The Cairo Diary (36 page)

Marion forced herself to run faster, with every ounce of her strength.

Despite everything, the fugitive was getting farther away, and changed direction with great agility.

Then came a long straight line, at the foot of the Merveille. Marion closed her eyes for a second to give herself energy.

She concentrated on her breathing. On the way her arms pumped back and forth, whipping the air with her hands. On the rhythm of her thighs.

Lift your knees, bring your heels up to your backside.

Her target did not enjoy the same freedom of movement, since its legs were hampered by the long robe.

And little by little, Marion caught up.

Instead of bringing her to life, the oxygen was burning her lungs.

Then the fugitive halted in front of a door at the end of the esplanade, took a bunch of keys identical to Marion's from the folds of the robe, and started looking for the right key.

Her keys. In the confusion, Marion hadn't brought them. If the other person succeeded in locking the door behind them, it was finished; she would lose her quarry for good. And the black book along with it.

She forced herself to breathe out as far as she could, and greedily took her fill of fresh air.

She sped up a little more. She was on the point of collapse, she could feel it.

And the silhouette raised a key to its eyes before sliding it into the lock.

43

Marion was nearing the end of the chase at top speed.

She was going much too fast. She must slow down.

The door opened.

The thief was about to disappear.

Marion did not slow down; on the contrary, she put everything she had left into one desperate gallop.

The wall rose up suddenly.

The silhouette withdrew the key from the lock, preparing to cross the passageway.

Marion saw the stonework fill her field of vision, far too rapidly.

She just had time to fold her arms in front of her to protect herself.

And she crashed straight into the individual who was attempting to flee.

The impact was so hard and so sudden that the two bodies were thrown together, violently crushing the fugitive against the stone.

Marion fought for breath, all the air suddenly expelled from her chest. Her thief acted as a buffer, absorbing most of the impact and crashing into the wall.

The bunch of keys fell to the ground. And so did the book.

All the same, Marion was groggy, and she staggered, instinctively drawing back. The hooded figure grabbed the door handle so as not to fall over. With a clumsy grab, it retrieved its keys. Marion was recovering slowly. She realized that the other person was in no better state than she. It was groping around with its gloved hands, in search of the book.

Her head still spinning, Marion approached.

“No, you don't,” she managed to gasp. “Oh, no … if you want … the book … you … you'll have to ask me for it, face-to-face.”

She came closer.

Immediately, she sensed panic in the figure, which leaped forward and slammed the door shut behind it.

Marion recognized the sound that followed as the sound of the key relocking the door.

The thief was escaping.

And the irregular pounding of footsteps sounded on the other side of the wall. The figure was having difficulty in getting away, still suffering from the recent collision.

The thief had escaped.

All the same, he or she had had to abandon the book in order to do so.

Marion collapsed to one side, and hugged it to her.

44

Jeremy climbed the steps up to the rail car, all his senses on alert, already concentrating on the evasive move he would make if he detected a hostile presence, preparing to strike.

The darkness was too intense to make out his surroundings clearly. The blackness of the night was amplified inside by the narrowness of the windows.

First he heard it coming.

Then he saw it.

A silhouette, rushing to meet him.

He did not move.

It raised an arm to strike him.

Jeremy made not the slightest attempt to escape.

And he took the violent slap full in the face.

“How can you think that?” cried Jezebel, the sound of sobbing still in her voice.

He had recognized her shape, the way she moved, and her perfume the moment she appeared in the half-light.

“Humphreys came to the house to report what you said about Francis. His
son
has been abducted! What more do you need? Well? Tell me, Jeremy, what more? Does he have to die himself? Or will you go on relentlessly pursuing his corpse? In the end, what has he done?”

She turned away and, clearly on edge, strode back and forth across the sitting room.

Jeremy breathed out through his nose. Suddenly, the alcohol and the tiredness weighed a little more heavily upon him. He picked up a packet of matches and struck one to light an oil lamp, whose light licked at the velvet drapes and the wood in the room.

Jezebel was now standing very straight, facing him.

The short flame sparkled against the jade, ebony, and ivory of her eyes, emphasizing the sleek lines of her beauty, her pale pink lips, her porcelain skin, and her intoxicating curls. She shone like a precious stone.

Jeremy gazed upon her like a work of art; his eyes lingered on the beauty spot placed in the middle of her cheek like the signature of a great master.

“Don't tell me this is because of me,” she said, her challenge barely louder than a whisper.

A fringe of tears appeared along the bottom of her eyelids.

She whispered again, painful effort distorting her intonation: “Why can't you forget me, Jeremy?”

Jeremy, whose shoulders were drooping, drew himself up. Raising his head, he swallowed, then poured himself a glass of whiskey, and gulped down a mouthful straightaway.

“Don't pursue him, please,” she murmured. “He is my only family, you know that.”

Jeremy rubbed the palm of his hand on his jaw, the skin scratchy with a fresh growth of beard, then massaged his temples. “Look on the desk,” he said eventually.

Jezebel hesitated, then went over to the desk.

“Do you see that notebook in the middle?” he asked. “That's the diary I began at the start of this investigation. This evening I shall add my final thoughts to it, my recent conclusions, and it will be almost finished. The truth is inside it. If something were to happen to me, everything is in there. I want you to know that.”

He turned to look at her. “Do you still like Puccini?” At which he wound up a gramophone, which launched into the opening notes of
Turandot
.

Jezebel remained silent for a few bars, then she sat down at the desk and started playing with a lock of her hair. Her other hand stroked the wooden surface of the desk, lightly brushing the objects placed upon it; her eyes lighting on a pile of dog-eared books.

“
One Thousand and One Nights,
” she said as she read the spine. “Francis is crazy about it,” she admitted weakly.

Jeremy snapped back instantly: “I know, I remember now that it was with those stories that he seduced you at the New Year's party.… My murdered colleague believed that was a lead for our investigation. Myself, I think that the killer uses them to play on myths, to re-create a legend. Because that immortalizes him, at the same time keeping the superstitious natives away.”

Jezebel's fingertips moved to the area between her eyebrows, and she shook her head. “Why do you persist?” she wanted to know. “You know that Francis is not a monster. He hasn't killed anyone, you know that.”

Her voice was saddening and sweet. Jeremy thought he could make out a tear, trickling along the bridge of her nose.

“You know me,” she went on. “I can sense what people are like, I'm not wrong about what they are. It's in me. I am an orphan from Alexandria, a little girl with foreign parents who abandoned me in this land where I am nothing, and I have become a respectable woman. Thanks to that gift, I can
feel
people. I have created myself all by myself, you know that very well; I have climbed the steps of the world without any help. Today I have found Francis, and I know what he is, I know his good qualities and his flaws. He is hard, it is true, but he is absolutely not the man you think he is. You can't pursue us like this, you can't.”

Jeremy drank a mouthful of whiskey, listening to the words of this woman he loved. Puccini was growing more passionate.

He was willing to give anything to feel her snuggle into his arms. To make love to her, one more time. He missed the warmth of her body, the folds of her skin, the taste of her sex, and of her tongue with its sweet flavors. She was standing there, only a few feet away, within reach. And yet so far away.

“You have to accept that I no longer belong to you,” she continued. “I am going to be blunt with you, Jeremy. I can feel people, and when it came to you, I never managed to work out what you were. At first, that's what attracted me to you, that savage charm that great explorers have. Then that was what irritated me, before … before it began to scare me.”

She gazed at him in the amber-colored chiaroscuro that divided the desk. “You have never really understood why I have been so hard with you since we parted, have you? To help you to draw a line under us. And because your fidelity and your naïve hope got the better of my patience in the end. By constantly harassing me with your indiscreet questions about my relationship with Francis, you pushed me to the limit. If you and I didn't stay together, it is because you disturbed me, Jeremy.”

The green of her eyes hypnotized the detective.

“In your soul, you possess the indifference of those who have gone too far, too far into nature, too far into solitude, and who have never returned. You are never entirely here, Jeremy. There is always a part of you that remains there, in those strange lands that you alone know, in those memories of war, in those wanderings through the savannah, and here”—she raised both palms to the ceiling—“in the muffled distance of this rail car. What is inside you escapes me, and makes me afraid. I think that you are a delectable lover, but you will never be an attentive husband, still less a good father. That goodness and that ability to give to others are no longer possible for you; you have lost them over the course of the last ten years, in all of this tormented life. The other evening, when you were telling that sordid story of what you experienced in the trenches during the war, I understood; that is why I wept. I understood, you know. And yet you are still this … ghost; you are never really here. You are not like us. I am sorry.…”

She wiped her eyes swiftly, before delivering the coup de grâce: “But you cannot hate Francis for bringing me everything that you could not give me.”

Not another word sullied the intensity of their gaze as they looked into each other's eyes. Puccini and his dramatic melodies carried them into this soul-to-soul exchange. At last, Jeremy put down his empty glass and broke the bond by turning around to go and fetch an object wrapped in a piece of cloth.

“Soon you will really understand who I am,” he said at last. “I am your guardian angel, Jezebel. And like all angels, I am half invisible. One day perhaps, you will see me as I really am.”

From the cloth, he took a Colt M1911 semiautomatic and the magazine that accompanied it, loaded it, and slid it into a holster that he retrieved from a shelf.

“And Francis is the devil in disguise. You have been manipulated, that's all.”

Jezebel darted her flaming eyes at him and, with a furious sweep of her arm, knocked over everything on the desk.

“Enough!”
she shrieked.

Then she jumped up and ran outside.

Jeremy clenched his fists.

He put on his holster under his jacket, picked up his diary, which he slid into one of his pockets, and left in the furious wake of this ethereal siren.

He ran behind her to sharia Abbas, where she jumped onto the first streetcar that came, just as the doors were about to close.

Jeremy sped up, the alcohol making his blood heavy. His poorly oxygenated brain weighed three times as much as usual, and his legs would not obey him as quickly as he wished. He forced the pace even more, struggling for breath, and leaped onto the rear footplate of the streetcar while it was picking up speed.

The lights of the city hummed in the darkness; they processed into the distance behind the windows of the tram, drowning in between the passersby and the cars that were driving in the opposite direction.

Jeremy opened the door and entered the compartment. He pushed his way through the other passengers and seized Jezebel by the wrist. “You are going to hate me,” he carried on. “I know that. I shall be your scapegoat, but one day, one day, you will understand. You will accept the truth. You must know that I will be there, I will wait.”

Roughly, she tore her arm from the detective's grasp. “You are making a monumental mistake, Jeremy. Monumental. Jealousy has made you lose your reason. And by accusing Francis you are going to destroy your career.”

She was about to run away from him when he grabbed the central pole and used it like a turnstile, swinging around and reappearing in front of Jezebel. “Your husband is guilty. He has enough influence to have found the so-called ghoul, and to use it to carry out his dirty work. He knows Arab myths well enough to play on them; it is his smokescreen to direct us onto the wrong track. The victims are children he knows, since he has them right in front of him—children from his foundation. After all, why search further afield? All he has to do is discreetly gain access one night to the children's files. The nights of the murders, you say he was sleeping with you, but how can you be so sure? You sleep heavily if I remember well.… And the night Azim was killed, he heard me repeat the address I was to go to. With his powerful car, he could have got there before me.”

“Francis did not go out that night!” shouted Jezebel. “After you took off like a whirlwind, we went back to bed. It doesn't hold water…”