Kingdom of Strangers (12 page)

“Sure,” she said, hoping it sounded normal. “I understand.”

“I really appreciate your help.”

T
he Thursday–Friday weekend passed with painful slowness. Ibrahim arrived at work on Saturday morning just after
fajr
prayer, when the building was still nearly empty. He was intent on tackling the pile of paperwork on his desk. He found that Omar had sent al-Warra’s files from Undercover. They must have arrived after he’d left the office on Wednesday. They were wrapped in paper and stuffed into a plastic delivery bag labeled
CLOSED CASES
and
HOMICIDE
to make them look innocent. Ibrahim tore them open and spent the whole morning reading through them.

There was a joke in Undercover that if you went into a situation and didn’t bump into somebody whose third cousin recognized you from your neighbor’s uncle’s wedding, you were probably spending all your time jacking off in the desert. They’d had so many covers blown that for a while they could hire only men from other cities, and even then a few operations went south because no matter how big Jeddah became, their men couldn’t seem to get away from familiar faces.

Ibrahim tended to take a dim view of these things, and he suspected that most cases were just rotten luck. But the sense of persecution that comes with a terrific streak of bad luck had driven him a little crazy for a while, crazy enough to come up with an absurd idea for an operation that, he suspected, would never be successful even if they could get it by the undercover chief. They would infiltrate a female shoplifting ring.

Ibrahim and two of the junior officers in Undercover certainly
had trouble explaining it to him. Even after they were able to convince him that there was indeed a network of wealthy women working together to steal high-priced luxury items from upscale department stores (diamond bracelets were a favorite), they spent weeks working out what a successful operation would entail. They would infiltrate the ring, gather enough evidence, and—what? Throw a dozen wealthy mothers in jail? A good half of them were pregnant at any given time. None of them had fewer than four kids. Most of them were married to upper-middle-class donkeys, guys who imagined that all those new clothes and jewels their wives were sporting were of course paid for by the master moneymakers themselves, whose ministry wages easily stretched all the way to the runways of Milan. They didn’t realize that their wives weren’t stealing because they were poor; they were stealing because they were angry and powerless and probably compulsive.

When Ibrahim first made the suggestion to the chief, the chief became very quiet. Then he looked at Ibrahim like he’d just laid an enormous horse turd on his desk and tried to pass it off as a Bedouin ritual of welcome. And instantly Ibrahim knew what he was thinking:
No way are we arresting a bunch of wealthy mothers
.

Someone quickly pointed out that they could always arrest the husbands in lieu of their wives. Nobody would bat an eyelash if they held the men accountable for their wives’ conduct. The tension in the room broke for a minute. Someone joked that they’d be saving those poor women from their idiot spouses. They’d be like those domestic-violence units in other countries, the kind that Jeddah was trying to have and sort of pretended it had, if the politicians were to be believed.

At first the chief didn’t want anything to do with the ring. “Back to drugs with the lot of you!” But they worked on him, choosing vulnerable moments, because they were sick to death of drugs. And they would never have admitted this, but they liked the challenge.
Infiltrate a closed group of women
.

Eventually the chief acquiesced. Even he had been impressed by the three-hundred-thousand-riyal broad-daylight diamond heist at the al-Tahlia Jewelry Center. The women had clearly done surveillance of the store’s security. They knew how to distract the female security guards and how to get into the display cases. And they did it all without the slightest regard for the battalion of video cameras that operated nonstop even when the store was closed. Why? Because their faces were covered, their bodies shrouded in shapeless black cloaks.

One of the techs had suggested they try a new software program—Undress—that could digitally strip the clothes from a person’s body and that was sometimes able to put a face to a shapeless burqa. But no sooner had he suggested it than the program was outlawed by a senior officer who was appalled that men were undressing women via computer and calling it law enforcement.

There seemed to be six women in the shoplifting group, but it was hard to tell since they always wore burqas. And it was nearly impossible to arrest a woman for shoplifting unless her husband was present and willing to let her be searched. The only way they could convict these women was by gathering proof of their crimes from other women—friends or family. What they needed was to get into the women’s homes, into their lives and secrets, and the only way they could envisage doing that was by planting a housemaid. They had women on the force, but very few Asians and immigrants—the ethnic groups that could reasonably pass as housemaids. The only person available at the time was Sabria.

The files Omar had sent were from her years working in Undercover before she busted the shoplifting network. And everything she had said about the cases had been right: there was nothing unusual. And certainly nothing that he could connect to the disappearance.

With the shoplifting case, she had been undercover for four months, and she had been such an excellent housemaid and had
become such good friends with the family that even after the mother, Salima, was taken into custody and told how she had been set up, she refused to speak poorly of Sabria. Miss Gampon, she said with a spark of grudging respect, was a professional to the bone. Ibrahim wasn’t sure at the time if that was a good thing. He gave Sabria three months off. She had come back a week later asking if they had a new assignment for her. He said no, she needed some time to recover, get back to her life. She left his office obediently, but three months later she was back, ready for her next assignment, looking exactly as she had before. So he gave her a new assignment, and then another. And each one seemed to leave her unscathed. She did her work with a kind of completeness that frightened him now. She put all of herself into it. Everyone believed her. She could convince anyone that her intentions were genuine.

He shoved the files back into the bag and caught sight of Sabria’s job application for the Chamelle Plaza boutique. It was still lying on his desk, covered in treasonous handwriting. In all the time they’d worked together, he hadn’t known her at all. He had handled her with the robotic skill of a boss who could lose his job if he acted inappropriately with a female coworker. It was only later, after she left, that he came to know who she truly was. And he thought very resolutely about that person now. The real Sabria would only send someone undercover posing as her if it meant serving a greater good. If it meant helping someone. But he still had no explanation for why the real Sabria hadn’t told him all about it.

It was after noon prayers when Ibrahim stopped the car at the end of the alley. He and Daher got out. Already six cop cars were crowding the scene. The duty cops had shut down the street for two blocks in both directions and chased the last of the pedestrians from the sidewalks.

Ibrahim tried to force himself to walk a little more slowly. He wanted to run. He passed the street sweeper who’d made the discovery, heard Daher say, “Boss, this is the guy…,” before he rounded the dumpster and saw the crime scene tape. He slid under it and went straight to the tangled mass of fabric that lay on the sidewalk. It was a woman’s cloak. Empty. And lying beside it was a dismembered hand.

Subhan’allah. Bism’allah, ar-rahman, ar-rahim
. His mind spiraled into prayer; he shut his eyes. The relief was so fierce it hurt.

He climbed back under the tape. “You said this was a body?”

“It’s not a body?” Daher stood anxiously beside him, trying to look useful and telling the duty cops to get on the other side of the crime scene tape.

“No, it’s a hand.”
Should never have left Undercover
. He moved to the shade beneath the shop awning and squatted on the ground, resting his head in his hands.

“They found this right next to it.” Daher was standing above him, holding out a woman’s purse. Ibrahim took it and looked inside. There was a wallet with an ID card in it.
Amina al-Fouad
.

“Make sure forensics gets this,” Ibrahim said. He barely had the presence of mind to consider that Falasteen Street in broad daylight without cars or shoppers was surreal. Aside from uniformed cops and a few business owners, the only figure in the area was the scrawny street sweeper. He was leaning against a dumpster looking nervous and perplexed, not like a man who had just discovered a dismembered hand.

Ibrahim got up and approached the man. “Was it in the dumpster?” he asked.

“No,” the sweeper said, “it was there. Just where you see it now. Some sinner’s hand…” He waved his hand and looked to the heavens.

“Did you see anyone near it?”

“No.”

It took fifteen minutes to establish what generously speaking could be called a crime scene. Two dozen officers were moving around. Shoppers were coming out of stores and stopping to gape. Abu-Musa arrived and pronounced the hand dead. Forensics arrived a few minutes later with a surprise: Katya stepped out of the van with her mobile kit and followed Majdi to the scene. Daher saw her and did a double take but kept his mouth shut.

Ibrahim’s thoughts slowly shifted into the rational. He had expected Sabria to be lying there.

Katya looked appalled as she knelt near the hand.

“Yes, Miss Hijazi?” Ibrahim asked.

“I’m having trouble imagining someone planting this here,” she said. “How did nobody notice?”

Daher snorted, as if the answer were obvious.

“This isn’t that far from the street,” Katya went on. “And this street is normally very crowded. Whoever put it here must have done it very recently. I’m sure it wouldn’t go unnoticed for long.”

Daher sniffed and looked away, fully intent on ignoring her remarks.

“I don’t know,” Ibrahim said. “You’d be surprised what people fail to notice. We’ve got men talking to the shop owners nearby. Maybe someone saw something.”

“It would be good to get a description of our killer,” Daher said.

“You’re already assuming this is connected to the serial-killer case?” Katya asked.

Daher looked at her sharply. Her previous bafflement, although irritating, was at least understandable. But how dare she criticize him?

Katya ignored him, a calculated bait. “Our serial killer never left a hand on a street before,” she said. “He buried them in a secret gravesite.”

“Of course it’s him!” Daher said. “He’s telling us to screw off ! This is an angry shout from our man.” He motioned to the hand.
“He’s saying he’s in control and that he can do whatever he likes, and there’s nothing we can do to stop him. I’m surprised. That message should be obvious.”

Katya unzipped her duffel with an angry yank. “This could be the hand of someone who was punished for theft.”

Daher snorted.

“It could also be a copycat crime,” Katya said.

“Sure,” Daher said, “except that no one knows about the bodies in the desert except us.”

“Why couldn’t it be one of us?” Katya asked.

Daher guffawed. “Yes, of course! And I vote for the American. She came here with her own angels of death to wreak vengeance on the terrorists.” One of the junior officers who’d been listening gave a wan smile.

“What?” Daher asked.

“Nothing.”

“You know what I’m going to say, right?” Daher asked.

“Something about Charlie’s Angels?” the junior officer said.

Daher froze. “Man, how can you make jokes at a time like this?”

“It’s not a joke. It’s just what they’re saying.”

“I was going to say that the first rule about serial killers—one that Dr. Charlie forgot to mention—is that they’re
American
. White males in their thirties. Normal-looking guys.”

“He’s probably not American,” Katya said, standing up.

“Oh?”

“Someone would have noticed an American.”

“Not if he was in an
abaaya
,” Daher shot back.

She barely glanced at him as she followed Majdi out of the alley. Ibrahim motioned Daher out. He was flushed, but at least he’d managed to get in the last word.

Stopping at the van, Katya turned to Ibrahim. “In order to establish a connection to the serial-killer case,” she said, “we’re
going to have to figure out a couple of things. First, whether this hand was severed postmortem. All of the hands at the gravesite were cut off after the victims were dead. It looks like a female hand, but we have to be sure. Also, we’ll have to find out when the woman”—she looked into the purse, found the ID card—“Amina al-Fouad went missing. Or if she is missing. It could be her hand, but that needs to be checked.”

Ibrahim was about to reply when Daher cut in with what he felt was a lame attempt at grabbing his attention.

“Boss,” he said, “we checked the consulates for that name you gave us. The woman’s name?”

“Mahal,” Katya said.

Daher was startled and looked at Ibrahim as if to say
How does she know?

“She was at Sitteen with me,” Ibrahim said.

Daher didn’t respond, but Ibrahim saw the look of betrayal in his eyes. Why had he taken Katya and not Daher to Sitteen?

“Did you learn anything at the consulate?” he asked Daher.

“There were no missing persons named Mahal,” Daher said in a brittle voice.

Ibrahim saw no gloating in Katya’s face as she walked away, but he worried anyway about the feelings between her and Daher and where those particular agonies might lead.

He’s simply
not qualified
,” said the voice of Yasser Mu’tazz.

Ibrahim was standing in the hallway outside the office of Chief Riyadh, hoping to give him a briefing on the crime scene. He’d been just about to go inside when he heard the sharp tones, felt the prickly sense that Mu’tazz was talking about him.