Clara turned around on the step of the bus and quietly thanked Kamala Aziz. She pulled her borrowed cloak closer around her and took a seat, grateful no one on the bus seemed to think she was any more than an observant Muslim lady wearing a burqa. The headscarf covered her hair while a veil covered the bottom half of her face, leaving her eyes uncovered. As Clara’s eyes were brown and the strands of hair that might sneak out of the scarf black, Kamala thought she would get away with the disguise. That coupled with the fiction that she was a deaf-mute and that Kamala had to tell the bus driver that her cousin couldn’t speak but wanted to travel to Saqqara, was sufficient to get Clara onto the bus unnoticed.
Clara put her bag next to her on the seat to discourage anyone from sitting beside her. She spent the next hour and a half mulling over what Kamala had told her. It was rumoured that Maryam had met her lover a few weeks into her first year. Clara wondered why the rumour had started. She remembered when she was at university there had been gossip about various students’ love lives that turned out not to be true. Kamala said she first heard the rumours when Maryam started skipping classes or coming in late. She would spend nights away from the dormitory. She said the longer she spent with the man the less she would talk of the Guardians and the Warriors.
Clara showed Kamala Uncle Bob’s notebook and told her what Maryam had written to him. Before she showed her the map, she asked the student to page through it to see if there was anything that stood out as unusual. There was. Kamala pointed to the various asterisks against certain entries. ‘Yes, these are noteworthy. These items did not make it into the official catalogue. We’ll have to check with Dr Rahman as he will have access to that, but I think these might be items that disappeared.’
‘Where did they disappear to?’ asked Clara.
Kamala shrugged. ‘The Europeans could have stolen them.’
‘Or the Warriors of Amun-Ra?’
Kamala raised a brow. ‘If you believe the rumours.’
‘What if the rumours are true?’ asked Clara, not wanting to divulge the confidence Dr Rahman and Sergeant Mackenzie had shared with her. ‘Where might the items have been taken?’
Kamala smiled. ‘That’s the Shangri-La of Egyptology, Miss Vale. It is rumoured there is an underground chamber somewhere in the desert where reclaimed artefacts are stored.’
‘Where in the desert?’
Kamala laughed. ‘If I knew that, Miss Vale, I’d be a very wealthy woman. Everyone has looked for it at one time or another.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Well, let’s just say some more seriously than others. But Egyptians and Europeans alike. It was thought for a while that it was near the Valley of the Kings. Then that theory lost favour and it was believed that it might be closer to Amarna.’
Clara thought for a moment, remembering what Bob had said in his letter about the Scotsman wandering into the camp from the desert and no one had known what he had been doing there. Could he – Yorke – have been looking for the secret chamber? ‘Was this theory prevalent in the autumn of 1928, when you started your first year?’ she asked.
Kamala nodded. ‘It was.’
‘And now,’ asked Clara, ‘where do people think it is?’
Kamala looked over her shoulder and lowered her voice as a group of students and academics walked past them and into the library. When it was safe, she said: ‘They think it is much closer to home. Possibly as close as Saqqara.’
That was just what Clara wanted to hear. She took out the map and told Kamala where and how she had found it. The young woman gasped, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘So, Maryam was not a fantasist after all.’
The bus stopped on the outskirts of Saqqara. The passengers were all Egyptians. Some of them made their way up to the pyramids and the tourist sites, others carried shopping bags down to the village. Someone spoke to Clara and she used the hand signal Kamala had taught her, learned from a family member who was indeed deaf, to indicate she was a deaf mute. Her questioner accepted the signal and didn’t speak to her again.
Grateful for the anonymity, Clara tarried behind the other passengers, and walked at a leisurely pace, so that by the time she got to the village she was alone. She made her way to the Hassan house, checked there was no one watching and made her way around the back. She was greeted by the black cat lying on the doorstep in the sun. It looked at her for a moment, then stood up and rubbed itself against her legs.
‘You recognise me,’ said Clara and gave the animal a gentle stroke. Then she reached into her bag and retrieved a manicure kit. I really ought to invest in a proper lockpicking tool, she thought, but this will have to do for now.
A few minutes later, after a couple of tries, the lock yielded and she was in the house. The cat followed her and immediately made its way to a bedroom and jumped on the bed. It was a young woman’s room. Maryam’s room. Clara sat down on the bed beside the cat and stroked it again. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, ‘but Maryam will not be coming home.’ Then she got up and looked around. The room was in disarray. Draws and cupboards had been pulled out. Was this from when the young girl across the road had seen Yorke in the house? What had he been looking for? Was it the map? Had Maryam mentioned to someone – to her lover perhaps – that such a map existed? Clara was convinced that that was what her intruder in Newcastle had been looking for too. And she had now brought it all the way back to Egypt. She had thought of trying to find the location herself but expected she would get lost. She needed a guide. And with Dr Rahman currently unavailable, she did not know who else to ask. But she couldn’t just sit around doing nothing, particularly in light of whom Maryam’s lover was supposed to be. Time was quickly running out and if she didn’t gather enough evidence to prove her case and catch the killer, more people could die. Perhaps there was something in Maryam’s room that could help …
She skimmed through Maryam’s wardrobe – which included a mix of European and traditional clothes – but could find nothing hidden in pockets. She got on her hands and knees and searched the detritus emptied from drawers by Yorke. There was nothing other than what any young woman would have. She could find no notebooks, diaries or letters. Nothing to give her further insight into Maryam’s state of mind or circumstance – nor confirmation of who her lover was. She then extended her search to the rest of the house but after half an hour of investigation, could find no further clues. But what it did tell her was that it did not look as if Mohammed Hassan and his daughter had packed up and left as they apparently did each summer. Which then begged the question: where was Mohammed? Clara sighed, fearing the answer. In all likelihood he, too, was dead.
She took one last look at Maryam’s room and decided to head across the road to question the neighbour, Sara, again. Clara and the cat left the house the way they had come in. But as she re-locked the door she felt the presence of someone behind her. He spoke in Arabic. She reached under her cloak and clutched her gun.
The voice spoke again. She turned, preparing to do the ‘I can’t hear’ gesture with her spare hand, and gasped as she came face to face with Reginald Yorke.
He leered down at her then smirked. ‘My, my, Miss Vale, I barely recognised you in that unflattering ensemble. A far cry from your outfit the first night I met you at the Hancock Museum.’ His voice was tinged with a soft Edinburgh brogue.
Clara held onto the gun but could not pull it out with him standing so close. ‘So who am I talking to,’ she asked, ‘Rupert Pilkerton the Yorkshireman or Reginald Yorke the Scotsman?’
He laughed and put on a posh accent. ‘Or George Herbert the Englishman!’ His voice returned to Scots as he said: ‘I am none of them. But you can call me Yorke if you like, as that’s how I first introduced myself to your uncle. Speaking of which, I believe you may have something I’ve been looking for.’ He reached out his hand. ‘The map, please, Miss Vale.’
‘I do not have any map,’ she said.
‘Oh, but you do. I followed you from the hotel to the university. Miss Aziz should have chosen a bench further away from the library. I had a full view of the two of you. Then, when she took you to the bus stop – in this ridiculous get-up – we were able to follow you in my car.’ He gestured over his shoulder to a motor vehicle.
‘We?’ asked Clara, craning to see who else was in the car.
‘Yes, we. I’ll introduce him to you in a moment. But first, the map.’ He reached out his hand again but this time grabbed her shoulder, clamping his large palm down hard. She winced with pain. Then she pulled back the safety catch on her gun and fired through her cloak. Yorke screamed and fell back, clutching at his side as blood seeped through his hand. Clara ran. As she did, she threw off her cloak to reveal a trouser suit and boots – she’d learned her lesson about wearing clothes she could run in. But where could she run? The only people she knew were the neighbours across the road. But as she turned to run in that direction someone shouted behind her.
‘Stop, Miss Vale, or I’ll kill the child.’
Clara whipped around, pointing her weapon, only to see young Mansoor being held by Sergeant Mackenzie with a gun against the boy’s head.
‘Put the gun down, Miss Vale.’
By now neighbours to left and right had come out of their homes at the sound of a gunshot. A woman behind her screamed. ‘Mansoor!’
Mackenzie grimaced. ‘Unless you want me to kill this boy in front of his mother, help get Yorke into the car, then get into the driving seat yourself. But don’t think about driving off.’
‘I can’t drive,’ said Clara.
‘Nonsense,’ said Mackenzie, ‘I know you can. I have been speaking to the police in Newcastle, and they have very helpfully told me all about you. So now, Miss Vale, put down the gun. Or I will kill the child.’
Mansoor’s eyes pleaded with her in terror. Clara obeyed.