The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (16 page)

Raf sat next to Felix, his back to a sea wall, staring inland over the dark expanse of dust and shut-down kiosks that was Place Saad Zaghloul. The café where they’d just bought supper was the only place still serving at two a.m. and Felix had been hungry. In front of him rested a half-full bottle of Algerian
marc
and a paper plate that had, until recently, been piled with grilled chicken breasts drenched with harissa sauce. It was as near as the fat man could get to a genuine McD chick&chilli burger.

Raf was improving his life with a third styrofoam cup of thick black coffee laced with rum. He didn’t think of it as using caffeine to release dopamine in his prefrontal cortex, but he felt the hit all the same. This way he could tell himself the shakes weren’t really about having been locked up in a cell.

“You know,” said Felix, “you could have told me…”

Just what Raf could have told him the fat man left drifting on the sticky night breeze blowing in from behind then.

“…don’t you think?”

Raf said nothing. Instead, he drained his coffee to the dregs, only stopping when his mouth filled with grit from coarse-ground beans. He wasn’t going to sleep anyway. The image of Hani’s guilt-stricken face was pixel-clear in his brain.

“If you had,” continued Felix, “I could have got the coroner-magistrate off your case right at the start, before we hit the station. If only I’d known.” The fat man’s conversation seemed to be going round in circles. Or maybe that was just the sky.

“Known what?” Raf asked tiredly.

“I made a call to Hamzah Effendi. You know what he told me?”

No, Raf didn’t. In fact, he couldn’t begin to guess. The last time he and Hamzah had talked, the thickset industrialist had been standing on the upper steps of the
qaa
and had threatened to have Raf’s legs broken for disgracing his daughter.

“He said you were an attaché at the Seattle Consulate… Said I wasn’t to mention that he’d told me.”

Raf went very still.

“It’s okay,” said Felix as he leant back and drained off a beaker of Algerian rot-gut brandy. “Look, fuck forbid I should get all touchy-feely. But I’ve been there… Smoke, flames, flying rubble. I’m not saying you should talk any about what happened but, all the same, telling me would have spared you that shit with Mila.”

“You think I killed Lady Nafisa?”

“The bloody
Thiergarten
killed Nafisa.” Felix slapped Raf heavily on the shoulder. “All the same, until this is over I’m going to have to take that passport from you. And the gun. General’s orders”

“Gun…” Raf looked as shocked as he felt.

“Hani told Madame Mila you sleep with an old revolver by your bed.” Felix smiled sourly. “Someone should tell that kid to keep her mouth shut… Anyway,” he shrugged, “drop them both off tomorrow, before the autopsy.”

“Tomorrow…?”

“This morning, whatever… All bodies get buried by the following noon, murder victims included. Shari’ah Law.” His tone made it clear exactly what he thought of the Khedive’s new deal with the mullahs. “Five a.m. then,” said Felix. “Nice and early.” And he pushed himself to his feet, then staggered off across Place Saad Zaghloul without a backward glance.

CHAPTER 23

7th July

Felix didn’t mention the tattered state of Raf’s beard or
hair. Most of both were gone, cropped short with kitchen scissors from the madersa. The job wasn’t yet finished, but then he’d only had two hours between arriving home and having to leave again, and most of that had been taken up with Hani.

“How’s the kid?”

Raf paused, remembering.

At 2.30 a.m. she’d been a shaking little bundle, crouched on the
qaa
steps with a blanket wrapped round her and Ali-Din clutched tight in her arms like life depended on it. “She’ll survive.”

Felix sucked at his teeth. “That bad, eh?”

“Yeah,” said Raf. “The kid wouldn’t sleep in the nursery because Nafisa’s room is next door, the kitchens were out because Khartoum sleeps there. And she said she couldn’t sleep in my room because it’s on the men’s floor and she isn’t a boy… So we turned on the fountain, dragged out a carpet and she crashed in the courtyard under a tree.”

Raf didn’t mention any Arctic fox he might have left curled up by her head to guard the kid while he was away. Mostly he didn’t mention Tiriganaq because he didn’t yet know what, if anything, the fox’s dawn reappearance meant. Besides, Felix didn’t look like someone who’d understand about inner ghosts. Crawling ants and pink elephants were more his style.

They were waiting outside a steel door in a dark underground corridor that was to-the-bone cold, something Raf hadn’t previously felt in El Iskandryia. The occasional shop or café might be air-conditioned but this was different. Cold grey walls and cold stone floor, even cold overhead strips that had a light thinner than the washed-out blue of dawn outside. For once Raf wasn’t wearing shades: Versace wraparounds didn’t seem appropriate in a morgue.

“You know,” said Felix slowly, “you don’t really act like a bey.” From his hungover growl it was hard to tell whether this was meant as a compliment.

“Most of the time I don’t feel like one.”

“Then you’d better start pretending,” said Felix seriously. He curled his fingers into a clumsy fist and punched Raf lightly on the shoulder. “Okay?”

Raf was still wondering exactly how he felt about becoming the fat man’s unofficial adoptee when Felix hammered hard on the closed door for a second time.

“All right, all right…”Bolts drew back inside and someone in a mask peered through a sudden gap. Over her shoulder came a blast of blood and formaldehyde.

“You’re late.”

Felix checked his watch. “It’s only five a.m…”

“I did it at four. Still, you might as well come in and see.” The woman stepped back, then stopped dead at the sight of Raf, her face suddenly indignant behind her mask.

“It’s okay,” Felix said hurriedly, before she could slam the door. “This is the dead woman’s nephew. They were very close, and he’s as desperate as me to find her killers… Raf, meet Kamila. Kamila, meet Pashazade Ashraf al-Mansur.”

“This is not fair,” the girl protested tightly, backing away from the door as Felix gently pushed his way into the autopsy suite. “I’m taking a risk just talking to you.”

“Kamila works for Madame Mila,” Felix told Raf. “Her father works for me. Sometimes these things are useful.” He ignored the cadaver of an elderly woman laid out on a mobile cart and made his way towards a steel autopsy table where another ripped-open body lay covered with white gauze. Holes had been punched in the table’s surface to let liquid drain down to a collecting tray underneath.

“What did you find?”

“The cause of death was a puncture wound to the chest. The mechanism of death was—”

“Kamila!”

“This wasn’t what we agreed,” the girl said furiously. “It’s bad enough that you’re here. As for him…” She glared at Raf.

“How did my aunt die?”
Raf kept his question short and his voice as cold as the mortuary in which they now stood. Somehow the dark glasses in his pocket had found their way onto his face. Pretend, Felix had said. Raf could do one better than pretend: when necessary, he could
be.

“Well?” Raf demanded. Even the fat man looked shocked at the sudden anger in his voice. “I want to know… How did she die?”

“Heart attack,” Kamila said quietly. “The pen severed her left main coronary artery. Which produced a big ischemic area. Tamponade was absent since the pericardium was punctured, but she—”

“You know what the fuck this means?” Raf demanded, swinging round to Felix.

The fat man nodded. “The pen spiked her heart. Not much blood on the outside, quite a lot on the inside but, technically at least, still death by heart attack. How am I doing?”

The girl gave him a grudging nod.

“Seen it before,” Felix said cryptically. He yanked away the covering gauze without asking Kamila’s permission.

Despite his best intentions, Raf looked. He couldn’t help himself. All the same, he knew that from now on it would now be impossible to think of Nafisa as anything other than so much jointed meat. What had once been human was human no longer. The body had been sliced open in a Y that began at each shoulder to shoulder, met below the breastbone and ran in a single slash down to a depilated pubis. The intestines were still in place but heart, lungs, oesophagus and trachea were a black and gaping cavity.

“Any signs of rape?” he asked abruptly.

“No.” The girl’s answer was brusque. As if that was exactly the kind of question she’d expect someone like him to ask.

“Then why was her shirt open?”

In answer, Kamila turned her back on him. “I’m about to repack the body,” she told Felix. “You can indent the coroner-magistrate for a copy of my report. She may even let you have one.”

Felix nodded. “What about other wounds?”

“What did you have in mind?” She’d spotted where Felix had lanced into the dead woman’s abdomen to take a core temperature, though the fat man hoped that the fact wouldn’t make it into her final report. And that wasn’t what he was asking about, anyway.

“Anything…”

The girl started to shake her head, then paused. “Maybe this,” she admitted, lifting one of Nafisa’s hands, which moved unwillingly beneath her grip. Detritus had been scraped from beneath each split nail and bagged and labelled. The tips of each finger still showed traces of staining where prints had been taken.

“Could be nothing,” said the girl. She nodded at the circular bruise that the fat man that had already noticed on the dead woman’s palm.

Felix nodded to a small metal trolley. “Okay to touch this?” He lifted Lady Nafisa’s Mont Blanc pen, transparent bag and all, from a metal kidney dish and held the blunt end to the bruise, without letting pen or flesh actually touch. The end was way too small.

“Anything else?” asked Felix.

Raf wondered if the Chief and the pathologist had noticed the pen was missing its top, then realized both of them must have done. Which made his not mentioning the fact significant. Some kind of interdepartmental dance was going on between Kamila and Felix that Raf didn’t begin to understand…

But he would. Raf was making it his business. Secure the circle, the fox always said. So if the coroner-magistrate had him pegged as culprit, well, he’d bring Felix on-side as protection. And if staying close to Felix meant involving himself in Iskandryian politics then he could do that too, and play out his role of Bey. Life’s absurdities existed to be milked for all they were worth. And besides, anything was better than being returned to Seattle to face Huntsville or Hu San. Which was exactly what would happen if anyone discovered who he really was.

“Answer the man,” Raf ordered. “Anything else?”

“Nothing,” said the girl firmly.

Felix smiled. “Normal stomach contents?”

“Chief!” Her voice was exasperated, as if she expected him to ask the ridiculous but still found it irritating. “This is a minimum-invasion autopsy—boss’s orders, minister’s orders too. Simply confirm cause of death. Repack body, sew along dotted line. You know how this goes…”

“Simply
confirm
cause of death,” Felix said slowly. “Sweet fuck. You know how worried I get when I hear those words?”

“Cause of death
pen.
Mechanism of death
torn heart muscle.
Manner of death
homicide.”
It was obvious Kamila considered their visit well into overtime. She’d had enough of the two men trespassing on her territory and wanted them off it, just as soon as possible. All the same, she was willing to compromise. “Look,” she said as she herded them towards the door, “you can indent me direct for a copy of the report.”

Felix nodded thanks. “About those stomach contents,” he added softly. “Just tell your father the results and let him pass them to me. Okay?” Felix smiled sweetly and dragged Raf from the room before Kamila had time to refuse.

CHAPTER 24

7th July

“La ilaha illa Allah…”

…Glory be to the Most High.

The small hand that gripped Raf’s had fingers of steel, nails sharp as glass and a palm clammy as that of a drowned child. Which was what she was, only Hani was drowning in ritual and other people’s pity. The hand in his shook so rapidly that her shakes were practically invisible.

All through the funeral she’d been tightening her grip, until by the final round of prayers she was alternately hanging on as if for dear life and digging her nails deep into his skin. Though it was hard to tell whether Hani was angry with Raf or herself.

The funeral was brief: divided into four parts and quite obviously following a template that, equally obviously, he didn’t recognize. The opening verses of the Quran had been read first, followed by another reading. An intercession was made and finally a plea that the gates of Paradise be wide enough to allow Lady Nafisa entry and therein that she be washed with water and ice, purified as a garment is purified of corrupting filth… It was a sentiment Raf briefly found himself wishing he could believe.

“Not much longer,” he whispered. Reassuring himself as much as Hani. They’d arrived together, straight from the madersa, accompanied by a weeping Khartoum and Nafisa’s cook Donna, who stopped at the gates of the necropolis, crossed herself with undisguised fervour and refused to take another step.

And as he stood dressed in black and waiting in the blazing sun for the interment to finish, Raf could almost feel Donna’s fierce gaze on the back of his neck. But then, almost everyone was watching him—except for Hani, who wouldn’t lift her eyes from the ground.

He’d shaved, trimmed the remains of his beard down to a short dark-blond goatee and taken clippers to his skull, because that was the quickest way to get rid of dreads. All of which turned out to be a bad mistake. Apparently, not shaving was a North African mark of respect, a signature of mourning. Lady Jalila couldn’t even bring herself to talk to him. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for everybody else.