Casablanca Blues (2013) (19 page)

‘No way! There’s no way I’m gonna get wrapped up in a plan like that!’

‘But I have no one else.’

‘Well... take Saed with you.’

Ghita pretended to weep.

‘But Saed’s too young to drive.’

Blaine turned to face her. She looked away.

‘You can’t drive?’ he asked accusingly.

‘
Me
...
drive
? Why would I ever need to? I have a chauffeur.’ She paused, gritted her teeth. ‘I
had
a chauffeur.’

‘This is ludicrous,’ said Blaine.

Ghita motioned to the taxi driver to stop.

‘I’m hoping you’ll change your mind.’

‘Believe me, nothing on earth could get me to.’

‘Will you at least wait until you have seen the car?’ she asked.

They got out, crossed a wide avenue lined with eucalyptus trees, and made their way to a large brick warehouse.

As soon as he saw them approaching, the guardian ran up, wheezing. He kissed Ghita’s hand, shook Blaine’s vigorously, and led the way through a side entrance and up an iron staircase.

‘This is my father’s little collection,’ Ghita said.

‘
Collection
?’

They stepped onto a platform and the guardian yanked up a lever mounted on the wall. The lights came on.

Arranged in a grid below – six rows of six – was a priceless assortment of classic cars.

There was a 1948 Aston Martin DB1 in racing green, and a pristine D-type Jaguar in steel blue. Beside it was a 1931 Packard with running boards, and behind it, a 1937 Bugatti Atalante.

Although she had little interest in cars, Ghita felt smug.

She pointed a hand to the last row – six scarlet sports cars, all in mint condition.

‘I like those ones,’ she said. ‘I like the way they sparkle.’

Blaine held a hand to his mouth for a long time, and eventually remembered to breathe.

‘This is... it’s... it’s off-the-scale incredible!’

‘It’s my father’s little secret.’

‘But how come they haven’t been seized along with everything else?’

‘Because no one knows about them, except my father, me, and the guardian.’

The American stepped forward to the edge of the iron viewing platform and squinted hard. He took in the Ferraris and the open-top tourers, the sleek limousines, and the space age Cadillacs, from the days when Detroit built monsters of steel.

Then, suddenly, he stopped – motionless.

‘How could that be?’

‘Hmm? What is it?’

With care, Blaine stepped down the narrow staircase onto the warehouse floor. Moving forward as though in a dream, his feet gliding over the scrubbed grey flagstones, he walked through the lines of cars. They were all shining like new, but none of them caught his attention.

In the middle of the last line he stopped.

Before him, open-topped, with a tan leather interior and with walnut trimmings, was a 1925 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. It was finished in bright poppy red.

Blaine took the envelope out from his jacket pocket and removed the black and white postcard. He knew instantly it was the same car. All that was missing was the young lady in the wide-brimmed hat.

He showed the card to Ghita, who had followed him down to the Rolls.

‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘It’s... like...’

Ghita squeezed her hands together.

‘Fate,’ she replied. ‘It’s like fate.’

‘I just can’t believe that your father owns the object that is so much the attention of my thoughts.’

‘He loves his cars,’ said Ghita frivolously.

‘But why does he keep them secret?’

‘Because of my mother.’

Ghita opened the front passenger door to the Rolls-Royce. She sat down and beckoned Blaine to climb in. He sat beside her, his hands caressing the walnut wheel, the scent of fine leather conjuring memories.

‘Fifteen years ago my mother was driving home from Marrakech,’ Ghita said softly, ‘she was in a vintage Mercedes. She loved it, and drove very fast, twisting and turning through the little towns on the outskirts of Casablanca. As she neared Settat a dog ran out into the road. She swerved... hit a wall. And she was killed outright.’

‘I am sorry,’ Blaine said.

‘My father always blamed himself. It didn’t make sense because it was my mother’s driving, not the car, that was to blame. But he was broken. After that he put all his energy into his company – Globalcom.’

Ghita sniffed again, more theatrically than before. ‘He’s all I have left,’ she said. ‘I
must
help him – whatever the danger.’

Leaning forward, Blaine touched her arm. He wanted to say something to make her happy, to reassure her.

‘We will go to find him,’ he said.

‘
We
?’

Blaine smiled gently.

‘I promise to help you,’ he said.

Seventy-nine

Monsieur Raffi was standing outside his shop, a fresh newspaper held between open hands. He was reading the obituary of an old friend, the dean of the university, a man distantly related to his long-departed wife. Tutting to himself, he folded the paper and set about opening up the shop.

Once the wooden shutters were up, and the multitude of door locks opened, Raffi flicked on the lights, and breathed a sigh of relief. He had not slept well the night before, woken by a nightmare that the shop had been ransacked, the precious collection hauled away by thieves.

Slipping into his red satin chair, he closed his eyes for a quick catnap before the morning rush, a rush that never quite came.

He dreamed of the good old days when the boulevard was spotless, the flagstones clean and unbroken, the air tinged with a blissful yellow light.

And, he dreamed of an elegant French woman, immaculate in white, with a wide-brimmed sun hat throwing a shadow over the right side of her face.

She was strolling along easily, oblivious to the gauntlet of lecherous shopkeepers, an apparition of beauty, a memory that had endured in Raffi’s head for sixty years. Sighing in his sleep, he breathed in deep to catch the perfume trail left behind the vision.

The door to the shop was suddenly thrust open.

A slim figure wearing a rough woollen jelaba was standing in its frame. Raffi woke at the sound. He began to sit up, but the man’s right hand shoved him back down.

‘Where is he?’ the intruder demanded.

‘Where? What?’ Who?’ Raffi strained to make sense.

‘The American. The one who came in here. Where is he?’

‘Which American?’

‘The young man. He was in here last week.’

Monsieur Raffi struggled to stand, but was struck in the face.

‘Tell me what you know, or I’ll bathe your shop in blood!’

‘But I don’t know anything about him. Except... except that he likes Humphrey Bogart. That’s all.’

The intruder punched him again, far more forcefully than before. The elderly shopkeeper was knocked out, his jaw fractured by the blow. Then, in a whirlwind of revenge and rage, the intruder swept through the shop, smashing everything he touched.

Outside, on the boulevard, the new tram rattled by, and pedestrians crisscrossed from sunshine into shade and back into sunshine again.

The door to the antique shop was left ajar, but no one thought to close it, or to check in on its owner, a shopkeeper regarded as half as old as time.

Eighty

The open-topped Rolls-Royce glided out from the garage at l’Oasis, and moved slowly down the wide tree-lined avenues of the French quarter.

Blaine caressed the wheel in his hands and, beside him, Ghita tied her hair down with a silk scarf.

‘What a dream to drive,’ he said. ‘It’s as if it can read my thoughts.’

‘Maybe it can,’ Ghita replied. ‘A little well-bred English magic.’

They rolled on, the suspension accommodating the potholes, until they reached the edge of Maarif. Ghita pointed to the angular Villa Zevaco, now a café, in which Edith Piaf supposedly once lived.

‘I’ll get some sandwiches for the journey south,’ she said.

Inside, opposite a long chilled counter laden with gateaux, was a small salon, its tall windows giving onto a garden.

Ghita strolled through to the sandwich counter, bought a baguette filled with Camembert and another of
truite fumée
. As she walked back in the direction of the car she spotted Aicha sitting at a table with her ex-fiancé.

She felt sick in her stomach, the bitter taste of bile on her tongue. But rather than shirk away, or pretend she hadn’t seen them, Ghita strode up, treading her heels down hard.

‘Hello,’ she said, unable to think of anything else.

The pair looked up from their conversation. They froze. Aicha’s face contorted into a scowl.

‘Keep away from me!’ she snarled. ‘I told you: in my eyes you are dead!’

‘Ghita, please leave us,’ Mustapha said in a low voice. ‘We are all suffering because of your father’s stupidity.’

‘You think you know what suffering is?’ Ghita riposted, the veins on her throat engorging with blood. ‘My father is languishing in a mountain prison...
Why
? Because he had the guts to stand up to a system rotten to the core – a system that you all defend! I may have lost you as friends in my moment of need, but I am a thousand times stronger for it!’

Turning on her heel, Ghita walked out to the Rolls-Royce.

Unable to avoid the sense of curiosity, Aicha and Mustapha watched as she tossed the sandwiches in the back and got into the passenger seat.

And, making certain her former friends got an unobstructed view, she leaned forward and kissed the American on the mouth.

‘What was that for?’ asked Blaine.

‘For revenge,’ Ghita replied.

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘How could you? You’re an American.’

Blaine looked into Ghita’s eyes.

As attracted as he was to her, he was maddened by almost everything she said or did.

‘I need you to understand something,’ he said, easing the car into first. ‘You need me a great deal more than I need you right now.’ Ghita stretched out her left hand and laid it on his right as it cupped the gear stick.

‘I won’t forget it,’ she replied.

Eighty-one

Before hitting the open road, Blaine zigzagged his way through the ferocious Casablanca traffic to Ghita’s apartment.

He parked the Silver Ghost on the corner and took a table outside Baba Cool. There was just enough time for a quick
café noir
while Ghita threw a few essentials into the Louis Vuitton portmanteau. She may have been separated from her fortune, but the way she acted no one would have known it.

The sun was filtered through palm fronds, the air scented with
shisha
water pipes. Even before Blaine could order, the waiter slid a couple of ashtrays and a glass of the house special, coffee as thick as crude oil.

‘It’s an old one,’ said a wizened figure beside him. ‘I remember when all the cars were like that.’

Blaine raised his coffee and drank to the old days, and he found himself thinking of Monsieur Raffi, a champion of all things past. Once Ghita had appeared, he drove the short distance to the antique shop, and parked outside.

‘This will just take a minute,’ he said. ‘There’s someone here who would appreciate the sight of this car very much.’

Blaine jumped out and ran round to the front door. To his surprise the antique shop was shuttered up.

As he stood there, the butcher next door stepped out into the light, a bloodied meat cleaver in his hand.

‘He’s closed up... gone away.’

Blaine held out his hands.

‘Why?’

‘He was attacked... beaten up. His shop was vandalized.’

‘Who by?’

‘I don’t know. But it’s not safe... not like it used to be.’

‘I can’t believe it. Poor Monsieur Raffi.’

The butcher wagged the cleaver towards the car.

‘There are thieves everywhere,’ he said. ‘Watch out!’

Eighty-two

An hour later, Blaine was stop-starting through gridlocked traffic in search of the highway to Marrakech. The lack of road signs and straightforward traffic sense were getting to him. He had tried to buy a map of Casablanca, but had been forced to settle for one of the entire country.

‘I’m no good at this, I’m afraid,’ said Ghita defensively.

‘How does anyone ever find their way around?’

‘Well, they either know the way, or I suppose they take the bus.’

‘Do
you
take the bus?’

Ghita’s eyes widened at the thought.

‘
Quelle horreur
, no!’ she replied quickly. ‘I sit in the back with an iPhone and magazines.’

Tired of inching forwards at a snail’s pace, Blaine motioned towards a slender side street veering off to the right.

‘What do you think’s down there?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Shall I brave it?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Ghita said enthusiastically. ‘I think it looks familiar. Take it...’

Blaine turned the wheel sharply and the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost banked silently. The street telescoped very quickly from slender to narrow, and from narrow into a piste. With insufficient width to turn around, Blaine had no choice but to continue, the Rolls’s suspension doing well over the ruts and bumps.

‘Oh my God!’ Ghita exclaimed.

‘What? What is it?’

‘I remember why I know this road.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it leads to a
bidonville
. We took some designer outfits there once. They were from the previous season, entirely out of style.’

‘What’s a
bidonville
?’

Before Ghita could reply, the open-topped car descended down a steep incline into a bustling shantytown. An army of children were sword-fighting with sticks in the dust, their mothers crouching in front of shacks scrubbing at great tubs of laundry. There were goats and chickens, cows and dogs, all of them ambling about in a stew of life.

The poppy-red convertible crawled forward beneath dozens of low-hanging washing-lines, as people swarmed from their shacks, and surged around it.

‘What do I do?!’ asked Blaine frantically.

‘Just keep going and stay calm. It’s got to lead somewhere.’

‘A track like this? It’s getting narrower.’