‘Tell me.’
The young man, no longer so neutral, his wig awry, gasped and coughed for air.
‘…doing my job…’ he managed to get out.
‘What job?’ Huy tightened his grip.
‘No.’
‘Then tell me.’
Limply, the young man did so. The girl had arrived from somewhere in the north early in the season. She seemed, in his words, to have some experience of what they required, and they put her through her paces. Huy found that, during much of what he had to listen to over the next few minutes, his only defence against the temptation to break the young man over his knee was to invoke the Horus within him.
‘And when she left?’
‘It was unusual. There’s very little goes on here that is true. Some of them really enjoy it, but mostly it’s acted. So it wasn’t as if she was being maltreated.’ He looked at Huy half-apologetically, cringing, as if he feared another blow. ‘But then we heard that she’d been killed.’
‘Beaten, raped and stabbed.’
‘That didn’t happen here.’
‘Who were her clients?’
The young man’s face froze. ‘Who are you?’
‘Vengeance,’ said Huy, meaning it, but speaking the word before he realised how theatrical it must sound. He had reckoned without the effect of his anger and his appearance on the man, who trembled. For a moment there was silence, punctuated, from somewhere deeper inside the building, by one long, isolated scream of pain.
‘Did Horemheb send you?’ asked the young man, finally. ‘Yes.’
‘I don’t understand. The people who come here are powerful. Their delights hurt no one. Why shouldn’t they indulge them?’
‘Horemheb understands that he cannot touch you – yet. But he would not want you to think that he had forgotten you. Who were her clients?’
An unpleasant expression slunk on to the young man’s face. ‘I do not believe you are from Horemheb. My masters and he understand one another now.’ He gave a curt signal with his head. Huy realised too late that the man’s eyes had switched direction to focus on someone behind him. He did not see his assailants. He was taken from behind by two men who pinioned his arms and pitched forward into the room, the young man darting out of the way to allow his saviours to smash Huy against the wall in his turn. He felt his teeth scrape against the plaster, then someone caught hold of his hair and pulled his head back. He had a close view of one of the pictures painted on the wall that he had not noticed before. Now, in a moment of crisis, he took it in with startling clarity. Two elderly men were crouched over a naked girl who was strapped face down to some form of wooden rack. Using sharp needles and ink, they were in the act of tattooing something on the girl’s back. One worked while the other watched, clutching his grotesquely enlarged erection.
The work was almost complete and the result was clearly visible: curled around the apex of the left scapula was a small, crudely-executed scorpion.
‘Not the wall,’ he heard the young man’s voice say. ‘There’s been enough damage done as it is.’ They pulled him round and beat his head against a stool until his brain boiled. Then blood swam before his eyes and there was blackness.
TEN
On the eve of her wedding, they found Nephthys dead. It was unusual for her to have been alone then, but she had asked for time to herself. Although the ceremony itself was a simple one – a private exchange of shared intentions in which the most important formal element was the document which laid down precisely who got what in the case of divorce – it was nevertheless going to be used by both sets of parents as an excuse to throw a party, during which they would vie with each other in largesse, showing off their wealth as well as arranging useful introductions for their unmarried children.
Huy, recovering from the wounds he had received, and cursing the broken left forearm which the doctor at the Place of Healing had put in a splint and then bound too tightly, heard about the killing from Nebamun, who awakened him early in the morning – about the eleventh hour of night – with a furious hammering at his door. Although his eyes were red, the young man seemed calm – until Huy handed him a cup of beer. His hands trembled so violently that he was unable to bring it to his lips. It took him several minutes before he could talk.
The plump girl, who had been so full of life, was killed in the same way as the earlier victims. She had been found lying on her back, hands folded, naked. There were no marks or signs of a struggle, and the body was without a blemish.
‘I have lost two sisters now. I know you are working for Ipuky, but you must let me work with you. I have a right. I seek vengeance.’
‘And Ankhu?’
‘He is organising his own hunt.’
‘Why do you not join him?’
‘Because I think you know what you are doing.’ The reason, as Nebamun gave it, fell too pat. ‘Won’t you tell me how much you have found out?’ continued the youth. ‘I am older than the king; and grief has made me a man.’
Huy thought about Reni. What was the old scribe’s reaction? Where would his philosophical attitude be now? Would he continue to be prepared to leave the matter of investigation to the Medjays? And what would his heart tell him about the gods, who had singled him out for this fate? Whom would he blame, and to whom would he turn for protection and comfort? His youngest daughter was almost ready for burial, her body emptied, dried out, repacked, decked out for the long night, bandaged in the finest linen with the scarab placed over her heart, and laid in her case of painted cedarwood. Soon her mouth would be opened by the lector-priest and her purification ministered by the Sent-priest. Horus would restore her five senses for the Fields of Aarru. She would descend to the Hall of the Two Truths, and go before the Forty-Two Judges. Then Nephthys would follow her, and instead of standing, as a new wife, before Renenutet and Tawaret, would go as a shadow to meet Anubis and Osiris.
Would Reni seek consolation in the arms of his last daughter, or would he lose himself in wine? Perhaps there was another route he would choose – after meeting the scribe again, Huy had little doubt who the rich client at the City of Dreams had been, and knew why his profile, fleetingly glimpsed, had seemed familiar. He thought of the bruise on Kafy’s shoulder. Did the rest of his family know of his predilections? Nephthys had not. How might Ankhu react if he knew?
The new death showed that the killer and his motivations had not changed. The death of Isis may have been an aberration, or it may have had nothing to do with the others. That Merymose had died because he had discovered something important enough to threaten the killer was clear, and Huy knew that his own reluctance to take the policeman into his confidence had been one indirect reason for his death.
One detail needed confirmation, and Huy knew that he would not be able to perform the task himself. Even Ipuky could not arrange for him to see this body, and he no longer had the cachet of officialdom with which to browbeat the embalmer. Could he expect Nebamun to do it for him? And yet the best form of relief for this boy whom grief had made a man would be in action.
He made his decision quickly.
‘I accept your help,’ he said.
Hope came into Nebamun’s eyes, and with it eagerness and desperation. Fear too. What secrets were there in Reni’s family? Would involving Nebamun put him in any danger? But it was too late to retract.
‘I need to know how Nephthys died. There is no trace on the body of a wound? Just as Neferukhebit? It will be difficult. You will have to look carefully at her body.’ He decided not to tell the young man where to search.
Nebamun looked at him. ‘I have already done that. I knew that there had to be a wound: she had not been drowned or strangled or poisoned. There is a little mark, only just larger than a needle might have made, under her left breast.’