Abduction (37 page)

“I'll explain everything over the phone,” Aziz implored him from the other side of the door. “Don't let us down – you're the only one who can help us!”

The stunned vet pulled an angry face as the rushing footsteps died away down the corridor. “I've already got a mother… You're nuts… What terrible manners. I'm working today, I am… Several meetings… A tiger with colic… The Director's going to be furious…”

Then, turning crimson with the sudden attention focused on him, he lowered his head towards the stretcher, puffing nervously through his teeth: “Oh well, beautiful lady, your own family has abandoned you. I'm not your son and my mother wouldn't appreciate having you as a rival! So there's no question of us signing a love contract, but, all right, I'll see what I can do for you…”

They drove along at full speed, ignoring the red lights. Meriem asked her husband if he'd been able to talk to Shehera. No, he replied.

“So how can you be sure she's alive?” she fired back as her knee moved as if it had a life of its own.

“I heard her shout ‘Dad',” he lied.

A spasm ran through Meriem's chest and she gave up asking for further explanations. Aziz's phone rang; the name of Lounes the vet appeared on the screen. Aziz didn't answer, postponing till later the time when he would have to face up to his friend's questions.

A policeman whistled at them after a dangerous overtaking manoeuvre, but they didn't stop. The traffic jam they feared had started to form in rue Didouche. As soon as the Central Post Office was in sight, they parked the car quickly on a patch of pavement. A shopkeeper sitting in front of his store warned them: “The police come round here a lot. Trust me, they'll clamp you!”

Paying him no heed, Aziz and Meriem set off at a run, bumping into pedestrians who showered them with insults. Aziz shouted to Meriem, “We're five minutes late!” On the square above the underground, they dashed across the sloping street leading to the esplanade in front of the post office, attracting beeping horns and obscenities from drivers. “Go fuck your mother, you whore's brood, instead of haring around like that!” yelled one taxi driver after almost piling into the vehicle in front of him.

“What time is it, Aziz?”

“We're over ten minutes late… My God… my God… Protect her!”

“I… I'm going to be sick.”

He gave his wife a tissue. She covered her mouth with it just before another convulsion shook her. Aziz got out his telephone and stared at it, imploring it: “Ring, I beg you, ring, you bastard!” A policeman coming out of the post office glanced suspiciously at the sweating couple and sidled up to them shiftily. Aziz pretended to interpret his mistrust as an offer of assistance.

“Don't worry – my wife's pregnant. She hasn't been feeling very well for the last few days. Thanks for your help.”

The husband's smile was so false that the policeman shrugged his shoulders before continuing on his way.

Aziz jumped when the ringtone finally sounded. The small device slipped out of his sweaty hands. A plaintive yelp escaped him when he thought that the telephone had broken.

“You're late, lovebirds!”

Meriem clung tightly to her husband's shoulder, straining towards the earpiece. She was still clasping the dirty tissue to her mouth.

“No, no, we've been waiting for your phone call for several minutes.”

The voice turned menacing.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Pardon me. No need to get angry.”

“Incidentally,” the voice resumed in an ironic tone, “my – how shall I say? –my associate is watching you and he just rang to tell me you were late.”

Aziz had a quick glance all round him. Crowds of people were going in and out of the large neo-Moorish building. The old man with the cigarette staring grim-eyed at him; might he be this accomplice? Or that other, younger but bearded man selling peanuts? Or the woman in a hijab waiting at the pedestrian crossing even though the light had turned green?

“There's no point trying to recognise him. I've hired competent people.”

“What do we have to do now?”

Aziz was having trouble forming his words. His chest was beating so violently that he had the impression it was spilling into his mouth. Paler than ever, Meriem shouted out, so that the kidnapper could hear, “Listen to my prayer, man, that God may show you the path of righteousness and protect you! He will bless you if you take pity on our daughter. Take us in her place.”

“Be quiet!” the father yelped. “Don't give him any more ideas!”

The man chuckled gleefully at his exasperation.

“It's not out of the question, this exchange thing. Maybe I'll agree to it, but there are two or three formalities to see to first. I intend to make sure no one has followed you. Go and see the bookseller…”

“You're messing us about!”

“Shut up! From the steps of the Central Post Office you'll see a bookshop on the corner of rue Ben-Mhidi. You'll tell the bookseller your first name and then thank him on behalf of your uncle. You will buy the
El Watan
newspaper. From there, still with your wife, you will go to the Sanctuary of the Martyrs. You will wait for my instructions at the base of the three concrete palm fronds. You have half an hour starting now. The traffic jams heading up onto the heights of Algiers are a damn nuisance at this time of day. Get a move on. I hope that you know Algiers and its shortcuts well.”

“But why the newspaper?”

“I've published a classified ad in it for you. If you're smart, you'll work out what it's about. It will, let's say, facilitate our negotiations. You're both graduates, so I trust in your intelligence. No dillydallying on the way – I've a knife waiting to be sharpened. Enjoy the race!”

The bookshop owner soon lost his business smile.

“OK, your name's Aziz. So what?”

“My uncle sends you his thanks.”

“What uncle?”

“My uncle,” the father replied, “
whom you know well
.”

“I don't know your uncle, especially if you won't tell me what he's called, mate. All right, you can see that whole queue of people behind you – what do you actually want?”

The bookshop owner threw a hostile look at the woman whose hair was glued to her sweat-streaked temples.

“I'd like today's
El Watan
.”

“Because you're scared I'm going to sell you yesterday's, are you?” the bookseller objected bad-temperedly, pulling a copy out of the revolving stand.

When they were outside again, Aziz heard the shopkeeper remarking to the other customers, “What are things coming to if they let mad people go around in couples!”

The nightmare began all over again: a gallop in the opposite direction back to the car – where a butterfly awaited them on the windscreen – uphill towards Pasteur, boulevard Mohamed V, Télemly, Clos-Salembier… Meriem read the classified ads out loud: job offers, situations wanted, unfinished villas and computer equipment for sale, and so on. His head full of fog, Aziz listened to her run through the marriage proposals from spinsters spelling out that they owned a flat and a car or from men noting a preference for a candidate who had emigrated to Europe. Nothing seemed to bear any resemblance to a message from the lunatic.

“I can't make head nor tail of this,” she groaned. “How about you?”

He shook his head to signal ‘no'.

“Read some more, please.”

Meriem put a hand between her legs like a little girl trying to stop herself peeing, before resuming the absurd litany.

“
…Minibus for rent… Home repairs of electrical appliances… Urgent, flat to rent… The Doha family is looking for their son Nasreddine, who left home on… Young woman, practising Muslim, good-looking, 30, would like… Shell of two-storey house for sale… Hairdressing diploma for rent…”

From time to time, Aziz rubbed his eyes with his arm to wipe away the sweat that was blinding him. His brain was wearing itself out searching for some clue among the mush of information reaching him. Why had the kidnapper referred to an accomplice operating openly? Was that portly bookseller really involved in his daughter's kidnapping? He seemed too young to have been caught up in Melouza, didn't really have the look and the arrogance of an Islamist terrorist… What then? Some thug who'd risk the death sentence for kidnapping without taking any precautions of anonymity? But why? For money? And what about this ordeal of decrypting the classifieds, which was turning the search for their daughter into some unbearable parody of a televised treasure hunt?

Something wasn't quite right.
He scratched his head in rage, as if to crush the cloud of unanswerable questions.

“Watch out!” Meriem screamed, when a car that Aziz had tried to overtake on the wrong side swerved towards them.

“I can't concentrate anymore,” he said by way of an excuse, smacking the steering wheel in anger. “There's nothing odd about those bloody ads. Maybe his goal is just to stop us thinking!”

“What did you say? You can't think?”

There was a glimmer of disdain in Meriem's hollow eyes, which said, in substance:
My daughter is being tortured by a maniac, my mother is dying because of him, and you dare to complain about being too tired to think?

“Nothing. Carry on, please. We've still got another ten minutes or so.”

Driving down a one-way street the wrong way
(… villa in Hydra at a fair price…)
enabled Aziz to avoid a crossroads
(…looking for work as a chef…),
which he knew to be very busy. A driver stuck two fingers up at him. As luck would have it, the traffic
(…3-room flat for rent to a foreign company…)
wasn't very dense. The Sanctuary of the Martyrs was already showing off
(…2005 Mercedes, price to be discussed…)
its enormous concrete palm leaves
(…looking for partner with financial contribution, significant yield guaranteed…)
which were meant to represent the three revolutions
(…pretty, well-educated, God-fearing…)
of modern Algeria: industrial, agrarian and cultural.

They parked alongside the run-down housing of Diar-el-Mahçoul, then, newspaper in hand, climbed the flight of steps leading up to the sanctuary square. One of the soldiers keeping watch over the surroundings of the flame of the unknown martyr favoured them with a suspicious frown; usually only lovers, school groups and families in their Sunday best came for a walk on this esplanade, not some dazed rogue accompanied by an untidily turned-out tart, both of them panting as if their heels were on fire!

“Shall I carry on reading?” Meriem asked.

Then, switching abruptly, with the neutral tone of someone who has actually had her mind on one thing: “I really hope it wasn't a mistake to keep the police out of this.”

They had stopped on the other side from the shopping centre, in the shadow of an immense statue of a fighter with a Kalashnikov. On the horizon before them rose the bulk of Mount Chréa.

“Yes,” he agreed, taking out his telephone, without indicating whether this was ‘yes' to reading the ads or to keeping the police out of things.

The wind was blowing, making it difficult to unfold and read the newspaper. Meriem's voice cracked at regular intervals. It sounded as if she were chanting the prayer of the dead, the one the imams pronounce over the coffins of the dead just before they are lowered into the grave, but here the surahs had been perverted to mock the survivors' grief.

It was only after ten interminable minutes or so that the telephone rang. Aziz activated the loudspeaker.

“Oh, now it's me that's late! Do I have to apologise? (He cleared his throat.) Excuse me, I must have caught a cold.”

His cough was merry.

“Hey, fine weather today. Is the flame of the martyr burning?”

“Yes, I think so. Where are we supposed to meet?”

“Not so fast. Did you understand my message?”

“No.”

“I'm not happy with you. Are you and your wife that stupid? You know that nature abhors an idiot? And that I respect nature's tastes? You're forcing me to take action.”

“Listen…”

“Shh!”

The spring sunshine toned down the bronze of the statues. They awaited the stranger's verdict without exchanging glances. Aziz put his arm round his wife's shoulders. Her whole body was trembling, while he could no longer feel his limbs. The stranger coughed again. His coughing fit was so everyday that Aziz dared to break the silence.

“Why all the complications? Tell us the meeting-place and we'll go there.”

“And how do I make sure that no policemen are following you?”

“I swear it by all that is most precious to me.”

“I've already got what is most precious to you. But I'll give you another chance. Lucky I've thought it all through! Go to the cigarette seller's on the first floor of the shopping centre. You will present yourself as the mayor's brother and you will ask him for the address. If he doesn't find anything suspicious, he'll give it to you. On the other hand…”

“Which address?”

“The address, that's all.”

“Will our daughter be there?”

“Probably, if you continue to knuckle under. And I did say
knuckle
…”

He burst out laughing.

“Keep your phone on,” he ordered. “I want to follow your conversation with the tobacconist. Off you go!”

They raced across the esplanade to get to the shopping centre, he with his ear glued to the phone, she like a robot. When she turned her head, drops of sweat flew off her face. The kidnapper hustled Aziz along with extraordinarily cheerful cries of “Faster, faster!”.

“Have you found the tobacconist's?”

“The one next to the bookshop?”

“The very same, sonny. He's ready and waiting for you. Let me warn you again: no sneaky tricks!”