Strangers (32 page)

When she opened the door to him, Roisin saw that Damien still looked drained and exhausted. The only improvement his visit to the hospital had made was that the hectic flush had gone from his face and his eyes were clear. ‘You should be resting,’ she said.

He grimaced as if he’d heard this already. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said.

‘Amy–she called me, last night. Damien, what happened?’

He closed his eyes and seemed to be marshalling his resources. When he spoke again, his voice was stronger. ‘Nazarian sent his men after her. He wanted answers to questions that Amy wasn’t prepared to give. But they got one bit of information out of her–that she was coming here.’

She looked out of the window to the place where the white van had been. ‘They were watching the flat,’ she said. ‘They saw me with the baby.’

‘They were watching me, as well. They were waiting for Amy to get in touch.’ He shook his head. ‘I was stupid. Careless.’

‘What were they looking for?’ She knew the answer, but she didn’t understand the way it had happened.

‘Yasmin’s baby. Nazarian knew that Amy had taken Yasmin’s baby.’ He told her the story as Yasmin had told it to him. ‘Once Amy had got the baby safely hidden away, she left Saudi via the Bahrain causeway and flew to Europe. Everyone thought she’d already left–even me. It was vital that no one suspected her, because that would put the focus back on Yasmin. She had to find a job, get a house, somewhere Yasmin could bring the baby once she managed to get out. Only she reckoned without Nazarian. One of his people saw her at the hospital the day the baby vanished.’

‘Where is the baby? Where did Amy take him?’

He shook his head. ‘Yasmin wouldn’t tell me. To be honest, I don’t want to know. He’ll be somewhere Yasmin can get him, when she leaves.’

‘How can she have him with her? Her father would find out–and her husband. Even if she leaves…’ Nazarian had had Amy followed from Riyadh to Newcastle to carry out his revenge.

‘She’s with Nazarian now. Of her limited choices, he’s the best. She’s going to divorce Majid; after this, her father won’t be in a position to stop her. Once she’s divorced, she can get her father’s permission to leave the country. I don’t know how
she’ll get the baby out. But Amy must have thought of a way.’

‘And Joe? How did Joe…?’ She could hardly bear to ask the question. This was the bit she dreaded hearing, and the bit that she had to hear.

‘He knew there was something wrong. He spotted an anomaly in the blood tests. I’ve seen his report–someone e-mailed me a copy. According to the test results, the sick child was rhesus negative. Yasmin was rhesus positive. It should have been flagged up–rhesus positive mother, rhesus negative father–potential for trouble. But it wasn’t. So he checked again, and that’s when he saw that Majid was rhesus positive as well. He couldn’t have been the father of that child. Joe had no way of knowing that the blood samples had been switched. They showed him the truth, but for the wrong reasons. I asked at the hospital that afternoon, and the pathology technician indicated that there was something missing from the medical records. I think your husband must have taken something out until he had a chance to think about it. But once the child went missing, then all the information had to go back.’

She could remember Joe in the car, looking worried, saying,
there’s something I should
…and then,
This fucking country. I don’t know what to do
. He had been worried that he’d be forced to reveal something that would convict a Saudi woman of adultery and place her in the hands of the Mutawa’ah. ‘And Nazarian killed him? For that?’

Damien, watching her face, wished he could give different answers. ‘It wasn’t Nazarian, Roisin. And it wasn’t for that. Majid should never have been at the hospital that night. He wasn’t allowed to investigate the kidnapping of his own child. But he went there anyway. He couldn’t stay away. He was already suspicious that the hospital had got something wrong. He thought they’d made a fatal error and were trying to cover it up. He went to the labs to ask some questions about the tests and he found your husband, apparently altering the records, destroying the evidence–as far as Majid was concerned–of a mistake that had killed his son.’

Yasmin had told him that Majid had come back late the night of Joe Massey’s death. He had told her that their son was dead, but the killer had been brought to justice. And then he had refused to tell her any more and had forbidden her to leave the house or to contact anyone. He had paid no attention to the rumours that were starting to circulate about the child’s paternity. He knew those records were nothing to do with the child he thought was his. Yasmin had been under virtual house arrest until her father’s return. All she had was the mobile phone Amy had given her in secret. She had hardly dared to use it.

‘Majid assumed his son had died, and your husband was responsible. He thought the “abduction” was part of a cover-up and he knew that a Westerner would never pay what he saw as the
appropriate price for the fatal error. He took Joe to the desert. I don’t know what story he used, or how he persuaded him. I don’t know why he went there. It may just have been a suitably isolated place, or he may have wanted to question him, to get the story out of him. Then he killed him.’

Her voice shook as she spoke. ‘Mad. He must have been mad. Crazy. And all Joe was doing was trying to protect Yasmin. We were so close to leaving. We were going to go in a few weeks. Oh, God. There was no
need.’
The tears were streaming down her face. He hadn’t seen her cry for her dead husband before. He touched her hair, and when she didn’t resist, he pulled her against him and held her. He was praying to the gods he didn’t believe in that she wouldn’t ask him the questions he didn’t want to answer.

He didn’t want to share his last piece of knowledge with her. Yasmin hadn’t challenged or accused her husband, and would never give evidence against him. By killing Joe Massey, he had removed the last witness to a story that would be fatal to her if it got out while she was still in Saudi. He didn’t blame her. She had her child to protect.

And Majid hadn’t been crazy. He hadn’t killed in a fit of rage or insanity. He had executed Joe Massey with clinical precision, with two deliberate cuts to the throat. The first one had disabled him, a cut that had opened the artery that carries the
blood to the head. The second cut had opened the larynx and severed the tongue, leaving him speechless and choking as his lungs flooded with his own blood.

And then he had left Joe Massey to die.

Roisin said goodbye to Damien at the station. He’d decided to go back. He was taking the Heathrow Express and catching the afternoon flight to Riyadh.

Outside, the day had the freshness of early spring. She walked through the backstreets of Marylebone and through the shabby grandeur of Bloomsbury, following the route that she and Joe had always used when they walked back to the flat together. She knew she would never see him again, that the part of her life that belonged to him was over, but she felt as though he was walking beside her.

Riyadh, March 2005

Damien slipped back into the Kingdom quietly. He didn’t tell anyone he was coming, but the house greeted him like an old friend, the cool shade welcoming him home. Rai was waiting with his calm smile. ‘Welcome back,’ he said.

Damien wandered through rooms veiled behind
the
mashrabiyaat
to the cool dimness of the hallway. He stood on the stone flags, remembering the day that Amy had called here, slipping through the door and into his arms, the blue of her dress and the vividness of her hair brilliant against the monochrome shadows.

And later, her hair had splashed across his pillow like blood.

Then he went back upstairs and waited for the visitor he knew would shortly arrive. Just after eight, the bell jangled. He heard the sound of the door opening and checked to make sure he had what was needed to hand.

He heard feet moving heavily on the stairs. The door swung open. Arshak Nazarian stood there.

‘Nazarian,’ Damien said.

The other man’s gaze travelled round the room. After a moment’s hesitation, he came through the door and sat down in the chair opposite Damien’s. ‘You might have been wiser to stay away,’ he said without ceremony.

Damien shrugged. ‘So might you. They tried to kill you, remember?’ The car bomb, indiscriminate though it might have been, had been targeted at Nazarian.

Nazarian dismissed this irritably. ‘It was just a warning. A business misunderstanding.’

‘They thought you were reneging,’ Damien said. ‘They’d taken a woman out of the country for you on a no-questions-asked basis, and suddenly there was your daughter stirring things up.’

‘As I said, a misunderstanding.’

A stab of anger pushed Damien into speaking. ‘Did you know that she died, the girl you gave them? She drowned herself in the Thames.’

‘I’m not responsible for what people choose to do, O’Neill. You of all people should realize that.’ He waited for a moment to see if Damien would respond. ‘Your wife. She committed suicide after you left her, am I right?’

It was the threat Catherine had held over him for the duration of their marriage, the threat she had carried out once he had gone. ‘Yes. She did.’

‘So you understand.’ He met Damien’s gaze. ‘I had no plans for Amy Seymour to be killed. I just wanted my grandson back.’

‘But she didn’t have him.’

Nazarian’s face darkened. ‘No.’

‘Do you plan to stay?’ The bomb had been the second attempt on Nazarian’s life.

‘I thought I might move to Dubai,’ Nazarian said after a pause. ‘I have some business interests there.’

‘And your daughter?’

‘She will come with me. She has left her husband. They’re getting a divorce.’ Once the divorce was through, Majid would no longer have control over Yasmin’s movements. That would pass to her father.

Damien could see the calculation in Nazarian’s eyes, the expression that said he was coming to a decision. He rested his fingers on the book in his lap and saw Nazarian’s gaze follow his hand.
‘I have no desire to do anything that might harm your daughter,’ he said.

There was a beat of silence, then Nazarian stood up. ‘In that case I’ll show myself out,’ he said abruptly.

Damien remained seated and waited as the footsteps went down the stairs. He listened for the sound of the door opening, then swinging shut. He heard someone whistling from the kitchen. Rai. Nazarian had left. He let out the breath he hadn’t been aware that he was holding, and took his hand off the gun that was hidden under his book.

There was still an account outstanding for Amy, but neither of them was due to pay it today.

He waited a fortnight before he packed his car for a night’s camping in the desert. He drove west out of the city towards the Tuwayq escarpment, past the place where Joe Massey had been left to bleed to death beside the road. He pitched his tent close to the rocks that were etched darkly against the night sky, and sat in the entrance to his tent, watching the stars that blazed above him in indifferent glory.

It made me think about that night in the desert. Do you remember?

Amy, why would I forget?

After all of this, do you still
…?

Love you? Of course
.

Always
.

The next morning, he packed his things away before the sun rose. No one had passed him in
the night, no one had come near him. He drove along the unmade track, and took the main road through Duruma. Then he turned south towards the small town of al-Bakri.

If it seems the right thing to do
, Amy had said. She had worked with the women of these villages, run the clinics, helped them with their health problems and their children’s health problems, and possibly given them more discreet help when she could, as it was needed, as it was asked for. Maybe the women would help him.

The clinic was housed in a small concrete building on the edge of the town. It was staffed by a heavily veiled woman. ‘I came to tell you about Amy Seymour,’ he said.

‘We have been informed,’ the woman replied with the brusqueness that was often mistaken for impoliteness by Westerners.

‘May I ask who…?’

‘By the English teacher,’ the woman said.

The conversation was over. Damien left the building and went back to his car.
The English teacher
. There was a small school attached to the clinic where women could gain skills in basic literacy and numeracy, and for some, there were lessons in other languages as well. The English teacher…she could be anyone. An ex-pat. A local. A trainee from the university. Once or twice a week, the drivers brought women from the city to teach the women of the villages.

The English teacher.

Yasmin? Now she was with Nazarian, she would be able to work again.

He sat behind the wheel of his car, wondering if there was anything else he needed to do. Amy’s request had been cryptic, and may have meant no more than she said.

As he sat there, watching the sharp-edged shadows move with the sun’s progress, he saw the woman he had spoken to come to the door of the clinic. She stood, half in the entrance, her veiled figure merging with the blackness. In her arms, she held a baby. As Damien watched, she lifted the baby, holding him up as if she was showing him the silent square.

Damien saw the mop of chestnut hair and the dark eyes.

I looked at him and I saw Haroun looking back at me
.

One day soon, Yasmin would be able to reclaim her son and take him out of the country. There was no future for them together here. He wondered how she would do it–across the causeway into Bahrain? Across the vast and barely patrolled borders where the traffickers operate? Risk the hazards of false papers and fly out? He had offered her his help, if she needed it. But she was Amy’s sister. She was more resourceful than she knew.

He nodded his thanks to the woman, and put the car in gear.

Manly, Sydney, Australia, February 2006

The Australian summer was warm, but caused no difficulty to someone used to the extremes of Riyadh. Damien strolled along the Corso that linked the cove with the beach. The street was wide and bright, with vivid colours and signs advertising juice bars and ice cream. The people strolling past were lithe, tanned and lightly dressed.

He could see the café ahead of him. White tables filled the centre of the street, the sea with its breaking surf forming a backdrop. He could see the bright colours of the surfers as they broke through the waves.

And she was there. They’d met in one kingdom, come together briefly in another, and now they were meeting again in the far south. It was just for a few days, the fulfilment of an old promise. Their lives had gone in different directions since the last time he’d seen her in the grey of a London morning.
She was sitting at a table, turned away from him. One hand was stretched out towards…His feet slowed as realization grew. She was rocking a pram gently, looking out to sea, her chin resting on one hand.

Roisin.

He could see the child as he came closer. A baby with fair hair was staring at her with an unswerving gaze. As he watched, Roisin’s head turned and she smiled down at the child who waved its hands and laughed in response.

To his inexpert eye, the baby looked about four or five months old. He began to do the sums, then stopped himself. If Roisin had anything to tell him, then she would. He came up behind her, interrupting her reverie. ‘Roisin,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her.

For a moment, the blue sea was the sea off the coast of Jeddah, and the sand was the endless desert where he and Amy had been together. It was as if he could see her, waving to him from a distant shore, as if she was telling him that somewhere in the world, there was a future.

And still the desert kingdom called him.