The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (64 page)

Raf caught the words
casino, firebomb
and
US negotiator
… And then the main picture flicked to a woman in a black suit behind a large desk. On the front of the desk was a large seal displaying the American eagle.
Chaos, lawlessness
and
organized crime
cropped up in almost every other sentence. Just in case Senator Liz’s anger wasn’t obvious enough, C3N had thoughtfully run Arabic subtitles along the bottom of the screen.

“Don’t underestimate that woman,” the General said, “she flew UN ’copters back in the little war.” He reached for another sheet of paper and scrawled two lines across its china-clay surface, then signed the sheet with spidery handwriting and pushed it across the desk towards the Khedive, his fingers shaking. “All I need now is your signature for these…”

The boy signed without dragging his attention away from the news, which showed a crime team sifting the wreckage of the smouldering casino. A voice-over was talking, guardedly, about rumours of a dead girl found nearby. Raf got the feeling that more was intentionally being said with the gaps than with the words.

“Enough,” said the General, tapping his table to blank the screen. “We need to concentrate on getting His Highness out of here…”

“I’m sorry?” The Khedive looked startled, then stubborn. “No,” he said. “I can’t possibly… Not now.”

“Your holiday,” said Koenig Pasha. “What time’s your flight?” The voice was little more than a cross whisper from an old man. And he did look old, if one looked past his immaculate uniform to the liver spots speckling his trembling wrists or the carcinoma scars that puckered one side of his neck, below his sunken jaw.

“Fik, what time…?”

Mohammed Tewfik Pasha blinked, tears prickling up until he had to look away.
Okay,
thought the General,
maybe that was a little unfair
… He couldn’t quite remember the last time he’d used Tewfik’s pet name. Maybe when he was ten, that time the boy caught scarlet fever and was confined for days to a darkened room with curtains soaked in vinegar, much to the disgust of the palace’s English doctor…

“Early evening,” said the boy. “The flight’s collecting me at seven
P.M.
”

“And you
are
going alone?”

The Khedive shook his head.

“She’s the wrong choice,” said the General tiredly. “You know that.” He stared at the boy, seeing anxiety turn to stubbornness, and sighed. “Do what you have to do… Just remember, your job is to be on that flight. And yours,” he said turning to Raf, “is to make sure His Highness goes.”

Folding his resignation into three, Koenig Pasha gave the sheet of paper to Khedive Mohammed with a slight bow. The letter to Raf, the General folded just the once and handed over with a nod. Then the old man waited until they’d both read and then reread what he’d written.

CHAPTER 29

17th October

Nothing so slight as a mere ring. Instead, long bursts of
increasing frustration filled the large hall.

Raf had been ignoring the bell for a while.

Sighing, he looked round for someone to answer the General’s front door and realized there was no one but him. So he went to answer it himself.

Another bad mistake.

While he and Zara stood, staring in disbelief at each other, the study door swung back and the young Khedive stormed out, tears of frustration streaming down his soft face.

Whatever final retort the boy was about to make died when he spotted Zara, with her cases. For a moment, it looked like the boy might walk across to where Zara stood, but then he shot Raf a bitter scowl, turned away and ran up the stairs. Somewhere a door slammed, then there was silence.

And as Zara stared between her suitcases and the emptiness on the landing above, Raf glanced into the study, his eyes meeting those of the General. What Raf got was an abrupt nod and an amused if wintry smile. And then the old man stretched, stood up from his desk and walked resolutely to the door, which he closed. The General didn’t even pretend to need his cane.

“What are you doing here?” Zara’s query was curt.

“Leaving,” said Raf. “To visit a crime scene.” He looked at her. “Oh, yeah, and trying to keep your father from being arrested for murder… Take your pick.”

Zara practically threw her suitcases into the boot of Raf’s Cadillac, stamped round to the passenger side and climbed in, shutting the door with a slam. As an afterthought, she reached behind her for a seat belt and found nothing. Felix had never got round to having them fitted and Raf hadn’t bothered to make good their lack.

Still seething about this stupidity, Zara stared resolutely ahead.

Which was how she missed seeing Raf clamber into the driver’s seat of the big Bentley, ram the huge car into reverse and spin it round on protesting tyres until it faced the mansion’s wrought-iron gates.

“What the…”

Zara never got to finish her question because Raf was already gone, all eight cylinders powering the Bentley out into traffic that skidded and stalled rather than risk scratching the General’s car.

My car,
Raf corrected himself, watching his gubernatorial pennant crack in the afternoon wind. My car, my city, my problem. My world coming down around my ears. And Hani’s too, if he wasn’t careful.

Up ahead was where Zara’s club had briefly been. Now CdeH was gone, and the venue had reverted to its original existence as a deserted cistern beneath a rain-stained, multistorey car park; the famous arrest and bust relegated to part of Iskandryia’s rapidly receding good times.

The number of clubbers who now swore they’d been there that night would fill the third-class stands at Iskandryia stadium.

He could have taken a direct route, east onto Faud Premier, then cut south, just before Shallalat Gardens, but instead Raf concentrated on working the big car round narrow back streets marked on the GPS in red, too narrow for the vehicle in which he drove.

So far he’d done little more than scrape one fender on a wall. Although this changed once he reached the car park at Casino Quitrimala. Of course, if he hadn’t spotted Madame Mila’s blue government Renault on his way in, he probably would have missed that concrete gatepost as well.

Madame Mila stood next to her car, back straight and eyes fixed firmly on the Bentley. Exactly a pace behind her, at a distance obviously laid down in regulations, stood two officers from the women’s police, both wearing the familiar police-issue
hijab
… Madame Mila, while obviously the most senior, was also by far the youngest. In place of her
hijab
she wore a simple blue scarf.

“General…” Her voice faltered as Raf climbed from the huge car, and Raf decided that maybe his morning wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Unfortunately, his optimism lasted only as long as it took him to reach the crime scene.

Right in the middle of the sodden wreckage of what had once been a casino stood a handful of uniforms, including a grey-haired lieutenant, a crime-locale technician in whites, two members of the
morales
made obvious by their bottle-green jackets, and three plainclothes in matching black jeans, blue shirts and long leather coats. From what Raf could see, it was a typical Iskandryian crime scene, five times as many officers as needed, with interdepartmental rivalries and demarcation disputes guaranteeing that no one was doing anything useful.

“Boss.” An elderly plainclothes stepped forward, all heavy moustache and combed-over greying hair.

“You’ve got something?”

“Looks like it.”

Beside him, the uniformed lieutenant snorted. The hyena-like grin on his youthful face didn’t even pretend to reach his eyes. “I think you’ll find
we’ve
got something.” There was an unsubtle stress to his words.

Raf raised one hand to chop dead an immediate protest from his own man and saw hurt pride and irritation swamp the old detective’s heavy face, only to be wiped. It was a reaction Raf had begun to recognize.

“What’s your name?”

The detective looked at him, judging the danger inherent in the question, while knowing he’d answer it anyway. “Osman, sir… Ibrahim Osman.”

“And what’s your job?”

Ibrahim Osman looked at him. “I’m your deputy.”

Raf sighed.

“What,” Raf asked the uniform, “makes you think this man was the butcher?”

The young lieutenant frowned. “We got his murder weapon,” he said defensively and reached into his pocket, pulling out a blackened hunk of metal he’d probably trampled all over a crime scene to find.

“…fic,”
whispered the fox.
“…taminated evidence…ow original.”

Raf beckoned for the two
morales
… “There’s nothing for you here,” he told them. “You can go too,” he said to the lieutenant. “Take your men and leave the blade… In an evidence bag,” he added tiredly. Not waiting for the man’s reply, Raf turned on his heels and headed back to Madame Mila.

Inside his head, the fox’s grin was thin and mostly invisible.

“Excellency…”

Heavy clouds crowded the horizon and according to Raf’s watch the temperature had fallen to 53° Fahrenheit, making it the coldest October for eighty-seven years. Mind you, according to his watch, he’d also missed three calls from Zara, who apparently needed to talk to him about her father. And one from Hani, which Raf found infinitely more worrying.

Toggling his Seiko to sound/vision, Raf added vibrate for any call coming in from the kid, while beside him the officers waited expectantly. Way too expectantly.

When Raf looked up from resetting his watch the coroner-magistrate was standing directly in front of him. A small and intense woman with braided black hair, minimal jewellery and shoes that were immaculately polished, for all that they were obviously cheap. She was, as Felix had once said, probably the most beautiful woman in the city and the most implacable. One who wore her disapproval of Raf like cheap cologne, flooding the moist air between them, colouring her every emotion.

“Madame Mila…”

It was obvious from her eyes what she saw when she looked at Raf. A rich, spoilt and overprivileged young notable who’d fallen into the job of Chief of Detectives. The dark glasses he wore permanently glued to his face she took as affectation, the rumours of his combat skills, exaggeration, nothing else. Which was true enough, they were exaggeration. But the ever-present shades were down to retinal intolerance and rich was the last thing he was. As for overprivileged… He could argue that definition with her all day.

“Well?” The woman was waiting for some response from him. So was the tight little group of uniforms, gathered on the edge of Madame Mila’s conversation.

“I’m sorry,” said Raf tiredly, “what was your question?” Behind him, one of his own men sniggered and Madame Mila’s scowl grew, her face darkening and perfect lips setting into a bitter line.

“A whole day’s been and gone,” she said finally.

“And your point is?” said Raf, then realized what she meant. They were back to Sharia law. “You want proof the dead girl wasn’t local…” He was talking to himself but a plainclothes who stood nearby took it as a question and nodded, careful not to meet Raf’s eye. Which meant that was undoubtedly
exactly
what Madame Mila had just told Raf.

“Where’s the body now?”

“Still on ice.” It was Madame Mila who answered. “She’d been spring cleaning a guard hut when she died, apparently…” Her voice made it silkily obvious she wasn’t about to accept that fact without further proof.

“Wearing what?” He saw the sudden tension in Madame Mila’s face and qualified his question. “Before she was murdered,” he said, gently enough to surprise himself. “I’ve read the preliminary report. I know she was naked when found.”

“White trousers,” said Madame Mila stiffly. “Thin, like silk. And a silver…” Her hands sketched a slight, embarrassed double circle, well away from her own body. “A metal brassiere…”

“Friday night. Wearing almost nothing. You think someone from this city would behave like that?”

Madame Mila thought about it. “No,” she admitted finally. “Probably not.”

Raf did, but he wasn’t about to say so. “And the wounds,” he said, “no change at all?”

A blank look.

“Upward slash from pubis to throat, a right to left across the rib cage, entrails disturbed…” And if ever there was an appropriate word
disturbed
was it. Three psy-profilers had been busy from the start trying to explain exactly what that shit with the ripped guts might signify. So far, their sole conclusion was that the mutilation was historically interesting.

Madame Mila nodded, tight-lipped.

“You took a close look?”

Another nod.

Which probably explained the tightness in her eyes, thought Raf. She had slight sweat marks under her arms and tiny beads of perspiration where her dark hair was pulled into a shape nature never meant it to hold. By anyone else’s standards Madame Mila still looked immaculate: judged by her own, the woman was a wreck.

“Go on,” said Raf. “Get out of here.” He meant it kindly but that wasn’t how his comment was taken.

Instead Madame Mila bridled. She actually pulled herself up to her full height, slight though that was.

“Out,” Raf said, finally losing his patience. “I want all of you out of here… Except for you,” he added and pointed to a uniform at random. “You get to finish taping off the crime scene and chase sightseers away.”

The uniform glanced at his young lieutenant, who glared at Raf, caught between outrage and a growing unease. Madame Mila just felt the outrage, which was how she got her question in first.

“Just who do…”

“…oes he think he is?…interesting question.”
The fox had Raf take out his two-line letter and hand it to the furious woman.
“…erson giving orders, like it or not.”

Raf shut his eyes.

He was standing, dead on his feet, in an almost deserted car park, outside a firebombed casino, in a city undergoing meltdown, with five different flavours of police, none of whom knew his real name, his record or that he was meant to be serving time for…