LITMIR.BIZ

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we go and have a look?’

      ‘What? Are you nuts?’

      ‘No. Are you gay?’ Freddy laughed. ‘Oh come on. Let’s investigate. It’ll be fun.’

      Malcolm hesitated: quite paralysed. He was seriously unkeen on investigating that noise, but he also didn’t want to appear a wuss in front of Freddy; he was wary of Freddy’s cruel sense of humour, his lacerating jokes. If he didn’t show he was up for this, Freddy might just humiliate him the next time he was feeling a little bored at the union bar.

      Malcolm tried to smile.

      ‘All right then. Let’s see who’s the real gaylord.’

      ‘Excellent.’ Freddy rubbed his hands together. ‘We’d better get coats and stuff. This is like Enid Blyton, only with ritual murder.’

      When they went back into the house, they found that Jojo had disappeared. Probably gone to bed? Malcolm was glad, in a protective sort of way. They turned off the music, grabbed their coats, boots and a pair of torches.

      The path up to Zennor Hill began just outside the grounds. It had been treacherous the previous day; in the moonlight it was even trickier. Ferns and brambles dragged at them, tussocks of grass tripped every step. Above them, the imponderable carn glowered, framed by myriad stars.

      But the horrible noise had stopped.

      For five, ten minutes they ascended the silent, narrow path up the hill. The view of Zennor village below, its Christmas lights twinkling in the wind, was beautiful and sad. Malcolm began to wonder if they had imagined it. Maybe it had been some curious sound effect, perhaps the fierce January wind whistling through the rocks: there were many strange rock formations up here.

      But then it came again, and this time it was even worse. The sound curdled the thoughts in his mind. This scathing and animalistic wailing was surely the sound of somebody – or something – in terrible and angry pain?

      Freddy turned, just ahead, his face a blur in the gloom.

      ‘Pretty sure it’s coming from the ruined cottage, the big one, Carn Cottage. Is that a fire inside?’

      Malcolm desperately wanted to go back now. This had been a daft idea; and yet he was still scared of Freddy’s put-downs. He was stuck.

      The noise came, and went. This time it was so close it was like an exhalation – you could feel the scream on your face.

      ‘There, look!’ Freddy pointed his torch beam excitedly. ‘Scoundrels!’

      Figures. There were people walking away – no, running away – down a lane across the top of the hill, dark shapes. How many? It was too difficult to see. Who were they? What were they?

      Freddy was laughing.

      ‘Do you think it’s devil-worshippers? We might be turned into newts!’

      The figures were already out of sight, swallowed by the darkness. Had they been spooked by the noise? Or by the fire? Or by Malcolm and Freddy?

      Malcolm waved a desperate hand. ‘Look. Please. Can’t we just go? This is dangerous. Let’s just go, please. Call the cops.’

      His protestations were futile; Freddy simply vaulted the low garden wall of the half-ruined cottage, and ran across the garden; he was followed by Malcolm, much less briskly.

      As they neared the cottage, Malcolm could see there was indeed a fire burning inside the building. And it was a large fire, too, casting eerie orange shadows on the windows. The heat from within was palpable in the cold winter air.

      ‘Freddy – wait – don’t—’

      It was too late. His friend was kicking at the old door; even as the infernal shrieking went on, and on.

      ‘C’mon – open up!’ Freddy laughed, ‘Open up, in the name of all that’s holy!’ Now Freddy stepped back and kicked even harder at the splintering door, and at last it succumbed. The lock snapped and the old door swung open, revealing a roar of heat and howls and things, strange black burning shapes, racing out at them, fleeing and burning—

      A flaming creature leapt at Malcolm’s face, and its claws sank deep. Malcolm’s scream echoed down from the lonely carn, carried on the freezing wind.

       4

       La Bodega bistro, Zamalek, Cairo

      Victor Sassoon sat in a darkened corner of the darkened bar, cradling a glass of Scotch and water, his fourth of the afternoon, and maybe his fortieth of the last four days. It was his last afternoon in Cairo. The whisky tasted like the bitter herbs of Seder: the taste of defeat.

      The monk was dead. The Sokar Hoard, if it had ever existed, would probably never be found. His one last hope, that he might meet Albert Hanna, was about to come to nothing.

      Hanna was a Coptic antiquities dealer. He was also notorious for his serpentine skills in fulfilling the desires of museum curators and billionaire collectors across the globe. The mummy of a concubine of a Rammeside Pharaoh? But of course. An intact and entire Fayum portrait rescued from the black mud of Antinopolis? Please allow me.

      His methods were obscure, and probably illegal, but he got results. Albert Hanna knew every rumour of every new find from every sandy corner of Egypt. If anyone knew anything about the truth of the latest gossip – the whispers of the Sokar Hoard that had brought Sassoon to the polluted streets of the Egyptian capital – it would be Hanna.

      But Hanna was an elusive quarry. He didn’t answer his phone; he didn’t answer emails; like many Christian businesses, his office in central Cairo was closed because of the recent and ongoing riots.

      So, La Bodega bistro was Sassoon’s rather desperate and concluding bid. Many of Cairo’s antiquities dealers were middle-class Copts like Hanna, and nearly all of them liked to drink discreetly – and many of them were regulars at the Bodega, not least because it was increasingly dangerous to drink everywhere else. Some of the bars near the Coptic quarter were getting trashed and gutted by Islamists. Christian grocers who still dared to sell beer were being forcibly closed.

      Pensively, Sassoon inhaled the aroma of his Scotch, and remembered a time when it had been much easier to drink in this city. He remembered drinking good German beer in Shepheard’s Hotel, with that keen young American Egyptologist, Ryan Harper.

      Victor wondered what had happened to Harper. But then, he wondered that about many people these days. Friends died like flies when you reached your seventies, as if there was an Old Testament plague, the Great Pestilence of Egypt. Now, which book of the Bible was that?

      His aged thoughts were wandering, again. Sassoon sipped the solacing bitterness of his Johnnie Walker, walked to the heavy velvet curtains, and gazed down at Zamalek.

      The street outside was a parodic vision of its own history: this part of Cairo, situated on an island in the Nile, had been built in the early twentieth century as a place of European elegance, with boulevards and plane trees, and chic apartment blocks – even a palace for Princess Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. But now all the trees had been chopped down, the apartment blocks had been turned into tatty shops and crowded flats, and the traffic was, of course, endless and polluting.

      Yes, the smoke and scuzz of Cairo disgusted Sassoon. It was time to go home, and to give up. It was never going to happen; it had all been a foolish dream.

      ‘You can positively smell the smoke from the TV centre. N’est ce pas?’

      Sassoon swivelled, letting the velvet curtains fall.

      Standing behind him was a slightly paunchy man in his mid-forties, wearing a perfect yet worn

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