The Jerusalem Puzzle. Laurence O’Bryan

a sweet scent; olive oil mixed with myrrh, the ancient incense Queen Esther had bathed in for six months to beautify herself for her Persian King.

      Myrrh was used at times of sacrifice. Arap knew its scent from his childhood. One man in particular had smelled of it. A man who’d brought pain.

      He closed his eyes, breathing the ancient smell in. Myrrh came from a thorny shrub which wept from the stem after it was cut. Some varieties are worth more than their weight in gold.

      He put his left hand out and held it over the flame. The pain was familiar. The walls of the room danced around him as the shadows from the candle played on the walls. He wrenched his thoughts away from the flame, focusing on the wall hangings. The thick red one with the stylised flames embroidered on it was the one he liked most.

      He bent his back. The searing pain in his hand grew in steps, as if ascending towards an ultimate crescendo. He threw his head back and opened his eyes. Not much longer. Seconds. One …

      The low white roof, its plaster filled with tiny cracks, swam in his vision. The cracks were moving. It always amazed him what pain could do to your consciousness.

      His need to take his hand away was making his arm tremble now. It was moving, rocking as muscle spasms from the pain were shooting up his nerves. He kept his hand to the flame.

      He had to. It was the only way. He had to know the pain he would inflict on others, the better to enjoy inflicting it when the moment came.

      He jerked his hand away, breathing in and out slowly. It was time to make the call.

      He turned on the mobile phone, pressed at the numbers quickly, his hand trembling, the pain of the scorched skin pulsing in waves. As he put it to his ear he heard the ring tone at the other end of the line.

      ‘Rehan,’ said a voice.

      ‘Father Rehan, I am so glad I found you. I am just checking that everything is in order.’ Arap Anach forced himself to sound friendly. His breathless eagerness he didn’t have to feign.

      ‘Yes, yes, my son. Your donation has been received. We are all very grateful. Is there anything we can do for you?’

      Arap Anach hesitated. ‘No, not really, Father. I’m just happy to be able to help with the restoration of the church.’ He coughed.

      ‘Please, there must be some small thing we can do for you while you are here.’

      Arap coughed again, then spoke. ‘There is a small thing. It would make me so happy. I have prayed for it for a long time.’

      8

      I woke in the middle of the night. There was fear in my dream. Fear and flames. I wondered for long seconds where I was. My face was hot, sweaty.

      The gray shape of the curtains and the yellow glimmer of street lights in the gap between them brought everything back. We had come to look for Dr Hunter, to find out what had happened to Max Kaiser.

      For months after we got back from Istanbul I’d wanted to have a long conversation with Kaiser, to give him my honest opinion about him claiming that the book we’d found in Istanbul was his. He needed someone to puncture his ego. It would have ended up in a shouting match or worse, but I didn’t care.

      But now he was dead, and in such a horrible manner that my instinct for revenge had turned to pity. He’d reaped what he’d sown. God only knew how many people he’d enraged before me.

      I was hoping the dream wouldn’t come back when I fell asleep again, but it did, and the flames were nearer this time and hotter.

      But this time I was woken by a voice.

      ‘Sean, Sean, wake up.’ Isabel’s tone was concerned. I was breathing fast. I sat up.

      ‘Was it the same as before?’ she asked. She hugged me.

      ‘Yeah.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell her about the flames. That part was new. The fear wasn’t.

      ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

      ‘No, I’ll be ok,’ I said.

      I lay down again. Isabel had spent a couple of nights asking me all about what had happened to Irene; how I felt about everything that had happened. It had been good to talk, but this felt different and after her speech about people being burnt to death before we came here, it didn’t seem right to tell her what had got into my dreams.

      It was light when I next woke. I’d slept a long time. Isabel was in the shower. The hum of cars, a distant car horn honking and the morning sounds of Jerusalem filled the air when I opened the balcony door. I was glad the night was over.

      The traffic was heavy on the road outside. A bell tolled far away. I stared at the old walls of the city. They looked like props from a movie about Crusaders and Saracens. A rolling blanket of clouds filled the sky.

      I looked up Max Kaiser on the internet. There were quite a few pieces about his body being found at the back of Lady Tunshuq’s Palace. The police had questioned some local hard-line Islamists. Others were being sought. It was clear who they thought had murdered him.

      I found an older article about some work Kaiser had done with a scientist attached to the Hebrew University. His name was Simon Marcus. Had Kaiser met him again while he was out here?

      I trawled the Hebrew University website looking for anyone I might know. I needed someone to introduce me to Simon Marcus, someone he would trust.

      After almost giving up, I finally found what I was looking for. A Dr Talli Miller in the Laser Research Unit. We had a tenuous connection, but it was better than nothing. She’d presented a paper at a conference I’d spoken at and we’d been at the same table for lunch. It was enough.

      I found a contact number and picked up the hotel phone to call her. The number at the university rang and rang. I looked at my watch. It was just past 9.00 a.m. Surely they were open?

      Finally a voice answered.

      ‘University’ was the only word I understood. It was a thin voice. She was speaking in Hebrew, the main language in Israel, the ancient language of Judaism. I knew only a few words of it. Easy words, like shalom: hello.

      ‘Dr Talli Miller,’ I said.

      Normally I’d have spent time learning a language if I was visiting somewhere. My German wasn’t bad following a project we’d worked on in the Black Forest, but a day and a half wasn’t long enough to learn any language, no matter how dedicated you were.

      The line sounded dead. Had she hung up?

      Then it fizzed.

      ‘Shalom,’ said a woman’s voice. Talli’s voice.

      ‘Hi, it’s Sean Ryan. I’m in Jerusalem.’

      There was a long silence.

      ‘Who?’

      It was nice to be recognised so quickly. ‘Sean Ryan, I was on the panel when you gave a speech about high temperature lasers at the University of London.’

      ‘Sean, Sean.’ She repeated my name slowly. ‘How are you?’ Suddenly she was friendly and her voice returned to normal. We reminisced for a few minutes. Then I asked her if she knew Dr Simon Marcus. She did, but not well.

      ‘That’s a pity,’ I said. ‘I need to speak to him urgently.’

      ‘I may be able to do something. I’ll call you in a few minutes. What hotel are you in?’

      I told her. My spirits lifted. I’d done it. My connections were going to get me to Simon Marcus.

      We ate breakfast in a long high-ceilinged dining room. There were groups of people in the room speaking French, Polish and Spanish, all pilgrims visiting their Holy City.

      The breakfast, a selection of cheeses, scrambled eggs, olives, jams and soft bread would have satisfied