Howard Engel - East of Suez (A Benny Cooperman Mystery)

PENGUIN CANADA

EAST OF SUEZ

HOWARD ENGELs enduring detective Benny Cooperman, who has appeared in twelve novels, is an internationally recognized fictional sleuth. Engel is the winner of numerous awards, including the 2005 Writers Trust of Canada Matt Cohen Award. He lives in Toronto.

ALSO IN HOWARD ENGELS BENNY COOPERMAN SERIES

The Suicide Murders

The Ransom Game

Murder on Location Murder Sees the Light

A City Called July

A Victim Must Be Found

Dead and Buried

There Was an Old Woman

Getting Away with Murder

The Cooperman Variations

Memory Book

ALSO BY HOWARD ENGEL

Murder in Montparnasse

Mr. Doyle & Dr. Bell

The Man Who Forgot How to Read

HOWARD ENGEL

A BENNY COOPERMAN MYSTERY

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2008

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright Howard Engel, 2008

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved

above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or

introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),

without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the

above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and

incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously,

and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely

coincidental.

Manufactured in Canada

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Engel, Howard, 1931

East of Suez / Howard Engel.

ISBN 978-0-14-305332-3

I. Title.

PS8559.N49E28 2008 C813.54 C2008-901515-0

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305332-3

ISBN-10: 0-14-305332-9

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at www.penguin.ca Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see www.penguin.ca/corporatesales or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 477 or 474

IN MEMORY OF

Harry J. Boyle, Don Summerhayes, Gary Thaler

and

dedicated to friends who helped me to write this book:

Madeline Grant, Susan Milojevic, Don Summerhayes,

Nancy Vichert, S. Roeksitthisawat, and Grif Cunningham

Ship me somewhere east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,

Where there arent no Ten Commandments an a man can raise a thirst.

RUDYARD KIPLING

BOOK ONE

ONE

ID THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE HEAVY with dust and cobwebs, like a movie showing the opening of the tomb of Dracula. Id thought that the light would be altered by bright motes of dust hanging in the air before the windows. Id pictured mice racing out of sight as my key turned in the lock. In my imagined version of that moment, they scurried from view, hiding behind the filing cabinet or slouching in between my old galoshes under the hat stand by the door. The papers on my desk were not gritty with long neglect. The reality didnt live up to my imaginings. My dear Anna Abraham had been there before me with mop and broom.

The room was silent; stiller than I remembered it being, as though the electricity had been shut off, leaving a silence deeper than the familiar buzz of day. For a moment, I felt as though the room was punishing me for the months Id been away from my old routines. Annas wash and brush-up of my place of business rendered it clean, ready for work, but somewhat strange and forbidding, a bit like an old photograph of dead relations.

Through the window, the street looked chilly. It was September, but it felt more like November. The manholes blew their columns of white vapor straight up into a colorless sky, as though we were still in the grip of February. Pedestrians hurried along the sidewalk, hands thrust deep into their pockets. Were they cursing the fact that a change to warmer clothing had become necessary? The chill of another Ontario autumn and winter was claiming us again, in spite of the calendars optimism.

The room wasnt exactly strange, but it wasnt an old friend either. It was like it had been cobbled together by a stage designer from photographs, or recreated in a museum diorama, although I couldnt think why. It was like being part of a stage setting. Anna had come in and dusted it on the weekend, so there werent any of the usual signs of neglect. The wastepaper basket was empty; that, at least, was uncharacteristic, as was the clear, uncluttered desk. Time had left my realm virtually unchanged. What I was seeing as change was within myself. I had been undergoing change. I had been away. I was the returning long-time tenant of this old second-floor office space. It was a confusion of subjects and objects. I had been out of town, flat on my back in a Toronto hospital for some months. I was the changed element. Dont blame the decor. The desk and chairs are completely innocent.

Anna, my best friend and sometime fiance, had placed a vase of flowers in the center of the desk. I didnt recognize what kind they were. I must get a book about flowers from the library. Somewhere there must be a book that solves all minor mysteries such as when to set the clock forward and when to deliver my pillowcase full of receipts to my accountant. It would be nice to know the correct way to address an archbishop or a kirtle friar.

The note from Anna was a puzzler, as were all written or printed materials. The fact is: Im a dogged reader, but no longer a quick one. My old head injury still made me stumble over the simplest words. Its not that I couldnt read, I just took a lot longer doing it. I worked my way through Annas note, slowly. Letter by letter, at a pace that made molasses in January appear to be sprinting, I worked it out. It was both touching and personal:

Benny,

Welcome back to the place you know best. Dont let the strangeness get you down. Youll be up to speed in no time. Meanwhile, theres nothing thats urgent. Most of the circulars are out of date, so you can pitch out almost everything. If you need succor, or even lunch, you know my number. Have fun!

Much love,

Anna

While the look of the room was strange, so too was my memory of the last few months. I remembered the big headlands of the experience: except for the bang on my headthat I had to piece together for myself from what I could squeeze from my reluctant police connectionsthe hospital routine, my friends from the lunchroom, the nurses and doctors, the look of the long corridor. I could remember the framed print on the wall outside the elevator which told me that Id successfully returned to the right floor from some appointment to be X-rayed or to give blood. But the details of this time spent in a Toronto rehab hospital were fading. The names of people went first. I could no longer recall the name of my favorite nurse. I remembered the sensation of trying to remember her name while we were speaking to one another; I could still feel in my bones the exercise of running through the alphabet hoping for a clue. My doctors names had also been erased from my memory, as had the names of my roommates and those of the other sharers of the was it the fifth floor or was it the tenth? Sometimes the stay at the rehab seemed like a dream, remote like a dream. And now this, my office, the scene of my work for the last fifteen or twenty years, had become as distant and as strange as my recollections of the hospital. I recognized that the sensation was eerie, but it didnt lead me on to panic. That route was occluded, a handy word I picked up at the rehab.