Firebird Page 15

  Then there was Andropov, who’d retreated to the Fayoum, where the first reports of the ghoul had come from four years ago. I thought of the old Bedouin at St Samuel’s graveyard only that morning: ‘The boy was killed by a ghoul. Everybody knows it...Found him still alive, half torn to shreds — and one of them saw a creature running off in the distance.’ I thought of the beast I’d seen in the vision when I’d touched Ibram’s dead hand, then of the Great Sphinx and its shapeshifter’s features, then of the spiderish Van Helsing and the unaccountable fear and loathing I felt in his presence. Somehow there was a whole monstrous design there, half-seen, half-guessed in the gloom. I turned a sharp corner and looked suddenly into deep yellow eyes, then something screeched and leapt away from me. I ducked instantly and went for my Beretta and my torch at the same time, my pulse thumping drumbeats in my ears. In the torch beam a big black cat yowled as it skipped and bounced frantically away from me along a high wall. I stood up, chuckling, sheathed my pistol and moved cautiously forward down the alley, letting my beam play across weathered sandstone.

  At the end the alley forked, and I hesitated there for a second, seeing only darkness in both directions. At that moment there was a terrible scream from somewhere close by — a scream of such wild horror and agony that my blood turned to ice water. For a moment my muscles seized up and I stopped breathing. Shakily, I slipped my weapon back into my hand. The cry came again, louder, nearer and more anguished than before, but this time there was another sound mingling with it — a threatening bass rumble like the hunting pant of a hyena. I heard a noise like tough cardboard being wrenched apart, and another paroxysm of shrieks that was drowned by a frenzy of deep throated roars. I took a deep breath, cocked my weapon and rushed blindly down the alley, whipping my flashlight beam from side to side. My trainer connected with something rough and hard and I fell cleanly, dropping the torch and rolling instinctively into a somersault. The torch bounced across the hard stones for a second, and in its last pulse of light I glimpsed the form of a squatting animal — all limbs and angles like a immense mosquito — that seemed to be dragging some dark burden down the alley. My torch hit a wall and the bulb went out, but almost at the same instant I squeezed the trigger of my Beretta.

  The report shattered the silence, reverberating from the walls, and I held my breath and pumped the trigger convulsively again and again, scourging the alley with fire. Suddenly the hammer snapped down on an empty chamber, and I rolled to my feet, my ears straining in the darkness. There was a dark bundle on the flagstones in front of me and I ran to it. It was a body — probably the body of a youth — and as I crouched down to touch it my hand came into contact with stickiness. I smelled vomit and blood and retched. There was a flutter of movement further down the alley and I froze for a second, then slammed another mag into my Beretta. In the dim light of the moon and stars I could just make out a spidery shadow floating away like a ghost. I shouted, fired twice, then ran after the shadow, bellowing wildly to encourage myself. Whatever was there terrified me, but this time I knew that no matter what happened I couldn’t let it escape. I’d been hunting that thing night after night for almost four years. Two weeks ago I’d seen it and it had slipped through my fingers, but that wasn’t going to happen again. Sanusi had claimed the man who took the amulet had been the ghoul in disguise. Maybe that was garbage, or maybe it provided the most crucial link of the whole investigation.

  As I sprinted down the alley I knew I had to get it this time. I needed to know why it had come back and what its purpose was, before other victims died: before it was too late. The shadow seemed to flit with incredible speed and I had nothing more to home in on than the faintest impression of motion. The walls passed me in a blur and I ran on panting, faster and faster until I came to a place where the street split four ways. Dim lights dickered along three of the streets but the other was in pitch darkness. I cocked my ear and heard a scuff of movement from the dark alley and plunged into it; sensing rather than seeing the creature drifting effortlessly in front of me. The alley turned abruptly into another street lit by a blinking lamp at the far end. As far as I could tell, the alley was completely deserted. I wondered suddenly if I’d simply imagined the ghoul in front of me. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing.

  I slowed to a walk and moved warily along the alley with my weapon at the ready, hardly daring to breathe, my head turning left and right. The walls were sheer, weathered sandstone maybe four hundred years old, broken only by the occasional slit window, but halfway down the alley was an arched doorway set into the stone down a couple of steps. The door was wide open and I glimpsed stone stairs beyond it, descending into inky blackness. I stood at the door and listened, and for a second I thought I made out a sibilation of air — a ghost whisper like the sea sound in shells. I glanced around. Either the thing was in here, or it was long gone, I thought. I gulped, extended my Beretta in both hands and began to descend the steps, feeling my way shakily. A fusty smell — dust, mould and rat urine — made my nostrils twitch. I reached the bottom of the steps and stood for a moment, helpless in the dark, listening for breathing, movement — anything that would tell me I was not alone.

  Suddenly I remembered the box of matches I was carrying in my jacket, and I put my handgun away, brought out the matches and struck one. It didn’t ignite, so I dropped it, swearing to myself, and struck another. There was a momentary flare of sulphurous light in which I saw another door in the wall nearby — a door scrawled with what looked like a crude graffito of the ibis-headed god Thoth, entwined with an enormous serpent as large as a boa constrictor. That was all I had time to take in before the match burned my finger and went out, and something invisible swung out of the darkness, striking me a glancing blow across the forehead. I staggered and fell across the lower stairs, and as I struggled to remain conscious I had the sensation of some dark body stepping across me and susurrating up the stairs. I might have blacked out for a minute or two, but certainly no more. I dragged myself, half-crawling, up the steps, but in the alley outside there was no one and nothing. I felt my head and found a lump there and a trickle of blood. I filled my lungs with air and moved haltingly along the alley, hugging the deepest shadow.

  Slowly, I retraced my way to the street where I’d first seen the ghoul, covering each successive turn carefully with my weapon. There was still no one about — no movement of any kind — and I was astonished that my salvo of shots hadn’t brought people running. It was as if it had all happened in a dream, and when I reached the alley where I’d first spotted the ghoul it became even more dreamlike. I found my broken torch lying against the wall, but the victim himself had vanished into thin air.

  19

  It was only a few minutes back to my apartment block on the waterfront, but I was still wired up and every shadow had me jumping for cover. I cased the alley behind the block steadily, then worked my way to the basement door. My flat was on the top floor and I’d chosen it because it had two entrances, one approached by the lift from the front and the other by the fire stairs to the back. Like I’d told Daisy, it always helped to have a back-up, and I used the front entrance so rarely that I’d have sworn the ghaffir hardly knew me. I closed the outer door, locked it, and let out a sigh of relief. It was good to be out of the cold and in the safety of the familiar. I lurched down the dank corridor to the steel fire door, which for security reasons could only be opened from the inside. Whenever I went out this way I left it jammed open with a wooden wedge, knowing by experience that none of the residents used this exit but me. As I bent to remove the wedge, though, a warning bell jangled in my head. The wedge was still there, but it wasn’t in the exact same place I’d left it, I was certain. Someone — or something — had come in, removed the wedge to close the door, then thought better of it and put it back. A new burst of adrenaline washed through my blood and I grasped my Beretta. I thought of the ghoul, and for a moment I considered bugging out. Then I set my teeth and climbed the stairs unsteadily until I came to my back door.
I put my ear to the wood. I heard nothing so I drew my keys, unlocked it and pushed it open.

  There wasn’t much to see in the kitchen — the contents of a couple of packets of cereal tipped out over the table, cutlery drawers open, the fridge door ajar — but enough to tell me that the place had been breached. In the living room, though, it was mayhem, as if it had been searched with increasing rage and frustration. My computer had been booted but was thankfully intact: the speakers of my stereo had been ripped open, pictures had been torn off the walls, chairs and cushions slashed open with a blade, books pulled out of shelves, ripped and scattered in pieces across the rug. I didn’t go in much for personal knick knacks, and Hammoudi always said my place was so impersonal that it was like someone was camping out rather than living there permanently. It wasn’t that I felt any attachment to the pad, but the idea that I’d been compromised made me livid. I heard a scuffle coming from the bedroom. For a moment I stood listening, then I moved forward silently, nudged the door open with a trainer and eased myself into the room.

  The mattress on my bed had been pulled up and cut open, and stuffing was strewn across the floor. There were only two possible hiding places — either the walk-in cupboard or the full—length curtains I’d left closed that morning. I went for the cupboard, and I lucked out. As soon as I turned, a dark figure exploded from behind the curtains, a black vortex of movement. For a split second I was certain it was the ghoul, but then I saw the long knife that flashed down on my gun hand. The blade clanked against gunmetal and I dropped the weapon, seizing the black draped wrist that grasped the knife and yanking it down so that there was a shriek of pain. The knife fell, and turning I saw that I was wrestling with a hooded figure — the same veiled Bedouin woman who’d laid me out in the Khan the previous night. She was big — bigger even than I remembered — and I could feel the powerful muscles moving under the robe. I dodged a roundhouse punch that might have knocked me down, let go of the wrist and delivered five or six Hammoudi-style smashes to the jaw, one after the other. There was a lot of pent up anger behind those punches. The woman staggered back drunkenly, and I did something I’d been itching to do for a long time — I tore off the veil.

  I suppose I’d known all along what I would find. Not many women have a punch that powerful, and few Bedouin women are that tall. If this was a woman, she was one hell of a dyke, with a two day shadow on a square chin, now bloody from my punches, to go with iron pectorals and biceps, and size eleven hands and feet. The guy was still staggering when I picked up my Beretta. I levelled it right between his legs and smiled. ‘Stop it right there,’ I said, ‘or you really will find out what it’s like to be a woman.’ Without taking my eyes off him, I tipped a wooden framed camp chair upright. ‘Sit down,’ I said.

  The man looked at the gun sullenly as if trying to gauge the distance between us. He didn’t sit down. Blood dripped out of his nose and he put up a hand to touch it, then looked at the blood on his fingers. ‘I ought to rip you apart,’ he said, the voice coming out bass and slightly hoarse. He made a sudden move towards me and I raised the gun a little and squeezed the trigger. There was a deafening thunk, and the guy ducked. The round whanged into the wall behind him — it must have missed his ear by about a millimetre. He put a shaky hand up to feel if his head was still in one piece, and then abruptly sat down on the chair.

  ‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘Believe me, the next one really will be in your cojones.’

  ‘I know what you did to Ibram,’ he said coolly, wiping blood off his chin, ‘and sooner or later you’re going to pay.’

  He was scared but in control, I realized. He had the same sort of quiet power Hammoudi had — a power that came from physical strength and the ability to handle oneself. He wasn’t in much of a position to rip me apart right now, but I’d actually felt the power of those ham like fists, and I didn’t underestimate his ability to do it if given the ghost of a chance. He looked fit and alert, his blue eyes clear, watchful and full of hate. He spoke Arabic almost perfectly, but he certainly wasn’t a Bedouin — not even an Arab, I thought.

  ‘I think we’ve got our wires crossed,’ I said. ‘Last I heard I was the one investigating Ibram’s death.’

  ‘You cops are mixed up in this — right up to the elbows.’

  I wondered how much he knew, and looked him up and down. Beneath the woman’s robe he was wearing rubber sandals made out of the inner tubes of motorcar tyres —the Arabs called them tamut takhalli — ‘die and leave them’ — because of their legendary inability to wear out. I distinctly remembered their eerie slapping on the flagstones of Khan al-Khalili.

  ‘You’ve been following me, I said. ‘You followed me to the US medical facility. You were there at the Mena Palace and in the alley last night coming back from Sanusi’s. You must have followed me here, too, and found your way in. I want to know why.’

  He folded his big hands in his lap with a show of complacency. ‘Because Ibram’s dead.’

  ‘And you think I did it?’

  ‘Maybe you didn’t gun him down yourself, but you and that big detective and the girl — you’re in it up to the eyes. You SID are just another death squad when it comes down to it, there to protect the establishment.’

  ‘Turn out your pockets,’ I snapped. He literally turned them inside out, but there was only a wedge of Egyptian money and some keys — no credit cards or ID .

  ‘Why are you wearing drag?’ I asked.

  ‘I had to stay alive long enough to get even with those who did it. I know I’m on the hit list and it seemed a good disguise.’

  ‘Hit list,’ I said, turning his words over in my head. ‘I talked to someone else today who claimed to be on the hit list, only this guy was convinced it was drawn up by the Militants.’ His eyes were full of interest now I noted. ‘Guy called Andropov — a former member of the Millennium Committee — like Ibram. He told me a great deal. Said there was another potential member of the committee who vanished. Maybe he didn’t vanish. Maybe he was just going round in drag.’ He opened his eyes wide, knowing I’d got him, and that slight flicker told me all. ‘Christian Monod,’ I said.

  He winced. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you’re probably going to kill me anyway, so what the hell.’

  ‘Doctor Ibram called you on the phone just before he was shot,’ I said. ‘I hope it was worth it, because it cost him his life.’

  ‘You should know.’

  ‘Look, why would I or my people want to take out Ibram?’

  ‘Because he was on to it. He was on to the whole thing.’

  The whole thing? I decided to risk it. Maybe Daisy’s shock tactics were best after all. ‘You mean Firebird?’ I said. The word dropped into the room like a mortar bomb and his face crashed shut.

  ‘You tell me,’ he said, ‘the only Firebird I know is an American car.’

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Monod stared back at me uneasily. ‘You’re in a great deal of trouble,’ I said. ‘Assault on a police officer — twice — once with a deadly weapon. Attempted murder. Aggravated burglary. You could be inside for a long time. Ever been in an Egyptian jail?’

  ‘It won’t come to that, will it? A bullet in the skull down a dark alley is more like it.’

  ‘Why were you following me?’

  He went silent, but he’d already revealed too much. ‘All right,’ I said, let me tell you why. Since you took the trouble to trash my place, you must have been searching for something. What was it? Not my silverware or my set of rare postage stamps, I’ll bet. No, you think I have something that belonged to Ibram. A map, perhaps? Or should we say, half a map?’

  I knew by the slightest flutter of his eyelids that I’d been right.

  ‘Where is it?’ he said.

  ‘It’s in a place you’ll never find it, not unless I want you to that is.’

  ‘You bastard!’

  ‘Why are you looking for the map?’

  ‘Forget it,’ he said, ‘I’m not talking.’

  F
or an instant I saw red. I squeezed the trigger and a round banjoed between Monod’s legs, only just missing the groin. The big man flinched and half stood, and in that second I switched the pistol to my left hand, whipped out my stiletto and took two paces over to him. Before he could stop me I slashed his bunched right fist across the knuckles with my blade and pistol whipped him across the jowls with the butt of the Beretta. He screamed and sat down heavily, clutching his injured hand. I poked the muzzle of my pistol right into his ear and held my blade across his Adam’s apple. ‘The next one is your throat,’ I said. ‘Now who are you, Monod?’

  ‘All right! OK!’ he stammered. ‘I’m an engineer, that’s all. I worked on a project in the Great Pyramid with Ibram. Then I got warned off by some shits who told me they were police officers. Said they’d kill my wife and kids, so I disappeared and disguised myself as a woman.’

  ‘You sure these guys were police?’

  ‘They had official ID, but they could have been anything. They were done up in these long black raincoats with black hats, like characters out of a “B” horror movie.’

  I let the blade drop and shifted the the muzzle of my handgun out of his ear. I took a step back. ‘Whoever those guys were,’ I said, ‘I’m not one of them.’