The
bleak atmosphere of the stainless steel zone wrapped itself around them like the
cold stink of formalin.
“You
recognize him?” the morgue technician said after sliding out the tray for the two
visitors, a young man and woman, a policeman from a London antiquities unit, Jon
Lawlor, and a young British Museum curator and Egyptologist, Jennefer Jollife.
She
tried not to breathe in the chilling air. It was like looking at cuts in a
butcher’s shop, the severed portions of the body arranged to the best advantage
on a tray. Yet the expression on the dead man’s face made him appear to be resigned
to his fate, almost as detached from the situation as the head was from its
body.
She
felt a choking grief. Martin had been a mentor, a kindly light in her sea of
inexperience when she had begun as a junior curator in the multi-universe of
civilizations that made up the British Museum.
“Which
part of him?” Jon said. “The arms, hands, legs, feet, head…?”
Jennefer looked at Jon with her wide-spaced
eyes that some took for innocence but they were the wideness and watchfulness
of a falcon’s stare. He
was showing his characteristic levity, she thought frowning. This was no time or
place for it.
“That’s
him all right,” she said. “Professor Bailey. I worked with him at the British
Museum. This is too horrible. Poor Martin.”
“Some
kind of elaborate suicide, no doubt,” Jon said, undeterred. She had long ago
nicknamed him Metro Man, a good-looking London metrosexual and sharp dresser,
with slightly thinning hair, who liked to belie the sharpness of his mind. “I
see what’s happened here. This man threw himself on a stack of carefully
arranged blades. Or maybe he did it piece by piece. Tricky lopping off pieces of
yourself one at a time until you get to your head, but then you’ve got a bit of
a problem with no arms.”
“This
is hardly the time for levity, Jon.”
Jennefer
regarded him with almost as much horror as she did the remains on the tray.
She
had to remind herself once again. This was Jon’s way of working. He liked to
voice the impossible first ‘to get it out of the way so that he could move on
to the possible and probable,’ he’d say, but sometimes his outrageous theorizing
made her stretch her mind and question her grasp on reality.
Was
it possible? Could she entertain the idea for a second that this was a case of suicide?
The gruesome body parts said no.
The gruesome body parts said no.
Quite impossible.
“This
has to be murder. Worse, an execution.”
“You think?”
“You think?”
She
shuddered. Catching a whiff of mortality, she moved a little closer to Jon. He
had a relieving tang of an aftershave or a bracing liquid soap.
As
a museum curator, she was used to setting out objects and ideas neatly and
carefully and labelling them correctly. Clean swept and willowy, even her
beauty was ordered, her long hair drawn back on one side of her head and allowed
to tumble in curls on the other side of her face.
“There
is of course a precedent for this,” she said. “The Egyptian devil-god Seth
murdered his brother Osiris and cut the body into fourteen pieces. It's almost
as if this is designed to echo an event in mythology.”
“A
murder in fourteen parts,” Jon said. “Interesting, Jennefer. If the Professor
didn’t do this to himself, then who did? A rival academic, jealous of his
research?”
“Seriously,”
she said.
“A
scholarly terrorist who’s read up on mythology?”
“Not
even terrorists butcher people this way.”
The
technician cleared his throat and glanced at the young lady.
“One
body part was missing,” the technician said. “Thirteen pieces were found.”
“Being
a female, she’s probably spotted that essential missing part already,” Jon
said.
“That
confirms it,” she said. “When Seth cut Osiris into fourteen pieces, he threw one
piece into the River Nile.”
“Which
piece?” He was making her say the word.
“The
penis.”
He
winced.
“Hate
that word. So, a mythological copycat killing,” he said.
She
shook her head.
“More
complicated and sinister than that. Such an elaborate execution is sending a
message.”
Detectives
and archaeologists worked in kindred professions, Jennefer recalled. Both dug
for answers, but their team of oddly matched investigators was like a pair of disputing
scholars learning the Talmud by arguing eyeball to eyeball. He liked to stretch
possibilities and speculate exploratively, even wildly, at times. She liked to
pin things down to reality. That was how they rolled, she thought.
“A
message for whom? And saying what?” he said.
She
shrugged.
“We’d
have to do some digging.”
“That’s
what we both do, as a detective and an Egyptologist.”
“Who
could have done this, Jon? Seriously.”
“Somebody
seriously disturbed,” he said.
“And
dangerous,” she said.
“With
unearthly attention to detail. Either they’re a surgeon, or they've done this kind
of dissection before...”
(Excerpt)
"The Obelisk Prophecy" - No2 in the trilogy (AMAZON PAPERBACK AND KINDLE)