The Long Shadow (50 page)

When the last light of the motorway had disappeared behind a ridge, darkness closed around them. Muhammad wound his window all the way up, as if he wanted to shut it out.

‘Is it far?’ Annika asked, wondering if it would have been better to wait until morning before setting out for the farm.

‘No,’ he said, ‘but the road is bad. You have to be careful with the car.’

She leaned back in the seat and stared into the darkness. She could see nothing but the vague outline of her face reflected in the window.

What had made David come here, to this godforsaken part of the world? Had he been shaken about in bad cars on even worse roads to get out to some little farm in the Moroccan outback? Had Suzette come this way recently?

Suddenly a scene from a film popped into her head,
La Vie en Rose
, which she’d seen at the cinema with Julia a few months ago. The boxer, Marcel, is sitting with Edith Piaf in a restaurant in New York, telling her about the pig farm he owns in Morocco. His wife looks after it while he travels the world, boxing and sleeping with French singers.

She shut her eyes and let herself be shaken and jolted by the potholes and stones. Men go out into the world while their wives stay at home to feed the pigs. She leaned her head back and fell asleep.

‘Madame? Madame! We’re here!’

She sat up with a jerk. The driver had turned to face her. He looked tired. It was half past eight. They had been driving for two hours. She rubbed her eyes, getting mascara on her knuckles.

The night was as impenetrably pitch-black as before, but above a hill to her right something was brightly lit.

A bright yellow spaceship was hovering against the sky.

‘What’s that?’ she said, staring up at it.

‘That’s the farm.’

‘That thing?’

She wound down her window. The wind blew into the car, bringing with it sand and pollen, and blowing her hair about. ‘Can you drive closer?’

‘Right up to it?’

‘Yes, please.’

Muhammad put the car into gear and slowly began to drive the last stretch towards the farm.

Annika gaped, fascinated, at the bizarre sight in front of her.

Of course, it wasn’t a spaceship. It was a yellow wall that was several metres high, enclosing a very large area, all brightly illuminated by powerful halogen floodlights.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked dubiously. She’d been expecting a little farm with a few sheep and a couple of horses.

‘This is the farm where Fatima lives, according to the
muqaddam
.’

‘Christ,’ Annika said.

The car stopped with a slight jolt in front of a large grey iron gate. The wall was crowned with a spiral of thick barbed wire. The floodlights were mounted along the top every ten metres, and two shone down directly on the gate. She could see an entry-phone and a surveillance camera. It looked more like Kumla Prison than a farm.

‘Where exactly are we?’ she asked.

‘Between Souk el Had el Rharbia and Souk Trine de Sidi el Yamani.’

‘Hmm,’ Annika said. ‘Are there any other houses nearby?’

‘No other houses. An hour ago we passed a little village. There might be more houses in other directions.’

‘How far are we from Asilah?’

‘Forty kilometres, maybe a bit more.’

‘Up in the mountains?’

‘Up in the mountains, but not too high. Good farmland in Asilah.’

She took a deep breath and opened the door. She’d come all this way so the least she could do was find out if anyone was at home.

The driver cleared his throat. She paused.

Payment, of course.

She sat down again in the back seat, and Muhammad switched on the little light in the roof so she could find her purse. She dug it out of her bag and pulled out three twenty-euro notes.

‘Don’t have any change,’ he said quickly.

She smiled at him. ‘It’s a tip,’ she said. ‘Can you wait until you see that I’ve been let in?’

He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Of course.’

She got out of the car, hung her bag on her shoulder, carefully closed the door and turned to the wall.

Muhammad had stopped ten metres or so from the gate. She started walking. The track sloped upwards, and the surface was poor. She blinked and squinted under the floodlights, then heard something buzz and saw the surveillance camera zoom in on her.

She reached the gate. It was shiny, as if it had just been smartened up with gloss paint. She touched the smooth surface gingerly with a finger. Then she went to the entry-phone and pressed the button next to it.

Ten seconds passed.

She was about to press it again when the speaker crackled. ‘
Oui?
’

She cleared her throat quietly and licked her lips, trying to summon the French she had learned at school. ‘
Je m’appelle Annika Bengtzon. Je voudrais parler avec Fatima.
’

The speaker clicked, then was silent.

She stood by the wall, increasingly aware of the sound of her own breathing. The floodlights hummed. In the bushes, just out of reach of the lights, she could hear animals and the wind.

She looked over her shoulder. The taxi was still there.

Muhammad met her gaze. ‘Problem?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think so.’

‘Do you want a lift back to Tangier? Fifty euros.’

You’ve got to drive back anyway, Annika thought, pressing the button by the phone again.

The speaker crackled into life at once this time. ‘
Oui?
’ More annoyed.

‘
Je veux parler avec Suzette aussi
.’ I want to speak to Suzette as well.

The speaker hissed and crackled: they hadn’t switched it off.

‘
Je sais qu’elle est ici
.’ I know she’s here.

‘Maybe they’ve gone to bed?’ Muhammad said.

Hardly, Annika thought, looking up at the surveillance camera. They were still up: there was no doubt whatever about that.

The speaker clicked and was silent.

‘I need to go now. Long way to Tangier.’

Annika hesitated. Apart from the rustling in the bushes, there was nothing but silence.

Maybe it would be as well to drive back and try again in the morning, in daylight.

She turned to walk back to the taxi, but at that moment there was a clang from the wall and the gate started to open. Another floodlight became visible through the gap, shining right into her eyes and forcing her to put a hand in front of her face. She squinted and waited, then held her breath and walked through the gap in the gate. At once it began to close. She was seized by sheer panic. Then there was a loud click as the lock snapped shut and there was no longer any point in thinking about retreating.

The floodlight shining in her face went out. She blinked against the darkness, still blind from the bright light. She heard Muhammad start his taxi, then turn round and drive off.

Two men were standing in front of her. One was in his fifties, the other a boy in his late teens. They were both armed with some sort of automatic weapon. The guns were pointing straight at her.

She took a step back, her sight still affected by the floodlight. She could see various versions of it floating
in front of her vision as pink balls of light. She tried to blink them away and see what was behind them. A yard, she thought. She was standing on gravel.

‘
Pardon
,’ she said. ‘
Je ne veux pas causer des problèmes
.’

The older man said something to the younger one in Arabic. The boy came over to her and pointed at her bag with his gun. ‘
Laissez le sac
.’

She put it on the ground.

‘
Donnez-le moi
.’

She pushed it towards him with her foot.

The older man took a step closer to her as the boy bent down and tipped the contents out onto the gravel. He poked through them with the barrel of his gun. Annika wondered if the lens of the camera would survive.

‘
Venez par ici
,’ the older man said, pointing with his gun. He wanted her to go with him. The boy gathered her things back into her bag and slung it over his shoulder. She wasn’t getting it back.

She took a few cautious steps forward, now able to make out the shapes of buildings and vehicles. As she had assumed, she was walking across a large, walled yard. There were buildings in two directions, in front of her and off to the left. She looked up at the building in front and gasped. It was a residential house, and it was huge. Thirty metres long, three storeys high, with balustrades and balconies on both top floors. There were lights on in several of the upper windows, but they were faint, as though filtered through heavy curtains. A small lantern glowed above the door on the ground floor.

The older man was walking in front of her, and the young lad behind. It looked as if they were heading for the illuminated door.

The man knocked lightly and it opened, like a black
hole. ‘
Entrez
,’ the man said, gesturing with his gun again.

She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears and gulped hard. Then she stepped through the door. The darkness was solid but the air light. She was in a large hall, a big, open space.

‘
À droite
.’

She had to think for a moment, then turned right.

A door opened in front of her. She got a light shove in the back and stumbled into a room containing a desk and an old chair.

‘
Attendez ici.
’

The door closed behind her. She heard a key turn in the lock.

She breathed out. At least it wasn’t pitch-black in here. A small table-lamp was shining on the desk.

There had to be someone here called Fatima, or they wouldn’t have let her in. And as soon as she had mentioned Suzette’s name the gate had opened.

She took a few steps to a window hidden behind closed curtains. She pushed one aside to look out, but couldn’t see anything. It took her a few seconds to realize that there were closed shutters on the outside.

Then she heard a rattle from the lock. She let go of the curtain as if she’d burned her hand and quickly went back to the spot in the middle of the room where the armed man had left her.

A woman in her fifties wearing traditional black clothing came into the room. She said something into the hall and closed the door behind her. Then she turned towards Annika. She was tall, almost one metre eighty, had neatly made-up black eyes and large rings on her fingers. ‘You wanted to talk to me?’ she said in perfect Oxford English.

‘Are you Fatima?’ Annika asked.

‘I’m Fatima.’

‘My name is Annika Bengtzon,’ Annika said. ‘I’m from Sweden. I work for a newspaper there, called—’

‘I know who you are.’ Fatima walked round the desk and sat down on the old chair. ‘Why have you come?’ Her eyes showed that she was used to giving orders.

Annika had to make a real effort to stand her ground and not back away. At least I’m in the right place. She knows who I am. So she also knows what I do. ‘I’m a journalist,’ she said. ‘I want answers to some questions.’

Fatima’s face didn’t move a muscle. ‘Why would I answer your questions?’

‘Why not? If you have nothing to hide?’

Fatima looked at her intently for a whole minute. ‘Maybe you can give
me
some answers,’ she eventually said.

‘Me?’ Annika said. ‘What about?’

‘Where’s Filip?’

Annika stared at her. ‘Filip?’ she said. ‘Filip Andersson?’

Fatima gave a curt nod.

Annika cleared her throat. It was no secret that she’d attended the press conference after his release. She had nothing to lose by answering. ‘He was released from Kumla Prison yesterday morning. I saw him at his lawyer’s office on Skeppsbron in Stockholm yesterday, just before lunchtime. I haven’t seen him since then.’ She paused. ‘I have no idea where he is now.’

‘What time did you see him in Stockholm?’

Annika thought for a moment. ‘Approximately a quarter to twelve,’ she said.

‘Does he have a passport?’

‘A passport?’ Were prisoners allowed passports? She’d once written an article about a prisoner who hadn’t been allowed to attend his mother’s funeral in Scotland. The young man had been desperate, but the rules
were inflexible. His passport had been seized when he had gone inside, and that applied to anyone who was sentenced to serve twelve months or more. See paragraph twelve of the Passport Act. It was out of the question that anyone sentenced to life would have a passport. And getting a new passport took five working days, she knew that, because she had tried to get the process speeded up herself a few years ago and failed. He might be able to get hold of a provisional travel document out at Arlanda – Anne Snapphane had managed to do that once when she was going on a charter holiday to Turkey.

She shook her head. ‘Not an ordinary passport,’ she said. ‘Possible a provisional one.’

‘Is Sweden part of the Schengen Agreement?’

Annika nodded.

‘So he can travel within Europe on a national ID card?’

She nodded again.

Fatima got up from the chair, went to the door, opened it and said something in Arabic. Then she closed the door again. ‘Do you know him?’ she asked. ‘You know what sort of man he is?’

Annika hid her finger behind her back. ‘I interviewed him once, but I don’t know him.’

Fatima sat down behind the desk again.

‘I’ve answered several questions now,’ Annika said. ‘Can I ask one in return?’

Fatima didn’t move. Annika took that as a yes. ‘Is Suzette here?’

The woman didn’t even blink. ‘What makes you think she’d be here?’

The woman didn’t ask who Suzette was. Which meant that she had to know.

Annika thought hard about her answer. She couldn’t let on that Suzette had managed to write an email
because that would get her into trouble. ‘Suzette has a very good friend called Amira. She’s told her friends about her, it’s no great secret. Amira lives on a farm with horses outside Asilah. If you know who I am, then you know that I write articles. I’ve written about Suzette. I’ve was very affected by what’s happened to her. I wanted to find her.’

There was a knock on the door, and Fatima went to open it. Annika heard voices muttering in Arabic. Fatima stepped outside and closed the door.