The Lost Army of Cambyses
television, Khalifa noticed.
    'Well?'
    'I'm afraid I have some bad news,' said the
    detective. 'Your husband, he's . . .'
    'Been arrested?'
    Khalifa bit his lip.
    'Dead.'
    For a moment she just stared at him, then sat
    down heavily on the sofa, covering her face with
    her hands. He presumed she was weeping and
    took a step forward to comfort her. Only as he
    came close did he realize that the muffled grunts
    coming from between her fingers were not sobs at
    all, but laughter.
    'Fatma, Iman,' she said, beckoning the two girls
    to her. 'Something wonderful has happened.'
    104
    11
    CAIRO
    Having finished at the embassy Tara wanted to go
    to her father's apartment to look through his
    belongings.
    He had kept few possessions with him during
    his four-month season at Saqqara – a change of
    clothes, a couple of notebooks, a camera. Most of
    his things had stayed in the Cairo flat.
    Here he had his diaries, his slides, his clothes,
    various artefacts the Egyptian authorities had
    allowed him to keep. And, of course, his books, of
    which he had a vast collection, several thousand
    volumes, all individually bound in leather, the
    result of a lifetime of collecting. 'With books,' he
    used to say, 'even the poorest hovel in the world is
    transformed into a palace. They make everything
    seem so much more bearable.'
    Oates offered to take her in the car, but the
    apartment was only a few minutes' walk away
    and, anyway, she felt like being alone for a while.
    He phoned ahead to make sure the concierge had
    105
    a spare set of keys, drew her a map of how to get
    there and escorted her to the front gates.
    'Call when you get back to the hotel,' he said.
    'And as I mentioned before, try not to stay out
    after dark. Especially after this river-boat thing.'
    He smiled and disappeared back into the
    embassy.
    It was by now late afternoon and the sinking
    sun was casting dappled patterns across the
    uneven pavement. She gazed around her, taking in
    the police emplacements along the embassy wall, a
    beggar squatting at the roadside, a man pulling
    a cart piled high with watermelons and then,
    glancing down at the map, set off.
    Oates had explained that this part of Cairo was
    known as Garden City and as she navigated her
    way through a maze of leafy avenues she realized
    why. It was quieter and more sedate than the rest
    of the metropolis, a faded remnant of the colonial
    era, with large dusty villas and everywhere trees
    and flowering shrubs – hibiscus, oleander,
    jasmine, purple jacaranda. The air echoed to the
    twitter of birds and was heavy with the scent of
    mown grass and orange blossom. There seemed to
    be few people around, just a couple of women
    pushing prams and the odd suited executive.
    Many of the villas had limousines parked in
    front of them and policemen stationed at
    their front doors.
    She walked for about ten minutes before she
    reached Sharia Ahmed Pasha, on the corner of
    which stood her father's apartment block, a turn-
    of-the-century building with huge windows and
    intricate iron-work balconies. Once it must have
    106
    been a cheerful shade of yellow. Now its exterior
    was grey with dust and grime.
    She went up the front steps and pushed open the
    door, stepping into a cool marble foyer. To one
    side, sitting behind a desk, was an old man, pre-
    sumably the concierge. She approached, and after
    a confused conversation conducted in sign lan-
    guage, managed to convey who she was and why
    she had come. Muttering, the man came to his
    feet, removed a set of keys from a drawer and
    shuffled over to a cage lift in the corner, pulling
    back the doors and ushering her in.
    The apartment was on the third floor at the end
    of a silent, gloomy corridor. They stopped in front of
    the door and the concierge fiddled with the keys,
    trying three in the lock before he found the right
    one.
    'Thank you,' said Tara as he opened the door.
    He remained where he was.
    'Thank you,' she repeated.
    Still he showed no sign of moving. There

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