Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
The phone buzzed. Ayesha Ryder ignored it, as she had on the three previous occasions. She flicked her long black hair away from her face and resumed typing on her laptop, her back propped against her living room sofa. At the end of a paragraph, she picked up her drink and drained the glass. As she put it down her glance fell on the glossy brochure that lay on the carpet beside her.
PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, CAN IT REALLY WORK?
Keynote Speaker: Ayesha Ryder Ph.D., Director of Research
Walsingham Institute for Oriental Studies
PALESTINE, A NATIONAL IDEA
The words were splayed across one of those so familiar photographs of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the golden Dome of the Rock rising above the limestone walls of the old city. The title of the talk was not her idea; she’d been overruled by the conference planning committee. Too dry, they called her suggestion for a title. It needs to be sexier, they said. Attention-grabbing. She snorted at the memory. The conference, timed to coincide with the summit meeting between the Israeli and Palestinian leaders—to be held at the Tower of London for security reasons—was already fully booked. The attention of the whole world would be on the summit, and on everything to do with the talks in which so much hope was invested. It would not have mattered what they called her paper.
She frowned at the screen. Words usually came easily to her. Quickly, too. Tonight she was struggling.
Procrastinating. She kept swapping to her browser, surfing the Web for the latest news on the summit. Checking the weather—all anyone could talk about was whether they’d have a white Christmas. Her bank account. Browsing the latest book reviews. Anything but what she had to focus on. Dammit, she scolded herself. Concentrate. The paper had to be finished by morning.
She stretched her arms high. She repeated the exercise with each of her long pale legs, wiggling her toes into the plush pile of the Aubusson carpet. Slowly, over the course of a year, she had adjusted to the idea that these things—the apartment itself, the carpet, and much more besides, like the fur coats she would probably never wear—were hers. The wealth, the sheer luxury of owning her own apartment near London’s Vauxhall Park—something she could never hope to do, even on her very decent pay—was so far removed from the surroundings she grew up in as to be laughable. She had a sudden flash of herself as a child, leaving the rough cement-block structure in Gaza City she and her parents called home, walking the mile to the nearest well and spending the day in line to fill two iron buckets with water.
She pushed away the memory. With a fluid movement, she rose to her feet and raised her arms high. On tiptoe she just brushed the bottom of the chandelier with her fingertips. She dropped back, padded across the carpet to the bathroom, relieved herself, washed her hands in the basin, and splashed water on her face. She blotted it dry with a face towel, raised her head, and looked at herself in the mirrored cabinet. She stared into the green eyes of her reflection, then grasped the bottom of her ribbed cotton tank top. It and panties were all she had on—the building’s furnace provided more than adequate heating, even in the depths of an English winter. She lifted the top back over her head and looked down.
The scars were old. She was thirty-four; the wounds were inflicted when she was sixteen. Few people had ever seen them. Only two of them were men: the man who had tortured her, and one other. With her left hand she probed the scars, feeling their rough texture against the soft skin of her fingertips. As she did this, her eyes rose to the mirror once more. Memories swarmed. She pushed them back and pulled her tank top back down over her head, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. Centered herself. When she opened them again she avoided the mirror and opened the cabinet door. She took down her toothbrush, making a mental note to clear the cabinet of Harriet’s drugs.
The apartment was still full of her aunt’s things—clothes and knickknacks. She had to clear them out. Give the clothes to a charity. Somehow she’d never gotten around to it. The presence of Harriet’s things meant she was still there. Sort of. Her father’s sister had been everything to her—mother, sister, friend. Harriet had rescued Ayesha from the asylum in Gaza, adopted her, provided her with an education—and seen that she got the years of mental therapy she needed. More than anything, though, Harriet’s love helped her . . . not heal, but survive.
She was still staring at her toothbrush when the doorbell rang. She threw a bathrobe on. “Yes?” She spoke through the crack in the door. “Who is it?”
“Detective Sergeant Kaleb Bryan,” a deep male voice replied. A photo ID appeared in the crack. “Metropolitan Police.”
She slipped the chain and opened the door wider. A powerfully built black man loomed in the hallway, six foot one or two, with buzz-cut hair and wearing a tailored suit.
“Sorry to disturb you so late,” he said. “I did try calling.”
“What can I do for you?” She glanced at her watch. It was just after nine o’clock. She made no move to invite the detective in. Whatever he wanted, she wasn’t interested; her lecture was in two days and she was nothing like ready. She had to get back to her computer.
“I work for Detective Inspector Holden,” Bryan said. “There’s been a murder. The boss wants you to have a look at some documents.”
Ayesha grimaced at the mention of Holden. Three years before, the inspector had consulted her on a case involving antiquities stolen from Iraqi museums. Discovering she was a mine of information on the Middle East—its peoples, cultures, languages, and politics—Holden had developed the habit of calling upon her whenever he thought her expertise might save him some time. Sometimes she found the work interesting. Not tonight, though. Whatever it was would have to wait until she’d finished her paper. She shook her head, started to close the door.
“Please tell Detective Inspector Holden I will be at his disposal tomorrow. I can’t possibly come at the moment.”
DS Bryan grunted. His eyes flicked downward.
She followed his glance. Her robe had fallen open. She pulled it tight. When she looked up again, Bryan held her gaze.
“The boss said you wouldn’t want to come,” he said. “He thought you might know the vic, though.”
She waited, impatient to close the door.
“He was a professor, lived over in St. John’s Wood. Expert in your field.”
“Who?” she blurted, her computer, her paper, forgotten.
“Sir Evelyn Montagu.”
She forgot to breathe. She stared at the detective, willing him not to be there, willing this not to be true. Finally she spoke. “How?”
Bryan didn’t answer. She saw it in his eyes, though. Whatever it was, it was very bad.
