The Moses Legacy

Chapter 46

‘Can you hear me?’

The big man on the bed didn’t want to hear him. He didn’t want to do anything. All he wanted to do was sleep. But he couldn’t sleep any longer; the time for sleeping was over.

Goliath opened his eyes. There were maybe half a dozen people in the room. Two of them were nurses. The rest…

They were in white.

Doctors? Policemen?

At the back of his mind, he remembered seeing Egyptian policemen in their white summer uniform.

‘Mr Carter? Can you talk?’

He felt the bandages upon him. Where was he? Hospital. He remembered what had happened to him. Fire… driving…woman… she threw something…

‘Yes,’ he muttered.

Through blurred vision, he fancied that he saw one of the nurses smiling. Was she happy because he could talk? Or was she cunning and scheming, like most women?

‘Do you know what day it is?’ asked one of the men in white coats.

What day is it?

He couldn’t think. How long had he been here? He had been slipping in and out of consciousness.

‘Mr Carter…’

Goliath turned his head and tried to sit up, but he couldn’t.

‘We need to ask you about the car you were driving… the car… it was destroyed by the fire. But we need to ask where you got it?’

‘The woman…’

‘The woman? The woman gave you the car?’

The man who had asked the question looked at his colleague. The other man shrugged.

‘But didn’t the woman have another car? Her own car?’

‘Petrol bomb…’

‘What?’

‘She threw it into my car…’

‘The woman threw a gasoline bomb into the car?’

Goliath made a slight nodding motion.

‘Did you know the woman, Mr Carter?’

Goliath said nothing, just looked at the policeman blankly.

‘Mr Carter, we need to know what’s going on. That jeep you were in was hired by our Deputy Minister of Culture. Someone tried to lock him in a tomb.’

Something flickered in Goliath’s mind when he heard the words ‘ tried to lock him’ – did that mean that he had failed?

‘Was it you, Mr Carter? Was it you who killed the guardian and locked him in the tomb? Or was it the woman?’

‘Captain, this man is extremely weak,’ said one of the doctors. ‘He needs time to recover.’

‘I need answers!’ snapped the captain.

‘He isn’t going anywhere. You can ask him when he’s stronger.’

‘I will ask him now!’

‘Look, Captain, it’s obvious that he isn’t fully conscious. At the moment he’s in no position to give you any answers. Give me a day or two to get him better and you can have all the answers you want.’ The tone was as appeasing as the words.

‘All right. You have one day.’

And with that the captain turned and left, followed by another man.

Goliath felt an itch on his nose and tried to rub it. It was then that he noticed that his left hand was handcuffed to the iron bed frame.