put my hands up. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t want anything from you.’ I hesitated deliberately, then went on. ‘Well, not anything material.’
Her eyes narrowed. I imagined she was wondering if I was one of those people who suffer from the Jerusalem syndrome when they get here, imagining they’re the Messiah, with the power to change the world.
‘It’s just that I was wondering what all those people were gathering for out there. Do you know?’
She breathed in through her nose. Her nostrils pinched together. ‘Young man, I am not a news service.’ She looked down at the ground, as if to avoid speaking anymore. A waiter put a lidded paper cup in front of her.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I need a little help.’
‘You’re a journalist, I suppose,’ she said.
I opened my mouth to deny it, but decided not to.
‘I expect you want to know about the djinn they all claim has been released at that dig.’ She sniffed again, gazed piercingly into my eyes, as if she knew what I was thinking, even if I didn’t.
‘Well, I can offer you nothing about such superstitions.’ She clutched her tea with a claw-like hand, and shot a glance over my shoulder as if checking out someone behind me.
‘That poor man was found near here, you know.’ She leaned towards me. ‘He was burnt to death. They all think it was the work of a djinn.’ She glanced out the window.
‘I hope,’ she crossed herself. ‘You’re not going to write about evil spirits on the Via Dolorosa, because there aren’t any. It’s all superstition.’
I shook my head. ‘I definitely won’t.’
‘Bless you, I hope so. It’s bad enough already here. We don’t need stories about evil spirits.’ She put her hand to her mouth, as if she’d said too much. Then she crossed herself.
‘God be with you.’ She turned away. I saw a gold cross glint at her neck. It was plain, heavy looking.
Back at the table Isabel whispered in my ear, ‘I hope you weren’t hassling her.’
‘I’ve only found out there’s a dig going on over there.’ I pointed towards the crowd. ‘And that people think a djinn has been dug up or disturbed or something. They think it has something to do with Max’s death.’
‘What the hell is a djinn?’
‘It’s a spirit, you know, a genie, if you believe in that sort of thing.’
‘You think Kaiser was working over there?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What sort of dig is it?’
I shrugged. ‘Let’s ask around, discreetly, see if anyone knows.’
It seemed such a simple idea, but it took two hours for it to sink in that we were not going to get any answers. Nothing at all, not a whisper. Four shopkeepers asked us to leave their shops, with varying intensity, after I asked them about the dig opposite Our Lady’s Chapel.
The only useful piece of information we gathered was from a policeman. After showing him my card, he said that I would have to put my request in through an Israeli university.
After we’d finished with him we went to a juice bar nearby.
‘Let’s call Simon Marcus,’ I said.
Isabel sipped her fresh orange juice. She was looking out of the window. The Via Dolorosa was almost impassable. What had been a small group was now a crowded demonstration with cheers and jeers, and young soldiers in khaki and efficient-looking policemen in blue watching everything.
I called Simon on my phone. It took three tries to get a signal.
He did not sound pleased when he answered. ‘Did you talk to the police in the lobby when you exited the hotel?’ he said, before I even had a chance to go into why I’d called him.
‘She asked where we’d been. I had to tell her.’
‘Half the people who were supposed to come yesterday didn’t turn up, Mr Ryan. I found out later that some of them were turned back at a security checkpoint in the lobby. Someone has been making stupid claims about what we’re doing.’
‘That wasn’t me. I didn’t make any claims about your work.’ I paused. ‘We need some help, Simon, please.’ There was silence for a few seconds.
‘What sort of help?’ He did not sound keen.
‘We’re trying to find out about this dig Kaiser was working on. We’re getting stonewalled.’
Isabel was motioning for me to give her the phone. ‘Isabel wants to speak to you.’ I gave the phone to her.
She spoke to him for a few minutes. It sounded as if they were getting on well. Too well.
‘That’s really nice of you to offer to meet us,’ she said, after a long gap listening to him. ‘We’re at a juice bar on the Via Dolorosa near Our Lady’s Chapel. We think this is where Kaiser was working. Do you know it?’
He said something. She thanked him again.
‘You were laying it on thick,’ I said when the call was over.
‘Do you want his help or not?’
‘Yeah, but he gets a quick put-down if he asks you for a date.’ I pointed a finger at her.
‘I’d say he’s after something else.’
I thought about that for a second. ‘You think he wants to work with the institute?’
‘Wouldn’t you? Your institute is leading the world in academic research in loads of areas. That’s what your website says anyway. Is it a lie?’
‘You were on our website?’
‘Just making sure you weren’t an imposter.’
‘Very funny.’
But she was right. He’d probably looked us up after we’d left the hotel. And he hadn’t put the phone down on me, even though he’d been angry.
I ordered another juice. We watched the people around us. There was a bunch of shaven-headed American men
at a table nearby. It looked as if they were all praying. They had their eyes closed and one of them was whispering something I couldn’t catch. There was a guy with a long beard with them. He looked like an Old Testament prophet. He was reading from a heavy gilt-edged book and muttering.
‘Djinn is a word derived from the Arabic root meaning to hide,’ said Simon an hour later, after he arrived and I’d told him what we’d learned so far.
‘It’s an interesting word,’ said Isabel.
‘It’s interesting people still believe in such things,’ I said.
Simon leant his head to one side and gave me his best condescending expression.
‘But Max’s death was evil, wasn’t it? So evil is not dead, Sean. The other words derived from the word djinn are interesting too. They are majnu-n – mad – and janin – an embryo.’
‘What sort of dig’s going on over there?’ said Isabel. She was giving him one of her super-friendly smiles. I kicked her under the table. Her smile became even warmer.
‘I can do better than that,’ he said. His chest puffed up as he spoke. ‘I asked around after you told me Kaiser was probably working here. One of my archaeologist colleagues was involved in the early days of this dig. He told me all about what they claim they’ve found.’ He paused, smiled.
‘But best of all, if this is the site I gave Max his reference for, they should be willing to let me look around. I have every reason to see the site after what happened to him.’