Arabesk (106 page)

The Australian boy in question looked from Antonio to the blade that quivered in the door beside him and his shock, outrage and (let’s be honest) unconcealed admiration went a tiny way towards restoring the chef’s good humour. There were basic rules in life and first up was touch someone else’s knife at your peril.

Antonio pointed to a half-full bucket of tomatoes. “You don’t stop until you’ve skinned the lot. You understand?”

The Australian did.

With a sigh the chef turned back to his radio. “Sources close to the police say the man just arrested has known links to fundamentalist terror groups.” The newsreader spoke with an accent so impossibly Parisian it had to be fake.

Antonio twisted the dial and watched a needle judder its way across a thin strip of glass inscribed with stations that, like as not, no longer existed. The radio was Soviet, the size of a cinder block, only three times as heavy. Someone, probably a prisoner in a gulag workshop, had painted individual swirls of grain across its metal casing.

“…more news for you on the hour.”

“Try another station,” demanded Hassan.

Antonio took time out to stare at his wife’s nephew but he still did what the fat boy suggested, stopping as the hiss of static thinned into Arabic.

“No further news on the murder at Maison Hafsid…”

Running the length of the dial twice, Antonio checked out as many of the local stations as he could find. It was easy to tell an approved station because those were the ones carrying identical versions of the same story. The pirates were more interesting but nothing they suggested sounded remotely like the truth.

“Any news on Isabeau?” Chef Antonio demanded.

“She hasn’t phoned back.”

“Okay,” Antonio told Idries. “Let me know if she does…” But when a call finally came it wasn’t from Isabeau.

“For you,” Hassan said.

“Who?”

Hassan returned the stare he’d been given earlier. “For you,” he said and dropped the receiver to let it spin, vinelike, tipped by a matte grey plastic fruit.

Sometime or other Antonio was going to have to talk to his wife. It was all very well having her nephew on board, but the deal was that the boy was here to learn, not behave like he was already part owner.

“Yes,” Antonio barked, voice harsher than he intended. “What?” Whoever answered had presence enough to fill the chef’s voice with something very close to respect. “I’ll be there.” The chef listened again. “We’ll be there,” he agreed, amending his words.

“Scrap the tomatoes,” he told the Australian boy. “We’re closing for tonight.” He nodded at Idries. “Turn off the ovens and put everything back in the cooler…”

“You know,” said Raf, the nouvelle ville rattling by behind his head in a succession of dusty shops and pavement tables. “There’s something I still don’t quite get.” Tapping his last Cleopatra from its packet the way Hamzah’s builders did, Raf crumpled the empty box and dropped it. A flick of a cheap lighter and he passed the cigarette to Isabeau, who dug deep and handed it back.

“What’s to get?” Isabeau asked flatly.

“Who are you running from?”

Jagged glass/broken bulbs. Raf was going to have to get over matching images to emotions, his own and other people’s. Shock of some kind had finally swallowed Isabeau; shaking her hands and dragging her thumb repetitively across her fingertips, grinding her heels into the floor.

One 30c ticket each had bought them an hour in which Isabeau shipped her growing panic out towards Tunis Maritime, back towards Place de Barcelone and up to Place Halfaouine. Parc du Belvedere. Place Bardo. Crossing the rails for a different line, switching directions. Two stops this way, one stop that, change lines every third move. Regular as clockwork and about as useful. It was like watching chess played by a child who lacked the rules but had one set of winning moves written on the back of someone else’s envelope.

“Welcome,” said Shibli as he climbed to his feet and touched his hand to his heart. Chef Antonio made do with returning a slight bow, not quite confident enough to return formal greetings to a Sufi master; particularly as the man still looked more like a bouncer than a mystic, what with his freshly shaved head, bare arms and pirate earrings. Although, admittedly, this time round Shibli wore a pale kaftan rather than his usual striped jellaba.

“Discard your knife.” Shibli pointed to a brass tray by the café door. It contained a handful of cheap switchblades and one ancient revolver.

“My knives remain in the kitchen.”

Shibli smiled. “Then find a space,” he said, “and make yourself comfortable.”

Antonio and his staff had reached Bab Souika in two taxis, passing through the gate into the medina on foot with a five-minute gap between each taxi. Partly this was caution, but mostly it was because the majority of taxis stuck to nouvelle ville, leaving the suburbs to buses and illegal cabs. And Idries said calling cabs out to Café Antonio would be a risk.

By the time the chef ducked under the low doorway to greet Shibli, his sous-chef was already settled on a bench at the far end of the room, apple-scented smoke filling the crowded vault from a
sheesha
on the floor in front of him. Chef and sous-chef looked at each other and Idries stood.

“Take my seat,” he suggested.

Antonio shook his head and pointed to a space on one of the longer benches. “I’ll be fine there,” he said. The embarrassment between them was palpable, made more obvious by this very public reversal of roles. In his kitchen Antonio was god, though he’d never claim so in the presence of his staff, most of whom were believers. Here it was Shibli and, to a far lesser extent, Idries who commanded the room. A dozen races and twice that many languages survived within the walls of the medina and there were very few penalties to being born
nasrani.

Except now, except here. In the presence of those whose eyes were open, the wool wearers and Those Who Went Naked.

Every café, shop, restaurant and brothel in the city paid protection to Kashif Pasha’s police. A few, no one knew how many, chose to pay again, a different kind of insurance. Chef Antonio was one of those. How much he paid was up to him and depended on how good a week he’d had. Sometimes, at the height of the ’packer season, a week could be very good indeed and Antonio would stuff an envelope with enough notes to make it fat and give this to Idries, who passed the envelope to Shibli. Where the money went after that neither Antonio nor Idries asked.

“Drink and eat,” ordered Shibli, nodding to a trayful of painted glasses filled with sweet mint tea and half a dozen yellow bowls rimmed around the top with white metal that wanted to be silver. The tray hung on a strap from around the neck of a small, one-armed man wearing
shalwar kameez
and a three-fist beard so wispy it hung like unspooled cotton. He was the only person in the room to whom Shibli was unfailingly polite and rumour had it that he was one whose eyes had been so completely opened that he was now near blind.

When everyone had eaten baklava and drunk tea Shibli clapped his hands once and the room fell silent. “Where’s Isabeau?” he demanded.

“With the soldier.”

“And where’s the soldier?”

“Here,” said a voice from the curtained doorway. Pushing his way through dangling beads, Raf blinked at the thickness of smoke. Behind him, wearing a new coat, minus her scarf and with her hair tied back, came Isabeau. She was still shaking.

“We’ve been hiding,” Raf said.

“Who from?” Shibli looked interested.

Raf shrugged. “Ask her,” he suggested, but his voice was gentle and his hand on Isabeau’s arm was light as he guided her towards a space at one end of a bench.

“Take a seat,” Shibli told Raf. “I’ll ask when the time comes.” And with that, he reached into his kaftan and extracted a book-sized block of hashish, stamped on both sides with Arabic lettering. Pulling a clasp knife from his pocket, the Sufi prised it open and shaved a dark sliver from one corner.

“A fresh
sheesha
,” Shibli demanded and Idries disappeared through the bead curtain, returning with a waterpipe into which the Sufi crumbled both honey tobacco and fragments from the block. He took the first puff himself and passed the waterpipe to Isabeau.

“I’m sorry about Pascal,” he said gently and Isabeau nodded. “Such things happen,” he added. “Sometimes they’re unavoidable.” Shibli sighed. “If you know who might have wanted him dead, then you must tell me…”

“I don’t.” Isabeau’s voice was small. Already distant.

“Then who were you running from?” The question was Hassan’s, from the far corner of the room.

Isabeau glanced from Shibli to Raf, then back at Hassan. “From myself,” she said and both Raf and Shibli nodded.

The story was complicated the way such stories usually are. But it seemed Isabeau’s brother had been found murdered in an alley behind Maison Hafsid, a restaurant at which some of Café Antonio’s staff regularly worked and where her brother was pastry chef.

Ahmed, a cousin to Idries, had been arrested for the crime. Shock mixed with outrage in Idries’ voice as he admitted this, but his predominant tone was worry. Despite their apparent closeness Idries admitted his cousin was not eminently likable. Ahmed’s habit of using his fists was mentioned. His inability to walk away from a brawl. His use of alcohol.

“But Pascal was stabbed?” Raf asked.

“Yes,” said Idries, “that was what it said on the news.”

“Did Ahmed carry a knife?”

Raf’s question earned him an amused glance from Shibli.

“We all carry knives,” Idries said gently.

“But Ahmed was the kind of man to use his fists?”

“That’s true,” Shibli admitted, eyes suddenly shrewd.

“So, what about witnesses?” Raf asked gently. It was a dangerous game he was playing. Giving them more of himself than was safe to give. But one that was worth the risk. Maison Hafsid was a step closer than Café Antonio. And Shibli had Isabeau under his wing. A wing Raf imagined to be vast and black, batlike, spreading its spines across the city and hiding wonders in its shadow.

“Did anyone see what happened?”

“God…” Hassan’s voice was harsh. “You talk like a policeman.”

“That’s because I was a policeman,” said Raf flatly. “I’ve been many things. Not all of them good.” He stared round the windowless room and when his gaze stopped it was on Idries. “So, were there any witnesses?”

“We don’t know,” admitted Idries. His voice tired. “And we can’t ask Ahmed,” he added, “because the police won’t let anyone see him until he’s pleaded guilty.”

Raf nodded, as if this was to be expected. “Okay,” he said, “you’ll need to show me the site.”

Thursday 24th February

“You be good,” Hani told Ifritah, placing the cat firmly
on her bed. No sooner done than Ifritah jumped for the suitcase Hani was trying to buckle, claws ripping into old leather as she scrabbled for a hold.

Hani sucked her teeth. “Try,” she told Ifritah. “At the very least, try…”

Hong Kong Suisse had delivered her cash. Late, admittedly, but Hani was no longer cross about that. She had a party dress made from red silk, green velvet and real gold embroidery. It was designed for someone several years older than Hani and on Zara would have been indecently short. On Hani it fell to her ankles like a ball gown. Added to which Madame Fitmah had even given her a discount on a pair of matching shoes.

Mortgaging her uncle’s madersa to finance the trip had been wrong, Hani realized that. And if she’d been allowed access to her own money it wouldn’t have been necessary. But to get that would involve asking Hamzah or the Khedive, and they’d want to know why she needed money. Hani shook her head. Sometimes simplicity was everything.

So she’d written to Uncle Ashraf’s bank instead, using headed paper and quoting his account number, which had been ridiculously easy to find since it featured on various statements kept in a desk outside his bedroom. Marked
confidential,
her letter inquired delicately about the opportunities for mortgaging a famous seventeenth-century madersa in a prime position. An equally circumspect (Hani liked that word) reply from HKS suggested that, unless His Excellency really wanted a mortgage of the kind that needed repaying over a number of years, the best option might be a straight loan, at no interest, since usury was obviously forbidden. A settlement fee to be paid as the final part of the reckoning, please see sample contract enclosed.

The bank had used longer words than that—because banks always use complicated words—but that was what Hong Kong Suisse meant.

Hani’s reply ended with a flamboyant impression of her uncle’s initials and the only thing that stopped her from scanning an original into her laptop and using that was a slight worry that HKS might use some kind of fluorescing system to distinguish fountain pen from printer ink.

As a final touch, Hani found her uncle’s spare comb, removed a single hair and dropped it into the envelope, which might be one touch too many but by then she’d stuck the envelope and used her only stamp.

Next morning and the morning after found Hani waiting for the postman, cat in hand. Swapping Ifritah for his fat bundle of letters she chatted about the weather while sorting through the pile. The letter she wanted was one of five. Four of these were bills, three of them red reminders…

The loan was agreed and the fact Ashraf Bey had initialled rather than signed his contract as requested was nowhere mentioned: but then Hani remembered reading that the Empire State Building had once been mortgaged against an unsigned deed and she was no longer surprised. All that remained, those were the words HKS used, all that remained was for His Excellency to nominate a receiving account.

Hani took this to mean she should tell the bank where to send the money. So she wrote again on a sheet of the paper taken three days earlier from her uncle’s office at the Third Circle.

Stealing it was easy. All Hani had to do was buy a chocolate sundae at Le Trianon, leave most of it and use the café’s internal lift to go straight to C3’s reception on the floor above. The story she’d prepared about wanting to collect a toy dog from her uncle’s office went unused. Madame Ingrid was giving evidence to a tribunal investigating the crimes of Colonel Abad and with their office manager gone, most of her junior staff had left for lunch early, while the rest just nodded at Hani or ignored her.