The Golden Scales (10 page)

‘You think he doesn’t care about the team?’

‘The team?’ Essam choked on a bitter laugh. ‘If you want my opinion he’s probably in Europe right now, signing with one of the big clubs.’

‘What would Hanafi say to that?’

‘From what I hear, Adil has the old man wrapped around his finger.’

‘Why Europe?’

Essam stared at Makana as if he was mad. ‘There isn’t a player in the world who doesn’t dream of playing for one of the big European clubs. It’s not just the money. In a few years you can get a passport and then you’re free.’

‘Mr Makana?’

The two men looked up to find a tall woman in her twenties standing before them, hands on her slim hips. Sharply dressed in a neat charcoal grey suit, she had long brown hair that hung to her shoulders.

‘I am Soraya Hanafi.’ Makana felt his hand seized in a firm grip. She was looking at him in a puzzled way, as if uncertain what to make of him. ‘I see you have already met some of our players. How are you, Ahmad?’

Mumbling a greeting, Essam began fumbling for his car keys. Soraya turned back to Makana.

‘We thought we had lost you.’

‘I thought I would take a look around.’

The Mazda coughed black smoke and began to back away, rattling noisily. Makana followed Soraya back towards the main building.

‘We nearly met yesterday. Was that you swimming at your father’s flat?’

Her expression was a mixture of distrust and curiosity, as if she couldn’t work out whether or not to trust him.

‘I try to swim every day.’

Soraya Hanafi had an air of confidence about her you might expect in a woman twice her age. She was striking rather than beautiful and her direct gaze only compounded the unsettling effect she had on Makana. They took the lift back up to the conference room in silence.

She asked him to sit down and gave him a brief introduction to the company. It was, he discovered, far more extensive than he had realised. Hanafi Foods grew beans and okra, and froze them or tinned them for export all over the world. They imported wheat from the United States and turned it into pasta. Hanafi Autos assembled cars and minivans made in Korea. There was an insurance company as well. The biggest section of all, however, was their construction company. Hanafi Developments was busy building everything, from tower blocks in the city and villa complexes in the Emirates to luxury hotels on the Red Sea and in Upper Egypt.

When Soraya had finished talking she sat back and appraised him.

‘You are not comfortable in the presence of women, I see.’

‘I’m not that old-fashioned,’ he protested, reaching for his cigarettes. The look on her face told him to put them away again, which he did.

‘I’ll be honest with you, Mr Makana, I have no idea why my father hired you. There are plenty of good investigators in this town. Many of them come with a long record of service in our police force. These are people we know. People who know their way around the city. They have contacts. You, on the other hand, are a complete outsider.’

Makana wondered just how much Soraya Hanafi knew about her father’s former life. As the daughter of his second wife, by the time she was old enough to understand fully, doubtless all of the questionable side of it would have been conveniently swept away out of existence. Gangsters replaced by bankers. Thugs by police chiefs. She would have grown up thinking she had a wealthy businessman for a father. A sheltered life where the occasional hint of untoward dealings could be dismissed as malicious rumour stirred up by her father’s rivals.

‘I can’t tell you why your father decided to seek my assistance. You’d have to ask him that, but I believe he has his reasons.’

Her pointed chin lifted for a moment, and then Soraya gave the briefest of nods, as if to herself, saying this would have to be good enough for the moment.

‘My father never does anything without good reason. I don’t know what those reasons are, but I am willing to cooperate with you in any way, if it will help.’

Makana stretched his legs out under the table. ‘Then tell me about him . . . about Adil.’

‘What would you like to know?’

‘Everything. Interests, friends, habits. At this stage anything could be useful.’

‘Well,’ began Soraya Hanafi, gazing down at her lap, ‘I’ve known Adil for as long as I can remember. I was alone from an early age. My mother and brother died in a car accident. My sisters from my father’s first marriage are much older. I was a lonely child. Adil was one of the first boys taken into the Hanafi Sports Academy. We spent a lot of time together when we were young.’ Her tone softened as she spoke about him.

‘I understand,’ Makana said. ‘This must be very difficult for you.’

‘It’s difficult for all of us.’ She wrapped her arms around herself, as if she was cold.

‘Your father must have taken a real liking to him, to bring him into the family like that.’

‘My father comes from a similar background. I imagine he saw something of himself in Adil. When there is something he wants, he goes after it.’

‘And you, are you similar in character?’

The question surprised her. ‘Is that relevant to your enquiries?’

‘At the moment everything is relevant.’

‘Very well.’ Soraya Hanafi crossed her arms in front of her, and looked him in the eye. ‘Yes, some people would say that I have inherited that side of his temperament.’

‘And what position exactly do you hold in your father’s business enterprises?’

A faint twitch of irritation passed across her face and vanished.

‘My father is not getting any younger, Mr Makana. I am gradually taking on more responsibility. In the end, I expect to take over the company.’

‘Wouldn’t that make you something of an exception in this country?’

Her head tilted to one side and her eyes narrowed. ‘I sense disapproval.’

‘Not at all.’ Makana tried to make amends. ‘But I imagine there are some circles where the idea of a woman your age running a company this size would be frowned upon.’

‘We’re behind the times in this country, especially now, with all this religious nonsense. If some people want to live in the Middle Ages, let them. It’s not something I worry about.’

‘What about Adil’s family, his parents? Does he have any contact with them?’

‘They passed away, but he more or less cut all ties to them before that. Adil had a difficult childhood. His parents were very poor. He often says that my father saved his life.’

‘What does he mean by that?’

‘I suppose he means that his circumstances did not provide him with many opportunities at birth. In all probability, he would have ended up in a life of crime or deep poverty at best if he had not been given a chance by my father.’

‘You’re saying he broke all contact with his family?’

Soraya Hanafi paused, locking her fingers together on the table. ‘I think he despised them.’

‘Despised?’ Makana said. ‘Isn’t that pretty harsh?’

‘I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration. He’s never forgiven them for not putting him in school . . . for making him work in the fields from a very young age. He couldn’t read or write when he first came to the academy. He was determined to make himself free, never to go back to that world. I’ve always admired him for that. A world of darkness, he calls it.’

Makana had the feeling he was dealing with an enigma. A man who had everything. Life had taken Adil from humble beginnings to fame and fortune. He lived under the protection of one of the most powerful men in the country. Yet who was Adil Romario, beyond the smiling figure on the billboards and advertising spots? It was as if he had disappeared back into the same obscurity he had come from. Makana reached absently for his cigarettes. This time he managed to get one almost to his mouth before he noticed Soraya’s look of disapproval. He set the packet back on the table.

‘Is any of this really useful?’ Her tone implying that she clearly didn’t think so.

‘Tell me more about these disappearances of his. Where does he go?’

‘It’s not that hard to understand.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s under a lot of pressure. Matches . . . publicity shoots. Sometimes it gets too much. He needs to let off steam.’

‘Your father said that they had argued – that Adil had wanted him to go away with him on holiday, a safari or something.’

‘It’s possible.’ Her shoulders lifted and fell again, more slackly this time.

‘This might sound a little strange, but do you think it’s credible Adil was trying to get your father away from here for a reason?’

‘What kind of reason?’

‘Adil might have been trying to protect him.’

‘Protect him from what? You think my father might be in danger?’

‘It’s a possibility. He said he came to me because he doesn’t want word to get out. But maybe there’s another reason. Maybe he doesn’t trust the people around him.’

He half expected her to laugh, to dismiss the suggestion as ridiculous, but instead Soraya seemed to draw herself inward, lowering her head to examine the grain in the polished wood of the table.

‘You don’t build a company like this without stepping on other people’s toes. My father has a lot of rivals.’ She spoke gently, with no trace of emotion. ‘But the idea that someone around him, as you put it, someone inside this company, might be working against him, is absurd.’

They walked back out to the reception area where models of construction projects in progress or recently completed, including the new stadium, were displayed.

‘Is that what it’s going to look like?’

‘Yes,’ Soraya said, pointing out various features. It didn’t end with the club, or the Hanafi Sports Academy as it would become, promoting excellence among the country’s youth. There would also be apartments and a hotel, a residential complex with a riverside promenade, shops and restaurants. It would be vast when it was finished. The pitch itself was set inside a huge oval-shaped space, with curved walls rising up around it. There were little model figures walking across the big concourse, and off in one corner was a wedge of high-rise buildings. The perimeter was marked by a framework of pillars, the row of twelve pharaonic figures, giant statues of Ramses that Makana had noticed earlier. Again, he was struck by the fact that they all had a certain familiarity. Leaning down, he peered at them more closely.

‘They all have your father’s face.’

‘Yes,’ she laughed. ‘That’s how he wants them.’

‘And what is this?’ Makana pointed at another model, this time showing a complex of villas embedded in a gently sculpted landscape of hills, trees and artificial ponds.

‘That is the Hanafi Heavens,’ she said. ‘It is a pilot project . . . the first of many, we hope. Probably the most modern residential community of its kind.’

‘Really?’ Makana leaned over for a closer look.

‘Oh, yes,’ she went on. ‘It will be quite luxurious, and completely self-contained. An oasis of calm, far from the noise and pollution of the city. People have a right to clean air and some peace and quiet, don’t you think?’

‘If they can afford it,’ he said.

She smiled at him, as if that had been the kind of quaint irrelevancy she’d expected from him.

‘And these little patches of desert add a romantic touch, I suppose?’

‘That’s part of the golf course.’

‘Of course,’ nodded Makana, wondering why he hadn’t known that.

When he finally emerged from the meeting, he gratefully lit a cigarette. The sky was growing dim, the colour of amber, streaked with dark angry threads of blue and red. Dots of artificial white light were strung against it like necklaces of cheap pearls. His first day was almost over and he felt that he had achieved little. If someone was using Adil Romario to get at Hanafi, the range of possible suspects could run into the hundreds if not thousands. A disgruntled team mate or a family member . . .  Makana wondered who was more dangerous to Hanafi? His own encounter with Soraya still occupied his mind. She intrigued him, but he couldn’t decide if this was good or bad.

Chapter Seven

Amir Medani’s office was hemmed in by concrete flyovers. They criss-crossed through the air like enormous tentacles that sprouted from the ground and wrapped themselves tightly around the crumbling old buildings downtown. Along these endless grey funnels rattled an unbroken stream of scrap metal on uneven wheels. The window that Makana stared through was so grubby you could barely see anything beyond it. On the other side of the highway a light came on and he saw a young woman appear, brushing her hair, her face illuminated by the headlights of the vehicles flying between them.

‘I wasn’t expecting you to pay me back, you know,’ protested Amir Medani.

Sitting behind his desk, he rubbed one hand over his slack features. He had the perpetual look of a man who has just been woken up in the middle of the night and is wondering where he is.

‘You should take it while I still have it,’ Makana said. ‘I have no idea when I’ll see any more of that.’

Tapping the notes on the desk in front of him, Amir Medani opened a drawer and dropped them inside. Despite his generosity, Makana knew that the lawyer’s funds were as tightly stretched as Makana’s own. The only money he had coming in came from human rights organisations around the world, the occasional assistance from a United Nations body, and that was about it. In exchange he carried out a one-man battle to denounce torture and other abuse as well as the plight of the millions of Sudanese trapped in Cairo, many of them living in misery. He was well connected in the political system and was forever jetting off to conferences in Helsinki or Stockholm, trying to convince the world to take an interest, although looking at the clutter of papers in this office it was a wonder he ever managed to find the door.