The Last Secret Of The Temple Read Online Free PDF Page A

hotel down in Gezira. The Menna-Ra.'
    'Beside the lake? Yes, I know it.'
    Khalifa took the wallet from the bag and flicked through its contents, noting the Egyptian identity card.
    'Born 1925. You're sure he didn't just die of old age?'
    'Not if the state of the body's anything to go by,' said Sariya.
    The detective pulled out a Banque Misr credit card and a wad of Egyptian twenty-pound notes. In a side pocket he found a membership card for the Egyptian Horticultural Society, and behind it a crumpled black-and-white photo of a large, fierce-looking Alsatian dog. On the back was written, in faded pencil, 'Arminius, 1930'. He stared at it for a moment, sensing the name was somehow familiar but unable to pinpoint precisely why, then put it back, replaced the wallet in its bag and returned it to his deputy.
    'You've informed the next of kin?'
    'No living relatives,' said Sariya. 'We contacted the hotel.'
    'And the Mercedes? His?'
    Sariya nodded. 'We found the keys in his pocket.' He produced another bag, this one containing an improbably large set of keys. 'We checked it out. Nothing unusual inside.'
    They walked over to the Mercedes and peered through the window. The interior – cracked leather upholstery, polished walnut dashboard, a fragrance holder dangling from the rear-view mirror – was empty save for a two-day-old al-Ahram on the passenger seat and, on the floor in the back, an expensive-looking Nikon camera.
    'Who found him?' asked Khalifa.
    'A French girl. She was out taking photographs among the ruins, came on the body by accident.' Sariya opened his notebook and squinted down at it. 'Claudia Champollion,' he read, struggling to get his mouth round the unfamiliar vowels. 'Twenty-nine. Archaeologist. She's staying over there.' He nodded towards a tree-filled compound further along the track, surrounded by a high mud-brick wall. The home of the French Archaeological Mission in Thebes.
    'No relation to the Champollion, I take it?' asked Khalifa.
    'Hmm?'
    'Jean François Champollion.'
    Sariya looked confused.
    'The man who deciphered hieroglyphs,' sighed Khalifa in mock exasperation. 'God Almighty, Mohammed, don't you know anything about the history of this country?'
    His deputy shrugged. 'She was quite good-looking, I know that much. Big . . . you know . . .' He motioned with his hands. 'Firm.'
    Khalifa shook his head and took a drag on his cigarette. 'If policework was simply a matter of ogling women, Mohammed, you'd be chief commissioner by now. You get a statement?'
    Sariya held out his notebook to indicate that he had.
    'And?'
    'Nothing. She didn't see anything, didn't hear anything. Just found the body, went back to the compound, called 122.'
    Khalifa finished his Cleopatra and ground it out beneath the heel of his shoe.
    'I guess we ought to take a look at him, then. You've notified Anwar?'
    'He's got some paperwork to finish, then he'll be over. Said to make sure the body didn't go wandering off anywhere.'
    The detective tutted wearily, used to Anwar the pathologist's tasteless sense of humour, and the two of them set off across the site, feet crunching on the fragments of pottery that littered the desert surface like discarded biscuits. Away to their right some children were sitting on top of a hummock of rubble, one of them clutching a football, watching as lines of policemen combed the desert for clues; ahead, the sun was slowly sinking behind the egg-shaped domes of the Deir el-Muharab monastery, its light thickening from a pale yellow to a rich honey-orange. Here and there shoulders of mud-brick wall heaved themselves from the sand, weathered and forlorn, like primordial creatures rising up from the desert deeps. Otherwise there was little to suggest that they were passing through what must once have been one of the most magnificent buildings in ancient Egypt.
    'Hard to believe this used to be a palace, isn't it?' sighed Khalifa, slowing to pick up a piece of pottery with traces of pale blue paint on it. 'In