George felt the hairs rise on his forearms and on the back of his neck. He rose to his full height, towering over the policeman.

“There is no easy way to say this, Mr Turner. However we believe that your wife took these books from the Professor’s office.”

“Are you’re suggesting that she killed him, too?” George challenged him.

“Your wife had a strong motive to take the books: her career was at risk and the books would have offered financial security. We cannot be certain at the moment that it was intentional, as he fell and hit his head on the side of his desk. However shortly after the incident CCTV footage shows your wife running from the museum holding the stolen items.”

“You can actually see Gail doing that?”

“There were no other women in the museum that night, Mr Turner,” he said. “We can only assume that she did not know where to go from there; she probably did not plan the crimes beforehand, and so simply ran in the approximate direction of the airport. She will have stumbled upon the canal around midnight, and been robbed herself shortly afterwards.”

George couldn’t believe what he was hearing. To find out that his wife had been murdered was bad enough, but to be told moments later that she had robbed and killed one of her closest friends and colleagues was simply ludicrous.

“Are you serious? No, it’s not possible. None of what you’re saying makes sense!”

The officer gave an uncomfortable smile and tilted his head sympathetically. “I’m afraid that we have all of the evidence we need, Mr Turner. Your identification of the corpse was the final detail, and as far as I am concerned the case is now closed. Of course, we are still looking for your wife’s murderer, but that is being handled by a separate department, who have your contact details.”

George’s mind was a mess of grief, confusion and anger. He looked down at the now covered body of his wife, and then back at Kamal. The forced smile, a dismal attempt at sympathy,  was still painted on the Egyptian’s face, his head tilted in that patronising manner. His account of the incredible story had left George speechless; there was only one thing he could think to do.

He wasn’t a violent man, by any means, but he felt a sudden surge of adrenaline as his fist hit the officer so hard on the chin that the small man literally spun round on his heels and fell over.

By the time Captain Kamal was back on his feet, nursing his chin, George Turner had already left the morgue, with the doors swinging closed behind him.

Kamal fished in his pocket for his phone and toyed with the sheet covering the body as he dialled a number with his free hand. As the phone rang, he pulled the sheet back to reveal the frozen face beneath. He shook his head to himself. Someone answered the phone.

“It’s Captain Kamal. Mr Turner has just left.”

A short pause.

“Yes, it’s done.”

He snapped the phone shut and tossed the sheet back over the face before marching quickly out of the morgue.

Chapter 45

Gail opened her eyes, but could see nothing.  She blinked twice, each time chasing away an army of frenzied white dots, like TV static. The darkness in which she found herself was so complete that she had to work out if her eyes were open or not by mentally checking the position of her eyelids.

She blinked half a dozen more times, a reflex of her eyes trying to adjust to the total absence of light, then lifted a hand up to her face, but it was like moving through treacle; eventually her fingers reached her cheek and made their way numbly to her eyes.  Her eyelashes brushing against her fingers told her that they were indeed open, and that there was nothing obstructing them.

Her second hand made its way towards the first and together she let them run over her face and body. To her relief, everything was there as it should have been.

Sensation, slowly, began returning and she started to feel a cold, hard surface against her back and head.  She was lying down on what her palms told her was a flat, metallic material.

Gail swung her body weight over to the right, ending up on her hands and knees. She craned her neck upwards and peered into nothingness: where am I? she wondered.

Placing her hands palms-down, she shifted along the floor for several minutes, first in one direction, then in another, then back again, until she had returned to what her mental map told her was pretty much her starting point. There were no walls, no chairs or tables. No grooves in the floor and no grit or dirt. In her immediate environment, there was nothing.

Somehow her subconscious mind knew it would be pointless standing up in complete darkness, and so she didn’t try.

She opened her mouth, but no words came. Closing it, she forced a gulp and tried again.

“Hello?” The word sounded muffled, as if by the darkness that surrounded her. “Hello?” This time she heard herself more clearly. She pushed away from the floor with her hands and rose to a kneeling position and shouted the word out: “HELLO!”

From the darkness, nothing replied.

“Where the hell am I?” she exclaimed.

She let herself fall back onto her bottom. Where the hell am I?

She thought back to the evening’s events. She had been with the Professor in his office at the Museum; he had just finished telling her about the book. The book! She remembered now: he had lied to her about the Library at Amarna, about the book on the plinth. All these years, he had known the truth and yet he had never told her.

Aliens in Egypt! No wonder he had never said anything: his career would have been in ruins. If what he had told her was true, then everything she thought she knew about Amarna, Nefertiti and Akhenaten had to be false. She tried to imagine the pictures the Professor had described; of towering cities with flying cars. It was like something out of a science-fiction movie.

So how had she ended up here – wherever here was? She remembered that there had been a knock at the office door, and then – nothing.

She shook her head in frustration. How could she not remember more?

 There was a knock at the door, and then – the Professor had said something. What had he said? And then the door had opened. After which she drew a blank. Nothing.

“Bloody hell!” she cursed herself for not knowing. “Professor!” she shouted, but there was no reply.

She suddenly remembered her husband. “George!” she exclaimed.  She fished around in her pockets and was surprised to find her phone. As it flipped open, the light from the screen almost blinded her, and she blinked several times before she was comfortable with it.

There was no signal. Wherever she was, whoever had put her there, had either no concerns about her contacting the outside world, or they knew that she would not have a signal.  To all intents and purposes, her phone was nothing more than a glorified pocket-watch.

She snapped the phone shut and was plunged into darkness again. She blinked several times and banished the static once more; each time her eyes closed she fancied she could still see the screen of the phone, shining brightly in the palm of her hand. Opening the phone again, she was once more bathed in its blue-grey light.

No more than a glorified pocket-watch, or a torch.

The phone pushed the darkness back at least three metres, whereupon it started losing intensity.  Pointing the screen directly in front of her and at arm’s reach, she studied the matt-grey floor. Shifting her body round, she noted its uniformity in all directions; it had seemed metallic to her touch, but she had never seen anything like it. Even the smoothest of floors always tended to have a joint, where two sheets or tiles would meet. Here, there was none of that. It was like a gymnasium floor, but more perfect.