Only it had gone wrong – horribly wrong. He accomplished the killing all right, but he had got caught. However, Arthur Morris had not abandoned him. He had got him a lawyer who managed to get him off with manslaughter. He learnt an important lesson at the trial, namely that securing the right verdict had less to do with the law or the facts than with getting a sympathetic jury. The lawyer had managed to get the trial relocated to a different venue and had used a lot of so-called ‘peremptory challenges’ to get undesirables off the jury.
However, the judge was angered by the verdict and sentenced him to seven years in prison, of which he had served three and a half. It was a strange experience. He had always heard that prison was a tough place. But most prisoners stayed away from him, especially after he had killed one who tried to steal money off him. Amazingly, although there were several witnesses, they all told the prison guards that they had seen nothing. He was told by one old prisoner that he should do the same if ever he were asked if he had seen anything.
When he arrived at the hospital, he set about finding the patient, Joel Hirsch. Morris had told him not to draw attention to himself so he couldn’t ask at the main desk. Instead, he started walking down the corridor towards the intensive care unit, where Morris had told him Joel would be. He found it by following the path marked on the map at the entrance. When he walked in there was only one nurse on duty. That was good.
‘Excuse me,’ he said in slow English, to make sure that he was understood. ‘I’m looking for a patient called Joel Hirsch.’
The nurse appeared to respond to the name and pointed to a glass-encased unit. Goliath started to walk towards it, but the nurse signalled him to stop with a gesture and the word ‘ Lah ’.
‘No, you don’t understand. I’m his uncle.’
She made a sign with her hand and said something in Arabic. Then she reached for the phone.
He knew what was happening. She didn’t speak English and she was going to call someone else. If only she had gone to fetch someone, that would have given him time. But instead she was going to stay here and wait until help came. That was no good. He didn’t want to be seen.
There was only one thing to do. He reached out and grabbed her, clamping one hand over her mouth to stop her screaming and encircling her neck with the other. And then with that technique that he was so good at, he snapped her neck and let her body slump to the floor.
But now he was in a panic. If this was the intensive care unit then there would normally be several people on duty and that meant that someone could come back at any minute. He knew that he had to find a sample of Joel’s clothes, but he didn’t know where to look. A patient’s clothes would normally be in a cabinet beside the bed, but in this case, the bed was in an isolated unit. And it was probably locked or at least alarmed.
He looked for some sign on a cabinet or unit next to the room that housed the bed, but there was none. They might have destroyed his clothes or taken them for analysis – he simply had no way of knowing. All he knew was that he could hear voices. That meant that people were approaching. He didn’t want to fail his mentor, especially after he had lost track of that Daniel Klein character. But what other choice did he have?
It was now too late to go back into the main corridor. Instead, he made his way across the unit to the emergency exit and slipped out just as he heard a woman scream.
They had discovered the body.
He broke into a sweat and started sprinting.
Chapter 19
‘Well, I’m pleased to tell you, Professor Klein, that you are free to go. For now. You’re being released on bail as we may have some more questions for you. However, one of your bail conditions is that you remain in the country, so we’ll be retaining your passport for the time being.’
‘Thank you,’ said Daniel, not sure what he was thanking the DCI for.
Ten minutes later, back in possession of his other personal items, Gaby was driving him back to his place in North London.
‘So let’s assume that it was one of the papyri from Deir el-Medina, it could be the key to unlocking a sizeable chunk of Jewish history. I mean, it could open up the whole history of the Israelites in Egypt from the arrival of Joseph to the exodus of Moses.’
‘Look, Gaby, I don’t mean to be rude, but this isn’t really what you want to talk about, is it?’
‘What else would I want to talk about?’
‘Your uncle.’
‘I do not want to talk about my uncle!’ she snapped. ‘And it’s Gabrielle.’
‘Look… I’m sorry. I know this is painful-’
‘I said I don’t want to talk about it! My uncle’s death is a tragedy, but there’s not much we can do about it. Some burglar who doesn’t like to leave evidence behind… some disgruntled former student… some rival academic… some local lunatic… Whoever it was, we’re in no position to catch them. That’s the job of the police.’
An uncomfortable few seconds went by. Daniel knew that any further attempts to comfort her would only backfire, that much was certain. So he returned to the subject of the mysterious papyrus and its origins.
‘Okay. Well, let’s consider your theory, Professor Gusack,’ he said with a forced smile. ‘The scribes who worked at the necropolis were fully literate in the various writing systems of the day, including hieroglyphics. Indeed, most if not all of the workers there were fully literate.’
‘I know. They were skilled workers – paid workers, not slaves. In fact, the Deir el-Medina papyri even contain the first known record of a strike, when they downed tools after going unpaid for too long.’
‘Which just goes to prove my point. The stonemasons had to be literate in order to carve the hieroglyphic characters into the rock.’
‘Your point being?’
‘My point being that Proto-Sinaitic script was used by the uneducated. Why would the literate, skilled workers at the necropolis bother with it?’
‘Have you got a better theory?’
‘Well yes, as a matter of fact I have. Who says the papyrus had to have been found at an archaeological dig?’
‘What else is there?’
‘I was thinking about it while I was cooling my heels in the police cells. I was wondering if it might have been found accidentally during some building project.’
‘ Which building project?’
‘Only one of the biggest in the world! The Aswan High Dam.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, maybe one of the workers was operating a bulldozer? Or clearing out the rubble that the bulldozer had dug up.’
Gaby’s mind drifted back.
The bulldozer… moving forward… forward…
Get out of the way!
‘Gaby?’
‘What?’
‘You were miles away.’
‘Sorry.’
He wouldn’t have been so worried if it wasn’t for the fact that it was Gabrielle who was driving.
‘I’ve just thought of something, Daniel. Aswan is just across the river from Elephantine…’
‘…And Elephantine was the site of a huge discovery of papyri, dating from the fifth century BC, connected with the Jewish community that lived in the area when it was under Persian control – the so-called Elephantine papyri.’
‘How much do you know about that?’ Gabrielle asked.
‘Quite a lot, actually,’ said Daniel. ‘This is right up my street. When the Kingdom of Judah was destroyed by the Babylonians, they brought most of the Jews as captives to Babylon. But when the Babylonians were defeated by the Persians, Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, and also tolerated them in other parts of the Persian Empire, including Elephantine, where they grew into a flourishing community.
‘And were any of these Elephantine papyri in Proto-Sinaitic?’
Daniel pursed his lips. ‘That’s the downer. They were written in a variety of languages: hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Coptic. But not Proto-Sinaitic. The majority of those that specifically concerned the Jews were in Aramaic, using the old Aramaic script that developed round about the eighth century BC.’