Ben knew this. Captain Kamal would too.

“Salaam,” Kamal answered the phone.

“Captain Kamal, it’s Farid Limam here, from the British Embassy. I work with the Consul on legal situations involving British Citizens in Egypt.”

“Yes? How can I help?” Kamal sounded impatient already.

“I have had some concerns brought to me from a British Citizen in Cairo currently. His wife was murdered several days ago, you will certainly remember the case.”

“Gail Turner.”

“Indeed,” Ben paused briefly and shuffled a pile of letters and utility bills on his coffee table. Office paperwork, he thought as he flicked through the paper noisily. “There seem to be some irregularities concerning the findings of your case, for instance –”

“What are you talking about?” Kamal interrupted. “This was an open and shut case. Mrs Turner murdered Professor al-Misri, one of Egypt’s pre-eminent Egyptologists. If she had not been found dead, she would be facing a possible death sentence, British Citizen or not.”

Ben cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Captain, but Mr Turner has highlighted to us some facts that lead us to question this. For instance, she was found in the canals to the west of the city, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And you have reason to believe that she ran there from the Museum after killing the Professor, with a clutch of books?”

“Yes. We have this on CCTV footage.”

“How many books were stolen, Captain?”

There was a brief pause. “Eleven. Among them some of the most valuable prints in the Museum.”

“And how far, if I may, is the canal her body was found in from the Museum?”

“Roughly two kilometres.”

“She ran the whole way? With eleven books in her arms?”

A sigh from Kamal. “She ran at least several hundred metres. We have this on three different cameras outside the Museum.”

“Ran?”

“At quite some speed, in fact.”

“Filmed at night?”

“It is most certainly her. The cameras are the highest possible quality with night vision: they protect the Egyptian Museum, Mr… Limam is it?”

Ben had his tablet computer open in front of him. “Mr Limam, indeed. Captain Kamal, I do appreciate your assistance in this. Please appreciate that I have a British Citizen here who is quite distressed by what has happened.”

“I understand,” Kamal softened slightly. “Is there anything else?”

“Well, Captain, there is. You see Mr Turner has a problem with your assessment that Mrs Turner ran nearly two kilometres with eleven books under her arm. I’m afraid I also find it hard to believe.”

“She can easily have taken a taxi once out of view of the Museum. Because of the number of un-licenced vehicles operating in Cairo, as I’m sure you are aware, there is simply no way of knowing if that occurred.”

“But even, Captain, several hundred yards seems unlikely.”

Kamal clicked his tongue. “Now, why exactly would that be unlikely?”

Ben looked at his tablet computer closely. “Because, Captain, Mrs Turner always travelled by Taxi, from door to door. She practically never walked on the open streets in her home town in the United Kingdom, let alone in Cairo.”

“On this occasion, she did.”

“Captain, I must insist that this was not possible.”

Kamal’s tone had now changed from mildly annoyed to angry. He wanted this conversation over. “Listen, Mr Limam, unless you have some kind of proof that I haven’t seen, in which case I recommend you disclose that information now, you are wasting Police time. That is, I remind you, also an offence.”

Ben looked up at George and grinned. They’d discussed at length what Ben would say, and how he would try to ‘rattle’ the Captain into a reaction. They could claim they had CCTV footage of their own, or that they had found voicemail recordings that Gail had left for George while on the run from the Professor’s real killers.

In the end, all of this sounded too complicated; too likely to be brushed aside by Kamal. He wasn’t going to be caught out by some detail like that without seeing or hearing the evidence himself. Instead, they had to demonstrate that his only piece of real evidence, the CCTV footage, was incorrect.

And to do that, Ben came up with a big, fat, incredible lie, which itself was backed up by a quick Wikipedia update to Dr Gail Turner’s personal profile article that Ben and George had just made.

If Kamal was hiding nothing, the CCTV footage was genuine and Gail had, unbelievable as it seemed, committed the crimes, then they had lost nothing; Ben had masked his outgoing number on his mobile phone, which in any event was Pay as you Go and could easily be thrown away: they would never trace the call to him.

If, however, Kamal was hiding something and the CCTV footage was in any way fake, then he was sure to find that out.

“Captain Kamal, Mrs Turner could not have run from the Museum, for at least a few hundred metres, turned a corner, and continued to run. With or without the books, it would simply be impossible.”

“I’m getting tired of this. Explain yourself now, or stop wasting my –”

“Because,” Ben cut him off, “Mrs Turner suffered from Usher syndrome.”

Kamal said nothing. Ben looked at George intently and continued. “She was born with the condition, which also affected her mother. It means that she had hearing problems, and in the past five years, her sight had deteriorated to the extent that she simply couldn’t see further than her hand in front of her face. Even then, she wouldn’t have been able to make out the individual fingers, no matter how close. Vision, to Mrs Turner, was simply varying shades of light with no definition whatsoever.”

“It’s entirely possible she knew the direction of the main road, and ran there,” Kamal suggested, though he sounded less confident than before. His bullish attitude had disappeared completely.

“The hearing problems that come with Usher syndrome affect the inner ear, Captain. Mrs Turner had severe problems with balance. She would have needed both arms to steady herself and even then, by Mr Turner’s account, she would not have been able to negotiate the corridors of the Museum without sometimes touching the walls and railings. This would have been quite impossible while at the same time carrying eleven books, no matter how much they meant to her, financially.”

Kamal, again, was silent.

“Captain? I recommend that we meet to discuss this. Mr Turner is, as I said, incredibly distressed. He has sought legal counsel with the Embassy, which we have agreed to provide.”

“Why didn’t Mr Turner advise me of Mrs Turner’s condition?” Kamal said quietly.

“Because in his own words, he didn’t trust you, Captain. From the start you had your own conclusions regarding this case, and you followed those conclusions through with complete disregard for anything he said. You made him feel that he was an inconvenience to you.” Ben wet his lips and smiled at George. It had all gone better than he had possibly hoped, and he was about to deliver what he considered to be his killer line. “Captain, I have to say that with the evidence I’ve seen, and your behaviour on this call, I do not trust you either.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Captain Kamal?”

After what seemed an age, there was the softest of clicks, followed by a dead tone.

Kamal had not simply been rattled. He had not simply stumbled over a few words. He had been so completely taken by Ben’s charade that he had gone.

Chapter 52

“If Gail didn’t steal the books, then she must have been set up,” Martín said, setting his knife and fork down on his half-empty plate.

Ben found himself nodding. George simply sat there, looking blankly into space.

“We know that someone is trying to cover up the finds on Mars, and it looks as if they are trying to cover up the finds on Earth too,” he continued. “Which means that someone must have known about them, before they were discovered.”