‘Any more leads?’ I said.
‘I’ve been asking around. It’s tough because these kids come from all over the kingdom now. Some of them are slaves or prisoners, while others are just desperate to escape and make their way to the golden streets of the city from whatever fly-infested nowhere they call home. Most come on the promises of a recruiter in their local area, but many are even sold by their own families. Babylonians, Assyrians, Nubians…if they’re lucky they end up in Thebes or Memphis.’
‘Or, if they’re unlucky, somewhere less romantic, a garrison town like Bubastis or Elephantine,’ I said. ‘They don’t last long anywhere. All they’ve got to offer is their beauty and their freshness. But once that’s passed…they’re only fit for the human junk-heap.’
I looked around, and saw in the young faces the damage caused by servicing all these demanding clients, night after night. Desperate, sunny faces smiling too widely, too deliberately, trying too hard to please; pretty girls and pretty boys like living dolls on the knees of the repulsive-looking men who could afford new flesh every week, or once a year. Everyone looked exaggerated and wild. A young woman with ruined eyes walked past us; her nose had been cut off. She looked as if she moved on invisible strings worked by an invisible puppet-master. She drifted away through the crowds.
‘But interestingly, many of them also carry illicit drugs across the borders or downriver as part of the deal. It’s a cheap delivery method. Everyone knows it happens, and individually the amounts are too small to bother with; and the border guards are bribed, or they’ll take a quick fuck as a backhander, and even when the odd few are caught for show, the profit far outweighs the loss.’
‘What a beautiful world this is,’ I said.
Khety chuckled.
‘It could do with some improvement.’
‘It’s getting worse,’ I said gloomily.
‘You always say that. You wouldn’t know what to say if something good actually happened,’ he replied, with his usual aggravating optimism. ‘You’re more miserable than Thoth, and he’s a dumb animal.’
‘Thoth is not miserable. Nor is he remotely as dumb as most of the two-legged creatures around here. He is thoughtful.’
I drank my wine.
‘Who owns this place?’
He shrugged.
‘Whoever owns most of this quarter of the city. Probably one of the big families, connected with the temples, who no doubt take a big percentage of the profits.’
I nodded. It was well known that the temples’ enormous wealth depended upon varied and very profitable business investments throughout the city and the nomes of the kingdom.
‘And who are we meeting?’
‘The manager. She’s a smart woman.’
‘I’m sure she has a heart of gold.’
We made our way through the braying crowds, past the blind musicians plucking at their instruments, despite the fact that no one was listening, and then slipped down a silent passageway lit by a few oil lamps.
Off this ran other passageways, with elegant curtains concealing spaces big enough for a comfortable mattress. Fat old men retreated into the cubicles to avoid us, and small girls and giggling boys slipped past like silly, ornamental fish. Despite the incense burning everywhere, the air was stale, tinged with human odours: sweat, tainted breath, stale feet and rank armpits. Somewhere someone was panting and groaning, in another cubicle a girl was sweet-talking and giggling, and from another a woman performed, low-pitched and ardent as a court singer. Further off I heard the splash of water, and laughter.
At the end was a door, and outside the door stood two thugs as big and expressionless and ugly as unfinished statues. They searched us wordlessly.
‘Can anyone smell onions?’ I said, catching a whiff of rank breath.
The thug who was patting me down paused for a moment. His face reminded me of a battered cooking-pot. The other thug put a thick, calming hand on his colleague’s broad shoulder, advising him with a wordless shake of the head to ignore my sarcasm. The thug snorted like a bull, then pointed a stubby finger right between my eyes. I smiled and pushed it away. The other guy knocked on the door.
We entered. The room was low and small, but mitigated by a vase of fresh lotus flowers on the table. The manager greeted us politely and distantly. She wore a long auburn wig in the latest style, but her fine, sculpted face was still, almost frozen, as if she had long forgotten the uses of a smile. She offered us stools and cushions. She elegantly arranged herself opposite us, her chin in her hand, and waited for what would come.
‘Please tell me your name.’
‘Takherit,’ she replied, clearly.
So she was Syrian.
‘I am Rahotep.’
She nodded and waited.
‘This is an inquiry, that’s all. You have no personal cause for concern.’
‘I feel none,’ she replied, coolly.
‘We are investigating a series of murders.’
She raised her eyebrows in a little mocking gesture of anticipation.
‘How thrilling.’
‘These slayings have been unusually brutal. No one deserves to die in the way these young people have done. I want to try to stop any more perishing in the same manner,’ I replied.
‘In these dark times people prefer to look away from everything they would rather not see,’ she said, evasively. Her tone was so flat I could not tell whether she spoke with a rich irony, or with none.
‘I want you to understand how serious this is.’
I threw the dead face, with its tarnished crown of black hair, on to the table in front of her.
Her face remained frozen, but something altered in her gaze; a reaction, at last, to the blunt facts before us. She shook her red hair.
‘Only a monster could do this to a woman.’
‘What he has done is cruel, but it is almost certainly not meaningless. This is not some unpremeditated act of violence or passion. This man kills for reasons and in ways that are meaningful to him, if to no one else. It is a question of discovering the meaning,’ I said.
‘In that case, there are no monsters.’
‘No, only people.’
‘I don’t know if that makes me feel better, or worse,’ she replied.
‘I sympathize,’ I replied. ‘We need to discover who this girl was. We thought she might have worked here.’
‘Perhaps she did. We have many girls who work here.’
‘But have you missed anyone in particular?’
‘Sometimes these kids just vanish. It happens all the time. No one cares what happens to them. There are always more.’
I leaned forward.
‘This girl died a horrible death. The least we can do is call her by her name. She had a snake tattoo on her upper arm. Her landlord told us her name was Neferet.’
She glanced at the face, considered me, and nodded.
‘Then yes, I knew her. She worked here. I didn’t know much about her. You can never believe the stories they tell. But she struck me as one of the more innocent and trusting of the girls. She had a strange, sad smile. It made her even more attractive to some of our clients. She seemed like she belonged to a better world than this one. She claimed she was stolen from her family, who loved her, and one day she was sure they would come for her…’
‘She did not say where she was from?’
‘A farming village north of Memphis, I think. I can’t remember the name.’
‘We can assume she met the killer here. That means he is a client. He is an older man, from the elite class. Educated. Possibly a physician.’
