Shadows on the Nile (39 page)

‘The other question,’ Monty said, still in his neutral tone, ‘is how this Ahmed knows you are Tim’s sister.’

It sent a shiver through Jessie and she glanced instinctively around the garden, seeking watchful eyes, even though they were alone.

‘I think we should go out there again,’ she said. ‘To the tomb.’

‘Are you sure?’

She didn’t want to go back to that place of the dead, but she gave herself no choice. ‘Yes.’

‘I agree. If they – whoever
they
are – are keeping a close eye on us, there is a good chance that Ahmed may make contact again.’ He glanced sideways at the boy. ‘This time I think we’ll go alone.’

Jessie blinked. ‘Malak?’

‘We can’t be too careful.’

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘Not Malak.’

The boy heard his name, and his berry-black eyes danced from one to the other, but he could not follow the meaning of their conversation.

‘Wait here,’ Monty said and rose to his feet.

He swept the heap of her belongings back into her handbag, lingering for a moment over her sketchpad as if tempted to open it. He placed the watch thoughtfully in an inside pocket of the bag and snapped the fastening shut. Both of them seemed to breathe
easier now that the watch was out of sight.

‘I’m going to pop up to my room to fetch a map. Won’t be a tick. Better to know exactly how the land lies.’

‘Good idea.’

Neither gave voice to the thoughts crowding their minds. Monty hung the strap of her bag back on her chair, and as he did so, he rested a hand on her shoulder, his thumb pressing lightly on her collar-bone.

‘The game is afoot,’ he said, ‘my fine fellow.’

She tilted her head back to look up at him, outlined against the blue sky. ‘Life,’ she said, ‘as Sherlock told us, is always more daring than any effort of the imagination.’

He gave her a half-smile and his thumb stroked her collar-bone for a fraction of a second, then he was gone. The garden felt cooler without him.

‘Miss Kenton?’

‘Yes.’

‘A lady is here to see you.’

Jessie was still in the garden, holding her handbag close on her lap, picturing the watch inside. She was expecting Monty to return any minute with his map and she looked with surprise at the attendant in his white robe.

‘But I don’t know any ladies in Luxor, so who …?’ Then it dawned on her. ‘Maisie Randall.’ She must have arrived early.

Jessie jumped to her feet with a smile on her face and hurried through to the hotel’s reception area, where Maisie’s tall intimidating figure would cause a stir among the staff, but there was no one. It was empty. She turned to the attendant and he waved a hand towards the entrance doors.

‘Out there,’ he said cheerfully.

Jessie walked out into the hot street and the smile of welcome melted from her face. It wasn’t Maisie. In the quiet shadows of an arched doorway stood Anippe Kalim. Swathed in black from head to toe, she stepped forward with a greeting, but Jessie was
too angry to bother with it.

‘Why did you run?’ she demanded. ‘Why did you make me chase you all over Cairo?’

‘I am sorry,’ the young woman said in a low voice, but her face was still proud, her bearing that of Queen Nefertiti. The apology was worthless.

‘Why didn’t you stop and talk to me?’

Anippe lowered her eyes. ‘I did not want to get Timothy’s sister into trouble.’

‘Trouble?’

Two smart Egyptian men walked past in suits and tarbooshes and spoke disapprovingly at Jessie in Egyptian before moving on.

‘They don’t like a woman to shout in the street,’ Anippe told her. ‘It is unseemly.’

‘So is getting me lost in Cairo’s backstreets.’

Anippe nodded. No denial.

‘Where is Tim?’ Jessie demanded, holding with one hand onto a fold of Anippe’s voluminous robe. No escape this time.

The Egyptian woman’s striking face was all that was visible of her and Jessie scanned it eagerly for signs of distress but found none. She was tempted to take that as a good sign, a sign that Tim was unhurt.

‘Where is Tim?’ she asked again.

The black eyes regarded her solemnly. ‘Come with me. I have something to show you.’

‘Is it Tim?’

‘You shall see.’ She turned and started walking away, down the dusty street of low buildings.

‘Wait! I must first tell my companion that I am …’

But the black figure did not wait, did not stop or even glance behind. She lengthened her stride.

‘Anippe!’

Anger burned in her chest. What was Anippe doing? Jessie didn’t want to leave the hotel without informing Monty – she had promised him – but the attendant had vanished and there
was no one else in sight.

Anippe turned a corner.

That decided it. With a curse, Jessie ran. This time she caught up with the Egyptian woman quickly and side by side they hurried through the town. They left behind the fine houses of Luxor with their elegant arches, fountains and columns, and their scrolled latticework, and instead they entered the old town where Europeans did not stray. Men with skin like leather and long tortoise necks above their flowing robes inspected Jessie with hard hostile eyes when she strode as an interloper through their bleak impoverished alleyways. The streets grew narrow enough to create shade for most of the day and desert-coloured dogs dug their way into the heaps of rubbish that littered the corners.

Jessie wished she had brought Malak with her, so that he could run back to Monty with news or at least speak for her to the woman weaving on her doorstep or the one grinding corn while her barefoot child picked fleas off a dog. She wanted these women to remember her. If Monty came looking.

‘Anippe!’ Jessie came to a halt. ‘Anippe, this is far enough. Tell me what it is you want to show me.’

Anippe didn’t break her stride but just kept walking fast.

‘Anippe! Where is Tim?’

Reluctantly the black-robed woman slowed and glanced behind.

‘Where is he? I’m not moving from here until you tell me.’

They were in an alleyway where a man was chopping up furniture with an axe. He swung at it with such a fury that Jessie was convinced the table and cupboards were not his own. Anippe retraced her last steps until she was within touching distance of Jessie, and despite the scorching heat and the fast pace, she showed no signs of discomfort inside her robes. Her face was calm, her breathing steady.

‘You want to see Tim?’ she asked.

‘You know I do.’

‘You do not do a good job as his
uraeus
.’

Jessie’s stomach lurched. Tim’s
uraeus
. The cobra that is there to protect him.

‘Stop playing these games,’ Jessie snapped sharply. ‘Tell me right now what has happened and where he is.’

The Egyptian woman’s mouth pulled into a silent line
but Jessie couldn’t tell whether it was annoyance or sorrow. She felt the gulf between them widen.

‘Anippe. Tell me.’

The woman nodded. Without her hair or her throat on view, she looked like a different woman from the one in the British museum, a total stranger.

‘Come,’ Anippe said. ‘Timothy is hurt. A gunshot wound.’

Jessie’s heart stopped. ‘How bad?’

‘Bad enough. Come,’ she said again, more gently this time.

Another alleyway in the maze, another row of crumbling shutters and dark secretive interiors before Anippe suddenly veered to her right and pushed open a door. Instantly they were in a small square room with nothing in it but a threadbare rug on the floor. The place smelled of charcoal.

‘This way.’

Jessie followed.

‘He’s in here.’ The Egyptian woman pointed to a low door at the back of the house. It stood ajar and a flickering light indicated a candle inside.

‘Tim!’ Jessie called.

She darted through the door to her brother. The room was windowless, with a rough earthen floor. Except for the lit candle embedded in the earth in one corner, it was empty. Stark and bare. She swung round to confront Anippe, just as the solid wooden door swung shut and there was the sound of a metal bar rattling into place across it.

Jessie was totally alone.

‘Where is she?’

The boy looked nervous. ‘Gone, sir
bey
.’

Monty stopped dead in his tracks. He scanned the
small garden, as if Jessie might be hiding under one of the bushes.

‘Gone? Gone where?’

‘I not know, sir
bey
. Missie Kenton rush out. I wait here but no return from her, no. She leave.’

‘Don’t be foolish, boy.’ His voice was raised. She had promised. ‘Of course she wouldn’t leave. Did she go to her room?’

‘No, sir
bey
. She go to front.’ He looked thoroughly miserable and plucked at the raw threads of a rip in his tunic. ‘I see.’

‘If she went to the front of the hotel, which way did she go?’

‘I not see.’

‘Boy, you are utterly useless to me.’

He was frightened for her and angry at her, all at the same time. He had said it over and over again:
Don’t wander off.
What was she thinking? Didn’t she realise the importance of keeping together now? He curbed his outburst with an effort and yanked the boy back by the neck of his tunic when he started to slink away. He gave him a shake.

‘What happened? Why did Miss Kenton
leave?’

The boy rolled his eyes piteously. ‘No my blame, sir. I sit. Wait. I good boy.’

Monty relented, releasing his grip. He dusted the boy’s shoulders. ‘So, good Malak, tell me what happened. I was only gone a few minutes.’ He cursed his luck. An Egyptian businessman in the next room had experienced trouble with his key sticking in the lock and had asked Monty for assistance. It had delayed him.

The boy’s eyes were wide and dramatic. ‘Lady come.’

‘What? Talk sense, boy.’

‘Yes, yes true yes. Ask Hamdi.’

‘Who or what is Hamdi?’

‘He work this hotel.’

‘Do you mean that one of the men who work here saw a lady come to talk with Miss Kenton?’

‘No,
bey
.’

‘Malak! Just tell me, for heaven’s sake.’ The boy looked ready to run, so Monty seized a handful of tunic on his chest. ‘What happened to Miss Kenton?’

‘Hamdi come. He say lady to see Miss Kenton.’ He was squirming to escape but Monty took not a blind bit of notice. ‘Missie look big smile. She say “May sandal”.’ He looked briefly bewildered but covered it with a big grin that would have been convincing if he hadn’t been staring hopefully at the exit door from the garden. ‘She want more shoes, you think, sir
bey
sir?’

‘You donkey, of course she didn’t need more …’ He stopped. Glared at his captive. ‘May sandal? Are you sure she didn’t say Maisie Randall?’

Fierce nodding. ‘That what I say. May sandal.’

Monty let go of the filthy tunic. ‘Wait here, boy. Don’t move a damn muscle, you hear me?’

More nodding.

Monty narrowed his eyes. ‘I’ll hunt you down and thrash you if you leave this garden.’

Another terrified grin. ‘I stay.’

‘Good!’ Monty strode off into the hotel. ‘Hamdi!’ he called. ‘Where the hell is Hamdi.’

A mild-mannered man with a quiet serenity about
him that Monty immediately envied appeared out of nowhere. He bowed politely.

‘Sir, how can I help you?’

‘Did someone call to see Miss Kenton just now?’

The man pointed to the steps the other side of the main entrance door. ‘Yes, sir. A woman stood out there and asked me to take a message to Miss Kenton to say she would like to speak to her. She didn’t give a name.’

At last. Someone who could think with precision. Monty exhaled with relief, but it didn’t change the fact that Jessie had vanished. If she was with Maisie, however, she should be safe. He began to calm down, as the anger started to melt into annoyance.

‘Did they say where they were going?’

‘No, sir.’

Monty nodded his thanks and passed over a tip that disappeared with alacrity into the pocket of the
galabaya
. It was thoughtless of Jessie in a way he didn’t expect of her, to go gallivanting with Maisie without a word. He’d put money on it that she had dashed off to the tombs again. Damn it. Something there had really shaken her up this morning. After a moment’s thought, he decided he would have to go chasing after the pair of them and with luck he’d overhaul them on the other bank of the river before they ventured too far. He was almost out the door before he remembered Malak. Poor little runt. He started to head in the direction of the garden, when he realised Hamdi was still standing patiently, waiting to be dismissed.

‘Thank you,’ Monty said courteously. Then added as an afterthought, ‘Was the woman tall with a large sunhat and a black umbrella? An Englishwoman?’

Hamdi smiled gently. ‘No, sir. She was Egyptian.’

Monty’s jaw hit the floor. ‘Egyptian?’ There was only one Egyptian woman in this whole damn country who knew Jessie by name. Anippe Kalim.

‘Which way did they go?’

‘They turned right.’

Monty was out of the door and racing down the street, knocking
against carts and weaving through a group of women in black veils, but it was impossible. Too many turnings, too many entrances into a maze of back streets. He zigzagged through them, tripping over a crate of chickens, but in the end, hot and frustrated, he admitted defeat. Lungs heaving, shirt sticky with sweat, a band of iron tightening inside his skull, he sprinted back to the hotel and burst into the garden. The boy was standing on the exact spot in which he’d left him.

‘Malak,’ Monty said fiercely, ‘you are a good boy. Now take me to your uncle.’

Monty walked and talked like a sane man. He spoke with the boy. Asked for his uncle’s name. With all the indications of a rational human being. He didn’t roar at the Nile or rip the unblinking sun from the sky which is what he raged inside to do.

The only sign of turmoil came when his foot lashed out at a sleepy lizard that was minding its own business on the gritty path down which Malak was leading him. He knew Jessie wouldn’t leave him and disappear with no word, no note, not again, not this time. If she was gone, it was because she had no choice, of that he was convinced. A fist clenched his guts every time he thought of the seriousness of the trouble she could be in.