‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
‘That’s what he told me, just before I drove to the airport.’
Daniel and Gabrielle were on a plane back to London. Mansoor hadn’t been happy about them flying out like that, when they were supposed to be collaborating on the most important paper of all their careers. But Gabrielle was clearly upset and Daniel had been in shock when he discovered from the police when the fire had occurred.
Daniel realized that it was on the same morning that he had visited Carmichael and he had been racking his brain trying to remember if he had seen anyone at the time.
‘So let me be clear about this. He said that the plagues could recur?’
‘He said the plague in the singular. When I pressed him, he specified the sixth plague.’
‘Which was?’
‘Boils… on the flesh.’
‘Look, I shouldn’t say this about my own uncle, but he was suffering from the early stages of dementia.’
‘I know that.’
‘Then we shouldn’t really be surprised about the fire. It was probably an accident.’
‘That wouldn’t account for the injuries that the post-mortem revealed.’
Gabrielle looked away, blushing.
‘You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that… do the police have any idea who might have done it?’
‘If they did, they didn’t tell me.’
‘Then why are you so sure that his death has anything to do with this nonsense about the sixth plague?’
Daniel thought for a moment.
‘Maybe it’s just the timing. One minute, he’s telling me something that sounds awfully conspiratorial. I dismissed it at the time – for the same reason as you did, because of the dementia. Then, right after that, he dies… in a fire… after both he and Roksana have been subjected to other physical injuries.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘He mentioned the incident with the fiery snakes and the bronze snake on a pole.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a passage from the Bible,’ said Daniel, rummaging through the light bag he had taken on as hand luggage. He found his copy of the Bible and thumbed through it. ‘Here it is: Numbers 21, verses six to eight.’
And the Lord sent fiery snakes into the people and they bit the people and many of the Israelites died. And the people came to Moses and said ‘We have sinned because we spoke against the Lord and you; pray to the Lord and he will take the snakes from us’ and Moses prayed on behalf of the people. And the Lord said to Moses ‘Make a burning one and put it on a pole and it shall be that all the bitten ones that see it will live.’
‘Burning one?’
‘It’s widely understood to be a bronze or copper snake.’
‘But how does that relate to the plagues suffered by the Egyptians? There wasn’t a plague of snakes, was there?’
‘No. And I wasn’t clear what he meant when he mentioned the sixth plague – which was boils – in the same breath. But it wasn’t so much the fiery snakes I was thinking about. It was the snake that Moses put on the pole to save the Israelites who had been bitten by the snakes. It reminded me of the symbol we saw on that clay jar.’
‘The Rod of Asclepius?’
‘Yes, or some sort of Egyptian precursor to it. I was wondering if that could be some symbol associated with Moses. I think that the association has been suggested in the past.’
‘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.’