Shadows on the Nile (40 page)

‘Anippe Kalim,’ he muttered under his breath as he strode behind the boy who was scampering ahead of him. As if saying her name aloud could rouse her from her snake-basket and conjure her up in front of him.

‘How much further, Malak?’

‘Here, just here.’

‘You’ve been saying that for the last ten minutes, you monkey.’

Malak grinned nervously over his shoulder at Monty and something that the boy saw in his face made his manner
change abruptly. The grin slid away.

‘We find her,
bey
,’ he said. ‘You and me. We find her very much soon.’ Then he was off again at top speed, the dusty soles of his feet flying up behind, and it brought some relief to Monty to break into a run.

‘Sir, please excuse my humble home. You are most welcome. I am honoured indeed to invite such a distinguished gentleman into my house, Allah be praised.’

‘Thank you, Yasser. It is my pleasure to meet you. Your nephew here told me you are a man of great abilities and many resources.’

Yasser el Rahim glanced across at his young nephew and awarded him a nod. Monty was sure money would pass into the young boy’s hand later. But Yasser himself came as a surprise. For a start, he was far younger than Monty had expected, twenty-five at most. Tall and handsome with a bush of thick black hair, there was a life and energy that radiated from him and lit up the gloomy room they were seated in. His large round eyes gleamed in anticipation, as if every fresh breath would be the one that would be blessed by Allah and would make his fortune.

The house was small and built of mud-brick with a line of washing flapping on the flat roof, but its window frames and shutters were smartly painted and it appeared to contain three rooms, plus a kitchen where a shadowy figure in black moved quietly. Brass lanterns were visible in abundance throughout the room as though it gave Yasser immense pleasure to shed light, and a low round brass table held a pitcher of fresh lemon juice. When Monty arrived unannounced with the boy, Yasser had been flicking through a colourful magazine about Egyptian film stars and sucking on a brass
hookah
pipe whose heated charcoal and
shisha
tobacco scented the air. He greeted his visitors warmly and his white teeth gleamed against his dark skin when he laughed, which he did often. It was the same infectious laugh as his nephew’s.

Yasser clapped his hands imperiously and called
out, ‘Mint tea for my guest, Souad.’ He flared out his olive green
galabaya
like a conjuror about to perform a trick and waved Monty to a seat covered in bright materials of red and blue and green in patterns that echoed the curls and swooping lines of Arabic script. ‘Sir, please sit and tell me what I can do for you.’

Monty took his place reluctantly. He did not have time for courtesies but knew he would get nowhere in Egyptian business dealings without them.

‘Thank you, Yasser. And my thanks for the arrangements this morning with the felucca and the horses.’

‘Good. All went well? You enjoyed the tombs?’

‘The valley is certainly interesting. My companion Miss Kenton and myself were particularly interested in King Tutankhamen’s tomb.’

He laughed. ‘You and half the world!’

‘That’s true. Many people come to Egypt now to admire its antiquities.’

Yasser’s eyes brightened. ‘Many many people.’

‘People who need someone like you to arrange things for them.’

‘Yes, indeed. If I can be of humble service, I am always glad to help them.’

I bet you are.

At that moment the black shadow from the kitchen emerged silently into the room carrying a tray which she placed on the table. Monty knew better than to look at her but he had the impression of a lighter-skinned woman with soft beautiful hands. When she had glided once more back to the kitchen, he accepted a glass of mint tea and settled down to business. Malak had been given a short length of sugarcane to chew on and he sat on his heels in a corner, relishing the fibrous sweet white heart of it.

‘I am looking for someone,’ Monty announced. ‘I hoped you might be able to help me.’

‘Ah.’ Yasser’s large black eyes regarded him shrewdly over the steaming rim of his glass. ‘I will put all my abilities at your
service, sir. Who may this person be who is missing from you?’

‘My companion. An Englishwoman, Miss Jessica Kenton.’

‘Indeed? The young lady who went to the tombs this morning?’

‘The same.’

‘So.’ He put down his drink and his smile. ‘Tell me.’

Monty supplied him with a rapid summary of Jessie’s disappearance after they had returned to their hotel this morning.

‘I need to find this young Egyptian woman, to discover who and where she is,’ Monty told him. ‘She must have arrived here yesterday from Cairo and has somehow persuaded Miss Kenton to go with her.’

Monty was no fool. He knew the only bait to tempt Jessie away would be Tim, though it didn’t mean that her brother was still here in Luxor. Jessie could already be on her way to any god-forsaken patch of scrubby Egyptian desert in the belief that Tim was waiting for her there.

‘Miss Anippe Kalim,’ Yasser murmured, picking up his
shisha
pipe and twiddling the mouth-piece between his fingers to give himself time. The water gurgled in the smoke-filled glass jar with each breath. ‘I am interested to know
why
she has taken your Miss Kenton.’

‘I assure you, so am I.’

‘No money demand for her yet?’

‘No. Let me worry about that. I want you to find out who this Anippe Kalim is.’ Monty lit a cigarette, took out an envelope of Egyptian bank notes from his pocket and placed it on the brass table in front of him. ‘Now,’ he said, his eyes fixed on Yasser’s, ‘let us talk business.’

Instantly the young Egyptian abandoned his
shisha
pipe and his smile leapt back in place as he reached out for the envelope, but the flat of Monty’s hand clamped down on it first.

‘One more thing.’

Yasser’s gaze reluctantly moved away from the envelope. ‘Yes?’

‘There is someone else I am searching for. A man who goes by the name of either Timothy Kenton or Sir Reginald
Musgrave.’ He flashed a photograph in front of the other’s bright black eyes. ‘This man.’

The Egyptian considered it. Then nodded solemnly and shrugged. ‘I will try.’

‘For him I pay double.’

The white teeth gleamed. ‘Then I will try harder.’

‘We understand each other, I think.’

‘Yes,
bey
. I will work fast.’

Monty knocked back his mint tea and rose to his feet. ‘Come, Malak, we have work to do.’

They tried every hotel in Luxor. On the off-chance. It was a long shot but Monty couldn’t just sit in the Blue Nile doing nothing, tormented by images of what could be happening to Jessie. Fortunately there were not many hotels in Luxor, a couple of larger ones for visiting tourists and dignitaries who expected something grander than the handful of small ones favoured by Egyptians eager to view the tombs. Monty tried them all with no success – no Anippe Kalim, no Jessica Kenton and no Sir Reginald Musgrave or Timothy Kenton. What was it that Jessie’s brother was up to? What mess had he used Anippe Kalim to draw Jessie into?

At one point when he emerged on to a wider street of elaborately decorated houses overlooking the broad silvery expanse of the Nile and was just about to return to the Blue Nile Hotel to check whether Jessie had returned, a woman’s voice hailed him.

‘Sir Montague!’

He looked round, his heart leaping ahead of him. But it wasn’t Jessie.

‘Blow me down with a Nile catfish if it isn’t his lordship himself.’

‘Good afternoon, Maisie, I didn’t expect to find you in Luxor yet.’

Maisie Randall was ambling along the riverbank under her umbrella, kicking up a wake of sand-dust, her grey muslin blouse making her resemblance to a heron on the prowl for a stray
fish even stronger than usual.

‘I caught the night train,’ she explained cheerfully. ‘That was a bloomin’ nightmare I wouldn’t want to repeat, I can tell you. So much snoring and shaking and screeching, you wouldn’t believe it. It stopped at every little goat-hut of a station and I …’ she stopped. Abruptly she furled her umbrella and peered at Monty. ‘What’s wrong?’

Jessie stood in the dark. Only the thinnest lick of
light around the door made it bearable. Not enough for her to see her prison, but her other senses took over. Beneath her feet the earthen floor felt cold and rough and from somewhere she could hear the throb of a generator. She smelled woodsmoke, something cooking. The ordinariness of it gave her hope. How could the world be spinning out of control when she could smell onions frying?

She wanted to scream and shout, to batter the door down.
Anippe had locked her up
. Why? Why would she lock her up?

But her thoughts jammed. They could get no further. What did Anippe hope to gain by this? It didn’t make sense.

She banged on the door. She called out. Angrily at first, but then more calmly, and finally without hope. Silence sat on the other side of the door like a guard with orders to keep her shut in the small dark space. She paced it out, four paces one way, three the other, her fingertips touching the blank mudbrick walls, the emptiness of the room frightening her more than anything else. It meant someone had prepared it as a prison for her, someone had planned this.

Why?

*

The metal bar rattled out of its brackets. Jessie was off
the floor and up on her feet before the sliver of light grew into a bright rectangle that momentarily blinded her. She could make out the outline of two figures silhouetted in the doorway, both male.

‘Tim?’

She uttered his name but without expectation. If it were Tim he would have rushed in and thrown his arms around her in a hug that would have squeezed the breath out of her.
Sis
, he would say,
what a clever little Watson you are – to have tracked me down like this. Wounded? Of course I’m not wounded. That was Anippe being silly to get
…

A guttural voice said something in Arabic, shattering the fleeting fantasy she was building for herself. She blinked hard to sharpen her vision in the gloom and to clear her mind. How long had she been here crouched on the floor in the darkness, alone? She had no idea. One hour? Three hours? Not longer, surely, her thoughts crawling like rats through her head.

The guttural voice spoke again, its tone impatient this time.

‘I want to speak to …’ she started but a strong hand seized her wrist and twisted it behind her. ‘To Anippe Kalim,’ she added quickly, ‘or to my brother, Timothy Kenton.’

A sack descended over her head.

She screamed and kicked out with her feet, connecting with a shin-bone and bringing forth a grunt of pain. But it was like fighting one of their field oxen, muscles hardened by years of labour, and before she could even consider escape through the open door, her wrists were roped behind her back, the sack was tightened around her neck and she was on her knees in the dark. Panic swelled in her throat, blocking her airways and making a thin high whistle issue somewhere inside her head. She couldn’t breathe. A drum was thudding in her chest. The blackness was inside as well as out, spreading like ink in her brain.

The voice again. It meant nothing. Her chin slumped forward but a male hand lifted it and released the bottom of the sack. Air buffeted its way in and she dragged it into her lungs until the whistling ceased. Two pairs of hands jerked her to her feet and marched her through the doorway, hands that were
not rough, but not gentle either. She could see a slice of the uneven ground under her feet when she peered downwards through the opening of the sack, and caught a glimpse of the bottom of the black
galabayas
swaying either side of her.

‘Wait!’ she shouted. She dug her heels in the ground. ‘Stop this! I refuse to walk further until you—’

They didn’t even break their stride. Between them the two men raised her a few inches off the ground and kept walking. It was as if she had ceased to exist as a person any more and had become just a package to deliver. The enormity hit her. Of how helpless she was. Of how pointless resistance would be. How useless, here in this vast unknown land of the pharaohs, were all her clever clues and secret signs. They dwindled to less than nothing here.

‘Monty,’ she whispered. ‘Take care.’

The stink of diesel. The grinding of gears. The jolting and jarring of the truck as the wheels slipped and slid, fighting for a grip in the sand. The hard edges of packing crates cracked against her back and knocked her head as she was shaken and jerked from one side of the back of the truck to the other. Jessie fought for breath inside her sack. Fear sat in her throat, stolid and steadfast, never leaving her, never yielding to her rational mind. She argued with it, reasoned with it, bullied it and tormented it with all the objections her frantic thoughts could conjure up.

If they intended to kill her, they would have done so by now.

If they meant her harm, they wouldn’t bother to drive her miles out into the desert in a truck first.

If they wanted to make her leave Egypt, this was the obvious way to scare her away.

If they were going to hide her somewhere, it meant a ransom and a life at the end of it.

Good reasons. Strong arguments. Clear logic. So why did the fear sit there in her throat?

*

They dragged her out of the truck and tore the sack
off her head. The heat of the desert reared up and for a moment paralysed her so that her feet wouldn’t move, nor her brain function. One of the black
galabayas
, the one with the dense moustache and the young earnest face, said something she couldn’t understand until she realised he was holding out a goat-skin waterbag to her. He poured the warm sour-tasting water down her parched throat and that simple gesture of kindness by her captor reassured her.

‘
Shukran
,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

Around her the desert stretched in an endless expanse of sand, a world of buff and beige, of brown and yellow, of stony gulleys and dried-up wadis. Her eyes struggled to find focus, as everything merged into everything else. Rocks were there one moment, but gone the next. Purple shadows seemed to move restlessly from one outcrop to another, the air shimmering deceptively in the heat, and Jessie could feel the sun leeching all moisture from her skin.