Abduction (36 page)

Aziz slipped out of the building like a thief. A guard watched him suspiciously as he passed. He took refuge behind a wall. With the phone pressed to his ear, he tried to form a “Hello', but no sound crossed his lips.

“Let's talk about your mother-in-law. Has she died?”

“No…”

“But she's going to, isn't she?”

The voice was hopeful. Aziz's armpits were suddenly moist. He sensed that it was dangerous to annoy the kidnapper.

“Probably. Her head injuries seem to be serious. She's in a coma. The doctor was very doubtful about her chances of coming through.”

“Guess I'm a good shot: the old man crashed and the old woman made sure she followed him! But I've still got a few balls to pot. And I'm ahead, right?”

Aziz was dumbstruck, overcome by an irrepressible urge to kill. He leaned against a wall, sucking in a great gulp of air to bring himself under control. The effort brought tears to his eyes.

“Don't have any comment?”

“You're going to kill my whole family, right?”

A long silence. Then the sounds of a chair moving.

“No more cheating: your aim is to kill us one by one, whatever we do. Am I wrong?”

“I haven't killed anyone, my boy. That is the plain truth.”

“Stop all this play-acting. According to Mathieu, you've kidnapped my daughter because of Melouza. Why would my daughter be responsible for the crimes of her grandfather or Mathieu? How would her death console you for your daughter's death?”

Then, in a sudden burst of fury: “She was called Sheherazade, right?”

More chilled than if the polar icecaps had lodged inside him, Aziz waited for the reaction from his daughter's executioner with the curiosity of the condemned man waiting for the blade to come down on his neck. Maybe the maniac was going to slit Shehera's throat the next moment? If so, the father decided with a realisation that his action would be but a minor blip in the man's plan, he would immediately bring his own existence to an end, without even taking the trouble to warn Meriem.

“Do not vainly desecrate the past, Aziz. It bears enough grudges against you already; you couldn't imagine how many.”

There wasn't the feared explosion of anger.

Aziz took up his futile pleading again.

“Listen… Today's children are not guilty of crimes of the previous generation… I beg you…”

“No, the past does not turn into the past without a helping hand. With goodwill, with tenderness, with the respect due to those who have suffered. As far as I'm concerned, the past is a gigantic bone stuck in my throat. In Algeria, you have spat on it, you keep on spitting on it and you will continue to spit on it… No, no,
my
past is far from passing, there is a price to pay for that… I shall be in touch in an hour's time to set a meeting place. It's in your bird's and your interest to come running when I signal. Your daughter has lost a lot of blood, so no dawdling. Rejoice, partners, your impatience will soon be at an end.”

“What? She's losing a lot of blood? I beseech you, let her go – we have to look after her, she's innocent!” Aziz begged, panic-stricken at not finding the magic words that would breach his interlocutor's monstrous logic. “Are you really the man Mathieu talked about? Please answer me… Is my daughter on the estate? Have mercy… Why us? No, don't hang up! For the love of…”

White-faced, the father put the telephone away in his pocket before walking stiffly back towards the waiting room. From time to time, he pressed on his chest, for he was having trouble breathing. Ten yards or so away, the hospital security guard was picking his nose and following the man with his eyes who had spent over ten minutes on the other side of the wall shouting into his mobile. “Must be some dirty story turned sour. Half the people in this country are looking for a shag and the other half are barricading their arses!” he ventured and decided not to call the guardroom.

The little boy was making a lot of noise in the waiting room. His worn-out mother gave him a clip around the ear. The child burst into tears. Overcome with remorse, the woman in the
haik
gave him a hug before plastering his nose with kisses. Smiling again while still snivelling, the child snuggled his head into his mother's lap and pretended to doze off.

Aziz was overwhelmed with an unbearable sense of jealousy as he watched the scene. He had overheard while the woman was chatting with her neighbour that her husband had been a victim of an accident on a building site. The child was wearing shoes with worn-out soles. Their day was going to be full to the brim with the humiliation that the administrative officials reserve for those with no social influence. Yet Aziz felt his throat desiccate with lust for this banal exchange of tenderness: would he ever be able to place another kiss on his Shehera's forehead?

The madman had mentioned a considerable loss of blood…

To Meriem he first of all explained that Lounes had promised to meet up with them to put them in touch with someone important at the hospital. Then, as if there were no way of postponing the moment, he allowed her no respite and announced the kidnapper's latest demand – without mentioning, however, his allusion to their daughter's critical state.

“He wants to meet us? We'll see Shehera? When?”

“Any time now. I don't know anything else.”

“But what are we going to do about my mother?”

Hearing a stifled cry, a middle-aged man sitting next to them turned to look at this haphazardly dressed woman who was watching over another older lady lying unconscious on a stretcher. The visitor was himself accompanying a young man as thin as a rake, whose features were drawn with suffering, and he sighed with a trace of irritation, as if to say: “This country is an unbelievable bloody shambles, so be patient, we're all in the same leaking boat.” Then, pulling some prayer beads out of his
kachabia
cloak, he fell into a silent invocation, his free hand patting the boy's back at regular intervals – his son, by all appearances.

Aziz begged Meriem with a glance to keep her composure.

“If necessary, I'll ask Lounes to take care of your mother.”

“But she's not his mother, he won't know how to look after her,” she protested, wringing her hands.

The vet arrived out of breath. Lounes gave his colleague's wife a kiss, putting on the appropriate pitying expression. He assured them that his relative had already been promised by the head of the trauma unit that the woman he had officially presented as ‘the mother-in-law of a favourite nephew' would receive VIP treatment.

“Was it a car accident?”

“Well… yes, sort of,” Aziz retorted, getting in ahead of his wife.

Intrigued, Lounes opened his mouth to ask for more details. Grabbing him by the sleeve of his raincoat, Meriem broke into a stream of excessive and garbled thanks. Lounes, impressed by her grief and the two scratches on her chin, stammered a few words about the compassion of God, who never neglected good people. Then, as if ashamed of having spoken in such conventional terms, he tried to relax the atmosphere.

“The head of the unit will be here in ten minutes or so. He's got a reputation as an excellent specialist. I'm convinced that everything will go perfectly and your mother will be up and running again in no time… and chasing after this bonobo-lover, who deserves it from time to time, eh Meriem?”

The attempted joke fell flat. Embarrassed by the couple's gloomy attitude, Lounes tried again, his tone still too cheerful.

“How's Shehera doing? She's just turned 14, that's what you said, isn't it, Aziz? If she were capable, our little Lucette would probably have sent her a text message to congratulate her
Homo sapiens
godmother!”

Confronted with the married couple's helpless looks, the vet ran a hand through his unruly hair, some new wrinkles at variance with his forced joviality.

“Let's go outside for a smoke, if you don't mind,” Aziz suggested, leading his friend towards the exit.

“But I don't smoke!”

“Well, I'll smoke then.”

O
utside, Aziz made some nonsensical comment about the din of the traffic and winter pollution in Algiers, before taking a half-empty packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. He smiled miserably.

“I won't offer you one.”

“This accident's really got to you, hasn't it?” Lounes remarked with concern.

“How can you tell?”

“Your fingers are shaking – anyone would swear you'd got Parkinson's. It's true that your mother-in-law's in a bad way. I can understand too that your wife is terrified of this shit hole Mustapha hospital. By the way, I didn't see your father-in-law. Has he been informed?”

Incapable of improvising a reply, Aziz stared straight ahead, wide-eyed. As if driven by some unconscious inverse imitation, Lounes creased up his own eyes and stared with puzzlement into his friend's tired and vaguely guilty-looking face. Aziz was tempted to rebel at this:
Hey, no point examining me with that concentrated, condescending look you use on your sick animals at the zoo!
before biting his lip, aware that that was
exactly
what he had been since his daughter was kidnapped.

“Don't tell me…” the vet suddenly whispered, as if struck by the obvious.

Aziz went bright red. The vet interpreted his colleague's reaction as a sign of assent.

“…That he was driving? Oh, please don't tell me that on top of that…”

Lounes tapped his forehead.

“…That he died in the accident… Am I right?”

Aziz nodded without thinking, suffocated by how close the lie was to the truth. Lounes let out a curse before reaching for the packet of cigarettes.

“That's a tough blow for your wife. I really feel for her. Come on, give me a fag, please. Might just as well poison your lungs as pollute your ears with such bad news.”

They smoked in silence. Aziz pretended to be lost in thought so that Lounes would think twice about pursuing his questioning about the circumstances of the ‘accident'.

“Why are you looking at your watch?”

“Erm… what?”

“You're looking at your watch every minute.”

“I… What are you talking about?”

“Aziz, you're so on edge, you'd make a blind goldfish nervous!”

“Why ‘blind'?”

“So you'd ask me that question, you venerable fool. By the way, where did the accident happen?”

To gain a bit of time Aziz took a long, deep breath, praying that his lie would appear credible.

“My parents-in-law were driving to our house this morning. He had a heart attack at the wheel. The accident happened on the way into the estate. Some neighbours let us know.”

“What a disaster! Your father-in-law's at the morgue?”

“I… Yes… Sorry… Phone? Is it mine?”

“Yes, in your pocket, Aziz… There… Don't you feel well? You're white as a sheet…”

Aziz made a vague gesture to signal to Lounes that someone was already talking to him over the telephone.

“Hello. Is it you?”

“Are you missing me, my friend?”

Controlling his voice so he didn't start shaking in front of his colleague, Aziz replied in an overly detached manner: “If you only knew how much…”

There was a snigger at the other end of the line.

“Is there someone with you who knows nothing about our little secret, my friend?”

Every time that ‘my friend' felt like a sticky lick from a venomous animal's tongue.

“I'm not your friend. Let's get down to business, if you don't mind?”

“In that case, get in your car with your wife. You must be at the hospital, if my deductions are correct. Be at the entrance of the Central Post Office in twenty minutes from now. Exactly twenty minutes. You don't have a second to lose, lad.”

“Are you joking?”

“Joking am I? Is
this
enough proof that I'm not joking?”

A scream of pain reached him through the tiny earpiece. His heart flagged, as though it was refusing to carry on beating.

“Recognise the voice? Want more details? So, you pathetic father, you will follow my instructions to the letter. Incidentally, you only have 19 minutes and… 45 seconds, 44 seconds… left. See you right away…. Run, run, if your brat means anything to you!”

“I… I don't believe this!”

Lounes was startled by Aziz's distraught face – an automatic smile jarred with his glassy pupils.

“More bad news, Aziz?”

“Lounes… Please don't ask any questions. Follow me – you'll find out more later.”

“Why are you running like a madman? What's going on? Hey, wait for me!”

They burst into the waiting room. A nurse threatened to call a guard if they didn't stop their racket. As several heads nodded in agreement, she complained that Arabs only ever respected the stick. Aziz whispered something in Meriem's ear. She put her hand to her mouth as though she were about to scream and her fingers should prevent her from doing so at all costs.

“Neither of us has a choice. Give him your mother's papers. Quick, quick, quick.”

“I've got her identity card… The family record book too? Should I leave him my card?”

“Hurry up. We've got quarter of an hour at the most.”

The people in the room watched the man and the woman fidgeting around the stretcher. Curiosity could not mask their disapproval. Even Lounes almost made a rude remark, but Meriem thrust an envelope decisively into his hands.

“I'm handing over my mother to you – please treat her like your own!” she whispered with a sob caught in her throat, “I only have one mother.”

She stroked the inanimate old woman's cheek before rushing towards the exit. She wavered as she touched the handle of the main entrance.

“Are you out of your minds?” Lounes protested, waving the envelope.