‘Maybe it is. But why did Uncle Harrison think the sixth plague could recur?’
‘He never really said. I think it may just have been…’
He didn’t want to say it.
‘A symptom of the dementia.’
Daniel avoided Gabrielle’s eyes.
‘But in that case… why are you worried about it?’
Daniel forced himself to meet her eyes and he chose his next words carefully.
‘Because now I’m not so sure. I was thinking about what Mansoor said about the food poisoning outbreak. Did you see any sign of it when you were there?’
‘No, it happened after I left.’
‘Because I was just wondering if Mansoor’s covering up for something.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, I can understand them closing down the dig because of food poisoning, but why didn’t they allow us to go there?’
Now it was Gabrielle’s turn to think for a moment.
‘You have a point. He did seem a bit cagey.’
A few hours later, when they landed at Heathrow, they found themselves held for a long time while the doors were kept closed and the passengers were told to stay in their seats. Eventually, when they were opened, four uniformed policemen entered the aircraft and made their way straight to Daniel.
‘Daniel Klein?’ said one of them.
‘Yes,’ Daniel replied nervously.
‘I have a warrant for your arrest.’
Chapter 15
Goliath was lying on the bed in his hotel room, thinking about how he had failed his mentor. Arthur Morris had told him to keep track of Daniel Klein. But he had lost sight of him, quite suddenly, and now he was feeling guilty.
When first given the task, he had asked if he was to kill Klein, but Morris told him not to ask questions. He would be told later if anything more was required of him. Right now all he had to do was keep tabs on Klein and report in regularly to tell Morris where he was.
And Senator Morris had always been good to Goliath – even giving him his nickname which he said was a sign of respect. Goliath was the more worthy opponent, the senator had told him once. In a fair fight he would have won against David. He was the victim of Jewish treachery. And contrary to popular mythology, the Philistines were culturally more developed than the Jews. Indeed, after becoming king, David had chosen a personal bodyguard of Philistines because he didn’t trust his own people.
Goliath felt a debt of gratitude towards Senator Morris, because it was Morris who had saved his life – or rather stopped him from taking his own life. In the old days, when Goliath was plain old Wally Carter, his wife had left him for another man and had taken him to the cleaners with the aid of her smooth-talking Jewish shyster. Between them they had played up his size and his occasional tendency to lash out when things did not go the way he wanted. And he had watched as the house was sold from under him and she took most of the money as well as the children. Watching them drive away in the car had been the most painful thing of all.
But when he was about to jump to his death, it was Senator Morris who had stumbled across him by chance and talked to him for three hours, persuading him not to. After he was hospitalized for mental illness, it was Arthur Morris who had provided him with the lawyer and the doctor’s reports that secured his release. It had been Morris who had invited him to his home and treated him like a son and told him that God had a plan for him. It had been Morris who had trained him in various social skills that enabled him to get on with people better than he had in the past and without the former awkwardness that had plagued him. It was Morris who had explained that the social conventions and manners of the upper classes were just a form of acting and it could be learnt like any other role.
For that Wally Carter – now Goliath, the man who walked tall and held his head up high – would do anything to serve Arthur Morris, knowing that in so doing, he was serving God.
Yet now he was miserable, for the trace on Daniel’s phone wasn’t working. It was possible that the phone was switched off or that he was in a tunnel or underground; but whatever the reason, when he logged on to the website and tried to find the phone, it was showing ‘no signal’.
It was just then that Morris phoned. Goliath was fearful of the prospect of having to tell his mentor that he had failed. But he never got the chance, because instead of asking him about the whereabouts of Daniel Klein, Morris launched into a set of rapid-fire instructions, telling Goliath that he was to go to the hospital attached to the Theodor Bilharz Research Institute, locate a patient called Joel Hirsch and get some of his clothes. He was to put them in a bag, seal it up to keep it dry and bring it back to the United States.
And he was not to let anyone see him.
Goliath was about to ask why when he remembered that he was not supposed to ask questions: he was just supposed to do what God requires.
Chapter 16
‘So you admit that you were at the house that morning?’ asked the Detective Chief Inspector.
‘ Yes! ’ said Daniel for the umpteenth time. ‘I went there to speak to him just before I flew off to Egypt.’
‘And you flew off to Egypt at short notice, at the invitation of the Vice Minister of Culture.’
‘You can call him and verify that yourself.’
‘We will. But perhaps in the meantime you can tell us what you talked to Professor Carmichael about?’
‘It was just a bit of catching up on old times. Nothing special.’
Daniel was aware of how implausible this sounded.
‘You’re about to leave the country at short notice, at the request of the Egyptian Vice Minister of Culture, and take a detour from your drive to the airport to stop off at your old professor’s house for small talk?’
The DCI shot a sceptical glance at his colleague who shrugged his shoulders as if to express his own disbelief of Daniel’s account.
‘He was my mentor,’ Daniel continued. ‘I hadn’t seen him in a while and I was quite surprised at Mansoor’s invitation. So I wanted to ask for his advice.’
‘But how could he advise you, if you didn’t know why you were being invited to Egypt?’
‘That was the point. I figured he might be able to tell me how to play it.’
‘And did he?’
Daniel looked away awkwardly. He had nothing to hide on this point, but the truth made him feel uncomfortable.
‘He was too far gone to help.’
‘Too far gone?’ the DCI echoed.
‘Dementia. I could tell that he wasn’t really with me.’
‘Is it possible that he had something on his mind? Something that might explain why someone would want to kill him?’
Again Daniel lapsed into thought. On this point he did have something to hide. For the next few seconds, he thought carefully about how much he wanted to share with the DCI. Did he want to mention Carmichael’s paranoid claims about his unpublished paper? The belief that the plague of boils could make a resurgence? At the time it had seemed preposterous. But Harrison Carmichael was dead and there was no question that he had been murdered. Even if the fire could be dismissed as an accident, the injuries to Roksana and to Carmichael himself could not.
But did he want to share his suspicions with the police? Would they come over as credible? Did he really have anything to tell them? Certainly nothing that Carmichael had told him amounted to solid information. All Daniel had was a nagging suspicion, but what he really wanted was an explanation and he wasn’t going to get that from the policeman.
Daniel saw no reason to stick his neck out by offering what might come over as a self-serving explanation. So he decided to hold his peace.
‘I can’t think of anything.’
‘Okay, Professor Klein. Interview suspended at 5.45 p.m.’
‘Look, I know you have to investigate thoroughly. But I’ve told you all I know and I’m a very busy man. Is there any possibility that I could be released on bail?’