Ben had his tablet computer open in front of him. “Mr Limam, indeed. Captain Kamal, I do appreciate your assistance in this. Please appreciate that I have a British Citizen here who is quite distressed by what has happened.”
“I understand,” Kamal softened slightly. “Is there anything else?”
“Well, Captain, there is. You see Mr Turner has a problem with your assessment that Mrs Turner ran nearly two kilometres with eleven books under her arm. I’m afraid I also find it hard to believe.”
“She can easily have taken a taxi once out of view of the Museum. Because of the number of un-licenced vehicles operating in Cairo, as I’m sure you are aware, there is simply no way of knowing if that occurred.”
“But even, Captain, several hundred yards seems unlikely.”
Kamal clicked his tongue. “Now, why exactly would that be unlikely?”
Ben looked at his tablet computer closely. “Because, Captain, Mrs Turner always travelled by Taxi, from door to door. She practically never walked on the open streets in her home town in the United Kingdom, let alone in Cairo.”
“On this occasion, she did.”
“Captain, I must insist that this was not possible.”
Kamal’s tone had now changed from mildly annoyed to angry. He wanted this conversation over. “Listen, Mr Limam, unless you have some kind of proof that I haven’t seen, in which case I recommend you disclose that information now, you are wasting Police time. That is, I remind you, also an offence.”
Ben looked up at George and grinned. They’d discussed at length what Ben would say, and how he would try to ‘rattle’ the Captain into a reaction. They could claim they had CCTV footage of their own, or that they had found voicemail recordings that Gail had left for George while on the run from the Professor’s real killers.
In the end, all of this sounded too complicated; too likely to be brushed aside by Kamal. He wasn’t going to be caught out by some detail like that without seeing or hearing the evidence himself. Instead, they had to demonstrate that his only piece of real evidence, the CCTV footage, was incorrect.
And to do that, Ben came up with a big, fat, incredible lie, which itself was backed up by a quick Wikipedia update to Dr Gail Turner’s personal profile article that Ben and George had just made.
If Kamal was hiding nothing, the CCTV footage was genuine and Gail had, unbelievable as it seemed, committed the crimes, then they had lost nothing; Ben had masked his outgoing number on his mobile phone, which in any event was Pay as you Go and could easily be thrown away: they would never trace the call to him.
If, however, Kamal was hiding something and the CCTV footage was in any way fake, then he was sure to find that out.
“Captain Kamal, Mrs Turner could not have run from the Museum, for at least a few hundred metres, turned a corner, and continued to run. With or without the books, it would simply be impossible.”
“I’m getting tired of this. Explain yourself now, or stop wasting my –”
“Because,” Ben cut him off, “Mrs Turner suffered from Usher syndrome.”
Kamal said nothing. Ben looked at George intently and continued. “She was born with the condition, which also affected her mother. It means that she had hearing problems, and in the past five years, her sight had deteriorated to the extent that she simply couldn’t see further than her hand in front of her face. Even then, she wouldn’t have been able to make out the individual fingers, no matter how close. Vision, to Mrs Turner, was simply varying shades of light with no definition whatsoever.”
“It’s entirely possible she knew the direction of the main road, and ran there,” Kamal suggested, though he sounded less confident than before. His bullish attitude had disappeared completely.
“The hearing problems that come with Usher syndrome affect the inner ear, Captain. Mrs Turner had severe problems with balance. She would have needed both arms to steady herself and even then, by Mr Turner’s account, she would not have been able to negotiate the corridors of the Museum without sometimes touching the walls and railings. This would have been quite impossible while at the same time carrying eleven books, no matter how much they meant to her, financially.”
Kamal, again, was silent.
“Captain? I recommend that we meet to discuss this. Mr Turner is, as I said, incredibly distressed. He has sought legal counsel with the Embassy, which we have agreed to provide.”
“Why didn’t Mr Turner advise me of Mrs Turner’s condition?” Kamal said quietly.
“Because in his own words, he didn’t trust you, Captain. From the start you had your own conclusions regarding this case, and you followed those conclusions through with complete disregard for anything he said. You made him feel that he was an inconvenience to you.” Ben wet his lips and smiled at George. It had all gone better than he had possibly hoped, and he was about to deliver what he considered to be his killer line. “Captain, I have to say that with the evidence I’ve seen, and your behaviour on this call, I do not trust you either.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“Captain Kamal?”
After what seemed an age, there was the softest of clicks, followed by a dead tone.
Kamal had not simply been rattled. He had not simply stumbled over a few words. He had been so completely taken by Ben’s charade that he had gone.
Chapter 52
“If Gail didn’t steal the books, then she must have been set up,” Martín said, setting his knife and fork down on his half-empty plate.
Ben found himself nodding. George simply sat there, looking blankly into space.
“We know that someone is trying to cover up the finds on Mars, and it looks as if they are trying to cover up the finds on Earth too,” he continued. “Which means that someone must have known about them, before they were discovered.”
Again, Ben found himself nodding. “Which means they must have known about what was on Mars before the mission was sent. But if they worked this out based on the Amarna finds, then Gail would have known about it too.” Which explains why the Professor and Gail are both dead, he thought.
“But why hide proof of extra-terrestrial life?” George said, breaking his silence. “And even if Gail and the Professor had managed to prove it from the Amarna finds, then so what? The news had already reached the media anyway! That’s why she was here in the first place!”
Before either of them could answer, he continued.
“I’ll tell you why: because it’s not proof of alien life that’s being covered up; it’s something else. Something bigger. Maybe the Professor knew something, maybe he didn’t. But whoever killed them wasn’t taking any chances either way,” he slammed his fist on the table. Behind them a waiter shot them a disapproving glance.
“What could be bigger than aliens?” Martín and Ben said in unison.
George looked at them both with fire in his eyes. “I don’t know, but it killed my wife, and when I find out what it is, I’m going to make sure that somebody pays for that.”
Captain Kamal scratched his head and switched off the screen on his desk. There were no two ways around it: Gail Turner just wasn’t going to go away as he’d hoped.
At first, he had been concerned that the lack of a body would make her husband a constant pain, a thorn in his side. Then, he had been delivered a ‘body’.
Back in the morgue, as he’d lifted the sheet that covered her, his heart had skipped a beat. She hadn’t looked dead to him. Motionless, yes. But dead? He just had to hope that her husband didn’t notice. He’d covered her up as quickly as possible, feeling the game was up, but Mr Turner hadn’t suspected a thing, even after being so close to her, touching her. If anything, the punch in the face for his lack of compassion had been welcome when compared to the alternative.