Christine drove even faster than usual back into town. On the outskirts, where the scruffy desert bumped into the first grey concrete apartment blocks, they saw a feeble attempt at a roadside café, with white plastic tables arrayed outside, and a few truck drivers drinking beer. The drivers were drinking with guilty expressions.

‘Beer?’ said Rob.

Christine glanced across. ‘Good idea.’

She turned right and parked. The drivers stared over, as Christine climbed from the car and threaded her way to a table.

It was a warm evening; insects and flies were whirling around the bare bulbs strung outside the cafe. Rob ordered two Efes beers. They talked about Gobekli. Every so often a huge truck would thunder down the road, lights blazing, en route to Damascus or Riyadh or Beirut, drowning out their conversation and making the light bulbs shiver and kick. Christine flicked through the pages of the notebook. She was rapt, almost feverish. Rob sipped his warm beer from his scratchy glass and let her do her thing.

Now she was flicking this way and that. Unhappily. At length she chucked the book onto the table, and sighed. ‘I don’t know…It’s a mess.’

Rob set down his beer. ‘Sorry?’

‘It’s chaotic.’ She tutted. ‘Which is strange. Because Franz was not messy. He was scrupulous. ’Teutonic efficiency’ he would call it. He was rigorous and exact. Always…always…’ Her brown eyes clouded for a second. She reached firmly for her beer, drank a gulp and said, ‘Take a look for yourself.’

Rob checked the early pages. ‘Seems OK to me.’

‘Here,’ she said, pointing. ‘Yes, it begins very neatly. Diagrams of the excavations. Microliths noted. But here…look…’

Rob flicked some more pages until she stopped him.

‘See, from here it falls apart. The handwriting turns into a scrawl. And the drawings and little doodles…chaotic. And here. What are all these numbers?’

Rob looked closely. The writing was nearly all in German. The handwriting at first was very neat; but it did get scrawlier to the end. There was a list of numbers on the last page. Then a line about someone called Orra Keller. Rob remembered a girl he’d known in England called Orra. A Jewish girl. So who was this Orra Keller? He asked Christine; and she shrugged. He asked her about the numbers. She shrugged again-more emphatically. Rob noted there was also a drawing in the book: a scribbled sketch of a field, and some trees.

He handed the book back to Christine. ‘What does the writing say? I don’t know much German.’

‘Well, most of it is illegible.’ She opened the book towards the end. ‘But he talks about wheat, here. And a river. Turning into more rivers. Here.’

‘Wheat? But why?’

‘God knows. And this drawing seems to be a map. I think. With mountains. It says mountains with a question mark. And rivers. Or maybe they are roads. It really is a mess.’

Rob finished his beer and motioned to the bar owner for two more. Another huge silver lorry thundered down the Damascus road. The sky over Sanliurfa was a dirty orange-black.

‘And what about the grass?’

Christine nodded. ‘Yes, that is weird. Why keep that?’

‘Do you think he was frightened? Is that why the notes are so…messed up?

‘It is possible. Remember the Pulsa Dinura?’

Rob shuddered. ‘Hard to forget. Do you think he knew about that?’

Christine picked an insect off the top of her beer. Then she looked hard at Rob. ‘I think he knew. He must have heard the chanters outside the window. And he was an expert on Mesopotamian religions. The demons and the curses. It was one of his specialities.’

‘So he was aware he was in danger?’

‘Probably. Which might account for the chaotic state of his notes. Sheer fear. But still…’ She held the book flat in her hands, as if assessing its weight. ’A lifetime’s work…

Rob could sense her sadness.

Christine dropped the book again. ‘This place is horrible. I don’t care if they do serve beer. Can we go?’

‘Gladly.’

Dropping some coins in a saucer, they made for the Land Rover and barrelled off down the road. After a while Christine said, ‘I don’t believe it was just fear, it doesn’t add up.’ She swivelled the wheel so they could overtake a cyclist, an old man in an Arabic cloak. Sitting in front of the bicycling man, athwart the crossbar, was a small dark boy. The boy waved at the Land Rover, grinning at the white western woman.

Rob noticed that Christine was taking side streets. Not an obvious route back to the centre of town.

At last she said, ‘Franz was diligent and thorough. I don’t think a curse would have sent him over the edge. Nothing would have unsettled him like that.’

‘So what was it?’ Rob asked.

They were in a newer part of town now. Almost European looking. Nice clean apartment blocks. Women were walking the evening streets, not all of them in headscarves. Rob saw a brightly lit supermarket advertising cheese in German as well as Turkish. Next door was an internet café full of shining screens with dark heads silhouetted against them.

‘I think he must have had some theory. He used to get excited by theories.’

‘I saw.’

Christine smiled, staring ahead. ‘I think he had some theory, about Gobekli. That’s what the notes say to me.’

‘A theory to do with what?’

‘Perhaps he had worked out why Gobekli was buried. That is, after all, the big mystery. If he felt he was onto a solution that would get him pretty agitated.’

Rob wasn’t satisfied by this. ‘But why didn’t he just write it down, or tell anyone?’

The car had stopped. Christine pulled the key from the ignition. ‘Good point,’ she said, looking at Rob. ‘A very good point. Let’s go and find out. Come on.’

‘Where?’

‘There’s a friend here. Might be able to help.’

They were parked in front of a new apartment complex with a huge crimson poster advertising Turku Cola on the wall. Christine ran up the steps and pressed a numbered button. They waited, and then they were buzzed in. The lift took them to the tenth floor. They ascended in silence.

A door was already half-open across the landing. Rob followed Christine. He peered into the apartment-then jumped: just inside the door was Ivan the paleobotanist, from the party. Just lurking there.

Ivan nodded politely but his expression was notably unfriendly. Almost suspicious. He showed them into the main room of his flat. It was austere, just a lot of books and some pictures. On a desk a smart laptop computer was showing a screensaver of the Gobekli megaliths. There was one beautiful small stone object on the mantelpiece which looked like one of the Mesopotamian wind demons. Rob found himself wondering if Ivan had stolen it.

They sat down. Wordless. Ivan offered no tea or water but just sat down opposite them, looked hard at Christine and said, ‘Yes?’

She took out the notebook and laid it on the table. Ivan stared at it. He glanced up at Christine. His young Slavic face was a picture of blankness. Like someone suppressing emotion. Or someone used to suppressing emotion.

Then Christine reached in her pocket and took out the grass stalk and laid it very gently on top of the book. All the time Rob watched Ivan’s face. He had no idea what was going on here, but he felt that Ivan’s reaction was crucial. Ivan flinched very slightly when he saw the stalk of grass. Rob couldn’t stand the silence any longer. ‘Guys? Please? What is it? What’s going on?

Christine glanced at him as if to say be patient. But Rob didn’t feel like being patient. He wanted to know what was going on. Why had they driven here, late at night? To sit in silence and stare at some piece of grass?

‘Einkorn,’ said Ivan.

Christine smiled. ‘It is, isn’t it? Einkorn wheat. Yes.’

Ivan shook his head. ‘You needed me to tell you this, Christine?’