The Last Secret Of The Temple Read Online Free PDF

his day, Amenhotep III ruled half the known world. And now . . .'
    He turned over the potsherd between his fingers, rubbing at the pigment with his thumb. Sariya said nothing, just made a chopping motion with his hand indicating that they needed to angle to the right.
    'Over there,' he said, 'just beyond that wall.'
    They crossed a stretch of mud-brick pavement, cracked and broken, and passed through what must once have been a substantial doorway, now reduced to two heaps of rubble with a worn limestone step between them. On the other side a policeman was squatting in a sliver of shade at the foot of a wall. A few metres away lay a heavy canvas sheet with a corpse-shaped hummock beneath it. Sariya stepped forward, grasped the corner of the sheet and whipped it back.
    'Allah-u-akhbar!' grimaced Khalifa. 'God Almighty!'
    In front of him lay an old man, very old, his body frail and emaciated, his sallow skin wrinkled and peppered with liverspots. He was lying on his front, one arm beneath him, the other splayed out at his side. He wore a khaki safari suit and his head, bald save for a few wisps of whitish-yellow hair, was jerked back and twisted slightly, like a swimmer taking a gulp of air before plunging his face into the water again – an unnatural posture caused by the rusty iron peg spearing upwards from the ground into his left eye socket. His cheeks, lips and chin were caked with a heavy crust of dried blood; a shallow gash angled across the side of his head, just above the right ear.
    Khalifa stood staring down at the corpse, noting the dusty hands and clothes, a small rip in the knee of the trousers, the way the head-wound was choked with sand and grit, then squatted and gently poked at the bottom of the iron peg, where it emerged from the sand. It was firmly embedded in the ground.
    'From a tent?' asked Sariya, uncertain.
    Khalifa shook his head. 'Part of a surveying grid. Left over from an excavation. Been here for years by the look of it.'
    He straightened, waving his hand at the flies that had already started buzzing around the body, and walked a few metres away, to a point where the sand was churned up and disturbed. He could make out at least three different sets of footprints, possibly belonging to the police who had been combing the area, possibly not. He squatted again and, removing his handkerchief, picked up a sharp lump of flint with spatters of blood on it.
    'Looks like someone hit him on the head,' said Sariya. 'Then he fell forward onto the peg. Or was pushed.'
    Khalifa turned over the stone in his hand, gazing at the red-black blood smudges.
    'Strange the attacker should leave a wallet full of money in his pocket,' he said. 'And the keys to his car.'
    'Maybe he was disturbed,' suggested Sariya. 'Or perhaps robbery wasn't the motive.'
    Before Khalifa could offer an opinion there was a shout from further out across the ruin field. Two hundred metres away a policeman was standing on top of a sandy hummock waving his arms.
    'Looks like he's found something,' said Sariya.
    Khalifa replaced the rock as he had found it and the two of them started towards the man. By the time they reached him he had descended from the hummock and was standing beside a length of crumbled wall along the lower part of which, on cracked mud plaster, was painted a line of blue lotus flowers, faded but still clearly visible. In the centre of the line was a gap where a chunk of plaster appeared to have been removed. On the ground nearby sat a canvas knapsack, a hammer and chisel, and a black walking cane with a silver pommel. Sariya squatted beside the knapsack and lifted back its flap.
    'Well, well, well,' he said, removing a brick with painted plaster on it. 'Someone has been a naughty boy.'
    He held the brick out towards Khalifa. The detective wasn't looking at him. Instead he had squatted down, lifted the cane, and was staring at its pommel, around which was incised a pattern of miniature rosettes interspersed with ankh