O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [11]
A bare two weeks earlier, Holmes and I had been bombed, hunted down, chased through London, and finally shot at while standing in an office of New Scotland Yard; a sniper’s bullet had exploded the window beside me, missing me by inches. I thought I had left behind the blinding terror of the exploding window and the hard slap of lead on brick, but I had not; now I plunged straight back into the dry-mouthed, heart-pounding state as if no time at all had intervened between that attack and this one.
“Oh, God, Holmes, she’s here,” I found myself saying with a whimper. “She’s here waiting for us, she must have known where we were going. Someone in Mycroft’s group has been bought. We have to get out of here, Holmes, we can’t trust these men, we can’t trust anyone, we—”
He caught me and shook me, hard. “Russell! Use your brain. It is not us. She could have had us any time in the last day. This is not about us, Russell. Think.”
I stared at him, and the panic retreated, my vision slowly cleared. I swallowed, nodded, and Holmes released me.
Still, two men were dead, and this one would be soon. If it wasn’t to do with us, what was it?
Mahmoud had bent over the dying man, so close his beard brushed the man’s shoulder, and was speaking forcibly into his ear. “Yitzak,” he said, over and over again until the still figure stirred slightly and the blue eyelids flickered.
“Yitzak, who did this?” It took me a moment to register that he was speaking in Hebrew.
“Mahmoud?” the flaccid lips breathed. The embroidered skullcap the man wore was dislodged by his faint movement. It tipped and dropped away to the earthen floor, revealing thinning hair, a circle of pale scalp, and a clotted head wound.
“We are here, Yitzak. Who did this?”
“Ruth?”
“Ruth and the children are not back yet. The carriage is not in the barn. Your family is safe. Who was it, Yitzak?”
“Man. Saw him. With. The mullah . Last week.”
“The mullah who preached in Jaffa?” Yitzak blinked his affirmation. “It was one of his men?”
“Two. Not his. I—” Yitzak coughed wetly and groaned, and that was all he told us. Ten minutes later his breathing ceased. Mahmoud stood up, looked at the drying blood on his hands, and went outside. While Holmes moved in a circle around the body, examining the scuffed ground, I stood and listened to the sound of a hand pump and the splash of water. When Mahmoud came back into the barn, the entire front of his dark garment was wet. He picked up the lantern from the floor, and inclined his head towards the door, a clear gesture that we should leave. Ali protested in Arabic, something about Ruth and the children seeing this.
“We must not bury him,” Mahmoud told his brother. “We must go.”
“We cannot—” Ali began.
Mahmoud moved slightly, a matter of drawing himself up, and Ali stopped immediately. Mahmoud’s face was dark with rage, not at Ali but at what Ali was forcing upon him. I took an involuntary step back, and hoped fervently that I would never have that look directed against me. “You will go and tell the neighbours,” Mahmoud said forcibly. “We will meet you on the road. Insh’allah,” he added: If God wills it.
Ali glanced at us and nodded, but before he could turn away, Holmes spoke for the first time.
“Why did the killer leave his knife?”
Mahmoud stood with the lantern in his hand and looked at Holmes; neither he nor Ali showed any reaction.
“The knife,” Holmes repeated. “This man was knocked unconscious, dragged here, dramatically arranged in the doorway by two men wearing boots and robes rather than trousers, and stabbed with that knife. His position shouts out ‘murder most foul.’ Of Jew by Arab. The shocking effect was deliberate.”
Ali turned to leave, but Mahmoud stopped him with a gesture, and went back over to examine the body more carefully. The three men studied the