The Cairo Diary (12 page)

“Yes, in my own time. I'm starting to feel ‘at home,' as they say.”

“Perfect. I was worried about you settling in, it's a little awkward. But I was given to understand that Sister Anne had taken you under her wing, so I know you are in good hands.”

So he was pretending to inform her that everything had had to be orchestrated well in advance of her arrival, presumed Marion. She wondered how many people had passed between these walls before her, entrusted to the brotherhood by the DST. Was it a well-oiled mechanism? That was unlikely; frequency and quantity would have placed the system in danger. A too-predictable procedure was of no interest for this kind of mission, which consisted of making an individual disappear for a given length of time. Nobody must be able to follow the trail back.

Marion decided not to play any longer. “Are you in permanent contact with the DST?” she asked.

Brother Serge hid his broad smile behind his even broader hand.

He turned his head toward Sister Anne to share his amusement before answering Marion. “No, on the contrary. Silence prevails. All I have is a telephone number to call if it is absolutely necessary. We are merely a spiritual community, Marion. Will you allow me to call you Marion?”

She gave a casual nod to invite him to continue.

“Not secret agents,” he concluded.

“I was just curious. Wondering.”

“We render a service. We were asked to do so one day, we agreed, and it happened again, and it is exceptional. That's all.”

“That's all,” repeated Marion, gazing fixedly at him.

“How do you pass your days? You are helping Brother Damien, I understand.”

“Yes. It isn't very exciting, but it keeps me busy. Alas, the cataloging is over and tomorrow I'm back to my idleness.”

“I'm going to give you this bunch of keys. Please take the greatest care of it. With it, you will be able to go wherever you wish.”

He picked up a metal ring, from which a dozen large keys hung. “Be as discreet as you can; the Mount's administration thinks you are on retreat with us. They would not look favorably on us allowing you such a privilege.”

Sister Anne leaned toward Marion. “I will explain the purpose of each of these keys to you,” she said.

“It will be as good a means as any other of amusing yourself. I must confess that your worst enemy here will be boredom. We shall keep you company as often as possible; having said that, I shall not hide from you the fact that our brotherhood has to keep to its normal routine. We cannot find you an official job on the Mount; that would not be sensible.”

“Were you told how long I was going to stay?”

Brother Serge scratched the nape of his neck. “No, not at all. I have no idea. We were asked to watch over you during the winter, for as long as it takes for ‘things to settle down or move forward.' I don't even know what those things are”—he brandished his index finger in front of her face—“and I don't want to be told. It might last three weeks or three months.”

He paused, then added, “Since we do not know, prepare yourself to spend the coming months here.”

Marion took the bunch of keys.

“In the meantime, if I can be of any assistance to you…,” he said, trying to be reassuring.

Marion thanked him briefly.

She knew where she had heard that voice.

The night of her arrival. While she was falling asleep, a deep masculine voice with extremely clear enunciation. He had come to her bedside on that first evening with Sister Anne.

Marion declined when she was offered dinner with the other members of the brotherhood; Brother Gilles—and his aquiline profile—was going to read from the holy writings during the meal. She went back to her house, more curious than anxious to find out if she had received another mysterious visit. Marion walked through all the rooms, but there was nothing to make her think so.

Perhaps it was over.… She had been titillated by the enigmatic letter, and checked out to see that she wasn't hiding any dangerous objects, and now she was going to be left in peace.

Marion prepared herself some instant soup, too lazy that evening to cook.

She placed the bowl on the living-room table, with a bottle of water and a yogurt, and took the black book from her woollen bag.

Marion settled down to eat and opened the diary where she had left off.

14

Jeremy Matheson and his colleague Azim elbowed their way through a pedestrian street in the el-Musky district. Here, everyone moved around on foot, or on the back of a donkey if absolutely necessary; the density of passersby and stalls was such that nobody could do otherwise.

Beneath the high, dilapidated façades with their jutting balconies, the deep shops overflowed at their leisure as far as the middle of the street, thus arranging the rainbow-colored bouquets and veils of exotic fragrance into a long procession.

Jeremy passed beneath a large carpet made from camel skin, displayed on high like a tent, and from which an acidic, sickening smell was emanating. A seller of silk fabrics hailed him, only to withdraw instantly when he saw Azim dismissing him in his own language.

The silken stoles in red, green, blue, yellow, and their variations disappeared behind one another, leaving the way clear to a labyrinth of baskets filled with dates and fat, sugary-scented figs.

Everyone was talking, shouting in Arabic, exchanging money for goods. The men were laughing and guffawing, revealing toothless mouths. People were watching each other and looking covetously from underneath the low rims of fez, tarboosh, or turban, protected from the sun by the awnings of tanned hide, fabric canopies, and other representatives of an ancient architecture.

“Why a ‘hunter'?” asked Azim. “Just now, you talked about the murderer as if he was a hunter. He's certainly a beast, a madman ripe for execution, but why did you say a ‘hunter'?”

“Because that's what he did. When I go on safari, I roam the savannah for hours, keeping watch on my prey from a distance, approaching it very gently, if possible from above. If it spots me I try to bring it where I want it, to enclose it in a natural circle or some kind of cul-de-sac, so that it is imprisoned. And if I have an elevated viewpoint, all I have to do is swoop down on it, and swiftly put it to death.”

“He is above all a sick man, sir. He must be sick in the head to kill a child. And he did not just kill it, he slaughtered it. He is demented!” thundered the little Egyptian.

“Not only that, Azim, it goes much further. He didn't just kill that child, he tracked it. He hunted it down. And when you're hunting, the pleasure isn't in the last second, once you've pressed the trigger, even if that is part of it. It is in the ritual that precedes it, the slow and meticulous quest to detect your prey, track it, manipulate it from a distance, imprison it. That is where the pleasure lies. And that's what he did, this killer; he hunted the child. He takes pleasure in tracking.”

Azim's hand swept through the air in protest.

“And yet,” Jeremy went on, “the murderer was hidden behind the wall, on the roof of a mausoleum, watching for his victim to arrive. He waited, so that he could swoop down on him suddenly, leaving him not the slightest chance of escape. And then he toyed with him.… He has the mind of a hunter, and a perverted one at that. He loves what he does.”

“Why do you say that? Were you inside his head?”

“The clues enable us to state it as fact.”

“Are you finally going to tell me what you found up there?” Azim raged.

They walked between sacks of spices hanging along an endless tunnel, their nasal passages suddenly assailed by successive waves of aromas.

“The reason why I speak of him as a perverted hunter, Azim. Semen.”

“What?”

“You understand me perfectly well. His own, I am certain. He could not hold it in, his excitement was so great. There are whispers that it happens to the greatest hunters, you know, that they have an …
erection
at the high points of their hunt. He couldn't control it. And that is good for us.”

“Good for us? What kind of Englishman are you to say such a thing? You talk to me of hunters, of sexual acts, and … good for us?”

“Yes, highly informative if you prefer,” Jeremy Matheson corrected himself, paying no heed to his colleague's astonishment. “First of all, we can work out his personality more easily. Next, we know that he is definitely a man and not a woman who has escaped from an asylum. We know that he probably wears a bubu or a djellaba, otherwise the semen would not have fallen on the ground; I have difficulty believing that a hunter on the point of swooping down upon his victim would have his trousers undone; and finally, the most important thing assuredly: We know that there is a lead to be followed relating to the way the child spent his time.”

Azim stopped in the middle of the ever-teeming street; a few people bumped into one another, but did not protest.

“I don't follow you,” he admitted.

“Think, my friend.… If the man was there, ready for the hunt, it is because he knew the child would come. Such excitement builds up; I can't imagine it just surges up out of nowhere, all at once—no, he had already been thinking about it for a while when the child appeared. He kept watch on him, before attacking him. And you will surely agree that the caliphs' necropolis is not a place where one meets many children! He knew that his victim was going to come, because he lured him there, or because he knew how the child spent his time. And that's where we must look.”

Jeremy wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve.

“There's still the child's terror,” he added lugubriously.

“The white hair, you mean?”

“Even caught unawares, I don't see how the boy could have been so afraid.”

Azim searched his English vocabulary before saying, “The killer's physiognomy. Perhaps he is as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside.”

“That's possible, that's possible…”

Azim nodded, producing folds of flesh beneath his chin. “In any case I am impressed by this lesson in deduction. A little mad, admittedly, but completely logical. And this does indeed lead us to a trail, bravo. What is more, using the hunter-killer hypothesis one can then add in an element that has worried me ever since I began conducting the inquiry: He has a feeling for the area. Notice how he has always chosen his victims within a very localized area: the northeast of Cairo. From the walls of the Citadel to el-Abbasiya district. He has defined the limits of his hunting ground.”

“Yes, exactly. We may have to go into this further, but to begin with we must deal with the most urgent matter: identifying the child.”

Jeremy took a date he had filched on his way past a few seconds earlier, and popped it into his mouth.

“You have a brilliant analytical mind,” commented Azim. “When you allow the detective within you to express himself, it is a treasure to accompany him in his reasoning.”

Jeremy stared at him for a moment before correcting him. “It wasn't the detective who spoke, Azim; he would not have sensed all that. No. It was the hunter.”

*   *   *

They found themselves in the basement of an age-old building, which extended back far enough for the interior to remain cool despite the high temperatures outside.

The room was vaulted, with a rather low ceiling, lit both by gas lanterns hanging on the wall and by oil lamps that gave off a persistent, fatty odor, mixed with the more terrible stench of meat. It was a pungent aroma, mingling the smell of rotting ham and the mustiness of different foodstuffs that had been allowed to spoil over several days inside a bag before it suddenly opened.

Four wooden tables covered with greaseproof paper stood in a row under two large blackboards.

Trolleys stood alongside the tables. On them, slender, sharp instruments had been set out, each more terrifying than the last; fine blades, notched or with teeth, wire cutters, saws, and even hammers. In one corner lay a half-yard-long ruler, whose yellow paint was now spattered with ring-shaped red dots.

And in the lone, but imposing sink lay a substantial accumulation of sticky instruments immersed in stagnant water the color of Bordeaux wine, in which more solid, stringy substances swam.

Notepads with sheets wrinkled by repeated wetting were piled on a small table at the entrance to the room.

Jeremy Matheson was standing, facing a man of around fifty with a white beard and hair. His black apron gleamed strangely moist in the light from the lamps.

“This is the last time I work in such a rush,” he warned.

“You know it is important, Doctor,” said Jeremy. Then he demanded, “So?”

The old man turned toward the sheet-draped shape on the nearest table. “The poor kid had a very bad time of it, believe you me. He was beaten to a pulp; he has bruises all over his body. His left arm was broken, shattered in three places, the elbow too, plus several ribs.…”

He spun around to face one of the large blackboards, on which different observations were written. “Four, to be exact. In short, I'll spare you the rest. It will all be in detail in the report you'll receive shortly from the office. This is what interests you: He was killed by manual strangulation, I am almost certain of that. Though, in view of all his injuries, the little chap wouldn't have survived very long. The disturbing thing is the appearance of the marks on his neck.”

He half sat on the edge of the table. “You know, Detective, when you strangle someone, it requires so much force to cut off the circulation of air and/or blood that you must press very hard indeed.… And in general, you push your fingers into the skin, leaving traces of the nails, grazes or dermabrasions. In this case, there are actual holes, savage cuts, sometimes quite deep.”

“What does that mean? That the murderer had a knife?”

“No, not really. The mark of the fingers is there; the hematomas are shaped almost like the hands. No, it means that the killer of this child had very hard, very long nails, almost like blades.”