“What kind of psychological battle are you playing with me?” she exclaimed. “Abducting me, drugging me, then pretending that somehow you’re not at all involved in anything that’s happened to me? Are you the Good Cop?”
He motioned for her to talk less loudly.
“And who the hell is the Bad Cop?”
“You’ll find out in a moment, we’re going to see him after you’ve finished eating.”
She looked down at the tray; roast meat and vegetables and some kind of fluorescent dessert. She pushed the table away and it glided softly on its wheels to the foot of her bed
“I’ve finished eating,” she glared defiantly.
Henry Patterson liked Gail Turner; it was something about her defiance. It was ironic that he be attracted to a woman for her attitude, when it was exactly that trait that would make most men think twice.
And attracted he was, from her long dark hair and full lips down to her cute southern English accent that made her pronounce all of her Ts perfectly. He had been smitten before they had met, too, having done a fair bit of research on her profile online since Mallus had advised she would be joining him.
So when he had seen her restrained and drugged in the facility in which he worked, an urge to protect her had overwhelmed him, and even made him have a direct confrontation with Mallus, something he would have been far more cautious about had he been in complete control of his emotions.
It was towards Seth Mallus’ office that they now walked. Somehow, despite the fact that he was walking ahead of her, Gail was setting the pace and they moved briskly down the long bleach white corridor. They walked in silence, mainly because Gail didn’t seem to want to talk to him, but also because he didn’t know what to say to her anyway.
He stopped in front of an inauspicious door set flush with the wall. She positioned herself so that she was standing next to him in front of the door. He caught the look in her eyes, decided against saying anything, then knocked.
“Come in,” came the muffled reply from within.
He let Gail enter, though he somehow felt that even if he had moved first she would still have entered before him.
“Ah! Dr Gail Turner!” he heard Mallus say with glee.
“Ah! Dr Gail Turner my arse,” she exclaimed angrily. “Where the hell am I, who the bloody hell are you and what the bloody hell do you want with me?”
Henry Patterson couldn’t resist a wry smile as he closed the door behind them, if not for the vehemence of her assault on the mighty Mallus, then purely for the way that she pronounced arse.
Chapter 51
Ben hadn’t liked Captain Kamal from the moment George had described him. It wasn’t because he was a policeman: some of his best friends were. It was simply a gut feeling that something was wrong with the situation surrounding Gail’s death and that of the Professor.
Kamal had been quick to put forward an unquestionable explanation of the events, which made him suspicious. It also struck him as being odd that he hadn’t heard anything about Gail’s death in the news. He hadn’t even known that there had been another death in Professor Mamdouh al-Misri’s murder case!
His first step, however, was not finding out what was being covered up, it was confirming for sure that there was a cover up in the first place. He may have had a gut feeling, but if he was wrong, then he wanted to get that out of the way now so that he, and in particular George, could mourn in peace.
“Salaam,” he said as the phone answered. “May I speak with Captain Kamal please? It’s Farid Limam, from the British Embassy.” There was a pause, a brief click and then ringing. He was being put straight through.
Ben loved his country. He was extremely proud to be Egyptian and to come from Egypt, with its vast cultural heritage spanning more than seven thousand years. Coming to his country was, for many, the trip of a lifetime, and an unattainable dream holiday to so many more. There were so many reasons to be a proud Egyptian.
But being Egyptian, Ben was not blind to corruption; for so long it had run so deep it was next to impossible to eradicate.
For the most part, he could understand it. Tourism Police, underpaid, looking for extra money to feed their families by taking people on unofficial ‘tours’ of areas normally closed to the public; hotels in cahoots with taxi drivers to artificially increase fares from the airport; tour guides charging a hundred times the going rate to take tourists to see pyramids, claiming that taxis are simply too ‘dangerous.’
That didn’t really harm anyone: people needed to make a living somehow, and if you’d travelled halfway round the world to see Egypt, you could probably afford it.
The problem with corruption was that once you accepted it, there was pretty much no stopping it. Embezzlement of funds, rigged elections and conflicts of interest were all commonplace in Egyptian politics. Everyone had their price.
That fact notwithstanding, it was no less true that in Egypt bribery and corruption of a member of the police force, especially a Captain of the Cairo Police Department, was illegal. Under recent laws aimed at trying to reduce bribery and corruption, there was technically no cap on what punishment could be levelled by the State if someone was found guilty. More importantly, while in the past there was a tendency to focus on all parties involved, which led to few denouncements, new guidelines were to focus on the corrupt official first and foremost.
Ben knew this. Captain Kamal would too.
“Salaam,” Kamal answered the phone.
“Captain Kamal, it’s Farid Limam here, from the British Embassy. I work with the Consul on legal situations involving British Citizens in Egypt.”
“Yes? How can I help?” Kamal sounded impatient already.
“I have had some concerns brought to me from a British Citizen in Cairo currently. His wife was murdered several days ago, you will certainly remember the case.”
“Gail Turner.”
“Indeed,” Ben paused briefly and shuffled a pile of letters and utility bills on his coffee table. Office paperwork, he thought as he flicked through the paper noisily. “There seem to be some irregularities concerning the findings of your case, for instance –”
“What are you talking about?” Kamal interrupted. “This was an open and shut case. Mrs Turner murdered Professor al-Misri, one of Egypt’s pre-eminent Egyptologists. If she had not been found dead, she would be facing a possible death sentence, British Citizen or not.”
Ben cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Captain, but Mr Turner has highlighted to us some facts that lead us to question this. For instance, she was found in the canals to the west of the city, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you have reason to believe that she ran there from the Museum after killing the Professor, with a clutch of books?”
“Yes. We have this on CCTV footage.”
“How many books were stolen, Captain?”
There was a brief pause. “Eleven. Among them some of the most valuable prints in the Museum.”
“And how far, if I may, is the canal her body was found in from the Museum?”
“Roughly two kilometres.”
“She ran the whole way? With eleven books in her arms?”
A sigh from Kamal. “She ran at least several hundred metres. We have this on three different cameras outside the Museum.”
“Ran?”
“At quite some speed, in fact.”
“Filmed at night?”
“It is most certainly her. The cameras are the highest possible quality with night vision: they protect the Egyptian Museum, Mr… Limam is it?”