Текст книги "Keystone"

Автор книги: Luke Talbot

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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 outof 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 rather 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.”

“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.”

Ben looked up at George and grinned. They’d discussed at length what Ben would say, and how he would try to ‘rattle’ the Captain into a reaction. They could claim they had CCTV footage of their own, or that they had found voicemail recordings that Gail had left for George while on the run from the Professor’s real killers.

In the end, all of this sounded too complicated; too likely to be brushed aside by Kamal. He wasn’t going to be caught out by some detail like that without seeing or hearing the evidence himself. Instead, they had to demonstrate that his only piece of real evidence, the CCTV footage, was incorrect.

And to do that, Ben came up with a big, fat, incredible lie, which itself was backed up by a quick Wikipedia update to Dr Gail Turner’s personal profile article that Ben and George had just made.

If Kamal was hiding nothing, the CCTV footage was genuine and Gail had, unbelievable as it seemed, committed the crimes, then they had lost nothing; Ben had masked his outgoing number on his mobile phone, which in any event was Pay as you Go and could easily be thrown away: they would never trace the call to him.

If, however, Kamal was hiding something and the CCTV footage was in any way fake, then he was sure to find that out.

“Captain Kamal, Mrs Turner could not have run from the Museum, for at least a few hundred metres, turned a corner, and continued to run. With or without the books, it would simply be impossible.”

“I’m getting tired of this. Explain yourself now, or stop wasting my –”

“Because,” Ben cut him off, “Mrs Turner suffered from Usher syndrome.”

Kamal said nothing. Ben looked at George intently and continued. “She was born with the condition, which also affected her mother. It means that she had hearing problems, and in the past five years, her sight had deteriorated to the extent that she simply couldn’t see further than her hand in front of her face. Even then, she wouldn’t have been able to make out the individual fingers, no matter how close. Vision, to Mrs Turner, was simply varying shades of light with no definition whatsoever.”

“It’s entirely possible she knew the direction of the main road, and ran there,” Kamal suggested, though he sounded less confident than before. His bullish attitude had disappeared completely.

“The hearing problems that come with Usher syndrome affect the inner ear, Captain. Mrs Turner had severe problems with balance. She would have needed both arms to steady herself and even then, by Mr Turner’s account, she would not have been able to negotiate the corridors of the Museum without sometimes touching the walls and railings. This would have been quite impossible while at the same time carrying eleven books, no matter how much they meant to her, financially.”

Kamal, again, was silent.

“Captain? I recommend that we meet to discuss this. Mr Turner is, as I said, incredibly distressed. He has sought legal counsel with the Embassy, which we have agreed to provide.”

“Why didn’t Mr Turner advise me of Mrs Turner’s condition?” Kamal said quietly.

“Because in his own words, he didn’t trust you, Captain. From the start you had your own conclusions regarding this case, and you followed those conclusions through with complete disregard for anything he said. You made him feel that he was an inconvenience to you.” Ben wet his lips and smiled at George. It had all gone better than he had possibly hoped, and he was about to deliver what he considered to be his killer line. “Captain, I have to say that with the evidence I’ve seen, and your behaviour on this call, I do not trust you either.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Captain Kamal?”

After what seemed an age, there was the softest of clicks, followed by a dead tone.

Kamal had not simply been rattled. He had not simply stumbled over a few words. He had been so completely taken by Ben’s charade that he had gone.

Chapter 52

“If Gail didn’t steal the books, then she must have been set up,” Martín said, setting his knife and fork down on his half-empty plate.

Ben found himself nodding. George simply sat there, looking blankly into space.

“We know that someone is trying to cover up the finds on Mars, and it looks as if they are trying to cover up the finds on Earth too,” he continued. “Which means that someone must have known about them, before they were discovered.”

Again, Ben found himself nodding. “Which means they must have known about what was on Mars before the mission was sent. But if they worked this out based on the Amarna finds, then Gail would have known about it too.” Which explains why the Professor and Gail are both dead, he thought.

“But why hide proof of extra-terrestrial life?” George said, breaking his silence. “And even if Gail and the Professor had managed to prove it from the Amarna finds, then so what? The news had already reached the media anyway! That’s why she was here in the first place!”

Before either of them could answer, he continued.

“I’ll tell you why: because it’s not proof of alien life that’s being covered up; it’s something else. Something bigger. Maybe the Professor knew something, maybe he didn’t. But whoever killed them wasn’t taking any chances either way,” he slammed his fist on the table. Behind them a waiter shot them a disapproving glance.

“What could be bigger than aliens?” Martín and Ben said in unison.

George looked at them both with fire in his eyes. “I don’t know, but it killed my wife, and when I find out what it is, I’m going to make sure that somebody pays for that.”

Captain Kamal scratched his head and switched off the screen on his desk. There were no two ways around it: Gail Turner just wasn’t going to go away as he’d hoped.

At first, he had been concerned that the lack of a body would make her husband a constant pain, a thorn in his side. Then, he had been delivered a ‘body’.

Back in the morgue, as he’d lifted the sheet that covered her, his heart had skipped a beat. She hadn’t looked dead to him. Motionless, yes. But dead? He just had to hope that her husband didn’t notice. He’d covered her up as quickly as possible, feeling the game was up, but Mr Turner hadn’t suspected a thing, even after being so close to her, touching her. If anything, the punch in the face for his lack of compassion had been welcome when compared to the alternative.

And so she had been taken away, and Kamal had staged the cremation of some poor nameless beggar who’d been stabbed in a back alley. Mr Turner had spoken with him briefly the next day to arrange transportation of the ashes back to England, and that had been that.

“Khara! ” he picked up his terminal’s keyboard and slammed it back down on the desk. “Ibin himaar!”

Because that hadn’t been that at all. What he’d been promised would be straight forward was now turning out to be anything but. And the worst part was that it wasn’t Mr Turner, or indeed anyone else, who had made things difficult.

He only had himself to blame. He had been left to cover the details of her ‘escape’ from the Museum. As far as he knew, she was in perfect physical health. He’d requested the doctored CCTV footage, and hours later it had been delivered to him. Watching it back, he even fancied, for a moment, that it was her running from the Museum, and not some computer generated model. It was, he knew, indistinguishable from real life. Even a trained expert couldn’t tell it was a fake. He knew, because he’d given it to one in his own department.

Usher syndrome !

How could he not have known, when it was even on her online profile page?

He leant back in his uncomfortable chair and looked at the ceiling. He followed a small crack from where it started next to a hanging light all the way across to where it met the wall. The crack had been repaired barely five years ago. And yet there it was again, as large as ever. Possibly even bigger. It had probably been repaired five years before that, too. He snorted in mild amusement, though it was far from funny.

Even if he managed to get out of his present situation, even if the powers that be accepted the CCTV footage over her husband’s testimony and her medical records, five years from now would some crucial piece of evidence be uncovered that would make the string of lies unravel? Would his best efforts barely cover things up, leaving the truth just under the surface, ready for someone to find? Would Mr Turner give it up? What would he do if he were in his place?

How long would it be before more people started poking their noses into the investigation? Into his affairs?

There was only one certainty: whoever was behind it all wouldn’t be there to protect him. He would be on his own. He already was on his own.

It hadn’t, he decided, been worth it at all.

George stuffed his wash bag into his suitcase and grimaced as he forced the zip shut. Behind him, Ben looked out of the window and shook his head.

“Martín seems to be an OK person. I think he is as genuinely bemused as we are.”

George threw his suitcase to the floor and gave the bathroom a quick scan. Satisfied he had gathered everything, he returned to the main room and checked under the bed; socks had a nasty habit of rolling under beds, as he knew from his travelling for work. It was more a force of habit than anything else, though, as socks couldn’t be further from his mind.

“But with all this talk of cover ups, I don’t know where to begin,” Ben continued. “And in any case, it doesn’t really help, does it?”

George got to his feet and checked the cupboard for suits, despite the fact that he hadn’t brought any suits to Cairo.

“It’s actually a shame Martín has to leave so soon. I have enough space in my flat for both of you. We could lock heads and give this some serious thought.” He looked at the Englishman, who was now checking every drawer of a chest of drawers he had obviously not used either  during his stay. “Besides which, I owe you a drink from last time you were here.”

George stopped and looked at him. Last time they’d been in Egypt, he had been with Gail, and they had gotten obscenely drunk in a bar. George knew his friend well enough to understand he didn’t lack tact; he knew what he was trying to do. He forced a smile and nodded slowly.

“I’ll stay a while,” was all he managed to say. Being in Egypt brought back painful memories, but he was dreading returning to their empty house in Southampton even more.

Ben was about to answer when there was a knock at the door.

“Martín?” he asked George.

George looked puzzled. “It shouldn’t be, his flight is in an hour, he’ll be late if he’s still here!” He walked over to the door and opened it.

To his total surprise, Captain Kamal stood in front of him. Looking nervously left and right down the hotel corridors, he forced his way into the room.

“Sorry, Mr Turner,” he said in his strongly accented English. “Please close the door.” As he said this he closed the door himself, leaving George standing in the entrance with his hand clasping an imaginary door handle.

“What do you want, Captain Kamal?” George said, deliberately saying the Captain’s name to identify him, to warn Ben not to speak. If he recognised his voice, who knew what might happen next.

Ben looked startled, but then surprised George completely with a voice he’d never heard before. Heavily accented, he somehow didn’t even sound Egyptian. “Salaam, Captain. My name is Ahmed Mohammed Naser. I am a family friend of the Mr Turner.”

They shook hands, Kamal somewhat reluctantly.

“Mr Turner will be staying with my family for some time while Mrs Turner’s murder is investigated. It is much, much, cheaper than the hotel for such a long stay,” he smiled weakly.

Kamal pushed past Ben and pulled a chair out from under a small round table in front of the window. Sitting down, he leant forward and placed his elbows on his legs, clasping his hands out in front of him.

“We need to talk,” he said, matter-of-factly.

George hesitated. “The Embassy have advised me not to without them being present,” he said, thinking on his feet. He and Ben simply hadn’t thought of what would happen if they came face to face with Kamal. They hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“That’s not why I am here,” Kamal brushed the matter aside with the back of his left hand and put his right hand inside his pocket. Fishing out a packet of cigarettes he lit one and offered the pack around.

George thought to mention that the hotel, unlike most of Cairo, was non-smoking. He managed to bite his lip instead.

Kamal put the pack of cigarettes back in his pocket and looked around for an ashtray. Ben saw an empty glass beside the bed, but didn’t move to pick it up. Following his eyes, Kamal reached for the glass and tapped his cigarette into it anxiously.

“Why are you here then, Captain?” George asked.

Kamal flicked his eyes between the two men before taking a deep drag. “Because I have something very important to tell you, Mr Turner.” As he spoke he exhaled, and the thick, pungent smoke filled the room. “Alone,” he stared up at Ben.

Ben was about to protest; the last thing he wanted was to leave his friend with this corrupt, possibly dangerous man. But George raised his hand to stop him.

He hesitated, trying to remember the name Ben had made up for himself. Abdul? He decided to play it safe. “It doesn’t matter if he leaves or not, whatever you tell me, I’ll tell him anyway.”

Kamal seemed to weigh the options up for a moment, and then shrugged impassively.

 “Those aren’t your wife’s ashes,” he said bluntly, nodding towards the urn standing on a desk behind Ben.

George jumped and took a step towards the policeman. “What do you mean they’re not Gail’s ashes? Where are Gail’s ashes?”

“There aren’t any. There are no ashes of your wife.”

“But I was at the cremation! I was given the urn containing her ashes! How can you dare come here and tell me that this isn’t my wife?” George was within a couple of feet of where Kamal was sitting, and the policeman instinctively leant back to defend himself.

“I’m sorry Mr Turner, I really am, but it’s true.” There was genuine remorse in his voice, and George eased his stance briefly.

“So why are there no ashes of my wife? Who screwed up? The crematorium? You?”

Kamal looked into George’s eyes. “There are no ashes of your wife, Mr Turner, because as far as I know she isn’t dead.”