The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (24 page)

“What happened to your face?”

“My face?” ZeeZee’s fingers came up to caress the slight graze on his cheek, the understated scar across his chin and the dark and swollen eye that removing his shades had suddenly revealed. “I came off my bike.”

“Did you?” Hu San stood up and walked the length of the table. She didn’t even make the boy come to her. Gripping ZeeZee’s chin between her first finger and thumb, she twisted his face towards the light, only to drop her hand as pearls of blood oozed between the butterflies.

“You came off your bike?”

The boy nodded. “Sure. I had supper with a friend, drank too much and slid the Suzuki on my way home. These things happen…”

“Is the bike damaged?”

“No.” ZeeZee shook his head. “Like me, there’s hardly a scratch.”

Hu San opened her mouth to answer but whatever she intended to say was stopped by a knock on the door.

“What…”

A waitress stuck her head nervously round the doorway. Her cheeks had gone red before she’d even stepped into the crowded room. In her hands was a tray. “I’m sorry, Madame. It’s the tea and toast that
—”

“Over here,” indicated ZeeZee, flipping up one hand.

The girl walked over to where ZeeZee sat at one end of the table and silently put down the tray, leaving just as quietly. ZeeZee knew that everyone was watching him, especially Hu San. That was why he made sure his fingers didn’t shake as he carefully poured the tiniest splash of milk into his cup and followed it with Earl Grey. Then, very slowly, he started to butter his toast.

The Japanese weren’t the only people who could conduct a tea ceremony.

CHAPTER 32

8th July

“Okay,” promised Raf. “Everything’s okay.”

“No,” said Hani crossly. “It’s not. How can it be?”

It was true that Madame Mila had finally gone, taking with her two uniformed policewomen and the court order she’d been trying to wave in Raf’s face. But it had taken threats to get rid of her, even if they were largely unspoken and involved not her life but her career.

“You can’t win,” Raf had said as he’d entered the courtyard and stepped between a furious Madame Mila and Hamzah’s Taureg foreman who was resolutely blocking her way.

“Can’t I?”

“No,” said Raf. “You can’t.” Leaning forward, he lifted the RayBans from her nose and smiled as the magistrate-coroner blinked in the sudden glare. “And before you try you should make sure you understand who you’re dealing with.”

“Yes. I know,” she said. “You’re a pashazade.” The anger in her voice was cut with contempt that Raf could pull rank quite that crudely.

“No,” said Raf, thinking of the fox. “I mean… Who am I? What do I do? Why am I here…?” He paused. “I suggest you have one of your pet policewomen call the precinct to find out.”

At a nod from her boss, the nearest officer flicked a switch on her belt and tapped a throat mike twice with her finger. Raf didn’t hear the question or answer but he saw the woman’s mouth tighten. Then she leaned across to whisper bad news into Madame Mila’s ear.

By now half the precinct would be claiming they’d known he was special forces all along. While a couple of the more out-and-out fantasists would be remembering when they’d met him before. Their lies turned to truth by simple unquestioning repetition. Of course, it just meant if someone did decide to come after him they’d come carrying heavier guns…

After Madame Mila left, Raf rode the lift up to the haremlek, intending to ask Hani where she wanted to live, since she didn’t want to live with Lady Jalila and her other aunt was dead. He also intended to suggest that Donna went with Hani to wherever it was. He’d keep Khartoum on to run the madersa. The old man knew which souk sold what and, besides, Raf needed someone else around. The ramshackle building was far too big for one man to live in on his own, even someone as antisocial as Raf.

By the time Raf reached Hani’s door he’d amended his plan to asking Lady Jalila for advice on good schools. There were worse places to live than away from home; and, in Hani’s case, boarding was probably her best option. Particularly as the only realistic alternative Raf could think of involved sending her to his father in Tunis or trying to find her a foster home.

“And the Djinn who was of the Only True Faith looked closely at the child asleep on the golden bed and marvelled at the loveliness of her hair that was like midnight spun into thread. And the cloth on which she lay was embroidered with pearls like tears and her nightdress was as white as moonlit clouds.”

Hani hiccupped and her screen stopped recording. Carbon dioxide cured hiccups, or so Hani had been told, so she exhaled into her cupped hands and breathed in again, inhaling cinnamon-scented breath. She didn’t really want to tell Ali-Din a story but she’d finished
Golden Road III
for the second time and she was bored. Or rather, the afternoon dragged more slowly than ever if she left it unfilled. And talking to herself kept the hurt at bay, mostly.

Hani clapped to get the computer’s attention.

“And when the Djinn saw her, he unfolded his mighty wings, saying ‘Glory to the True God. This is a creature from paradise.’ And he flew heavenwards until he met the Ifritah and said, ‘Marvel at the poor child who sleeps here in innocence. For you will see none more brave…’”

On the plate beside Hani’s screen were a few cake crumbs, not really enough to bother with but Hani scooped them up crossly, squeezed them into a sticky mass and then pushed them into her mouth. She had heard the lift whine noisily as its wire dragged over the ungreased wheel at the top of the shaft. Aunt Nafisa had promised to get the lifts serviced. That was another thing which wouldn’t come true.

“And the Ifritah spiralled down from the star-studded firmament, alighting on the balcony of a marble palace in old Cairo and did as the Djinn bade. And, Glory to the True God, the child who slept in innocence in the golden bed was every bit as beautiful in loveliness as the tattered beggar boy asleep in the old graveyard by the grave of his father…”

Hani knew he was there, but she didn’t stop telling her story and she didn’t look round. To do so would be to admit that a man had entered the haremlek. And that was something that never happened. So, instead, she kept telling her story to Ali-Din and the puppy told it secretly to her screen, which wrote it down in flowing letters, with ornate calligraphy for the names of God and less ornate but still beautiful capitals for the names of humans, locations, ifrits and djinns. She’d chosen the lettering herself from a database at the Library. Accessing the script had been easy; she’d just pretended to be a professor of literature from Cairo University. Cairo was Hani’s favourite city. She’d never been there, but in
The Arabian Nights
that was where the most beautiful girl ever born was discovered, sleeping, by a djinn.

Lady Nafisa hadn’t liked Ali-Din and she hadn’t liked
The Arabian Nights.
But then, Lady Nafisa was dead. So that showed what
she
knew.

“Hani.”

Raf could have told her a story of his own. Maybe he would, one day. Maybe soon. On the red-tiled floor, beside the girl’s small chair, a robot dog sat in what looked like a puddle of spilt tea. The dog was silver, leather and tattered felt, with floppy plastic ears and a long tail that ended in a blue glass button. Instead of eyes the dog had a black plate stretched over the top third of its head like a motorbike visor, behind which were twin video cameras.

What the dog saw she saw, in a tiny window open on one corner of her screen.

“Ali-Din’s made another mess,” Raf said quietly.

Hani’s eyes slid to the rag dog and she nodded doubtfully.

“He’s not real.”

“I can see that,” said Raf. “But then, nor is my fox.”

The glance Hani flicked at her screen was to check she wasn’t dealing with a complete madman.
Been there,
thought Raf.
Felt that…
“We need to talk,” he said apologetically.

It took an effort, but Hani made herself turn round; made herself wait until she had Raf’s whole attention; made herself ask the question, even though she already knew the answer…“You’re going to send me away, aren’t you?” Her words were little more than a whisper.

“Hani, I can’t…”

“Knew it.” She almost stamped in frustration. “I can help here. I won’t get in the way.”

“It’s not about—”

The girl didn’t let him finish that sentence, either. She wasn’t interested in his reasons any more than Raf would have been if he’d been her: adults could excuse anything. Even things they didn’t really believe in. They both knew that.

“Why, then?”

“Because…” He didn’t have a
because.
Or, rather, he had dozens, from local tradition to his own convenience, all of which he could justify, in none of which he actually believed. But then, believing in things got you hurt. And if the thing you believed in was a person, that could hurt you worse.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said. Remembering that that was what adults had said to him.

Next morning was Friday and the city was shut. Gathered together in the early-morning cool of the kitchen, Khartoum, Raf, Donna and Hani ate breakfast, before Raf and Hani started work cleaning up the rubble that Hamzah’s builders had left behind. Hani insisted on cooking and gave Raf a plate piled high with flat bread and sticky chunks of comb honey. Her own she left empty except for a peach and a handful of grapes.

Only when Raf had finished did Hani pile up the dishes in the sink. After that, she made a second bodun of java, even though Khartoum and Donna drank only mint tea and Raf insisted he was wired enough already. Then she went to fetch a broom, the room echoing to her footsteps.

Outside the kitchen window Rue Sherif was almost empty, missing its usual heavy grind of traffic. And the few taxis that travelled moved unhindered along almost deserted roads that saw the trams stilled and most shops locked tight. Loudspeakers everywhere were calling the faithful to prayer, from minarets dotted like spindly rockets across the humid city. Raf ignored them.

“Isk wasn’t always this quiet,” said Hani. She spoke with the absolute certainty of someone aged nine. “But it all changed last year. Now you aren’t allowed to drive unless you’re going to the mosque.” She carefully swept a pile of crumbs from under the table into a plastic dustpan and, just as carefully, tipped the pan into a metal dustbin. Which was fine, except that blowback sent a swirl of dust and crumbs up into the girl’s face and started her sneezing. “Not funny,” she said fiercely.

All of the major rubble from the hall had already been removed by Hamzah’s men who’d left behind only dust, grit, fist-sized chunks of brick and the fine white bones of dead mice and an unlucky kitten. No treasure, but Hani was getting to grips with her disappointment.

The wooden double door on Rue Sherif now opened onto a newly revealed entrance area, tiled in black. To right and left, running round the edge of the hall, an elegant split staircase hugged the wall, alabaster balustrades rising around its edge, the ever-increasing gap between floor and stairs filled in with what looked like a smooth fall of ice that turned out to be white marble.

The actual walls were bare, stripped of whatever paintings, tapestries and hangings had originally cut the monochrome severity of the black floor and white staircase.

The style was Third Empire, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons why it had been bricked away. At a time when Iskandryia’s Nazrani contingent had been building ornate villas in the High Moorish style, Ottoman families were having their own ancient houses demolished to be replaced with buildings better suited to Faubourg St Germain. Two hundred years later both communities were still embarrassed by their earlier enthusiasm. The hall might be the only part of the Madersa al-Mansur to be reworked in Third Empire style, but its European influences would have been enough of an embarrassment to Lady Nafisa for her to have it bricked away. But then, this was a woman whose outward acceptance of
inshallah,
the surrender to God’s command had been such that she avoided using the future tense in public, because it presumed on the will of God…

At the top of the marble stairs, Hamzah’s builders had unbricked another archway, one that led to an alcove. Without being asked, they’d demolished a wall between that alcove and the
qaa.
Of Lady Nafisa’s smoked-glass office nothing remained but a bad memory.

Just how Hamzah’s team had done the work they had in the brief time they’d taken was beyond Raf. All the same he was grateful, and looking round at the new entrance, the rebuilt
qaa
and the replacement mashrabiya he felt more at home than he’d felt…

Forever
was the answer, if he was honest. And Raf kept on feeling right at home, even when someone rapped with a cane on his new front door and a tall, instantly recognizable man strode in. Or, at least, strode as much as anyone could with a damaged leg and a walking stick. The resurrected hall was swallowed in a single ironic glance.

“You’ve wasted no time.”

Behind General Saeed Koenig Pasha walked Lady Jalila, a scarf wrapped demurely round her hair. Then came two bodyguards from the General’s personal cadre who silently took up positions either side of the front door. The General’s face had that stony-eyed glare usually found only on statues. His skin was dark, not from the sun but from heritability and his cheeks were hollowed out with age and lack of sleep. Piercing eyes examined Raf from under heavy brows.

“You and I need to talk,” he told Raf, his gaze sweeping the hall until it reached Khartoum. “Leave us,” the General ordered. “And take the child with you.”

He pivoted round to face Raf, malacca cane thrust hard on the floor. “I take it this is the way up?” The tiles were crossed in a clicking of walking stick and boot-heels before Raf even had time to answer.