The Deceit - Tom Knox

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work, the tears were falling lavishly now. Along with the memories of her mum, before Dad died, making jokes and pasties, with flour on her fingers, when everyone was alive, when she had cousins and uncles and parents, but so many were gone, all gone—

       I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;

       Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.

       Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?

       I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

      Karen stifled her sobs. If only she could believe that was true, that there was something beyond, a loving God for all, a brother for the lonely, a father for the orphaned, an embracing and eternal Lord, gathering the anguished. But whatever Nonconformist fire had once filled this big ugly chapel was long ago extinguished; all the tin was mined out. She certainly hadn’t inherited any faith.

      The grave was victorious, after all. And yes, death stung.

      Thankfully, the next hymns were more bearable. A few prayers were mumbled, the vicar talked of Mavis’s vivacity and gardening. Then everyone – all twelve or so of them – filed out of the chapel, and repaired to her Uncle Ken’s house for Cornish bread, saffron cakes and pots and pots of tea, thick protection against the cold and drizzle outside. There was no alcohol. The Nonconformist tradition of teetotalism lived on, even as the religion itself had expired.

      At three o’clock Karen got a call. She stepped out of her uncle’s front room into the hall to take it. The number flashing on her phone was unknown.

      ‘Hello?’

      ‘Karen?’

      ‘Hello – is this …? Is this …?’

      ‘Yes. Sally Pascoe. Your second cousin! Remember?’

      ‘Sally!’

      Karen was genuinely pleased to hear her voice, and also a little perplexed. She and Sally had been great friends as kids, during those childhood Cornish holidays they spent hours hopscotching in Trelissick or building sandcastles at Hayle. Later on, their adult lives had diverged, yet continued in parallel: Karen had become a detective chief inspector in London, Sally a policewoman; but she had stayed in Cornwall. Busy careers and lively kids meant they hadn’t met in years.

      ‘Karen, I’m so sorry I couldn’t make your mum’s … you know. So sorry.’

      ‘Sal, it’s OK.’

      ‘But work is, well, it’s very busy. I’m sure it’s a lot more hectic up in London, but we have crimes down here too.’

      ‘Don’t worry. It’s fine.’

      ‘Anyway I just wondered if you might … well, I mean, you have quite a reputation in London, as a DCI … I wondered if you …’

      ‘Sally, spit it out!’

      ‘Do you want to drive over to Zennor, maybe later, or tomorrow? I mean, if you have the chance, it might, uh, distract you. You see, we have a strange case, a cottage on the hill.’

      ‘I can come over right now. To be honest I’d like an excuse. The funeral was … intense. And now my Uncle Ken is trying to overdose me with scones.’

      Sally laughed gently. ‘We like our carbohydrates down here.’

      ‘I’m on my way. Meet you there in forty minutes?’

      The drive took less than forty minutes. Karen drove fast, with her mum in the back, in a carrier bag. She parked at Zennor church and followed the winding path up to the hill to the ruined cottage. Her destination was obvious: there were two police Range Rovers parked next to the derelict building, their yellow-and-blue insignia garishly conspicuous on top of the grey-green, stony hill. The drizzle had abated but the January wind was keen.

      A constable greeted her. ‘You must be DI Pascoe’s friend?’ He opened the door of the cottage.

      Karen stepped inside. Her reaction was reflexive.

      ‘Oh my God!’

       7

       Sohag, Egypt

      Victor Sassoon saw the smoke of the second small bomb from his hotel window. The fifteenth-floor balcony of his hideous 1970s concrete tower gazed across the Nile, from the dense and frazzled streets of Muslim Sohag, to the smaller, ancient, more Coptic, west-bank town of Akhmim. The smoke from this latest bomb rose like a long-stemmed lotus flower above the dense medieval streets.

      Then came the sirens, harsh and plaintive in the noonday heat. Had the Muslims attacked the Copts again? Or was it the Copts attacking the Muslims in return? The only thing anyone knew for sure was that the violence was worsening. The papers had informed him this morning that the Zabaleen were also rioting in Cairo. Egypt was truly roiled.

      Yet this very morning the poor people from the countryside had tethered their shallow boats to gather reeds from the side of the Nile, much as they must have done in Pharaonic times. This was Egypt, turbulent and tumultuous, and also unchanging.

      Turning from the balcony, Sassoon sat on his bed and unscrewed his precious bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label and filled a tooth mug with half an inch, slugging it in one go. It gave him courage for the day ahead, and it dulled the pain. The pain in his lungs and in his legs; and in his heart.

      Lifting up the bottle, Sassoon examined the liquor that remained. Five inches maybe. And it would be hard to buy more: Sohag was a dry city. Islamist.

      Everything was running out. Time and whisky, and life.

      He rose, buttoned his blazer and picked up his stick. In the street he hailed an old, pale blue fifties Ford taxi and got in the back seat to negotiate the day. The driver, Walid, spoke a little English and asked Victor if he knew his brother Anwar who lived in Manchester and worked in a car showroom.

      Victor confessed that he had never met Anwar, despite living in the same country. Walid seemed very disappointed by this, until Victor told him what he wanted: to be driven to all the nearby ancient Coptic monasteries, for the next two days; and then Victor added that he would pay a hundred dollars for his time and gasoline.

      This was an absurdly generous offer, but Victor was infinitely beyond caring. He had tens of thousands of dollars in his account – the product of a lifetime of academic salaries and scholarly frugality – and he had no family. What better use could he find for the money than discovering a great and final truth?

      But he needed to be quick. The pain in his lungs was like a murderer had stabbed a sharpened crucifix in his chest.

      ‘Please.’ Victor gestured at the donkey cart blocking their way. ‘Let’s go.’

      Walid smiled a tobacco-stained smile and slammed his horn, frightening the donkey, as they screeched out into the Sohag traffic.

      They talked about the bomb as they made their slow way through the chaos of trucks and cabs, and old Mercedes minibuses full of Egyptian matrons, in vividly coloured headscarves.

      ‘Much bad,’ said Walid. ‘Very bad. Soon they will make the Coptic leave Egypt. Sadat, Mubarak, they protect the Copt. But now … No good. No good.’ He made a chopping gesture with his hand.

      Sassoon gazed at the rear-view mirror, and the absence of dangling prayer-beads. ‘You are a Christian?’

      ‘La.’ Walid shook his head and ignited his third Cleopatra-brand cigarette of the morning. ‘Muslim. But I having many Coptic friend. We are all Egyptian, all People of the Book. The bad men want to … make hate. You smoke?’

      Victor demurred. He had once been a smoker. Forty years a smoker,

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