The Jerusalem Puzzle (38 page)

I had to find them.

My ankle rubbed stone. I stifled the pain, kept going. There was a row of pale rocks, a trail of leftover lava, in front
of me.

And that was when I walked past the acacia bush. Its thorns stabbed my arm through the jumpsuit. I stopped, dripping from the rain, half crouching. Not a sound came out of my mouth, though I wanted to groan. The needles had plunged deep.

The unmistakable noise of a gun being loaded echoed faintly in the air.

He was near.

I pulled my arm from the bush. It didn’t want to come out. Some of the needles were stuck fast. My skin tore as I pulled away. It took an effort not to make a noise or to move too suddenly. My eyes were slits as rain poured over me. I could smell damp earth, and feel the water seeping fast down my neck. The rain was beating strongly on my shoulders now, great waves of it washing over the valley and everything in it.

One of my hands was resting on a rough stone, the other was hanging beside me, after extracting it from the bush. My leg muscles were in pain. My throat was tight. I felt a cough on its way. Something itchy was in my chest.

And then a shot split the air.

He was firing at something! The bullet pinged off a rock far in the distance.

I turned my head, slowly. He was behind a rock to my left, about six feet away. Part of the shadow at the back of the rock was him. It had to be. And then the shadow moved and I noticed the sky behind him was lighter.

The moon was coming back into a break in the clouds.

He would see me.

I had a second, maybe two, to decide what to do. My head was at waist height. It was not a good position to launch an attack from. And I knew how strong he was.

I wasn’t going to be able to overpower him easily.

I brushed my hand achingly slowly around the stones at my feet. I felt for the biggest one as the rain bounced over them. I held the hard wet rock like a stubby knife and inched slowly forward.

One step. Another.

My calf muscles were aching.

The shadow was just beyond a low bush.

I sprang, like a cat launching towards him, covering the three paces between us in an adrenaline-filled second.

I hit him, slammed my stone into the side of his head.

He grunted, ‘Uuuuhhh’, but swung at me as if he’d heard me coming. Something hit my cheek with a jarring metallic slap.

I swung again with the rock towards his head.

I missed. His arms were flailing. He grunted again. ‘Aaaahhh.’

Then his gun went off.

A rush of burning wind passed my arm. We were
grappling
. It was frantic. I didn’t know which side of him I was holding. His arms were flailing wildly. His body was jerking. A numbing blow hit the side of my head. I saw stars, yellow and orange, but I still held him. Then I heard a voice. As if from heaven.

‘Help, help, I’m down here!’ It was Isabel’s voice!

She was alive! My grip on him tightened fast.

We rolled over, both of us frantically grappling, twisting, using every muscle not to be overpowered.

And then my feet were in the air. There was a hole in the ground under them!

A shuddering blow hit the side of my head. My vision blurred. Dust was in my mouth. My skull thumped, creaked, as if parts of it might come loose. I twisted, grabbing him as a rush of pain fogged my mind.

He was going to hit me again. My legs were dangling over the hole. His hands pushed my shoulders. He was going to push me in. I slipped back. He grunted in triumph.

‘I’m down here,’ came Isabel’s voice.

I jerked back, yanking him towards me.

My legs were well over the edge of the hole. I had no idea how deep it was. I didn’t care. I had to pull him in! Even if it killed us both.

Isabel’s chances of being alive tomorrow would be a lot greater if he was dead. We fell back, down into darkness, grabbing wildly at the air. Then we hit something together, in a cracking shower of dust.

Billows of sand filled my vision. I was on my side, lying awkwardly, something sticking into me.

I was on a broken lattice of dust and sticks. No, not sticks, they were bones; tibulas, fibulas, hip bones, skulls! And there were thick pieces around me of what looked like a hard crust that had been put over the bones.

‘Sean, Sean,’ Isabel shouted. ‘Get up! Get up!’

I rose, holding one of the sticks. It was thick, smooth, knobbly at the end. I heard grunting, and saw a shadow rising in front of me.

She’d been kept in a charnel hole, where bones were stored.

Was that why the local Arabs hadn’t searched these holes? Were they off-limits?

My head was spinning. Pains were shooting through me. Pale moonlight was streaming in with the rain.

‘Watch out!’ shouted Isabel.

He was swinging something, as if clearing a path between us. I took a step towards him, crunching awkwardly through a knee-high crust of bones.

Isabel was behind him.

I saw her face, pale as a sheet of paper, lit faintly by the stream of moonlit rain. She was moving.

She smashed into him at speed as he turned. For a second I thought he was going to hold steady. Then, like a tree falling, he came towards me.

I held the thick end of the bone high. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it would do. As soon as his head came near me, his arms swinging, trying to defend himself, I smashed the bone into his skull, slamming it down with all my remaining energy.

His body jerked. I smashed the bone down again. There was a loud crack. The bone in my hand broke, cracking into jagged pieces. His skull had to have been broken too.

He fell, twitching, spasms jerking his body through the dust and smell and particles and a wave of pale bones scattering, the flotsam of an uncovered boneyard rubbish tip shifting all around us.

My breathing was ragged, my lungs hurting, my head aching, reverberating with pain in banging waves.

And then a euphoric surge of relief poured through me. I was shaking all over from the effort of the fight, my body unable to stay still.

But we’d won. We’d won!

The bastard was dead.

And Isabel was alive!

We hugged in the centre of the pit. I had one eye on his body, but it was still. I closed my eyes for a second.

I heard a faint crunch.

I pushed Isabel away.

He was rushing us, a jagged piece of skull in his hand. He swung it at my face. I leaned back.

I heard it pass with a whistling noise, saw its edge glisten an inch from my eyeball.

He howled like some wounded wolf, an animal in pain preparing to deliver his revenge.

Blood was seeping from his eyes. His face was half slick with it. His mouth was open, his bulging lips were bloody purple.

I stepped forward fast, ramming my fist straight into his nose. A jack hammer of pain flowed up my arm.

‘Finish him, Sean,’ Isabel screamed.

A spurt of blood showered towards me. His eyes filled with it. His mouth opened impossibly wide as if he wanted to bite me. I swung again, smashed my fist into his nose, pushing it back into his brain, and felt something splinter. He tottered like a felled oak, crashing back onto the bones. I watched, waited, my heart thumping, as blood poured out of the hole of bone and gristle where his nose had been. It seeped across his face.

This time he wouldn’t get up.

A shout came from above in Arabic. I looked up. I could see an Arab headdress against the stars. There was another shout.

I waved. The head disappeared.

Isabel was hugging me now, tighter and tighter. Thudding pains rose then fell inside my skull and down my side. I stood on one leg. The other one felt bruised. She held me, as if she never wanted to let me go.

We didn’t speak.

Moonlight was filtering into the cave. I could see Dr Susan Hunter laid out where the floor wasn’t broken. It looked as if that had been the real floor of the cave before we’d fallen in and crashed through it.

We broke apart. I went over to the bastard I’d just fought for my life with. He didn’t appear to be breathing. His head was at an odd angle and he was staring up at the sky. A big spider was walking over him. It stopped at his open bloody eye, then walked across his eyeball. He didn’t blink. ‘Is Susan alive?’ I asked, softly.

‘Yes, just. Can we get an ambulance for her?’

‘As soon as we get out of here.’

‘Let’s leave that bastard down here for the scorpions,’ she said.

A rope came curling down from the hole. The Arab at the top motioned for us to come up. He made a gesture, as if we should tie the rope around ourselves.

The shaking in my body was still there, but it was subsiding, as was the thumping of blood in my ears.

I looked around. The rain was easing. I wanted out of there. The hole in the centre of the roof looked like the pupil of an eye.

There was thick dust in the air. The bones around us seemed odd, too densely meshed in places, strangely lined up in others, as if some demented artist, obsessed with death, had arranged them for an exhibition. I saw spiders crawling. Not many, just two or three, but enough to make me leery.

Isabel was hauled up first. Then they hauled Dr Hunter up. She was unconscious the whole time. I put the rope around her, held her as she started to go up.

After we were all pulled out I took one last look into the hole before I hobbled away. The pain in my head was circling and thumping at the back now as if it was going to burst.

I don’t know whether it was a trick of the light, but it seemed his head moved as I watched. Had he woken up?

Then I saw the scorpions on his face. There had to be a dozen of them. Their tails were flexing. They were eating. And then his head moved again, as if he was trying to throw them off.

But they were still there when it settled back. And then I saw more scorpions moving up towards his face. A fitting end.

The Palestinians who had pulled us up were carrying Dr Hunter away between them. I heard shouting. It sounded like an argument someone was having on a mobile phone. Then, in the distance, I saw the lights of a vehicle approaching slowly.

Isabel was beside me. And then we were standing near Ariel’s car, waiting. It was locked. We had no way to get into it. The rain was coming down softly. I didn’t care.

I held Isabel in my arms. I was trembling. She was too, her body fluttering as if she was ill. She didn’t feel soft though. She felt wiry, like steel.

And I was ecstatic that it was all over.

And we were both alive.

The head of the local clan arrived a few minutes later in a fifteen-year-old mud brown Mercedes 220. He was a giant of a man wearing a red keffiyeh and a dusty suit. He had a suspicious expression when he got out of his car, but as soon as he saw Dr Hunter lying nearby, sheltered from the rain by the jacket and body of one of the Palestinians who had carried her, he changed.

He waved at his driver to turn their vehicle around.

‘We have a good hospital in Bethlehem,’ he shouted, as he came up to us. ‘But the road is blocked because of this stupid Zionist air raid.’ He gestured to the sky.

Then he put his hand on Isabel’s arm. ‘My driver will take you to the hospital in Jerusalem.’ He turned to me.

‘And you will tell me everything that happened here.’ He poked a finger into my chest.

The fact that I was holding my head where I’d been hit repeatedly didn’t seem to concern him at all.

‘I’m going with them,’ I said. I pointed at his face. I didn’t want to be separated from Isabel for a moment.

Two Palestinians who were standing nearby raised their guns as soon as I pointed my finger. The man in the red keffiyeh waved at them to lower their guns. Then he took a step towards me. He pointed his finger at my face.

‘My driver can get through the checkpoints easily with two injured women. You will stay here to explain what has been going on out here in our valley, my friend. Unless you think all of your injured friends should be delayed until the authorities are finished with you?’ He looked quizzically at me.

The men behind him had lowered their guns, but they were still in their hands.

If Isabel and Susan would get to the hospital quicker, this had to be done.

‘Okay. But I’ll hold you personally responsible for getting them both to hospital fast.’ I was shouting. My finger was shaking, jabbing at him.

‘Sean, follow us as quickly as you can.’ Isabel gripped my arm, as if she wanted to take a piece of me with her.

We hugged as they put Susan into the car. It was the longest hug I’d ever had. I whispered the news that Mark was dead. She squeezed me even tighter but didn’t say a word. Our hug was interrupted by the driver tapping my shoulder.

‘We have to go, yes, yes. Your friend is sick, very sick, very sick,’ he said, in an accent that sounded part French. His face had a pleading expression.

I let Isabel go.

As the car drove away in the rain my friend with the red keffiyeh said, ‘Show me this cave.’

I went with him back to the hole. There was a little more light now and I noticed the hole was in a saucer-like depression and that around it there were rocks that were large enough to push over the hole if you wanted to cover it.

I pointed down into it, saw the dust still rising down there. I didn’t want to look anymore. He growled as he peered in.

‘He is the man who killed your people,’ I said.

‘His body will have to be checked by the police,’ he said. ‘If no one claims him we will throw him back in here and cover this hole over. Evil ghosts must stay buried. This valley has seen many things before.’ He waved at the steep hills around us. ‘That hill there is called Ravenge, and that long one there is called Jalous.’ He pointed at the spiny ridge circling around. ‘This valley is cursed. Evil spirits live here. The ones who kill for pleasure No one comes here unless they have to.’

‘That man murdered people like he was sacrificing them,’ I said. How had he got so twisted, I wondered? Was it all about revenge on a world that had treated him badly, or was real evil, something ancient, at work here?