The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (121 page)

Back at his office desk, a plate of
droits de Fatima
lifted from Maison Hafsid already reduced to a blizzard of pastry flakes, the new Chief of Police drew up his own list of clues, using a fountain pen he’d found in the drawer.

Blunt knife, broken handle, rusty blade; no fingerprints; damaged door; empty corridor; clean steps. A body that changed position. And finally, most bizarrely, one misplaced murderer.

Eduardo drew circles around each and joined them together as he’d once seen Ashraf Bey do, but because his clues were written in a list one under the other, the links just sank, like lead weights on a fishing line. So Eduardo wrote his clues out again, arranging them in a circle and joining them with new lines. And then, because it looked so good, he wrote it out a third time, folding one copy to put in his pocket and leaving the other on his desk for everyone else to see.

It was only when Eduardo reached the end of the street, still surreptitiously brushing flakes from his pastry-stained fingers that he realized his detective work would go unappreciated. He was the boss. The only person remotely likely to go near his desk was Marie, who stood up every time he came into her outer office. She seemed far too nervous to take such liberties.

He’d just have to show his clues to Rose instead. Then he’d tell her the answer, maybe. Licking his fingers, Eduardo wiped them afresh on his trousers and went to buy Rose some chocolates. Somehow eating always made him hungry.

CHAPTER 41

Friday 11th March

“Your Excellency.”

Given that someone had stolen all three door knockers, the barefoot Nubian in the white silk robe had little option but to hammer ever louder on the door of Dar Welham. As a method of attracting Ashraf Bey’s attention it proved surprisingly unsuccessful, all but the final knocks being drowned out by the thud of ancient and unserviced fans inside.

Until he made his stop at Kairouan the previous week, Raf hadn’t even realized he owned a house in Tozeur, let alone one in the oldest district; but the tall dar with its ochre, geometrically laid brickwork and dark interior had been a wedding present from the Emir to his mother, apparently.

Un présent de mariage.

Isaac & Sons’ files were dust-buried on the shelves of their deserted walk-up when Raf and three uniformed officers cut the padlock on the rear and kicked in a door at the top of the stairs.

All it took was Raf presenting himself at Kairouan’s Police HQ and demanding the loan of three good officers, bolt cutters and a hydraulic battering ram, one of the small handheld versions. His name alone had been enough to turn his wish list into reality. The officers were uniformed, respectful and obviously experienced. And the really terrifying thing, at least the thing that Raf found really terrifying was that at no point did anyone ask him for any form of identity.

He went looking for a wedding certificate and came back with copies of a deed of ownership, which did just as well. The date he wanted was at the top. While his mother’s signature and that of Moncef were at the bottom. Fifty years earlier, on the day after they were married, Moncef had presented his mother with a house in Tozeur and another in Tunis. Fifty years…

Lady Nafisa, his aunt, had known this because it was for her that the copies were made by notario Ibrahim ibn Ishaq. Thanking the police officers, Raf had taken one copy of the deed and ordered the men to remove all other documents from the office and have them shredded, then burned. He made the most senior officer repeat that order, all documents, all shredded, all burned.

When Raf left to find Hani, Murad and the Bugatti, the officer was already radioing for backup while the other two had begun to arrange the files into dusty piles on the floor.

Dar Welham, his new house, stood behind the main road from the Palm Groves to Zaouia Ishmailia, on the right, halfway down an alley too old and narrow to merit a name. One side of his street had already been partly rebuilt using traditional yellow brick. Raf’s side remained a mess of crumbling façades and locked doorways, with most of the houses obviously empty. Almost all of the triple door knockers, which allowed long-gone inhabitants to know if the person calling was a man, woman or child, had been stolen. As had a number of the old iron locks and the door handles themselves.

The private courtyard of Dar Welham still stank of cat’s piss and sewage, although Raf had slopped it down at least three times and tipped buckets of rusty water through the open grilles of the drains. Hani and Murad had concentrated on the inside of the dar, sweeping floors and scrubbing at mineral deposits that had leached up through the floor tiles.

That the dar had electricity to drive its fans at all was a miracle. One involved twisted flex glued direct to rough walls and fed through a large hole into next door’s cellar, where Raf jammed open the trip switch of a junction box with half a clothespin. Air-conditioning would obviously have helped. Although being somewhere other than Tozeur at the start of a
khamsin
wind might have been better.

Sand fall was expected. And Murad kept referring to a
chili
, alternating that word with
khamsin
… It had to do with a depression moving into the Gulf of Gebes. One that had kicked the afternoon temperature up to 98°F and threatened to drop sand as far north as Madrid. The local radio station talked about little else.

“Door,” Hani said, looking up from a game of chess. She was winning five games to zero. The only way Murad had been persuaded to play again was her promise that this would be his last for the day and her assurance that he’d soon be good enough to beat her. But then, as Murad pointed out, she’d said that the day before as well.

At Hani’s feet stretched Ifritah. Panting in the heat.

“What?” Raf put down the deeds to Dar Welham.

“Someone’s at the door,” said Hani. “I’d go but it’s probably for you.”

And it was. Apparently Kashif Pasha’s messenger saw nothing odd in presenting an envelope featuring an ersatz version of a European coat of arms, one bearing a Western interpretation of an Othman turban, on a silver salver in the style of Napoleon III, overlaid around the edge with Quranic script in beaten gold, bronze and copper.

“Will there be a reply?”

Having read Kashif’s message, Raf put it carefully in his pocket.

“No,” he said, “I think not.”

The Nubian might have come to the door of Dar Welham barefooted and dressed in a white robe but he drove off in a black four-by-four with smoked windows and roo bars big enough to knock down a buffalo.

“Who was that?” said Hani. She stood on the stairs with Murad behind her. A windup radio was in the boy’s hand.

“Just one of Kashif Pasha’s friends.”

“My brother Kashif doesn’t have friends,” Murad said firmly, then paused, worried that he might have sounded rude. “I mean,” he said more politely, “he has only allies or enemies.” The boy’s voice made no secret of which camp he’d found himself in. “What does the message say?”

“That’s private.”

Two heads turned to face Raf. Hani’s frown now a full-on scowl. “No secrets,” she reminded Raf. “Remember? That’s what you told me when Aunt Nafisa died. Anything I asked you would answer.”

It had been a simple enough promise, made to a crying child who wanted to know why life was so unfair. One that Raf would have liked an adult, any adult, to have made to him. And it was proving impossibly difficult to keep.

“Hani, I’m really sorry…”

“You promised.”

So he had. “It’s from Kashif Pasha,” Raf said.

“But that’s the Emir’s coat of arms,” Murad insisted.

“I know,” said Raf, “but it’s not his message. Kashif and I need to meet.”

“You’re not going to go…” Murad sounded appalled that Raf might even consider it. “Have you listened to the latest news?”

Raf hadn’t.

Apparently C3N had been told by St. Cloud that Ashraf Bey was behind the attack on Emir Moncef. Colonel Abad, that well-known war criminal, was mentioned. As was Raf’s part in helping Abad avoid being brought to justice. The Marquis even managed to suggest that the bey might be behind last autumn’s attacks on the Midas Refinery, jointly owned by St. Cloud and Hamzah Effendi.

“If you go, Kashif will hurt you,” Murad said flatly. “I know him.”

“All the same,” said Raf, “I think I must.” Skimming the note, he ran through words he already knew by heart. The message was short. “It seems Kashif’s captured the missing waiter,” Raf told them both. “He’d like me to be present at the questioning.”

Hani opened her mouth and shut it again. “Something else,” she said finally. “What else?”

“Because of the
current danger
,” said Raf, failing to extract the bleakness from his voice, “my brother has extended his offer of protective custody to include Zara.”

“She’s here?”

“Apparently…”

“So what do you want Murad and me to do?” Hani asked.

“Stay here,” said Raf. “And keep out of trouble. If that’s remotely possible.”

Hani’s look was doubtful.

CHAPTER 42

Friday 11th March

Three hours after Raf left, men in black jellabas locked
off the unnamed alley using Jeeps they swung across both ends, isolating the stretch in between.

Once again the Jeeps had smoked glass, fat roo bars and whip aerials. The man who seemed in charge had dyed hair combed forward like a Roman emperor, a heavy moustache and a black
mubahith
blouse on without insignia of any kind. Only a slight bald patch and the fact his choice of top accentuated his paunch took the edge off an effect that was, Hani had to admit, still quietly threatening.

“You take a look,” she said, handing Murad an old pair of opera glasses. The boy did what she suggested, staring down at the alley entrance.

“Soldiers,” he said.

Hani nodded.

“In disguise,” she said. “Who’s the man?”

Murad took a second look at the
mubahith
with the weird hair. “No one I recognize,” he said, like he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Are they from the Emir’s guard?”

“Of course not.” Murad shook his head. “All Eugenie’s troops are women.” He spoke as if Eugenie were still alive. “Those are not women…”

Only fear let Hani restrain herself. Some people shouted when they got afraid, others closed down, went silent. That was her. “Look,” Hani said, “you think they support Kashif Pasha?”

“You heard the radio,” said Murad. “All the soldiers support my brother Kashif.”

“Now there’s a surprise.” Hani sounded like Zara at her most cross. The way the older girl had been those last few days at the madersa before Raf vanished, sharp and snotty but nothing like as cruel as Raf had been with his dark silences and exile inside his own head.

“Kashif,” Murad said. “He won’t hurt you.”

“Yes, he will. And he’ll hurt you. And it won’t be the first time, will it?”

“He’s still my brother.” Murad’s voice was quiet.

“And the Emir is his father,” said Hani flatly. “But he still ordered that attack.” She didn’t know this, of course, but she knew her uncle and it was obvious he thought so.

“I don’t believe it.”

“You don’t want to,” Hani told him. They were sitting together on the flat roof of Dar Welham, peering over the parapet. Behind them, sheets dried on a line and drifting sand wrote patterns across cracked tiles and gathered into tiny dunes.

Picking herself up, Hani stepped back from the edge. And four floors below, now unseen by Hani or Murad, the man without insignia ordered one of the jellaba-clad men to knock on the door. After that, the soldier tried the door without being told and found it locked. So he hammered again, harder.

Faces appeared from the roofs of houses opposite and disappeared just as rapidly when their owners realized what was happening.

“Open in the name of the NR.”

When this unnaturally loud cry went unanswered, the man tried the handle himself. Finding it still securely locked, Poul Fischer nodded to a young Berber. “Plastique,” he ordered.

The flexible breaching charge the corporal pulled from under his disguise wasn’t strictly plastique. At least not in any sense he understood. It was a short length of three-hundred-grain-an-inch cutting charge with a soft rubber body that could be bent into any shape needed and a sticky foam that glued it to the door and helped reduce the danger of back fragmentation. Correcting a
mubahith
officer, however, was not in the corporal’s career plan.

Fixing one length around the lock, the corporal positioned two more around the hinges, then did top and bottom where bolts might be, just to play safe. The FBC series also came in six-hundred-grain and twelve-hundred-grain densities but for hinges of this age three-hundred-grain was probably already overkill.

“It might be best, sir, if everyone stood back.” Quickly, so he didn’t have to see Poul Fischer’s answering expression, the corporal fixed an electronic match to each charge and began to enter his identity code into a firing box.

“Ready when you are, sir.”

Raf had never explained to Hani how he’d managed to break Zara’s brother out of the basement of a locked house in Kharmous and she’d been careful never to ask. But with her screen, a satellite shot of El Isk and some serious intuition she’d been able to work it out.

Intuition was part inherent and part learnt. The percentages were open to debate. As they always were with anything involving socialization versus heredity. Hani, however, was pretty sure she’d been born with heightened levels.

Hypersensitivity was one description. Hani knew this because she’d done a quiz on a medical Web site. It suggested childhood stress might have made changes to an area of her brain called the
cingulated gyrus
… Or rather, her time with Aunt Nafisa had ensured changes were
not
made: reducing Hani’s ability to filter out life’s raw mixture of competing noise and demands.