Merymose looked uncomfortable. ‘But what about their characters? Iritnefert was a firebrand, but she hadn’t done anything. Neferukhebit, well, if what you say is true…’ his voice trailed off.
‘I think it’s true. The brothel keeper had no reason to lie to me, and I’ve talked to the other clients who saw her there.’
‘How could she want to do such a thing?’ Merymose’s voice was harsh.
Huy looked at him. ‘You have been through enough to know what this world is like.’
‘I think of my own daughter. She never had a chance to grow up, either.’ Merymose looked at Huy. ‘I am going to destroy this spawn of Set.’
Huy had delayed telling Merymose about Surere, waiting for the right moment to come. Now he wondered if he had left it so late that he would arouse the man’s enmity. There was something else. Merymose clearly had orders to ignore any trail that led to the palace compound. It would be unwise, therefore, to say anything to him of what he had learned about Ipuky’s sons from his first marriage, or about the other visitor to the City of Dreams. But yes, he would tell the policeman about Surere now. Then at least the responsibility would be shared.
‘What about the third girl?’ he asked first. ‘Mertseger. What have you been able to find out from the parents?’
‘Very little. They know of nothing. Certainly no lover. To talk to them, you would think she had still been playing with toys. She was their only surviving child. They were old when they had her.’
‘There is something I must tell you,’ said Huy, tensing himself. ‘Something I have not told you, which I should have done. I should have told you days ago.’
Merymose looked at him. ‘That surprises me.’
Huy squared his shoulders. How could he explain his feelings, his reservations, and the reasons for them? Would Merymose, who had been so badly let down by Akhenaten himself, be able to feel any sympathy at all? He might simply view as collusion what Huy saw as loyalty. And now there was another doubt: the new element which Surere had introduced – contact with the ghost of the dead king – was not only the one which had triggered Huy’s decision to tell Merymose all he knew; but also the one which might exempt Surere from any blame. If the former administrator had gone mad, then the passion that possessed him had more to do with the re-establishment of the New Thinking in a new place, rather than any desire for vengeance. Surere, however cunning and even ruthless his instinct for self-preservation made him, might also be an innocent.
If he had not gone mad, but was really in touch with the ghost of the old king … Well, there were precedents for such things; and if ever a monarch might not rest peacefully in the Fields of Aarru, that man was Akhenaten.
Huy conveyed this as best he could. For most of the time he was talking, Merymose’s expression remained set. Huy found himself wishing that he were able to read some comment on the policeman’s face – anger or disapproval might have been easier. To his own distress, he realised that he was in danger of abandoning his self-reliance, and making a friend of Merymose.
Coming to the end of his account, he remembered the fate of the mason-overseer, Khaemhet, held responsible for the security of the prisoners deputed to him for the journey from the granite quarries to the Southern Capital. The obelisk was nearly completed, and a place had been prepared for it near the south pylon of the Temple of Ptah; the barge which had brought it had long since returned to the quarries upriver. But what had become of Khaemhet?
‘He was executed,’ Merymose told him coldly, leaving Huy with an extra burden on his conscience; though in this case the burden was easier to bear, since Huy, given the choice, would never have put the interests of the prisoner below those of the jailer.
‘Would you recognise the house again?’ was all Merymose asked.
Huy shook his head. ‘It was a door like a thousand others in a wall like a thousand others.’
‘A man like you might have looked through the screens of the rickshaw; might have counted the time it took to reach the place, calculated the direction in which you were taken.’
Huy took the criticism in silence. It was true that he was more than capable of all that; what was more, the measures Merymose described were ones which he would usually have taken instinctively. He had deliberately laid them aside this time, though he had not been aware of any direct instruction from his heart to do so.
‘When I went to him, I had no idea that what he would say to me might bring him within the sphere of our investigation.’
‘Even though he is obsessed by an ideal of innocence? Even though he sees the parents of these dead children as traitors to his cause? Even though he has spoken to you of vengeance?’
‘I cannot associate what he said with the action of killing. His obsession is to form a community loyal to the Aten, away from this city. He rejects us and our values.’ Huy had spoken his last words quite automatically; but their utterance made him realise in what world he now lived.
‘We must find him,’ insisted Merymose. ‘I do not share your instincts. It hasn’t escaped anyone’s notice that a former senior official of the Great Criminal goes on the run, and at the same time a series of murders begins of the children of other former officials of the Great Criminal. Kenamun is baying for blood.’
‘Well, now you have some bones to throw him,’ countered Huy. ‘We know how the girls were killed; that they must have known or at least trusted their killer. If it is no demon, we know that his motives are not robbery or sex. Some strange ideal moves him.’
‘Some strange ideal moves Surere,’ said Merymose crisply. ‘My heart tells me we need look no further than him.’
Merymose did not involve Huy in the search that followed. He did not explain why, and this placed a distance between them. Huy knew that it was because the policeman could trust him only so far after his confession. He wondered how much had been passed on to Kenamun, though it was unlikely that Merymose had told the priest everything. Merymose did not like Kenamun, neither did he trust him; and if the case were solved, Kenamun would take the credit.
But his confession to Merymose had a positive effect too, because permission was granted to the former scribe to talk to the bereaved families within the palace compound.
Huy took this to mean that Merymose still needed his help. He might be able to elicit information from the families which the policeman had missed; but he had reckoned without the gulf between granting permission to interview, and the families’ readiness to talk. His own association with the court of the Great Criminal was not a secret, least of all to these people, and their attitude to him was one which Merymose had no power to influence.
‘Of course I’ll help,’ said Taheb. ‘I have been ready to ever since you began this.’
‘Can you arrange for me to see the parents?’
‘That will not be difficult. When?’
‘As soon as possible. But they will object to seeing me.’
‘Not if you come with me. And I will send letters ahead. They will not refuse. They remember favours owed to my father and to my father-in-law. I will take you this evening. In the cool of the day. Let me write the letters now. Then we will wait for their reply.’
Later, Taheb raised herself on one elbow and let her hand slide along his thigh. They lay together in the same blue-white room, though this time their lovemaking had been gentler and more familiar, as warmth and exploration of each other’s bodies and hearts had succeeded the glorious frenzy of their first coupling. This time, they had not needed the stimulus of an aphrodisiac. Huy felt he could get drunk on the smell of Taheb, sinking his lips into the base of her neck where it joined the shoulder. Now, re-aroused, he curled his body to hers and slid into her lazily, as they lay side by side. They kept their eyes open, to see into one another’s hearts.