Pearce was glad to be out of the cafeteria. They were still in their stifling masks, but were no longer surrounded by the upturned chairs and disarray that marked horrific mass murder.
‘Here,’ Salah said, leading Pearce and Brigitte to a booth in the austere concrete guard room.
The booth had a window that was covered by a metal grille. Access was through a locked metal door, which Salah opened. Inside was a desk, an old plastic chair and shelves stacked with papers, folders and large ledgers.
‘All search reports go to the duty officer,’ Salah said, opening the ledger that lay on the desk. He flipped to a page near the back of the book. ‘This is a log of the most recent searches of the food stores.’
‘What’s that?’ Pearce asked, noting an Arabic signature in an adjacent column.
‘When a search is carried out, the guard who does this writes his name here,’ Salah replied.
‘Ismail Mahmoud,’ Pearce said, sounding out the Arabic letters. ‘May I?’
Salah nodded. ‘Of course. Your colleagues and the Egyptian security forces have already conducted their forensics.’ He stepped back and allowed Pearce to get to the desk.
Pearce leafed through the book, only partly aware of Kamal and Yousef’s conversation in the corridor outside. The former colonel had asked the deputy governor what changes he’d make to the prison if he was promoted and the pompous man’s voice echoed off the concrete walls as he rattled through a catalogue of failings and recriminations, most of which were aimed at his boss. Pearce focused on the ledger and felt a familiar pang of excitement as he spotted something tiny, but very significant.
‘Captain, could you look at this?’
Salah peered over his shoulder and Brigitte crowded in and looked from the other side.
Pearce flipped from the page Salah had shown him to one from three days earlier. He pointed at the signature next to the most recent search log entry and then at Ismail Mahmoud’s earlier scrawl.
‘Do you notice anything?’ Pearce asked.
Salah looked clueless, but Brigitte spotted the discrepancy immediately. ‘The swirl above the line goes in different directions.’
‘It’s called a hamza,’ Pearce remarked. ‘Above the alif, it is written like a five, rather than a two.’
Salah studied the lettering of the two signatures and nodded. Alif was the first letter of the Arabic alphabet and was often written with a tiny hamza at the top, like the dot on an ‘i’. Pearce flipped through the book and pointed out more of Ismail’s signatures.
‘He wrote all his hamza like a two, except on this one day,’ he noted. ‘Whoever did the forgery got it almost perfect.’
Pearce carried on leafing through the ledger until he saw what he was looking for. ‘Karim Halabi,’ he said. ‘The only guard who writes his hamza like a five. Was he one of those killed?’
‘No,’ Salah replied, his face suddenly hardening. ‘He and all the other guards who worked on this block have been signed off for health reasons.’
Yousef sensed something was up and broke off his speech to sidle over. ‘What’s this?’
‘Someone might have forged the search records,’ Pearce said. ‘Possibly a guard called Karim Halabi.’
‘Then we must call internal security,’ Yousef responded excitedly, no doubt imagining the political advantage he’d obtain. ‘He must be interrogated.’
‘If it’s all the same, we’d like to talk to him first,’ Pearce said.
Brigitte nodded at Kamal. The former colonel pulled Yousef aside and Pearce only caught the first couple of words of their whispered conversation. ‘Ya habibi . . .’ it began. My good friend; the words used to prime countless corrupt deals in the Middle East. Pearce wasn’t interested in what grubby arrangement Kamal made to ensure Yousef didn’t escalate the discovery. He was thinking about what he’d do when he met Karim Halabi.