcohol in

the blood. And he would seem to have had an

interest in ancient Egypt.'

'The scarab tattoo?'

'Exactly. Not the most common of designs. And

look here.'

Khalifa came closer.

'You see this bruising around the upper arms?

Here, and here, where the flesh is discoloured.

This man has been restrained, like this.'

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Anwar went behind Khalifa and grabbed his

arms, his fingers digging into the flesh.

'The bruising on the left arm is more extensive

and extends further round the arm, which suggests

he was probably being held by two people rather

than one, each gripping him in a slightly different

way. You can see by the depth of the bruising that

he put up quite a struggle.'

Khalifa nodded, bent over his notebook. 'At

least three altogether, then,' he said. 'Two holding,

one wielding the knife or whatever it was.'

Anwar nodded and, crossing to the door, put his

head out into the corridor and shouted to some-

one at the far end. A moment later two men

appeared pushing a trolley. They lifted the body

onto it, covered it with a sheet and wheeled it out

of the room. Anwar finished his nuts and, going to

a small basin, began washing his hands. The room

was silent apart from the purr of the fan.

'I'm shocked, frankly,' said the pathologist, his

tone suddenly devoid of its usual jocularity. 'I've

been doing this job for thirty years and I've never

seen anything like it. It's' – he paused, soaping his

hands slowly, his back to Khalifa – 'ungodly,' he

said eventually.

'I didn't have you marked down as religious.'

'I'm not. But there's no other way to describe

what happened to this man. I mean they didn't

just kill him. They butchered the poor bastard.'

He turned off the taps and started to dry his

hands.

'Find who did this, Khalifa. Find them quickly

and lock them away.'

The earnestness of his tone surprised Khalifa.

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'I'll do my best,' he said. 'If any more information

comes up, be sure to let me know.'

He put his notebook away and started towards

the door. He was halfway through it when Anwar

called after him.

'There is one thing.'

Khalifa turned.

'Just a hunch, but I think he might have been a

sculptor. Doing carvings for the tourists, that sort

of thing. There was a lot of alabaster dust under-

neath his fingernails and his forearms were very

built up, which might indicate he used a hammer

and chisel a lot. I might be wrong, but that's where

I'd start making enquiries. In the alabaster shops.'

Khalifa thanked him and set off down the

corridor, pulling his cigarettes from his pocket.

Anwar's voice echoed after him.

'And no smoking till you're out of the hospital!'

77

8

CAIRO

'He hated cigars,' said Tara.

The embassy official glanced across at her.

'Sorry?'

'Cigars. My father hated them. Any form of

smoking, in fact. He said it was a disgusting habit.

Like reading the
Guardian.'

'Ah,' said the official, perplexed. 'I see.'

'When we first went into the dig house there

was a smell. To start with I couldn't place it. Then

I realized it was cigar smoke.'

The official, a junior attaché named Crispin

Oates, returned his eyes to the road, honking

loudly at a truck in front of them.

'Is that significant in some way?'

'As I said, my father hated smoking.'

Oates shrugged. 'Then I guess it must have been

someone else.'

'But that's the point,' said Tara. 'Smoking

was banned in the dig house. It was an absolute

rule. I know because he wrote to me once

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saying he'd sacked a volunteer for breaking it.'

A motorbike overtook on the inside and

swerved in front of them, forcing Oates to slam his

foot on the brakes.

'Bloody idiot!'

They drove in silence for a moment.

'I'm not sure I see what you're getting at,' he

said eventually.

'Neither am I,' sighed Tara. 'Just that . . . there

shouldn't have been cigar smoke in the dig house.

I can't get it out of my mind.'