Dogstar Rising (2 page)

Talal’s ambitions had become further entangled by his romantic involvement with Butheyna, commonly known to her friends as Bunny. Talal, being the muddle-headed and soft-hearted kid that he was, had convinced himself that his life would be incomplete without this woman. Love’s arrow had struck its fatal wound while they were studying the complexities of the tourist trade together. In this area, she had a distinct advantage over him as her father happened to be the very same Faragalla that Makana was now waiting for. Talal thought he might improve his standing with the girl’s father by persuading him to enlist Makana’s services to solve a problem that had been worrying him.

With a glance at his watch to see if the minute hand was still doing its job, Makana picked up a creased and well-read newspaper. He had ignored it at first, noting that it was several days old, but the appeal had started to grow as his interest in the tourist business waned. On an inside page he found a double spread about a recent spate of attacks on churches. It was not the first time the Coptic community had been targeted and in all likelihood it would not be the last. Every now and then somebody would get it into their mind that a
14
per cent minority posed a deadly threat to the way of life of the other
86
per cent. Violence towards Christians had been going on for centuries. The response from those on high had been the usual murmurs of consolation and promises of change to come.
Al-Raïs
himself, the president, was pictured shaking hands with the Coptic pope, always a useful gesture even if it signified little in the way of real change. The Minister of the Interior claimed confidently that such events were the result of a criminal element which was trying to undermine the country, and called on everyone to help fight this attack on the nation’s security. At the bottom of one page, tucked into the corner, there appeared a brief mention of a church in Imbaba which was battling against the threat of closure due to the building having been declared unsafe. There was a blurred photograph of a fierce-looking priest declaring he would fight until his last breath to keep the church open. In the closing lines of the article, the journalist noted that the priest, Father Macarius, was regarded as a controversial figure, accused by some locals of conducting satanic rituals, which may or may not have been related to the recent spate of young boys being murdered in the area.

Tiring swiftly of this nonsense, Makana tossed aside the paper with a sigh and got to his feet to begin pacing. There wasn’t much room for pacing, most of the office being cluttered with desks, all of which, bar one, were empty at this hour. Talal had led him to believe that Blue Ibis Tours was a fairly successful operation. It now seemed obvious that Talal’s eyes were clouded, firstly because he was employed by the company, and secondly, and probably more significantly, by the fact that he was infatuated with the owner’s daughter. Makana decided he would hold on a little longer, for the boy’s sake if for nothing else, but his first impressions were not encouraging. Either they were doing so well the owner didn’t need to be on time, or, more likely, there was so little to do nobody could be bothered to be behind their desks at nine in the morning.

The only occupied desk was the one closest to the door, facing the entrance. The woman who sat behind it was the person who had let him in. She certainly didn’t seem short of work.

‘I don’t have any record of an appointment,’ she had said, looking him over and coming up short of conviction. ‘Can you tell me what it concerns?’

‘Mr Faragalla would not thank me for discussing his business without his permission.’

To her credit she did not show annoyance at this. Instead she tried calling her boss a couple of times without luck. Obviously Faragalla had better things to do with his time than answering the telephone. Now the woman seemed to take pity on Makana. She ceased the clicking of her keyboard and reached for the telephone again.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, listening for a time before replacing the receiver. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink? Coffee or tea?’

Makana reconsidered his options and decided a cup of coffee would not be out of place. ‘Have you worked for Sayyid Faragalla for long?’

‘Almost a year,’ she smiled briefly. ‘How time flies.’

Makana was beginning to warm to her. He smiled back.

‘And how is business these days?’

‘You don’t really expect an honest answer to a question like that, do you?’

‘I was just wondering why you are the only person who seems to be working.’

‘Oh, the others usually turn up just before it’s time for them to go for breakfast.’

‘You talk as if you were responsible. Are you Faragalla’s assistant?’

She laughed aloud at that. ‘Oh, no. I don’t know what made you think that.’

There was something about her which didn’t quite fit into this environment. In her late thirties, he guessed. She had a narrow face and eyebrows whose arch betrayed a keen intelligence. Her clothes had been selected with practicality in mind and not towards enhancing her slim figure. Indeed, the long skirt and jacket made her look somewhat drab, and certainly older than her years. She chose to blend in, not to stand out. The ring told him she was a married woman. The tips of her collar and cuffs showed slight wear. A woman who lived frugally and was careful with her money. Whatever Faragalla was paying her it obviously wasn’t enough to refresh her wardrobe too often. Either that or she was unconcerned about her appearance, except that she was not a mess. Her long dark hair was clean and neatly tied back with a simple black ribbon. She wore little make-up and on the inside of her wrist she had a pale-blue tattoo of a cross.

The building’s
bawab
,
a grey-haired man with a hunched back, limped in carrying a tray in one hand. He saluted Makana like an old soldier as he set down cups of coffee and glasses of water with trembling hands, managing not to spill too much.

‘
Ya Madame
, you work harder than all the others put together. Give your fingers a rest and drink some coffee to give you strength.’ He winked at Makana.

The woman laughed, which made her look about ten years younger. Then the light faded from her eyes and her normal reserve returned.

‘Abu Salem is quite a character,’ she said when he had gone. ‘I think he keeps us all going.’

She might have been about to say more when the glass door flew open and the first of the day’s arrivals finally made an appearance. A young man in his twenties entered. Wearing a brown suit and a white shirt with pleats down the front. His hair was slicked back heavily with oil and he trailed an overpowering scent of aftershave behind him.

‘Ah, there she is, the light of my eye,’ he breezed as he swept by, the heavy bag slung over his arm thumping into the door as it swung back. A young man heading firmly towards an overweight life, he had the plump, well-fed look of a proud mother’s pampered son. The suit bulged tightly around midriff and thighs.

‘Good morning, Wael.’

‘What’s new,
ya habibt
i
? Any pyramids fall down overnight?’

‘Not that I’ve heard of, but then I’ve been so busy working . . .’

‘Yeah,’ he said, slipping into English. ‘Always the busy bee. Well, all that gonna change now, darling.’ He broke off as he noticed Makana and reverted back to Arabic to address him formally. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’

‘He has an appointment with Mr Faragalla.’

‘
Marhaba
, welcome,
bienvenue.
Is he not here yet?
’

‘Not yet,’ the woman said. As she caught Makana’s eye a brief look of complicity passed between them. The others began arriving soon after that. There were six in all, including the woman behind the front desk, whose name Makana gathered was Meera. There was a general assistant with a club foot who shuttled around between the desks running errands and carrying papers back and forth from the photocopier. The three main players were the plump young man, Wael, then Yousef and Arwa. Yousef was a small wiry man in a leather jacket. His eyes were cold chips of stone deeply sunk into their sockets. He muttered a brief greeting as he entered and then hurried across to his desk on the far side of the room where he threw himself down into his chair, spun towards the window and reached for the telephone. He smoked incessantly with his back to the room, glancing round from time to time to keep an eye on things. The vain and energetic Wael seemed to have boundless energy. He spoke to clients on the phone in a confused babble of English, Arabic and French, with a word of Spanish or German thrown in here and there for good measure, though by the sound of it his knowledge of these languages did not extend much beyond the odd compliment or greeting. Despite this, he carried himself with the weight of a man who was negotiating world peace or brokering million-dollar deals on the stock exchange rather than arranging a few holidays. The final member of this happy family was Arwa. Short and somewhat overweight, she was buttoned down inside a heavy black coat that came down to her ankles and wrists and turned her into a shapeless creature of indeterminate gender. She wore a leopard-skin hijab and chewed gum like it was an Olympic sport. She shuffled across the room to her workspace with barely a nod to anyone.

Faragalla himself finally turned up. A bluff, clumsy figure of a man on skittish legs. His features were blurred by loose, hanging folds of flesh which gave his face a puffy, indistinct look. His eyes were jaundiced and swollen. Dressed in a shapeless two-piece suit that looked as if he had slept in it for a week, he wandered by like a man under heavy sedation, a handful of newspapers under one arm, and nothing more than a brief nod to Meera on the reception desk.

‘This is Mr Makana,’ she announced, leaping to her feet. ‘He’s been waiting for some time.’

‘Waiting?’ frowned Faragalla. ‘Whatever for?’

‘He says he has an appointment.’

‘An appointment?’ Faragalla peered at Makana. ‘What appointment?’

‘I believe Talal had a word with you, sir?’

It took a while for the clouds to lift from the other man’s brows, but then he gave a start. He brushed a hand over his grey moustache and nodded his head.

‘Ah, yes. Yes, of course. You’d better come in.’

Faragalla’s office was the most chaotic mess Makana had seen in a long time. It was hard enough working out where the desk was. Finding anything in the heaps of folders and files and papers that were stacked up in every conceivable spot around the room would have been an impossible task. A row of shelves had collapsed under the pressure and now slumped at an alarming angle into the far corner like a paper landslide. Faragalla fiddled with the air-conditioner switch, flipping it back and forth and thumping the unit with his hand until finally it wheezed into life, filling the room with an unhappy grinding sound and a faint current of warm, dusty air.

‘Have a seat, please.’ Faragalla disappeared behind a wall of paper as he sat down. He got up again and shifted an armful of files to the top of a filing cabinet, where they perched precariously, and began to go through his pockets. ‘Of course, Talal told me all about you.’ He finally found the pipe he was looking for. ‘He said you were an old friend of his father’s?’

Back in the days when Makana was a police inspector in Khartoum, he had worked together with Talal’s father on a number of cases. Abdel Aziz fell foul of the authorities long before Makana did. He protested frequently and, being an intelligent man, managed on a number of occasions to outwit the regime’s legal goons, most of whom, he proclaimed indignantly, would never have managed to get into the Faculty of Law in his day, let alone graduate. Makana had tried but failed to persuade him to flee. Despite his being a prominent figure it was only a matter of time before the regime decided to rid themselves of him. Eventually he was charged with conspiring to overthrow the state and sentenced to death.

‘Talal tells me you were in some kind of trouble yourself.’ Faragalla was stuffing the bowl of his pipe with large, clumsy fingers. Flakes of tobacco fluttered left and right like insects scurrying to safety.

‘They were difficult times for everyone.’ Makana shifted in his seat and reached for his cigarettes. It was ten years since he had landed in this city and he wasn’t keen on going over all of that here and now. It all seemed a long time ago and far away. ‘Why don’t you tell me what is bothering you?’

Faragalla had a match going by now and the big fleshy head nodded up and down like a baggy elephant as the flame veered sideways before being sucked into the bowl. In a few moments he had a forest fire going with clouds of smoke filling the room.

‘Yes. Well, it’s not as simple as all that. You see. A man in my business has to be discreet. You understand that? Reputation is everything and I don’t mind telling you there are a few people out there who would not shed a tear if I was to go out of business tomorrow.’

‘I can imagine.’

Faragalla’s eyes flickered up from the bowl of his pipe as if he detected a faint note of what might have been sarcasm. He let it go.

‘The point is I need a man who knows how to keep his mouth shut. Have you had coffee? I wouldn’t mind some myself.’ He reached for the telephone and Makana suppressed the desire to reach over and hit him with it. Instead he waited while Faragalla ordered his coffee and stoked his pipe some more and then rocked himself back in his chair.