Secret Skin (25 page)

I flagged a taxi, took the driver’s number as a guarantee, and sent him away with a generous tip.

With time to kill, a Malaysian street café enticed me in with its appetizing aromas. Too edgy to eat I sipped iced coffee for an hour and then called Orsa back. The deal was on. He chuckled with recognition when I mentioned Russian Beach.

In an ideal world I would have had more time. I hoped I’d done the right thing. There was no going back now.

***

On the way over I picked up a towel, some trunks and a straw hat. I arrived early, changed, then carried everything else to one of the shaded tables scattered along the short beach. It was still known as Russian Beach from the days when the city limits ended only a couple of kilometers away. The beach had been popular with post Soviet Union expats, there to find interesting ways to invest their cash after the free market frenzy that followed perestroika.

Dubai remained popular with the Russians but despite what everybody thought they weren’t all gangsters and prostitutes.

A couple walked past me. Both older, both handsome and well groomed even in their beach wear. There were one or two other couples and several curvaceous bikini clad bodies along the beach. In the water groups of men glared hungrily at the women, aggressive stares that quickly turned to flicking tongues and hand gestures as soon as the boyfriends’ backs were turned.

Stretched out on the towel I set the camera up for a second shoot, same actors, different setting. With the bag placed as both pillow and camera rest I flipped the viewfinder screen out, pushed the hat over my head to obscure my face and settled in.

Akbar arrived 20 minutes late, prompt by Middle Eastern standards. A slim Indian man in a short sleeved shirt arrived with him. Without any exchange of words the Indian took a position at the access to the promenade walkway. He put one foot up against a palm tree and sucked on a tooth pick with his collars up.

He’d clearly overdosed on Bollywood gangster flicks.

The promenade dissected the beach in two and led to a circular walkway at the end of a small concrete pier. Akbar strolled casually from the road along the promenade, made a turn once around the circle and took a seat on a bench with a view back over his path, the only way in or out.

The scowl behind his thick shades told me he’d expected to find me there waiting for him. He sucked in his cheeks and pouted with that peninsula passive aggression that said as a westerner you must be on time, while I will turn up whenever I damn well please, if at all.

But he had to wait. He was protecting his family and knew that with Dubai traffic at some point everyone was late.

He tapped what looked like a metal comb against one palm. A weapon for polite seaside company perhaps? I sensed Orsa had arrived when the tapping stopped and he stared back down the promenade.

I turned my head. A black land cruiser had pulled up to the kerb. Orsa and three men strode purposefully down the hot concrete. The big man was taking no chances with Akbar this time, four to one evened up the odds.

The Indian moved in behind them and began to follow.

I was too conspicuous with this many eyes on the prowl. I wedged the camera into the sand and flipped the screen to horizontal so that I could see without being seen.

I found the Indian in the viewfinder, panned to take in Orsa and his boys and then finally back to Akbar. He sat perfectly still, then made a small hand movement down by his side. I whipped back to the beginning of the line.

The Indian pulled a knife out from under his top, dark metal so that it wouldn’t glint in the sunlight, and moved quickly forward.

The sculpted white shirt worn by the nearest of Orsa’s men exploded with dark inky gore where the Indian’s knife punctured his kidneys once, twice, then three times. The man shrieked as he fell to the floor and the shirt began to soak up the blood and heat.

Orsa and the other men turned. It took them a moment to make sense of what they saw. Their colleague on the floor, the Indian with weapon still in hand, viscous fluid running down the blade.

I tilted my hat for a clearer view and off-camera saw Akbar rise to his feet and sidle towards the edge of the pier.

They moved as one to take the Indian, but paused when the fallen man pointed behind them. Orsa turned towards the beach just as Akbar hopped over the fence that ran the length of the walkway. Orsa shouted back to the two remaining men, one of them broke off to deal with the Indian.

The other joined Orsa and they clambered over the fence.

Akbar had the head start but the spot he’d chosen to make his exit placed him directly on a short shelf of rocks between the low level pier and the sea. He jumped the few feet down into the water and then tried to run. By the time he made it to the sand, the two men were on him. I glimpsed guns held close to the body at waist level. Akbar was theirs.

They marched him back towards the waiting vehicle.

The Indian and the third man circled each other, the Indian using the knife to keep his opponent at a safe distance.

When he saw Akbar in the Russian’s grip and the guns by their sides, he held his knife hand up to the other man in a side on, non-threatening gesture.

He’d worked out the odds. One brief head shake to his former boss and he took off towards the other end of the beach and a construction site where he could lose himself. Orsa’s man made to take after him but then remembered his injured colleague. He kneeled down and helped him up. They set off together towards the vehicle.

Every head on the beach followed their movements. None of them knew who these men were or why they were trying to kill each other. Orsa barked ‘Look away,’ at the horrified faces. They obeyed until they heard the clicks of car doors closing and the roar of the land cruiser speeding away.

I strolled nonchalantly over to where the man had been stabbed and shot a long lonely track of the drying blood to the point where it hit the kerb.

Akbar was gone, for good. He had to be. I couldn’t see how he’d talk himself free. If an unrecognizable corpse turned up in the desert in the next few days I’d know my plan had been successful.

As Schrödinger’s bastard child I’d expected to be responsible for at least one death before the day was out, either Orsa’s, Mani’s or my own. As it was Akbar my conscience was almost clear. But I left the scene in a hurry anyway. I didn’t fancy explaining to Khadim the recording of his uncle on my camera.

***

Empty hours kill me. I had the rest of the day to myself, nothing on the agenda until the morning. So I made myself busy.

I uploaded the day’s recordings from the camera and put two packages together, Yasmin, Tabitha, Armin, the American – the straight story where things were still clear and the job was just a job.

The voices of Faisal, Orsa and Akbar followed, along with the video of the fight and the pick up – the real story: How I’d just killed a guy.

AMBITIOUS JOURNALIST GOES TOO FAR.

BLACKMAIL JOURNALIST FRAMES MURDER.

Could I sell myself as a headline?

‘Wooooo.’ I said, blowing out the tension. I finished up for the day and opened a cold bottle of white from the fridge. I kicked open the mossie screen on the balcony and slumped in one of the two sun bleached easy chairs, where only a few nights before Yasmin and I had planned our futures.

The alcohol filtered pleasurably through my system, exaggerating my mood and increasing my need to talk to someone.

I flipped through the numbers on the phone’s cracked façade, stopped on Yasmin’s name and pressed call. Then hung up when I heard the Arabic message for an out of service number. I scrolled back up the list.

Verity. She didn’t need to buy me dinner; hopefully that worked both ways.

I stared at her number for a few seconds, working up the courage and a suitably self deprecating opening line.

Before I had a chance to figure one out the phone jumped in my hands. I jumped right back.

Unknown caller.

Seemed nobody wanted me to know who they were these days.

I let it ring. Most likely just another random Dubai wrong number, unless Yasmin had a new one.

‘David Bryson,’ I said, just in case she didn’t.

‘David,’ the voice from the answer phone message replied. ‘David, finally. How good to speak to you.’

It took a moment for the voice to register.

‘Dad?’

‘David,’ he sounded genuinely pleased.

Too bad. I cut the connection, uninterested in whatever he had to say next. I stared at the phone daring it to stay silent.

It rang again, the same unknown caller.

How the hell did he get my number?

I could handle extortion, blackmail and murder by proxy, but not my father. If I spoke to him he’d have me biting my own tail off before I knew what was going on. But that was how it used to be; things were different now weren’t they?

The noise stopped after two short rings, leaving the warm night air to sway the branches of the date palms beneath my balcony.

Then it started again. I pressed green.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Hello son,’ he said. I recoiled at the sound of his voice. Everything was just the same. If there were fewer miles between us I’d make him understand why. I’d escaped and I didn’t want him back in my life. No matter what.

‘Don’t ever contact me again, Dad,’ I said pouring a lifetime’s vitriol into that contemptuous word.

I cleared the call, stripped the phone, removed the battery and threw the sim card over the balcony and into the trees.

***

I drank deeply from the bottle and let the evening call to prayer silence my thoughts. Tonight’s muezzin was a shouter. His voice thundered through the pedestrian valleys between apartment blocks.

While some of them sang beautifully, enchanting the devout as they passed, this guy bullied. He shouted ‘Hallas!’ after each ‘Allah Akbar.’ Enough! Come to pray already.

Eventually he put a recording of a real singer into the tape deck and blasted it over the tannoy, making the evening beautiful again.

As I sat and listened to the pre-recorded call I realized there was something that I’d always done no matter what else happened in my life. No matter which skeletons rattled the cupboard door or where my arrows of outraged fortune ended up. I always got the story. It didn’t matter whether it was teen fluff or terrorism.

But I still didn’t have the big story. So I had to make a choice. Was I going to hunt down my narrative fix and jack up on the facts? Or go cold turkey on this whole living through other people’s lives world that I worked in?

Guidance from a fatherly voice was needed after all. I rummaged through my wallet until I found the sim card I’d used for my Scott Walker persona. It still had credit.

Holy Joe picked up on the third ring.

‘Hello?’

‘Hey Joe, it’s David Bryson here, it looks like this is my new number.’

‘David, how the devil are you?’

‘Good,’ I lied and then didn’t know what to say. Thankfully Joe did.

‘So, how’s our story coming?’

‘Great actually,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the photoset out with a couple of agencies along with some high minded body copy, it should be sellable in quite a few territories. It’ll get picked up no bother. I’ll let you know when things start happening.’

‘Well done,’ he said, and waited for me to say something else.

‘Joe,’ I said, ‘you’re a religious man right?’

‘Clearly.’

‘Would you also say you’re a moral man?’

‘I try to be.’

‘Good, because I need some moral advice, you game?’

‘Sure. I can’t guarantee you’ll like what I say.’

‘Doesn’t matter, I just need somebody who’s not going to pussy out on me when I give them something serious to think about.’

‘Not a problem, you know me.’

‘No sermons from the mount though, okay?’

‘The straight dope only David, fire away.’

I gathered my thoughts and filled my lungs.

‘I think somebody may have died today,’ I said, ‘because of me.’

‘An accident?’

‘Nope. I set things up so that one man would kill another.’

The line was silent. I filled the empty air.

‘The thing is, if I hadn’t, someone else would have died in his place, someone innocent. These guys were bad guys Joe, real nasty pieces of work.’

‘Did you kill him?’

‘No.’

‘There we are then.’

‘There we are what?’

‘You didn’t kill him, you did nothing wrong, if the man is dead by someone else’s hand, that man had a choice. He chose to kill him, not you.’

‘You believe that?’

‘No, that would mean Hitler was a good guy because it was his soldiers that did the deed, but you tell yourself whatever you need to get you through the day. Same as the rest of us.’

‘You’re some man of god Joe.’

‘Just take responsibility for your actions and live with them. Anything else is just an excuse.’

‘You sound like the guy.’

‘Who?’

‘The guy I set up. He liked to take responsibility for pain and suffering. He was a real shit.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Ah, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re right though. So if I get the guys who got him, does that make things level out? Balance my karma or whatever?’

‘Hardly,’ he said, laughing. ‘I’m a Christian David, not a new age fuzzy thinker.’

‘I was brought up a heathen; it’s all the same to me.’

‘Well then my heathen friend, you’ll just have to work it out for yourself.’

‘Yeah, okay, I get it. It’s not so easy without the rule book hey?’

‘Very true.’

‘Okay Joe, thanks for your time. I do appreciate it.’

‘Anytime David. Take care now.’

‘I’ll try.’

Work it out for myself. Okay, well, that made more sense than reading Socrates expecting to find ethical considerations on speed dating.

I knew what I wanted to do. But with Akbar gone so was my inside track. I needed someone to fill in the blanks, corroboration. A second source.

I had a story to finish.

The speaker on stage smiled with the smug satisfaction of a man about to become far richer than he already was. James Lawrence, the banker with a Napoleon complex and a wife who hated him had dark features, dark eyes and faint traces of bruising across the bridge of his nose. A nose I’d broken. The injured skin was disguised beneath a layer of deep brown foundation that matched his salesman’s tan.