Deep Black (23 page)

Jerry gave the driver a five-dollar bill and we walked through the glass doors into reception. The lobby area was a lot smaller than the Palestine’s, the ceilings lower. Wood veneer was still king, however, and a glass cabinet displayed the same kind of goods for sale, everything from packs of cards of the fifty-two most wanted, to Saddam watches and toothbrushes.

Jerry kept out of the way while I went up to the desk, which was manned by an Iraqi who smelt heavily of cologne and seemed more interested in his ledger than asking me if I needed help. A young woman was sorting out room keys behind him. I wondered if they were related. This had the feeling of a family hotel; they certainly had the same nose and eyes combo.

The news crew came in with their gear and headed straight for the lift, talking low and slow German. Just beyond, a pair of glass doors opened out on to a concrete terrace and I caught a glimpse of the end of a swimming-pool. Sunlight danced on the water. Danny Connor would have liked it here.

The young woman finished with the keys and looked up, her face creased by a big smile. She had long black shiny hair, parted in the centre, dark red lipstick and black eye-liner. ‘Good day. Can I help you?’ Her English was perfect; in fact, better than mine.

‘I hope you can. I’m looking for Mr Robert Newman. He’s staying here.’

She smiled and looked down at the book. They did have a PC but what was the point of using it when the power kept shutting down?

‘He may be with a smaller man with thick black hair,’ I added. ‘He’s a tall white guy with dark wavy hair and a big nose. Checked in yesterday?’

She flicked a page, trying not to smile too much at my powers of description. She looked beautiful in her crisp white blouse and black trousers, and it made me think of the bride. I wondered if she was still alive.

‘Please, one moment.’ She picked up a phone and tapped three digits. The Germans were back for a second load.

She put the phone down. ‘Mr Newman is not in his room.’

‘Never mind. We’ll wait by the pool, if that’s all right. Could you send someone to tell me when he comes in, or can you tell him someone’s here for him?’

‘Of course, of course.’

I headed for the doors near the lift. Jerry followed, and as we stepped outside we were slapped in the face again by a wall of heat.

The garden was another little oasis in the midst of Baghdad’s chaos. Immediately ahead of us was an eating area with tables and chairs. The pool was down some steps to our left, its water turned blue by the tiling. Plastic sun-loungers, chairs and tables were dotted round the edge, under large blue canvas parasols that had been bleached by the sun.

Australian squaddies were on stag here too. One was in the shade of the perimeter wall. The old-style barbed wire had been unrolled along the top. The other guy was higher up, at the edge of the eating area.

We went down the steps and headed for the far end of the pool. It was still fairly early, and it looked as if there was some decent shade to be had at the tables. A few people were having a swim, the rest were lying under parasols. Most of them were white, but a few Iraqis sat sipping iced tea and ogling the women.

Gunfire rattled in the distance, maybe half a K away. The Australian in the shade got on his radio to report it. We walked past two women stretched out on their loungers, both reading chick-lit paperbacks as they hoovered up their morning dose of skin cancer. I could smell their sun cream.

The Australian was standing against the wall, paying a bit more attention to the sun-worshippers than he was to us. As we passed I gave him a big grin. ‘War’s hell, innit?’

I got a big smile back as we took a vacant table, and the moment his mouth opened it was obvious he wore dentures, only not during ops. Maybe he didn’t want them damaged, or he’d sold them to an Iraqi.

We would stay in the shade here until the sun got higher, but there was another reason I wanted my back to the wall. I didn’t want to miss Rob’s turning to.

52

The menu was anchored beneath an ashtray. I picked it up as Jerry got out the phone.

‘I’m gonna go and make a call to Renee.’

‘Thought you called this morning?’

‘Yeah, well, I did. But she was totally freaked out. Even more now, if she’s seen the news. I just want to calm her down a little.’

‘Better make this the last call for a while. The CPA might be waiting to see where that thing gets used again, and we’re supposed to have left.’

He walked back to the steps and up on to the terrace. I lost sight of him as he rounded the corner.

People floated in and out of the door to Reception. I kept an eye out for Rob while checking the menu, and waited for the guy in the crumpled white shirt to come over with his little round tray. I wondered if he’d mind if I went in the pool wearing my very smelly and saggy boxers. A few birds competed briefly with the distant rumble of traffic.

Awhite guy in shorts with a towel over his shoulder sauntered past the two sun-worshippers, stopped, went back and settled himself on a chair next to them. He was a big lad, lots of brown hair brushed back. The moment he started speaking I could tell this Brit was a bit pleased with himself. He worked in documentaries, apparently. ‘Yeah, been on a shoot this morning, actually – firefight just outside town.’ He was the cameraman. Been in Baghdad a few days; came here straight from Cape Town. Couldn’t work out which city was hotter. He was going to order a drink – did they want one? I didn’t know what was funnier, his chat-up lines or that he’d been holding in his belly the whole time he’d been speaking.

The Australian squaddie looked on enviously. He must have been weighing up the chances of swapping a rifle for a TV camera. I was feeling the same way.

The waiter had been on his way to me but got waylaid by Cecil B. de Mille. I’d never had much restaurant presence, either. Maybe I didn’t look the tipping kind.

I took off my greasy sun-gigs and gave them a wipe as I listened to their conversation – or, rather, his monologue. He’d worked with them all, you know – Simpson, Adie, Attenborough. He was interrupted when, from maybe a hundred metres away, either a car backfired or there was a single gunshot.

I was thirsty. I spotted another crumpled white shirt up on the terrace and got up. I walked past the Aussie and the two women, who’d abandoned their books to listen to their new friend. Shit, I wished I could waffle like that. They weren’t good-looking, but that didn’t seem to matter in this town. If you were young, white and had a pulse, you’d be scoring like a supermodel. No wonder the Balkan boys were in town.

I managed to catch the waiter’s eye by waving like a lunatic, showed him where I was sitting, then started back. Jerry soon followed. He didn’t look happy.

‘Everything all right, mate?’ I held out my hand for the phone as he sort of nodded. ‘I think I’ll make one.’

‘She saw the news and got totally hyped about me staying.’

Family shit: best keep out of it. Back in the shade, I pressed number history, but nothing was stored. Even the last number dialled had been cleared. Good skills.

‘I hope you’re clearing the history every time.’ I did the whole pretend-dialling bit and held it to my ear.

‘Yep. I don’t know if those pinheads at the camp checked it, but they’d have got zip.’

I closed the phone down. ‘No answer. Shame. It’s my mum’s birthday.’

As I watched the to-ing and fro-ing about the pool I tried to remember her birthday, or even how old she was. It wouldn’t come to me. I’d sort of lost interest in that kind of thing when she lost interest in mine, when I was ten. My last birthday present was my first ever 99 ice-cream. The deal was me not saying anything to the school about the bruises on my neck and cheek.

My mum had been called in to explain. Was Nicholas being beaten at home? The ice-cream worked: I shut up as she told them how I’d fallen down the stairs. I nodded in agreement instead of saying her nice new husband had filled me in because I’d asked for a 99 when the ice-cream van came into the estate. Whatever. At least she’d come in handy for an excuse to see who Jerry had been calling.

The waiter turned up with two cans of cold Coke. Either he was clairvoyant, or I was fluent in Iraqi sign language. Or maybe this was all they stocked. He put them on the table and showed the kind of smile that could have done with renting the Aussie’s teeth.

Jerry pulled back on his can and took two very thirsty gulps.

I picked up the menu before the waiter had time to decide he had better customers elsewhere. ‘I’ll have some potato fingers and a couple of bread rolls.’

‘Yes, sir. Sure, sure, sure.’ He didn’t write it down, which was always a worry. It normally meant he wouldn’t come back, or if he did, it would be with a boiled egg.

Jerry was checking his camera gear. ‘I’ll have whatever you’re having, and another Coke.’

I looked up at the crumpled shirt. ‘Two more Cokes, two potato fingers and tons of bread. These soldiers here, do you know if they’re allowed drinks?’

He didn’t seem too sure.

‘Give them a Coke each, will you? And make sure they’re cold ones.’ I handed the waiter eight dollars as Cecil managed to make the women laugh. Bastard.

Jerry was obsessing round his lenses with a little brush. ‘You’re getting generous in your old age.’

‘Must be thirsty work listening to that bloke’s bullshit all day.’ I sat back in the chair and enjoyed the shade a while. I might even have dropped off for a minute or two.

53

‘Sir?’

Crumply Shirt was back with the bowls of chips and bread rolls.

I showed Jerry the finer points of making a buttie with undercooked chips and butter so hot it had turned to oil. There was still no sign of Rob.

The place was filling up. One white guy stood out. He was sitting with another white guy and a couple of locals, all drinking tea from little glasses. His crewcut was just cropping out to show the grey on the sides. His face was peppered with small scars, as if he’d been blasted with fine shrapnel. Stubble only grew where the skin wasn’t marked. But what made him difficult to ignore was that he was missing the little and ring fingers of his right hand.

Jerry had spotted him too. He leaned forward, grabbing some more bread out of the bowl. ‘Bosnian Muslim? What you reckon?’

‘Dunno, can’t hear him properly.’

Jerry got up, still chewing a chip.

He skirted the two women, and went on past Three Fingers’ table. A couple of paces further on he stopped, turned back, smiled and started talking to the four men.

He certainly looked old enough to have been captured by Mladic’s mates. Cutting those two fingers off a prisoner really gave them a buzz because it left the hand in a Serb salute, sort of a Boy Scout thing.

The conversation lasted less than a minute. It didn’t look promising. Jerry moved on to Reception, maybe going for a piss. It had to look like he was passing for a purpose.

The guys finished their tea and left before Jerry came back and helped himself to the two remaining chips.

‘What you say?’

He sprinkled salt over the last one. ‘He didn’t speak English, but the other guy did a little. I just said I heard him talk, and wondered if he knew my old friend Hasan who I’d heard was in town. “I know it’s a long shot but I’d really like to catch up with him.” That kind of thing. But jack shit, man.’

I dipped a finger into a puddle of salt and chip grease on the table. ‘What you reckon? Girl power? We got Muslims at this place, Serbs at the Palestine. We could have a war inside a war soon over who runs the knocking shops.’

Four cans of Coke and another round of chips later, the sun was a lot higher and hotter, and we were about to be in the firing line. I stood up and raised the parasol. Most people had drifted away from the swimming-pool and gone indoors.

‘Midday.’ Jerry was looking at his watch.

‘Well, I guess I’m still an Englishman.’ I sat back down and moved my chair a little to get right under the canvas with Jerry. ‘So I guess that makes you the mad dog.’

I saw movement up by the doors. Rob stepped out on to the terrace, AK in hand. He squinted as he looked around for us.

‘Heads up, mate, here we go.’

I didn’t want him to come over to us. We’d be within earshot of the Australian, who was now standing in the shade of a big sheet of cardboard rigged up in the corner where the external wall met the building.

We got to him as he was coming down the steps. We shook hands. ‘I need a favour.’

‘Haven’t got that much time, mate. I’m off again soon.’ He paused. ‘But what’s all this about me having a big nose?’

He was wearing exactly the same clothes as yesterday, only now his shirt-tails were hanging out. They were probably covering a pistol in his jeans. His back and armpits were soaked. Sweat covered his face and chest.

Jerry shook his hand. ‘I saw you at the party last night.’

‘Yeah.’ Rob turned back to me. He didn’t know Jerry, so why talk to him? It’s just how it is.

‘Tell you what, let’s go up.’

‘Which floor?’

‘First.’

Of course. I bet the crumpled shirts came to him without being asked as well.