Selected Detective
SHAYKH UMAR ABDUL KARIM
The banana garden was still covered in morning dew when Khalifa arrived at Jansen's Karnak Villa, unlock the front gate and settle along a gravelly rocky path towards the low, one-story building in front of it, with a wooden porch and windows here and there.
He had spent the afternoon and evening studying Schlegel's case files, while making some notes, familiarizing himself with the case. As he had suspected, the archive proved to be of little help. The archive did provide some forgotten details of a photo of Schlegel's corpse, a statement from witnesses who had seen him before he was killed, a copy of the correspondence with the Israeli Embassy in the arrangement of the transport of his body back to Israel but nothing can realistically be considered as new information. He has been trying to re-establish contact with two key witnesses - the housekeeper who heard Schlegel talking by phone in his hotel room and the Karnak guard who had seen someone rushing from the scene of his murder - but after digging it he got a statement that the guard had died and the housekeeper had married and moved from the area without leaving his new address. Effectively, he had to start all over again.
He arrived at the front door of the villa. After several tries, the door finally opens and he steps into a cold, shady room, then turns on the light contact. Things were really still the same as when he visited the last time a hand-held chair, a paper shelf, a large oil painting with a rocky mountaintop, painted, the same nuance in sterile neatness and obsessive security. Half a dozen letters were scattered on the floor near his feet. He bowed, picked up the letters and read them.
The first five were bills or circulars; the sixth had handwriting on its envelope and Luxor postmarks. He opened it and drew a photocopy of a brochure advertising a seminar for tomorrow: “Jewish crimes”. His speaker was Sheikh Umar Abdul Karim, a local worker known for his inflammatory and anti-Western teachings.
Khalifa studied the brochure, astonished that such a thing was sent to someone like Jansen, then put it in his jacket pocket. Then, closing the door behind him, he surrounded the room. An opening. That's what he's looking for. A kind of window into Jansen's secret world. Something, anything, that would tell him more about the owner of this mysterious villa. Something that could help him break through the inaccessible acreage that the man seemed to have built around him.
He starts from the living room, feeling confident that there will be clues to Jansen's story, though it is uncertain how to read it. Great oil painting, for example.
The painting clearly says something about its owner, about the life in him. Butwhat? That he just likes mountains? Or is the message more specific?
That this is a landscape of his native country, perhaps (but isn't the Netherlands a flat country)? He felt as if all the information he needed to get at the core of his quest was right here in front of him, but all in cipher, and he didn't have the cipher to break it.
He spent half an hour, researching the space, then went to the bedroom, the study, where he spent a long time observing Jansen's bookshelf, pulling out some random documents, open the page: Die Sudlichen Raume des Tempels von Luxor by h. Brunner; The Complete Works of Josephus, translated by Willian Whiston; Cathares et Templiers by Raimonde Reznikov; from Solon to Socrates by Victor Ehrnberg; The Basilica of the holy Sepulchre by G.S.P. freeman-grenville city. As on his previous visit, he was amazed by the diversity of subjects that Jansen read, by the man's intelligence and knowledge. There are written works on everything from pre-dynastic Egyptian times to the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades to the Aztec burial customs, Byzantine Jerusalem to the art of planting roses. It is a rich collection, eclectic and intellectual, and once again Khalifa feels it is a bit odd compared to the male outer life that has it all.
“Who are you, Piet Jansen?” he muttered to himself.
“Who are you, and why are you here?”
From the bookshelf he turned his attention to the table, then to the filing cabinet. The first contained a plastic folder that held business, banking, insurance and legal documents, proving nothing new was revealed from it when he first checked it. The second, with pockets containing photographic slides, is more interesting simply because the slides are about a place Khalifa knows or likes or always visits. Giza, Saqqara, Luxor, Abu Simbel all the great monuments are there, expertly photographed and neatly labeled, like a number of smaller sites that few tourists bother to come to: giant mud-brick walls at al-Kab; akhenaten border at Tuna al-Jabal; djehutihotep tomb at Dar al-Barsha. Some of Jabal Dosha, Kor, Qasr Dush sites are so foreign and Khalifa has never heard of.
One slide in particular caught his attention, as he was the only one to feature Jansen himself. He looked younger here, with his hair neatly combed and upright with his back straight, standing on what looked like SetiI's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, where he was found, in front of the image of the king with the gods horus and osiris. There was something rather threatening about the image, the way the subject was staring directly at the camera lens, his gaze strong and arrogant, his expression between a smile and a grin.
“You are evil,” Khalifa whispered to herself. “That's in your face, the light of your eyes. You did a despicable thing, a cruel thing.” He stared at the picture for quite a while, then returned it and continued looking through the rest of his collection of slides. He didn't spend too much time researching each slide, just holding and laughing at it, his eyes moving here and there, focusing on only six or seven images before moving on to the next stack of files.
Khalifa would not have seen the image of the entrance gate of the tomb if the slide was in a normal plastic frame like other slides, because when he got to that slide he almost got to the end of the collection and paid a little more attention to each of the pictures than just a cursory gaze. As it is, the image pokes slightly from another slide nearby due to its outdated thick layer of brown paper. His interest was stirred, Khalifa took it and looked at it from a closer distance.
The image is one of a series of images of the doors of the tombs of the Middle and New Kingdoms in Dar al-Bahri, on the eastern side of the Theban Necropolis. Although the image is black and white, unlike the pictures next to it which are full of color, and somewhat out of focus to note, the initial assumption is that the main material of this image is the same. only when he lifted and laughed at her did he begin to hesitate, not only because he did not actually recognize the door for fifteen years at Luxor he had explored every tomb there but because of the dark and frightening walls of perfect flat stone and its base there was an open door unlike any geological formation he had ever seen in the Luxor region.
Khalifa flipped the slide, curious, hoping who knew there was an explanatory label like usually any other image in the collection. But nothing, which certainly frustrates him, for for no reason can he explain he feels that somehow the image is significant. He stared at the picture for a while “What do you want to tell me?” he murmured. “tomb who are you?” then he slipped it in his inner pocket along with the brochure and re-examined the contents of the house.
The last time Khalifa explored the basement, as when first visiting this house, went down the dark and creaking stairs, and, turn on the contact lights below and look at the tables and shelves covered in loot.
At this point, he had been in the house for more than three hours and now he spent the next ninety minutes researching the entire contents of the basement, again admiring the size and diversity of the collection in it, found many objects that interest him but none of them gave at least a bright light about the man who put it all together.
He stopped at the side of the vault in the farthest corner of the room, a crate with a number chakra and a strong brass handle. While crouching in front of him, he pulled the chakra of the number forward and backward, the equipment system inside clicked gently as he spun. Khalifa could not have pushed through the door of the iron box, and although she had learned, from her long association with the criminal group, about how to unload a simple key, she said, this one was far above the basic break-in skill level. He needed a combination number, which most likely had been lost buried with the owner of the iron box, or something else ...
Khalifa remained in the room for a moment, then, grunting as if to say
“Ahh, care deeply!” he returned to the living room, picked up the phone and dialed a series of numbers. There was a ringing six times, before a loud and rude voice answered.
“Aziz? This is Inspector Khalifa. No, no, it has nothing to do with it. I need your help.”
“If this is some kind of hoax...”
“It...”.
“Because now I've become an honest and straight man. Youunderstand? He was completely honest and obedient to the law. All of those things .. have become the past. I'm a different person now.”
Aziz Ibrahim Abdul Syakir, who is famous as “si ghost” For his ability to break through even the most sophisticated doors of his security, opened his bag full of tools then took out a small cork barrette, which was then used to make the most of his safety, put it on the floor in front of the iron box and kneel on it, sliding it forward and backward until he felt comfortable. A crazy little man with a round nose like radish and armpits who always had traces of sweat, took a few breaths, breathing slowly as if he was about to start a meditation, then stretched out his hand and gently moved it at the top, beyond the roof and all sides of the iron box, as if stroking a nervous animal, calming him, gaining his trust.
“This is just between us,” Khalifa assured Aziz. “No one will know.”
“indeed better so,” muttered Aziz, while pushing his body forward and pressing his ears on the door of the iron box, turning his dial back and forward, while listening.
“You can hold...”.
“Can you open it?” ask Khalifa.
Aziz ignored him, reached into his bag.
“Chubb sheath, mauser dial system,” he murmured, while pulling a stethoscope, a pencil with a flashlight and a small hammer that geologists used to break rocks.
“Susceptible nail, three pieces, or maybe four; double lever. ohh, come on you sweet little girl!”
“Can you...”.
“Of course I can open it!” Aziz grunting. “I can open anything. Except my wife's leg.”
He smiled wryly at the candlestick and began to palpate the dial with his hammer, eyes closed concentrating. Aziz Abdul Syakir is generally respected, by anyone including himself, as the best safety box opener in Upper Egypt. As a man who had twice broken through the main iron chamber in the office of the National Bank of Egypt in Luxor, and dismantled the American express vault in Aswan that should not be dismantled, he is a legend among his criminal friends and those whose duty is to bring him to justice.
Khalifa met him for the first time in 1992 after he drained the vault at the Luxor Sheraton, and the direction of their journey has intersected several times since then, the most recent was two years ago when Khalifa arrested him for a robbery at a local gem store. On that particular occasion Khalifa had written to the court judge, recommending tolerance of the charges on the grounds of pity as Aziz's smallest son was diagnosed with leukemia. Aziz had heard about the letter and, with the teachings of morality allowing one to provide for his life by stealing and at the same time always honoring his debts, he contacted Khalifa and told her that whenever Khalifa needed her help, just ask for it. That's why he's there now.
He set aside his hammer and installed a stethoscope, attaching the flattened part of his disc to the safety box door with one hand while slowly clicking his number forward and backward with the other hand. He bit the flashlight with his mouth, eyes closed as he listened with great concentration to the movements of the spikes inside. Khalifa knew for sure that Aziz was lying when he said he was living a straight and honest life. Aziz is still the villain who is still active as before. But at this particular moment, Khalifa needed his expertise and did not want to debate it.
“Sweet girl.” Aziz whispered to himself, a faint smile expanding on his face. “Don't make things difficult now. oh, you're such a sweet little girl. What a sweet girl.”
Finally, in just under twenty minutes he managed to find a combination of numbers, a source of satisfaction because, as soon as the last nail clicked, he sank into a wide smile with a row of brown teeth. He leaned over and landed a kiss on the top of the vault. Her lips died of marks on the green-gray metal.
“Si ghosts are back on the scene!” he chuckled, opening the door of the vault a few inches, then re-cleaning his belongings.
they went upstairs and Khalifa took him away.
“Do not make trouble,” he said as Aziz descended the front stairs.
The vault dismantler grumbled as he walked along the gravelly path towards the front gate. Once there, he turned his body.
“You oK, Khalifa,”. He was silent, then added, “for a policeman, that's it.”
He blinked, then disappeared behind the coconut and mimosa trees.
Khalifa watched him leave, then returned to the basement. He crouched down in front of the vault and opened the door. There were only three objects inside: a brown manila envelope that looked official which, upon close attention, apparently contained the will of the deceased; the gun, which Khalifa had never seen before, with a thin barrel protruding from its solid L-shaped body; and right at the back of the vault, was, the rectangular-shaped object was wrapped in a long black cloth. The latter was heavy and after removing his black cloth Khalifa found a large piece of gold. On the shiny upper surface of the eagle stamp with wings spread, its claws clutching the arms of the Nazi swastika that interlock. Khalifa whistled small.
“What are you going to do, Mr Jansen? What are you going to do?”
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