The Soul Scarab Read online

  Dedicated to Frank,

  Abi, Keiron, Sarah, Olivia

  and Bump

  Fourth Year of the King Horemheb

  Egypt 1312 BC

  The sun reflected in dazzling reflection on the green, pellucid waters of the Nile. Jade overlaid with gold, Kenna thought with tenderness, like Tameri’s eyes. He would carve her a jewel as beautiful as her eyes and she would wear it always.

  He would use turquoise, the colour of the Lady, for its magical abilities to repel evil and he would carve it in the shape of a scarab, the symbol of resurrection, and it would endure as a beacon of their love so that even death could not separate them. While she wore the scarab, he would find her, even in the afterlife, and they would be together again.

  Together for eternity.

  She lay in the strong young arms of her love and listened to his plans, the outpouring of his heart, and wished that this moment in time, this golden moment by the Nile, could last forever…

  London – 21st Century

  Throw a brick with enough force at plate glass and sharp, deadly splinters explode in all directions.

  Imagine this happening in your head.

  She had never intended to wake up.

  The woman pressed trembling hands to her cold, sweaty forehead as if she could physically contain the searing pain that had suddenly erupted within her skull. Drawing a deep ragged breath, she tried desperately to pull herself together and felt the agonizing pressure lessen, still throbbing, but containable now and on the ebb.

  Too weak to prevent them, her thoughts were drawn back like a magnet to the steel. The unbearable pain of loss was still raw, her suddenly empty life rendered pointless so abruptly that she still could not take it in. She had never realized that grief could bring such physical, as well as mental, anguish.

  Turning away from the silent accusation of the empty pills cartons in front of her, an illustration on one of the many books strewn on the desk top caught her eye. For some reason the image calmed her, and involuntarily she found herself smiling back at the beautiful, enigmatic face of the Goddess on the front cover.

  Idly, she picked up the book and flicked through the glossy pages.

  ‘The Golden One, Mistress of Turquoise . . . An ancient and most mysterious of deities with many titles, Hathor, Goddess of Love and Dance was also worshipped as the Mother of Mothers . . . and in her personification as a Goddess of the Dead, Lady of the West . . . And so she was believed to be a friend to the dead . . .’

  The book slipped to her lap as her hands clenched convulsively, the nails biting painfully into the soft palms as her forehead grew hot and damp again.

  Inside the dreary sitting room it was very quiet, the coziness emphasized by the distant roar of the relentless rush hour traffic outside and the splattering of icy sleet on the frost encrusted windowpane.

  Taking a deep breath, she resolutely cleared her mind, raised the book, and read on.

  ‘However, as The Vengeful Eye of Ra, Hathor’s alter ego was Sekhmet, which means powerful one. This fierce Goddess was also given titles such as the One Before Whom Evil Trembles, the Mistress of Dread, and the Lady of Slaughter. She was portrayed as a fierce lioness, or as a woman with the head of a lioness, who was dressed in red, the colour of blood.’

  Still not acclimatized to the harsh English winter raging outside, the woman shivered, but it was not the bitter weather that made her fearful and suddenly cold.

  Abruptly, she pushed the book away and with an exhausted sigh, eased her body further into the comfortable contours of the chair. Gentle hush wrapped her round again like a warm, soft blanket and heavy eyelids flickered and slowly closed.

  The hypnotic ticking of the mantelpiece clock gently whispered a lullaby and the woman did not notice that a chill had crept into the room.

  Gradually, she became aware of the heat from a younger sun beating on her face, burning through her closed eye lids.

  Tantalising her senses, but still not daring to open her eyes, she could smell an exotic mixture of aromas redolent of lush vegetation, green water, baking sand and a waft of spicy perfume.

  Very faintly, from far off, she caught the soft susurration of the wind in the papyrus reeds down by the riverbank, and the sound of splashing as oars dipped rhythmically in and out of the water.

  And laughter.

  Bourne on the warm dry zephyr, came the distant sound of lover’s laughter.

  Chapter 1

  London Seven Years Later

  The cacophony of background noise muffled to a muted hum as the young Professor closed the door softly behind him and there again came the feeling of being one step removed from the world. The hospital lay above and below him and on either side, but here there was only himself and the girl in their own little oasis of mutual bafflement and frustration.

  This afternoon she was not hunched, tense as an over-wound spring, in her usual place by the window. Instead, she lay huddled on the narrow hospital bed, dark tangled hair spread over the stiff white pillowcase, in exhausted sleep. He looked down at her battered face, unguarded for once and defenseless, and was shocked by the intense mix of emotions that suddenly swept over him. Whoever was behind this would pay, he promised himself grimly.

  He was further disconcerted when a blue gowned nurse abruptly put her head round the door and beckoned him with an imperious finger. Allowing himself to be ushered into her tiny cubicle of an office without demur or caustic comment, it was probably due to this uncharacteristic inner turmoil that led to the successful conclusion of Sister Maguire’s tentative suggestion several minutes later.

  Meredith, the Sister had told him in her soft Irish accent (the nurses had named their mystery patient after the Ward), was well enough to go home. But here was the problem, there was still no sign that her memory was returning and now that physically at least she was well on the mend, what could they do with her?

  The man sitting before her with the devastating damn you eyes gazed at her blandly. Folding his arms, he leaned further back in the chair and negligently stretched out his long legs, a faint expression of incipient boredom on his undeniably handsome face. It did not fool Sister Maguire who was adept at reading body language and an old hand at dealing with recalcitrant males. In variance to his casual air, the man radiated a keen alertness that vibrated in the air between them and she was encouraged to continue.

  The girl still suffered from appalling nightmares but, in her professional opinion, Meredith would have a better chance of recovering from these if she could relax in a more peaceful and normal environment. A proper home, in fact, with someone whom she knew and who understood her circumstances. The alternative was some sort of institution or even, she feared, an immigrant holding centre.

  Sister Maguire noticed with satisfaction a sudden tensing of the broad shoulders before her and confided further. It appeared that the police were by no means convinced that Meredith’s amnesia was genuine, despite medical assurances to the contrary. If, because of her accent and lack of papers, they decided that she might be in England illegally, the concerned Sister was extremely worried about what would happen to her.

  The Professor raised a quizzical eyebrow at the placid, blue gowned figure seated composedly behind her battered desk. She met his suspicious scowl with innocent eyes the same shade of Madonna blue as her uniform, and an equally guileless smile.

  Surprisingly, his frown lifted and the dark, rather hard contours of his face relaxed into an unexpectedly boyish (and hitherto unseen) grin, as he raised his hand in the mock salute of one expert fencer to another when they acknowledge a hit.

  Yielding to an uncharacteristic, but not altogether altruistic impulse, this unusual young man, (Blake Gasgoine did not look at all like Sister Maguire’s idea of
a Professor) rose nobly to the bait. She was pleased and relieved. Yes, of course, she would have to check with the Inspector, but if he said that it would be in order to release Meredith into Professor Gasgoine’s temporary guardianship while he pursued his enquiries, that would be grand - that would be just splendid!

  She bustled away to make the necessary arrangements, devoutly grateful that at least one of her many problems had been resolved so easily. Which left the Professor to wander uneasily back into the little white room, throw himself down on the standard issue bedside chair and look glumly down at his new responsibility.

  The girl was still asleep, one small hand flung over her head. They had told him that she was forcing herself to stay awake at night and catnapping during the day, when the black dreams seemed to plague her less. The sleeve of the baggy hospital gown had ridden up and sickeningly, he noted again the ugly bruises, cuts and wheals disfiguring the delicate pale skin on her inner arm. The doctor had told him that most of these had been inflicted before the accident. Some of the marks were quite old scars.

  This could get complicated he realized. On the other hand, what a wonderful opportunity to get to the bottom of an intriguing mystery.

  I wonder what Max will make of her, he thought with a dry chuckle and then in sudden consternation, what the hell am I getting into?

  Egypt – Present Day

  The lammergeyer wheeled high in the limitless sky above, riding easily on invisible air currents with an occasional lazy flap of its powerful wings, the span almost three meters from tip to tip. From far below, the great bird barely showed as a tiny black speck against the celestial blue of infinity. From its airy vantage point, the fierce vulture head turned ceaselessly from side to side, seeking movement with its unblinking, far seeing golden eyes, seeking prey.

  There far below, something white fluttered and scrabbled against the tumbled rocks. Sensing weakness, the winged hunter swooped lower to investigate, then suddenly veered away, emitted a shrill whistling cry which echoed across the craggy heights.

  The solitary human figure below started nervously at the unearthly sound; shading his watering eyes with his hand, the old man peered up into the brightness.

  Shaking his head irritably, he looked fearfully over his shoulder before continuing his shuffling progress with renewed haste along the cliff edge. The rising wind tugged at his ragged robe, and he leant heavily on a stout wooden staff, sometimes breaking into a stumbling run, occasionally halting his erratic progress to shout and wave his skinny arms threateningly at the innocent blue sky above him.

  Almost blind, and oblivious to the awesome vista spread only a few vertiginous feet away from the perilous track, he seemed intent on evading some imagined threat behind him, stopping frequently to squint anxiously back along the way he had come. Nothing stirred in the empty landscape, but he did not seem reassured. Mumbling incessantly into his straggling, matted beard, he drove himself on until the steepness of the climb and the heat from the pitiless sun blazing down on his defenceless old head, dried the spittle in his mouth.

  He had not eaten for three days, nor drunk in twenty-four hours.

  He was mad, and he was dying.

  Sometime later, the old man staggered and fell sprawling in the dust. With a last effort, he dragged himself painfully on hands and knees into the meagre shade cast by the high cliffs, whose heights rose sheer to the sky on the far side of the narrow path. Finally spent at last, he collapsed and lay still.

  For a while, his laboured breathing rasped like a rusty saw through the baking air, until the agonised sounds abruptly stopped.

  And the silence of the desert rolled back, settling like dust over what was now just a heap of old rags, abandoned on the path.

  London - Present Day

  It was only two weeks ago, as Blake was leaving the museum after his afternoon lecture, that a sudden sharp squealing of brakes and blaring horns heralded yet another rush hour traffic disaster for someone. The victim this time was a young woman, flung by a speeding motorbike practically at the feet of a bearded man wearing the ubiquitous uniform of the tourist - jeans and scruffy T-shirt.

  The man had knelt down by her body and the Professor, trying to edge past the crowd (there was already more than enough people milling around to take care of things, in his jaundiced opinion), had glimpsed her arm jerk forward. In that brief moment something in the weak, defensive gesture had disturbed him. The Professor stared harder at the burly figure squatting by her side and decided he did not like the look of him.

  Compelled by an unaccustomed compassion to offer any help he could give, (he had more than a passing knowledge of practical medicine) Blake pushed his way through the crowd towards them. However, the other man was already rising abruptly from his knees as the Professor came up, and hurriedly shouldered past him, muttering tersely that he would go and telephone for an ambulance.

  Blake bent down by the barely conscious girl, frowning in concentration as he attempted to assess her injuries. Blood was welling from a nasty contusion on her forehead, the bright crimson rivulets shocking against the paper white skin. As he attempted to take her pulse between cool fingers, the dark fans of eyelashes fluttered as she tried to open her eyes. The left side of her face was bruised and swollen, one eye already beginning to puff and close, but he was immediately struck by their unusual colour, a luminous clear grey ringed with darker charcoal and enhanced by ridiculously long, curly eyelashes.

  The Professor experienced something of a shock as he stared down at her. For a fleeting moment he was struck by something hauntingly familiar about those extraordinary eyes, radiant with light like a rain washed sky.

  The impression vanished and was immediately forgotten as he took in the urgency and pain reflected in their depths. She strained towards him trying to speak and he leaned closer, supporting her slight frame against his shoulder, but before she could utter the words, her head fell back into the crook of his arm as she abruptly lost consciousness.

  Quite a crowd had gathered by this time and the Professor, at first ruffled to find himself the unwilling centre of such attention, quickly regained his equilibrium to such an extent that he could feel not a little indignant that he had been left holding the baby, or more accurately in this case, the body.

  The ambulance seemed to be taking an unconscionable time to arrive and eventually someone else in the crowd telephoned emergency services from their mobile phone. This was fortuitous, as the hospital had received no other call.

  Most of the spectators had dispersed by the time the ambulance appeared, followed shortly by the police. The harassed Professor had felt obliged to wait while the young constable in charge made out his report, even though, as he irritably pointed out more than once, he had actually seen nothing of the accident and could contribute no useful information whatsoever.

  Now running disastrously late for his next appointment, he typically gave no further thought to the incident until he received a telephone call from the police later that evening, with disquieting developments.

  No identification had been found on the girl and she appeared not to speak a word of English, or indeed, any other language that had been tried by their limited interpreters.

  But the real reason for the call was this. A scrap of paper had been found clutched tightly in the patient’s hand. Part of a torn note, with Blake’s name and address scribbled on it.

  Could the Professor shed any light on why she might have been on her way to see him?

  No, he could not. It might appear at first to be an astonishing coincidence but if in fact the girl was a student, she may have had his name written down for all sorts of reasons.

  Blake Gasgoine was not unknown, even beyond the rarefied halls of academia. Various television appearances as an expert in Egyptian archaeology had brought the charismatic Professor to the fleeting attention of the general public, or at least to that section who watched those types of documentaries. The hackneyed but always popular romance of the subject, co
mbined with Blake’s dark good looks and his impatient, often irascible but always entertaining views, attracted a fair degree of popularity, especially amongst the female viewers. Indeed, he may have gone much further in the media if the magnetic challenge of his blatant masculinity was matched with an equally attractive charm of manner.

  Unfortunately, it was not.

  The Professor did not take to television and the feeling was entirely mutual. His uncompromising manner and refusal to pander to mere sensation seekers, combined with a barking acerbity when his perfectionist standards were not met to his satisfaction, made most people who had to work with him profoundly thankful when that taxing experience was over!

  Nevertheless, his genuine appreciation and enthusiasm for his subject was contagious and his books and lectures, imbued with Blake’s own dry sense of humour and free of all stuffy pretension and commercially driven hype, were popular and well attended.

  The young police inspector now asked whether it was possible that the girl could actually have been on her way to see the Professor, allowing for the proximity of the accident to the Museum, where he could usually be found.

  Of course it was possible, Blake testily pointed out, but how could he know? In any case, whether she had intended to see him or not did not take them any further. Her appearance suggested middle-eastern origin, her wristwatch and plain gold ear-studs were modern and of good quality but entirely anonymous. Like her clothes, which were chain store American, and if she had been carrying a bag, it had not been found, possibly stolen in the confusion.

  However, they had found that she had one very remarkable possession.

  Would it be possible for the Professor to meet the investigating officer at the hospital to see if he could identify this curiosity? A striking, unusual ornament of turquoise and semi-precious stones set in rich enamel work and solid gold.