Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

Which meant Jaafar had to be creative. More than ever, he would have to conceal the products he was sending out. The item on the bench in front of him was a source of particular pride. It was a flat plastic box, divided into two dozen compartments, full of brightly coloured beads, under a clear lid-a jewellery-making set, aimed at the younger end of the teenage girl market. His wife’s sister had bought it for Naima’s twelfth birthday after a trip to New York. His daughter had played with it for a while, then tired of it. Jaafar had come across it a couple of months ago, quite by accident, and had realized its potential immediately.

Now, trying to ape the garish tastes of an adolescent girl, he reached for a pink bead, threading it onto the string, which already carried a fake ruby, a purple sequin and the metal top from a bottle of Coca-Cola. He smiled. It looked like a tacky charm bracelet, a medley of novelty items that a teenager might wear, break and never remember again.

Unless they looked too closely at one of the items on the string. It was not the only golden piece-there was also a brassy miniature poodle-but it was the finest. A simple gold leaf, delicate and finely engraved. But you would have to look, and Jaafar had been around precious things long enough to know that context was everything. Had it been in a museum, resting on a cushion, far away from the beads and the bottle-tops, then maybe you might have guessed that this was an earring buried four and a half thousand years ago with a princess of Sumeria. On Jaafar’s worktable, cheek-by-jowl with trash, it looked like nothing.

Next came the seals, small stone cylinders embossed with a unique cuneiform pattern. Five millennia ago these would have been rolled onto clay tablets to denote a signature. Ingenious for their time, but no more ingenious than the home Jaafar had found for them. He reached down to the big brown carton that had arrived a week ago from Neuchatel, Switzerland. Inside was a bulk load of toy wooden chalets, complete with painted windows and surrounded by matchstick picket fences. Lift the roof and you would discover that this mantelpiece ornament had another function. A slow, tinny melody would begin, picked out by the shiny metal mechanism within.

It had taken him months to source this exact music box. He had looked on dozens of websites and spoken to more technicians than he could count until he was satisfied that this one had the right specifications. Now, as he prized out the mechanism with his screwdriver, he saw his patience had been rewarded. The central rotating drum, punctuated with tiny spears which caught a hammer to produce the melody, was hollow, just as he had been assured. His hand, gloved in latex, reached for the first of the cylinder-seals which he had lined up on a shelf at eye level. Slowly, carefully, he eased the seal inside the metal drum. It fitted perfectly. He exhaled his relief, looking again at the hoard of seals he had amassed, lined up before him like soldiers awaiting inspection. They were all sorts of shapes and sizes, but now he felt confident, glancing down at the carton from the Swiss company, who had sent him the full range of music boxes, from very small to ‘our grand model, sir’. This might just work.

But he could do it so much quicker if he had some decent help. He glanced over at the tea chest by the big roll of bubble wrap. That alone represented about three months of hard, solitary labour. Inside it were the several hundred clay tablets he had accumulated since April 2003. He had a plan for those, too. Not fiddly, but time-consuming.

He checked the calendar, with its soft-focused portraits of the king and his gorgeous American-styled wife on each page. All being well, he would have this lot boxed up, labelled as handicrafts and on its way to London by the spring. There was no need to rush. In the business of antiquities time was never your enemy, only your friend. The longer you waited, the richer you became. And the world had waited four and a half thousand years for these beauties.

JERUSALEM , WEDNESDAY , 1.23PM

The drive back from Psagot had been tense. Maggie had administered a bollocking to Uri before the engine had even started. ‘Mentioning Ahmed Nour, what on earth was that for?’

‘I thought he might have something to tell us.’

‘Yeah, like “piss off before I kill both of you, too”.’

‘You think Akiva Shapira killed my parents? Are you out of your mind?’

Maggie backed off. She had to remind herself that Uri was still in the immediate shock of a double bereavement. But she was fed up with treading on eggshells. Calm self-possession and control might be the order of the day in the divorce mediation room, but not here.

‘Tell me. Why is that so crazy?’

‘You saw the guy. He’s a fanatic. Just like my dad. They loved each other, these guys.’

‘OK, so not him. Then, who?’

‘Who what?’

‘Who killed your parents? Go on. Who do you suspect?’

Uri took his eye off the road and looked at Maggie, as if in disbelief. ‘You know, I’m not used to working like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘With another person. When I make a movie, I do everything myself. Interviewing, shooting, cutting. I’m not used to having some Irish girl next to me, chipping in.’

‘I’m not “some Irish girl”, thank you very much. That kind of sexist crap may play in Israel, but not with me. OK?’

Uri shot a glance back at Maggie. ‘OK, OK.’

‘As it happens, I’m not used to it either. When I’m in the room, I’m on my own. Just me and the two sides.’

‘How come?’

‘I find it just works better that way. No aides, advisers-’

‘No, I mean how come you do this? How come you’re so good at it?’ She guessed he was trying to make amends for ‘some Irish girl’.

‘At mediation, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

She was about to tell the truth, to explain that it had been a while since she had engaged in an international negotiation, that the last dispute she had brokered had been over weekend access to Nat, Joey and Ruby George of Chevy Chase, Maryland. But she said none of that.

‘I got it from home, I suppose.’

‘Don’t tell me. Your mum and dad used to fight all the time and you became the peacemaker?’

‘No, don’t be soft.’ Though she had to admit she was impressed: as it happened, the broken home appeared in the personal histories of dozens of mediators. ‘The opposite. My parents were rock solid. Best marriage on the street. Not that that was saying much. Everyone else was rowing and fighting, husbands getting in drunk, mothers having it off with the milkman, all sorts. They used to come to my mother for advice.’

‘And you watched her?’

‘I never planned to. But couples would appear in our front room, asking my mother to arbitrate between them. “Let’s see what Mrs Costello has to say.” It became a catchphrase round our way. I watched what she did and I suppose I picked it up.’

‘She must be very proud of you.’

‘They both are.’

Uri said nothing, allowing the hum of the car to fill the void. Maggie scolded herself: it was crass to have referred to her two parents in the present tense so breezily, rubbing their aliveness in his face. But she had got carried away. It was rare for her to be asked about herself like that and she had enjoyed the chance to answer. It had probably seemed obvious to Uri, who earned his living getting people to talk about themselves, but she couldn’t remember the last time anyone else had asked, ‘How come you’re a mediator?’ It struck her that Edward had never once asked that question.

While they sped towards Jerusalem, past roads she knew were choked with Palestinians moving at a fraction of their speed, if they were moving at all, she tried to focus on the meeting with Shapira. He seemed pretty clear: Guttman had told Shapira what he had found- You don’t want to know what I know -and, Shapira believed, the Israeli government had killed him for it. But Shapira was a big, puffed-up blowhard. Why hadn’t he told Uri what his father had discovered? Maybe because she was in the room. Though that made no sense: if there was some devastating new ammunition against the peace process, he’d have seized his chance to hurl it at the Americans. Was it possible Shapira knew nothing, but simply wanted to make the Guttmans look like martyrs to the cause?