‘This place was built by my people,’ declared Gerald impetuously. ‘It is a Christian place. It is as I just said, it is the tomb of the Prophet Jesus.’
The Shaykh took several steps forward among the ossuaries. The light in his left hand shook, throwing shadows on the amber beads. In his dark robes, he was invisible unless light fell on him, and even then only his suspicious eyes were visible.
‘Leave,’ he said. ‘Leave now or suffer the penalty.’
‘I think we should talk. My friend here has healed the son of Si Musa. We have shown our friendship towards the Kel Tamasheq. We have demonstrated our loyalty to the people of Ain Suleiman.’
The Anislem made a noise in the back of his throat, a light cough that seemed to sneer at what Gerald had just said.
‘Si Musa is dead. His wife, who helped you, is dead. They have been punished, and Allah will punish them in the next world. Si Musa allowed infidels to defile this place. His wife showed you to this sacred habitation belonging to our ancestors. A kafir defied the will of Allah when he saved the child from a certain death. I could not let so much go unpunished. I have taken charge of Ain Suleiman. If you leave now and swear on whatever you hold sacred never to return to this place, you may leave with your lives. Otherwise, not one of you will see his home again. Your bones will shine white in the sand for a little time before they return to dust.’
‘I told Si Musa why we came here. You need our help. If the Germans come here, they will massacre everyone in this oasis. I swear by this holy place and the sacred objects it contains that the Germans will bring great evil on the Kel Tamasheq. They have no mercy. Even if Si Musa and his wife and son are dead, you still need our help.’
The Shaykh lifted his right hand and pointed the gun at Gerald.
‘Put the gun down!’ Gerald shouted. He had not re-armed, there was nothing he could do.
The Anislem fired, a single shot that echoed wildly through the enclosed space, as though a stone had cracked open, or a tomb.
As the sound died away, everyone looked round. Gerald realised he was still standing and seemed to be unhurt. He looked round to see Max on his right and Donaldson a few paces away to his left. But when he turned, Clark had disappeared. Looking down, he saw the soldier lying on his back, tossed awkwardly across one of the tombs.
Shaykh Harun started to aim the gun again, but as he did so another shot rang out, louder than the first, if that was possible, knocking him back as though a mule had kicked him hard in the chest. His body crashed to the ground. Gerald stepped across to him and bent down.
‘He’s dead,’ he said.
Donaldson ran to Clark, but it was too late. The Anislem’s bullet had taken the boy in the throat.
The gunshot hung in the air for what seemed an age. Its reverberations had invaded every inch of the crypt, and its ringing echoed in their ears for longer than it took for the air to grow still and silence to make its presence felt once more in the narrow chamber.
‘I think it’s time we made ourselves scarce,’ said Max as he returned his pistol to its holster.
5
In the Bleak Midwinter
The police had been and gone, two unmarked vans had taken the bodies away, the house party had been questioned, fingerprinted, and sent home. Throughout the day, three teams had remained at the hall, carrying out further forensic work in the library, and on doors and windows in its vicinity. Uniformed police, plain-clothes detectives, forensic specialists, and pathologists had passed in and out in an unending stream. Fingerprints had been lifted, everyone in the house had been fingerprinted, DNA samples had been taken from the room and the guests, everything in sight had been photographed and labelled, evidence bags had been filled with bits and pieces, and everyone above the age of three had been invited into the library to relate what they remembered of the night past.
Rather than hang around waiting to be questioned, several guests had taken on themselves the mournful task of taking down the Christmas decorations. The police had let them get on with it: the festive tree, the presents at its foot, the table laid for lunch, the lights, the candles, the nativity had all seemed the saddest things in the world, and no one could face them, not even the children. They’d questioned the parents first, so they could take their little ones off, along with their presents, to try to make some sort of Christmas for them, to find Father Christmas hidden somewhere at last, to forget the screams that had dragged them from their stocking-festooned beds in the bitter cold, greeted on the happiest morning of the year by adults weeping, and a sense of horror in a world of carols, angels, and midwinter lights.
The hall had been closed and sealed with police tape. The parish priest had come to pray at the door, as if his words and the tape together formed a ritual of closure. He too had gone on his sad way, wondering what to say to his evening congregation. Ethan and Sarah, barred from the hall, had taken themselves to the lodge, one hundred yards from the main building.
Outside, the snow continued to fall, and in the parish church, a diminished congregation bowed their heads and knelt and offered up thanks for the birth of God. In the darkling woods, birds shivered in their nests, foxes, badgers and squirrels huddled in their lairs, and silence clung to the trees. Smoke rose above the village, where wood fires crackled and spat, turkeys and geese roasted in hot ovens, puddings boiled, children played with new toys, and television screens flickered with inane shows beamed in from an array of satellites that, remote and unconcerned, circled a world of Christmases.
Ethan had sent Mrs Salgueiro off to stay with relatives. Her nerves had suffered a severe shaking, and the village doctor, who had been snatched with ill humour from his Christmas holiday, had given her a bottle of tranquillisers to ease them. She had not been the only one for whom he had prescribed that morning, but she had been Gerald’s housekeeper for twenty years (and some thought rather more than his housekeeper for some time), and she took his death — and the manner of it — badly.
Ethan made a last tour of the grounds. While he could not be part of the murder investigation, Bob Forbes, who headed it, had made him responsible for keeping a general eye on things. He went back to the lodge and returned to the small library on the ground floor, where he had spent time earlier. He was surprised to find Sarah in an armchair, reading. A bright log fire was burning in the grate; the flames danced like sprites, their reflections painting patterns of light and shade across the young woman’s face.
‘Good book?’
She looked up.
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I picked it out at random. I just wanted to read something. After everything. I thought reading might help clear my head.’
‘And has it?’ he asked. ‘Has it helped?’
She shook her head. He noticed that she hadn’t fixed her hair or put on make-up since waking earlier. The smile he’d liked so much had vanished as if for good.
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ he ventured. ‘How long will it take you to get back to Oxford? To be honest, I thought you’d be gone by now. There’s been a lot more snow through the day. The roads are hard going.’
The smile returned for a brief moment.
‘I’m not driving back yet. I’ve got time on my hands, so I thought I’d hang on here as long as necessary.’