Free City of Dreams by Anton Gill Page A

line.
    ‘It was you? I’d have thought you’d have made a better job of it.’
    ‘I wanted you to know someone was following you, so that I could be sure you’d lead me a dance. That was the only way I could check that no one else was on your tail.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I’ll tell you inside. I shouldn’t be here, and I certainly shouldn’t be talking to you, but I have no option.’
    Once seated in Huy’s living room, Merymose relaxed, but only a little, and he could not remain in his chair long, but kept getting up and pacing the narrow space between the front door and the rear wall. 
    ‘First of all, I should explain why you heard no more from me after you came to see Iritnefert’s body. Somebody must have reported the meeting, because I was summoned to the priest-administrator’s room at the palace the next day for a tongue lashing. Something along the lines of loss of professional dignity, enlisting the aid of socially undesirable persons in official business. I was lucky to keep the case.’
    ‘Have you made any progress?’
    ‘I haven’t been allowed to move. I wasn’t able to talk to Ipuky myself. I wonder if that would have helped. All I have been able to find out is that he was a remote father. After the mother’s departure, he lost interest in the girl, turned over her upbringing to one of the house matrons. She was severe, used to have Iritnefert whipped for the slightest misconduct. The girl grew up without love.’
    ‘That is much.’
    ‘That is all. There is no clue to follow. And now I am no longer in charge.’
    Huy looked at him. ‘Who is?’
    ‘Kenamun.’
    Huy knew the man by sight and reputation. In temperament he was not unlike Surere, a career official who had dedicated himself to climbing to the top of the power structure, though he had chosen the priesthood as his channel. He was as inflexible in his allegiance to Amun and the old gods as Surere was to the Aten, and during the reign of Akhenaten he had fled to the oasis of Kharga to escape death. His loyalty had stood him in good stead after the restoration, and he was now a commissioner of police for religious conformity — a post which did not prevent him from working in any other area which Horemheb, through the king, saw fit to appoint him to.
    ‘When did this happen?’
    ‘Yesterday.’
    ‘Do you know why?’
    Merymose sighed. ‘There has been another killing. They begin to think that it is the work of a demon. But how? There is no violence. Not a mark on the body.’
    ‘Who was she?’ 
    ‘The youngest daughter of Reni, the Chief Scribe.’
    ‘How old was she?’
    ‘She would have been fourteen at the time of the Opet festival.’
    Huy looked grim. ‘And how was she found?’
    ‘The middle sister found her by the pool in their garden. The family also live in the palace compound. She was naked, laid out with as much care as if Anubis himself had done it.’
    ‘Did you see her yourself?’
    ‘Yes. Reni ordered that the body shouldn’t be touched and sent a servant directly to me. I should have reported it first, but I thought I could always plead urgency if I was disciplined again, and I couldn’t take the risk of being denied access.’
    ‘Did you talk to Reni?’
    ‘Yes. He’s an intelligent man, but his heart was darkened by his daughter’s death, and there was nothing he could tell me. His house is large, and his children are old enough to be free, though all still live under his roof. He and his Chief Wife dined alone at sunset, then he went to his office to work. He didn’t see any of the children that evening, except the oldest girl, who is eighteen and unmarried, and acts as his secretary. The middle sister discovered the body when she came home at about the sixth hour of night.’
    ‘How many children are there?’
    ‘Two surviving daughters, and two sons.’
    ‘When did he summon you?’
    ‘Soon after. I went immediately, as I said.’ Merymose looked troubled. ‘I reported the killing as