‘Yes?’ the quiet voice said.
‘It’s Jeff,’ the man replied. ‘I’m outside the building and she’s just come back. But she’s not alone. There’s a man with her.’
‘Describe him.’
‘Big guy, dark hair. He’s certainly over six feet tall and heavily built — muscle, not fat. He looks as if he could be quite handy in a scrap.’
There was a short pause while the man at the other end of the line digested this piece of unwelcome information.
‘That complicates things,’ he said. ‘I had hoped she would be alone tonight. Do nothing for the moment. Wait there and see if he leaves. If he does, you can carry on as planned.’
The man in the car shrugged.
‘You’re paying the bill,’ he said, ‘so it’s your call, but I can handle him, no problem. Get the job done in half an hour.’
‘Definitely not. You only go in if the man leaves the building. Understood?’
‘Got it. So do you want me to stay here all night?’
‘If this man hasn’t come out again by, say, one in the morning, I think we can assume that he’s staying the night. If he does that, you can try tomorrow night instead. And remember, this has to look like a burglary gone bad.’
‘I know what you want done and how to do it. Don’t you worry.’
43
Angela decided to ring Ali again at lunchtime. But this time there was no answer at all, and eventually the call went through to voicemail. She tried twice more over the next half-hour, with the same result. There wasn’t much else she could do.
Then a thought struck her. Egypt, she knew, was still quite volatile, with occasional riots and other forms of civil disturbance. Maybe something had happened in Cairo which could have prevented him getting to work that day. She hadn’t been near a TV or radio since yesterday. She opened her web browser and typed ‘Cairo news’ into the search field.
The results were disappointing, or encouraging, depending on your point of view. As far as she could tell, there had been no riots or any other significant happenings in the city.
Then another result, towards the bottom of the screen, caught her eye. It was headlined ‘Savage murder of museum worker’, and the moment she saw that she felt a sudden sense of foreboding. With trepidation, she clicked the headline and watched as the story loaded.
Savage murder of museum worker
A manhunt is under way across Cairo today following the discovery of a murder victim at the Egyptian Museum. Police were called to the building after a member of the administrative staff found the body of Dr Ali Mohammed, a specialist in ancient documents, lying in his office. It is understood that he had been killed with a knife. The reason he was murdered is uncertain and, although his personal laptop was missing, a police spokesman stated that robbery seemed an unlikely motive.
It has been established that Mr Mohammed received a visitor that afternoon shortly before he was murdered, a man who claimed to be a police officer and who showed a form of identification to security staff at the museum to gain entrance. It is now known that this identification was a forgery, and a description of the alleged perpetrator has been circulated to all police stations and military units in and around the city. Members of the public are urged not to approach this man under any circumstances, but to call the police immediately.
A very poor quality sketch of a man’s face followed the article, and then a brief word-picture, which described the man as solidly built, a little under six feet tall, with a tanned complexion, thick black moustache and dark hair, and a round face. Which was little enough for any police officer to go on, Angela thought.
She read the report once more, and felt her anger at Ali’s assailant growing more intense by the second. She hadn’t known him well, but what she’d known about the Egyptian scientist she’d liked.
And then she had a realization. Ali had warned her not to get involved with the parchment, and had even hinted that his own life could be in danger because of it. And he had obviously — and very tragically — been absolutely right.
Suddenly, the parchment didn’t seem so important any more, not when two of the people known to have handled it had already been brutally murdered. Angela wondered if Ali’s killing would mark the end of the matter, or if the man he had described as the ‘owner’ was still out there somewhere, on the run from the killers and in desperate fear for his life.
She was about to return to her work when another thought struck her. She hadn’t actually ever seen the parchment in the flesh, as it were, had never been closer than a couple of thousand miles to it as far as she knew, and had certainly never owned it. But she did have a number of high-quality images of it in her possession. Would that fact alone make her a target as well?
That thought was so stunning — and so alarming — that for a couple of minutes she simply sat still at her workbench, staring into space.
Then she shook her head. Surely, whoever had been responsible for killing the two men in Cairo wouldn’t even know that she had been sent the images? But if they did, if they somehow found out what had happened, would they come after her?
44
Abdul had spent the day in the souk and the neighbouring streets, his rationalization for choosing that area of the city for his search being that Husani might well go to ground in the part of Cairo that he knew best. He’d stopped briefly for lunch in a small café, choosing a seat outside so that he would have a clear view of all the passers-by.
He paid the bill and started walking away from the café, but he’d only moved a few metres when his phone rang. Immediately, he stepped to one side, away from the press of humanity, and answered the call.
‘Yes?’
‘He’s left Egypt,’ Khusad stated, without preamble.
‘What? When? And where has he gone?’
‘There is no need for you to know. Suffice to say, he’s gone, and others will take it from here.’
45
‘So she still hasn’t come back to the apartment? Why?’
‘Listen, mate, I’m a hired gun, not a bloody mind reader. How the hell should I know where she is? If you want my guess, she’s shacked up somewhere with that bloke I saw her with last night. You should have let me do her then. Him too.’
In the study of a large semi-detached house on the edge of Norwood, a middle-aged man with a round and almost cherubic pink face drummed his fingers in irritation. His plan had been thwarted the first night by the unexpected presence of Angela Lewis’s male companion, and now tonight she hadn’t returned home at all. There was also, he realized, the very real possibility that she wouldn’t be there over the weekend either, possibly spending the time with him. That could mean that the earliest the contract could be completed would be Monday evening, and that might be far too late. And now his contractor was getting cheeky with him.
For several seconds he sat in silence, considering his options. Then he made his decision. The most vital thing, very obviously, was Lewis’s death: the actual manner of it was of secondary importance.
‘OK. Change of plan,’ he said.
‘Good,’ the contractor replied.
‘We know that the target is still going to work. Get to her that way, and make it look like an accident. If you pull it off, there’s an extra grand in it for you.’
‘Where and when?’
‘That’s up to you, but no later than tomorrow night. You know where she works and what time she’ll leave the building?’
‘Yes to both. Just leave it to me,’ Jeff replied.