The Face in the Cemetery

Also by Michael Pearce (#litres_trial_promo)

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Over towards the Nile the light shimmered and seemed to fall apart, and then it came together again and presented a beautifully clear picture of the river, with palms shifting gently in the river breeze, a pigeon tower, and children playing around a water buffalo in the shallows; so clear that you could make out every detail.

Only it was not a true picture, at least, not of this part of the river. The Nile bent away at this point and where the mirage was, was just scrub and desert.

The desert was playing tricks here, too, inland a quarter of a mile. Heat spirals danced away across the sand and dust devils chased among the graves, where galabeahed men stood silently, watching him.

‘You’re not a pet man, though, are you?’ said McPhee.

‘No.’

‘I’m dogs, myself.’

Only it was cats here; dozens and dozens, hundreds and hundreds of them. They lay in open circular pits, uncovered by the archaeologists and then abandoned. Each pit was about eight feet in diameter and five or six feet deep. The cats lay on ledges around the sides, except that when space had run out they had been piled carefully on top of each other in the middle. Each cat had been tenderly mummified, the body treated first and then swathed in yards and yards of linen bandages. The pits stretched out towards the horizon.

‘They weren’t really pets, though, were they?’ said Owen.

‘Someone must have loved them, to lavish such attention on them.’

‘But didn’t you say –?’

‘There are lots of inscriptions to the cat goddess round here, it is true,’ McPhee conceded.

‘So perhaps they were just running wild in the temples?’

‘I don’t know about running wild,’ said McPhee severely. ‘Fed, and not ill treated, perhaps.’

‘But hardly pets.’

‘Perhaps not.’

‘Objects of devotion?’

‘Sacred, certainly.’

But in the grave at Owen’s feet there was something which was clearly not an object of devotion. It lay across the middle of the pit and cat mummies had been clumsily pulled off the shelves and spread over it in an attempt to hide it. It was rather longer than a cat mummy but bandaged tightly like them.

Except at the head, where the district mamur, alerted by the village omda, had uncovered enough of the modern bandages to reveal that the body was that of a twentieth-century, fair-headed woman.

‘Identification?’ said Owen.

‘They all know her. The omda –’ began the mamur.

‘Someone closer.’

‘There is a husband,’ said the mamur, almost unwillingly.

‘Husband?’

Owen looked at his papers. They made no reference to a husband.

‘Where is he?’

‘Up at the factory.’

‘Has he seen her?’

‘He knows,’ said the mamur evasively.

Owen bent over the body. Already, in the heat, it was changing.

‘You’d better get it moved,’ he said.

The mamur nodded, and beckoned to two of the villagers.

‘Mustapha! Abu!’

They came forward reluctantly.

‘Wait a minute!’ said Owen. ‘Aren’t you going to … ?’

He stopped.

‘Yes?’ said the mamur.

Owen shrugged. It wasn’t really any of his concern and out in the provinces things were done differently; when they were done at all.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said.

‘Is there a hakim?’ asked McPhee.

In the provinces any autopsy was usually conducted by the local doctor.

‘He has been sent for,’ said the mamur.

The two villagers were hesitating on the brink of the pit.

‘Get on with it!’ said the mamur. ‘What are you waiting for?’

‘We don’t like it,’ said one of the men.

‘It’s nothing. Haven’t you seen a body before?’

‘We’re not bothered about the body,’ said the other villager. ‘It’s these.’