Arabesk (16 page)

“Yeah,” said Raf. “The kid wouldn’t sleep in the nursery because Nafisa’s room is next door, the kitchens were out because Khartoum sleeps there. And she said she couldn’t sleep in my room because it’s on the men’s floor and she isn’t a boy… So we turned on the fountain, dragged out a carpet and she crashed in the courtyard under a tree.”

Raf didn’t mention any Arctic fox he might have left curled up by her head to guard the kid while he was away. Mostly he didn’t mention Tiriganaq because he didn’t yet know what, if anything, the fox’s dawn reappearance meant. Besides, Felix didn’t look like someone who’d understand about inner ghosts. Crawling ants and pink elephants were more his style.

They were waiting outside a steel door in a dark underground corridor that was to-the-bone cold, something Raf hadn’t previously felt in El Iskandryia. The occasional shop or café might be air-conditioned but this was different. Cold grey walls and cold stone floor, even cold overhead strips that had a light thinner than the washed-out blue of dawn outside. For once Raf wasn’t wearing shades: Versace wraparounds didn’t seem appropriate in a morgue.

“You know,” said Felix slowly, “you don’t really act like a bey.” From his hungover growl it was hard to tell whether this was meant as a compliment.

“Most of the time I don’t feel like one.”

“Then you’d better start pretending,” said Felix seriously. He curled his fingers into a clumsy fist and punched Raf lightly on the shoulder. “Okay?”

Raf was still wondering exactly how he felt about becoming the fat man’s unofficial adoptee when Felix hammered hard on the closed door for a second time.

“All right, all right…”Bolts drew back inside and someone in a mask peered through a sudden gap. Over her shoulder came a blast of blood and formaldehyde.

“You’re late.”

Felix checked his watch. “It’s only five a.m…”

“I did it at four. Still, you might as well come in and see.” The woman stepped back, then stopped dead at the sight of Raf, her face suddenly indignant behind her mask.

“It’s okay,” Felix said hurriedly, before she could slam the door. “This is the dead woman’s nephew. They were very close, and he’s as desperate as me to find her killers… Raf, meet Kamila. Kamila, meet Pashazade Ashraf al-Mansur.”

“This is not fair,” the girl protested tightly, backing away from the door as Felix gently pushed his way into the autopsy suite. “I’m taking a risk just talking to you.”

“Kamila works for Madame Mila,” Felix told Raf. “Her father works for me. Sometimes these things are useful.” He ignored the cadaver of an elderly woman laid out on a mobile cart and made his way towards a steel autopsy table where another ripped-open body lay covered with white gauze. Holes had been punched in the table’s surface to let liquid drain down to a collecting tray underneath.

“What did you find?”

“The cause of death was a puncture wound to the chest. The mechanism of death was—”

“Kamila!”

“This wasn’t what we agreed,” the girl said furiously. “It’s bad enough that you’re here. As for him…” She glared at Raf.

“How did my aunt die?”
Raf kept his question short and his voice as cold as the mortuary in which they now stood. Somehow the dark glasses in his pocket had found their way onto his face. Pretend, Felix had said. Raf could do one better than pretend: when necessary, he could
be.

“Well?” Raf demanded. Even the fat man looked shocked at the sudden anger in his voice. “I want to know… How did she die?”

“Heart attack,” Kamila said quietly. “The pen severed her left main coronary artery. Which produced a big ischemic area. Tamponade was absent since the pericardium was punctured, but she—”

“You know what the fuck this means?” Raf demanded, swinging round to Felix.

The fat man nodded. “The pen spiked her heart. Not much blood on the outside, quite a lot on the inside but, technically at least, still death by heart attack. How am I doing?”

The girl gave him a grudging nod.

“Seen it before,” Felix said cryptically. He yanked away the covering gauze without asking Kamila’s permission.

Despite his best intentions, Raf looked. He couldn’t help himself. All the same, he knew that from now on it would now be impossible to think of Nafisa as anything other than so much jointed meat. What had once been human was human no longer. The body had been sliced open in a Y that began at each shoulder to shoulder, met below the breastbone and ran in a single slash down to a depilated pubis. The intestines were still in place but heart, lungs, oesophagus and trachea were a black and gaping cavity.

“Any signs of rape?” he asked abruptly.

“No.” The girl’s answer was brusque. As if that was exactly the kind of question she’d expect someone like him to ask.

“Then why was her shirt open?”

In answer, Kamila turned her back on him. “I’m about to repack the body,” she told Felix. “You can indent the coroner-magistrate for a copy of my report. She may even let you have one.”

Felix nodded. “What about other wounds?”

“What did you have in mind?” She’d spotted where Felix had lanced into the dead woman’s abdomen to take a core temperature, though the fat man hoped that the fact wouldn’t make it into her final report. And that wasn’t what he was asking about, anyway.

“Anything…”

The girl started to shake her head, then paused. “Maybe this,” she admitted, lifting one of Nafisa’s hands, which moved unwillingly beneath her grip. Detritus had been scraped from beneath each split nail and bagged and labelled. The tips of each finger still showed traces of staining where prints had been taken.

“Could be nothing,” said the girl. She nodded at the circular bruise that the fat man that had already noticed on the dead woman’s palm.

Felix nodded to a small metal trolley. “Okay to touch this?” He lifted Lady Nafisa’s Mont Blanc pen, transparent bag and all, from a metal kidney dish and held the blunt end to the bruise, without letting pen or flesh actually touch. The end was way too small.

“Anything else?” asked Felix.

Raf wondered if the Chief and the pathologist had noticed the pen was missing its top, then realized both of them must have done. Which made his not mentioning the fact significant. Some kind of interdepartmental dance was going on between Kamila and Felix that Raf didn’t begin to understand…

But he would. Raf was making it his business. Secure the circle, the fox always said. So if the coroner-magistrate had him pegged as culprit, well, he’d bring Felix on-side as protection. And if staying close to Felix meant involving himself in Iskandryian politics then he could do that too, and play out his role of Bey. Life’s absurdities existed to be milked for all they were worth. And besides, anything was better than being returned to Seattle to face Huntsville or Hu San. Which was exactly what would happen if anyone discovered who he really was.

“Answer the man,” Raf ordered. “Anything else?”

“Nothing,” said the girl firmly.

Felix smiled. “Normal stomach contents?”

“Chief!” Her voice was exasperated, as if she expected him to ask the ridiculous but still found it irritating. “This is a minimum-invasion autopsy—boss’s orders, minister’s orders too. Simply confirm cause of death. Repack body, sew along dotted line. You know how this goes…”

“Simply
confirm
cause of death,” Felix said slowly. “Sweet fuck. You know how worried I get when I hear those words?”

“Cause of death
pen.
Mechanism of death
torn heart muscle.
Manner of death
homicide.”
It was obvious Kamila considered their visit well into overtime. She’d had enough of the two men trespassing on her territory and wanted them off it, just as soon as possible. All the same, she was willing to compromise. “Look,” she said as she herded them towards the door, “you can indent me direct for a copy of the report.”

Felix nodded thanks. “About those stomach contents,” he added softly. “Just tell your father the results and let him pass them to me. Okay?” Felix smiled sweetly and dragged Raf from the room before Kamila had time to refuse.

7th July

“La ilaha illa Allah…”

…Glory be to the Most High.

The small hand that gripped Raf’s had fingers of steel, nails sharp as glass and a palm clammy as that of a drowned child. Which was what she was, only Hani was drowning in ritual and other people’s pity. The hand in his shook so rapidly that her shakes were practically invisible.

All through the funeral she’d been tightening her grip, until by the final round of prayers she was alternately hanging on as if for dear life and digging her nails deep into his skin. Though it was hard to tell whether Hani was angry with Raf or herself.

The funeral was brief: divided into four parts and quite obviously following a template that, equally obviously, he didn’t recognize. The opening verses of the Quran had been read first, followed by another reading. An intercession was made and finally a plea that the gates of Paradise be wide enough to allow Lady Nafisa entry and therein that she be washed with water and ice, purified as a garment is purified of corrupting filth… It was a sentiment Raf briefly found himself wishing he could believe.

“Not much longer,” he whispered. Reassuring himself as much as Hani. They’d arrived together, straight from the madersa, accompanied by a weeping Khartoum and Nafisa’s cook Donna, who stopped at the gates of the necropolis, crossed herself with undisguised fervour and refused to take another step.

And as he stood dressed in black and waiting in the blazing sun for the interment to finish, Raf could almost feel Donna’s fierce gaze on the back of his neck. But then, almost everyone was watching him—except for Hani, who wouldn’t lift her eyes from the ground.

He’d shaved, trimmed the remains of his beard down to a short dark-blond goatee and taken clippers to his skull, because that was the quickest way to get rid of dreads. All of which turned out to be a bad mistake. Apparently, not shaving was a North African mark of respect, a signature of mourning. Lady Jalila couldn’t even bring herself to talk to him. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for everybody else.

“Okay,” said a voice at his shoulder. “Ready to go?” That was Felix, more smartly dressed than Raf had seen him before. His ponytail washed and his shoes so shined and polished he’d even blacked the heels. Though the suit he wore, newly pressed or not, still looked as if he kept it hidden at the back of a cupboard and dragged it out once or twice a year when he had a colleague to bury or needed to attend the funeral of some victim. It went almost without saying that the cloth, colour and cut were at least fifteen years out of date.

“Come on.” The fat man touched Raf’s elbow. “Time to move.”

Felix had been the one to collect them from the madersa and driven them out to the necropolis in his pink Cadillac with white-walled tyres. And Raf got the feeling it was only the fat man’s presence that was keeping Madame Mila at bay. He hadn’t expected to see her at the funeral. But then, Raf had naively thought it would be just Hani, himself and Felix, not realizing that fifty of Iskandryia’s great and good would turn out into the airless rising heat of a Wednesday morning to see the cloth-wrapped body of Lady Nafisa carried into her family tomb.

“Ashraf,” hissed Lady Jalila, materializing beside him like a bad smell. “You have to lead.” Dark patches of sweat showed under the arms of her white linen suit, but her make-up was still immaculate and the few strands of hair that escaped from under her Hermès scarf glinted prettily in the sunlight.

“Come on,” Raf said and turned to Hani. Only to stop at the sight of her face.

The child had her legs set apart, her heels dug deep into the grit of the path. Everything about her body language roared defiance except for the hurt in her eyes. Raf recognized that, the exploding bleakness, which wasn’t the same as remembering it. Though he remembered well how hard he’d had to learn to forget.

“We need to move,” Raf said softly.

Hani shook her head. No question of compromise.

“Hani.”

Heads flicked round at Lady Jalila’s rebuke, until most of the mourners were gazing at the child. There was something hungry about the gathering. Lady Jalila held out her hand to Hani and waited.

Nobody moved.

“You
lead,” Raf suggested, taking in the crowd of strangers and knowing they listened to his every word. “You were her closest friend and you found her. Besides, you can see the child is terrified.”

He dropped to his knees on the gravel path. “We’re staying here, aren’t we?”

Night-black eyes stared back at him, then arms thin as sticks fastened themselves tight round his neck as Hani clung to him and her butterfly trembling exploded into full-blown shakes. Sobs shook her body but Raf had no need to look to know the child was crying: the tears were trickling into the collar of his shirt.

When he looked up, a good half of the onlookers were gazing sympathetically at them both. The Minister of Police even had a sad, tolerant smile on his face.

“If you insist.” Something ghost-like flitted across the face of Lady Jalila as she turned to face the mausoleum door. And she walked away without waiting for her husband.

“Poor child,” said Mushin Bey sadly. “Such a loss.” Raf figured the Minister of Police was talking about Hani and not his wife, but it was hard to tell.

One by one, the other mourners followed Lady Jalila and the body until they were all swallowed by darkness and the necropolis suddenly felt empty. From a nearby bush came the bubbling call of a common bulbul and beyond a high wall cars could be heard grinding gears at distant traffic lights.

“About goddamn time,” said Felix, with feeling. The flask was out, flicked open and tucked safely back in the fat man’s jacket in an instant. “Needs must,” he said, looking oddly shamefaced. “It’s either grab the odd refuel or not turn up at all…” He glanced towards Hani—folded into Raf’s arms, her eyes screwed tight, her face buried in his shoulder—and nodded thoughtfully. “Good man,” said Felix softly. “Now find out what she really knows…”