EIGHT
The search for Surere, the first of its kind ever to be conducted by the Medjays, had been organised with precision by Merymose. The Southern Capital had been divided into eight segments, like slices of the round, flat loaves the Semite guest workers baked, each segment’s inner edge bisecting one of the main quarters of the town, into which it was split by the two main thoroughfares, one running north-to-south, and the other east-to-west, which met at the centre. Most police were concentrated in the crowded districts of irregular streets, such as the harbour quarter, and special details were dispatched to the privately-run brothels which did not fall under the control of the priesthood. Nubenehem, her peace made with him, complained of this bitterly to Huy; the attentions of the Medjays had cost her a day’s profit, with the following day well below average on takings, as frightened clients stayed away. Following an instinct based on Huy’s description, for what it was worth, of the house where he’d met Surere, Merymose sent Medjays out of uniform – another innovation – to the good residential districts.
All of which led to nothing. Not even the raids on the town’s three gay brothels brought forth a whisper of information about Surere’s whereabouts, and after four days of intensive hunting, over ground which included the Valley of the Great Tombs on the west bank of the river, Merymose began to think that perhaps, after all, the escaped political had done as he had told Huy he would, and left for the northern deserts to found his religious community. The thought came as no relief to Merymose, for although the loss of his quarry might not mean his dismissal from the Medjays, he could expect demotion, or at best to end his days in no higher rank than he held now. He reflected gloomily on the price of his ambition, because he had gone out on a limb to persuade a mistrustful and increasingly hostile Kenamun to consent to the operation he had mounted, and then he had only achieved it by linking Surere to the serial killings.
If it were now fixed in Kenamun’s mind that Surere was the killer, another murder would be all that would save Merymose’s neck. And yet he had been thorough, efficient, and ruthless in his investigation, not drawing the line at torture to extract information where he thought it might be withheld. But a new thought struck him – another murder might lead his superior to assume that Surere was, after all, still hiding out in the Southern Capital, and that, too, would hardly be to Merymose’s credit. Merymose had not been left much by life apart from his career. Now it looked as if that, too, were coming apart.
Surere could not disappear in the way that he had without powerful help. Merymose had to find out where that help came from, but he told himself that he had no reason to suspect Huy of withholding any more information. The risk would certainly not be worth it to the little ex-scribe.
The tail end of the search for Surere was still in progress when they found the fourth girl. She was near the east bank of the River, five hundred paces south of the town, lying on a flat white rock where the crocodiles could not get her, though by the time she was discovered by a Med jay patrol at the sixth hour of day when the sun was at its highest, the vultures had eaten her eyes and part of her face, and the flies were so glutted that they could not leave the feast unless they were picked off. As the season progressed, so had the heat, and Huy and Merymose stood over the body with their heads wrapped in linen cloths to protect them from the sun.
‘We had better get her away from here,’ said the Medjay healer, removing the last of the flies and quickly wrapping the corpse in a linen sheet before any more could settle. ‘That is, if you want her examined before she falls apart.’ He turned away to supervise his two assistants, who manhandled the small bundle on to the back of a covered ox-cart.
As it drove slowly away towards the town, so the small knot of idlers and gawpers dispersed, back to the quays and the eating houses to tell about what they’d seen, and Huy and Merymose were left alone.
‘What do you think?’ Huy asked him, as they looked at the rock. The flies had returned to cluster on two small lakes of dried blood, all that remained here to show where the girl had lain, apart from the lingering smell.
‘It’s the same, isn’t it? Except that the body wasn’t found soon enough. I don’t envy the embalmers.’
‘No.’ Huy was pensive. He had told Merymose nothing of his thoughts about Ipuky and Reni – sensing the policeman’s disappointment and mistrust when he told him that he had been able to find out no more than he had himself. All his reservations were based on intuition, supposition. He had nothing to give Merymose to take to Kenamun, and the priest-administrator would not thank him for information which cast suspicion on two of the most powerful men in the country. At the same time, the more he delayed, the greater Surere’s danger was.
The girl’s body had been laid out just as the others, and it had been the work of a moment to discover the tiny stab wound under the soft left breast.
‘I’ve sent men into the palace compound to find out which household she was from.’ Merymose was tense. ‘The outcry will raise Set. I must find the man who did this.’
Huy stooped to pick something off the ground, that lay three-quarters hidden in the rough yellow grass that grew around the sides of the stone. It reflected the sunlight dully in his hands, dangling from a broken chain. It was an amulet of Ishtar.
By the eighth hour, all the Med jays sent to the palace compound were back. No one had been reported missing. Not a servant-girl; not even a slave, though the enquiries themselves had stirred up panic.
‘Are they sure?’ asked Huy.
‘Certain. I would not be mistaken over this,’ replied Merymose shortly.
‘One household overlooked would be enough.’
They had received the reports in the Place of Healing, where the body lay in the courtyard, protected from the flies and the heat by wet wrappings, waiting for someone to claim it and give permission for an examination to begin, before it was taken to the embalmers. By the twelfth hour of day, as the sun sailed west and inclined towards the horizon, finally allowing the north wind to bring its cooling relief, still no one had come.
‘If we don’t look at her now, we won’t get a chance at all,’ said the Medjay healer, who had returned and partially unwrapped the body. ‘I’ve dressed the eye-wounds but the rot has started. If no embalmers collect her tomorrow, she must go to the lime pit.’
‘Is it still light enough to work?’ asked Merymose, standing, and walking across to the doctor to look down at the body.
‘Yes. It will be an hour before Nut swallows the sun.’
Merymose glanced at Huy. ‘Then I think we should begin.’
‘And if her relatives turn up?’ said the doctor.
‘Then I will explain,’ replied Merymose, with a confidence he did not feel. However to take no action would be worse than to risk insulting the dead.
A faint noise, like sighing, was brought into the courtyard on the wind. Merymose looked around the darkening corners, wondering if it was the girl’s Ka. Would it object to this treatment of its old dwelling before the proper rites had been observed? The doctor, covering his nose and mouth with a cloth and summoning an assistant, carefully began to unwrap the body, supporting it in his arms like a mother or a lover. He laid it back on the table and went over to another, producing a small leather bag from his kilt. Laying it on the table he opened it, and took out a selection of fine flint knives.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said wrily, noticing Merymose’s expression. ‘The spirits respect me; I have had to do with the dead for a long time.’