Third Voice (21 page)

‘It would mean a great deal for my thesis if he’d be willing to do it,’ she said.

Thorhed nodded and gently tugged on his plait.

‘How long would it take?’

‘An hour maybe? Any time, any place. Well, near Stockholm, not Marrakech.’

Olivia smiled that big smile again. Thorhed didn’t smile back.

‘I’ll be in touch.’

He pushed his way over to the door and Olivia exhaled. She waited a few minutes and then made her way out as well. If Borell was coming this weekend and would agree to a meeting, then she had a few days to cram as much as she could about young, contemporary Swedish art.

For an interview.

Luna watched Muriel lift the spoon to her mouth. She’d made her some hot noodle soup, assuming that Muriel’s stomach wasn’t up to heavier food. Muriel blew on the spoon and tried to guide it into her mouth without spilling it. Stilton was sitting just on the other side of the lounge.

‘So do you see any of the other guys? Pärt? Benseman?’

‘We don’t see much of Benseman any more, he’s got into that “Housing First” scheme and he’s got a pad by Skanstull, so he
spends a lot of time over at Ronny Redlös’s. I think he works there sometimes.’

‘And Pärt?’

‘He’s finished.’

Like you, Stilton thought and turned to Luna.

‘It was Pärt who found One-eyed Vera in the caravan, half-dead. He’s a nice guy. Does he still sell the magazine?’ he asked Muriel.

‘No. He had to stop that, some shit about money. Last time I saw him he was lying under the Traneberg Bridge throwing up.

Stilton looked at Luna. Just as well that she got a slice of his past, so he didn’t have to speak about it himself.

Muriel finished her soup.

‘Would you like some more?’

‘Nah, thanks.’

Muriel’s arms starting shaking again. Luna sat down next to her and put her arm around her shoulder.

‘You’re welcome to sleep here if you want.’

‘Sweet.’

Muriel pulled her plastic bag towards her, from the wrong end, and some of its contents fell on the floor. Stilton bent down to pick them up. A hairbrush, a small cuddly toy, a packet of condoms and some small square plastic bags filled with tablets. Stilton held one of the bags up.

‘What are you taking?’

‘5-IT. It’s fucking brilliant. Much cheaper than heroin and it’s bloody safe too.’

‘You think so?’

‘Can I have them back?’

Stilton passed the bag of tablets back to Muriel. Luna looked at him. She would have got rid of the bags if it were up to her.

‘Where did you get hold of it?’ he said.

‘Off that guy, Classe Hall. He’s a good bloke, sometimes I don’t need to pay. He gives me five bags for a shag.’

Stilton looked at Muriel and she averted her gaze. She knew that Stilton had got back on his feet. She knew that he’d got revenge on the people who killed Vera. She knew that he’d left the city. Now he was back and looking at her with that expression that Vera sometimes had.

‘What the fuck am I supposed to do?’ she said almost inaudibly, trying to get control of her hands.

And then she started crying.

Stilton and Luna let her cry, that would tire her out, and when her tears finally dried up, Luna helped her up from the wooden bench and took her out towards the bow of the barge. Stilton watched them. It was a pretty stark contrast between the short scraggy Muriel and the tall and well-built Luna.

‘You’re really sweet, you know?’ Muriel said to Luna.

‘Thanks.’

Stilton saw them disappear down into a narrow corridor. He assumed that there was some extra sleeping area there at the front, where Muriel could get a few hours’ rest. Then she’d disappear again, he knew that, out into a world that he did not have any control over.

Abbas had walked around half of Marseille, alert and focused. He’d scoured all the porn shops he passed. He’d talked to prostitutes along all the places he knew, the eastern European girls by the central station, the transvestites up on the West side, the lot. He’d moved from bars to gambling dens to dealer hangouts.

And he’d asked the same question to everyone: Le Taureau?

No one knew who he was, or dared to tell him. Some of them had reacted in a way that suggested they might know, but no one said a thing and Abbas didn’t want to wave his knives about again.

Now he was on his way back to the hotel. Darkness had fallen over the Mediterranean and was mirrored in his thoughts. Had
he been wrong? Had Martin been lying to him after all? Should he go and see him again? Pointless. He wasn’t going to get any more out of Martin than he already had. He wasn’t going to get more out of this city full stop.

He’d failed.

Then Marie rang.

‘I just remembered, have you spoken to Samira’s sister?’ she said.

‘Did she have a sister?’

‘Didn’t you know?’

‘No. Where does she live?’

It was late when Abbas turned into the narrow rue Sainte. The door he was trying to find was between a bakery and a small restaurant. Samira’s sister worked at the restaurant, La Poule Noire, ‘the black hen’. She was due to finish at eleven. Abbas waited on the other side of the road. He’d had no idea that Samira had had a sister. Samira had never mentioned her. There’d been no reason to. Then he saw a short middle-aged woman emerging from the restaurant. She was wearing a grey knitted jumper and dark trousers. She stopped and looked at him.

‘Abbas?’

Abbas crossed over the road and held out his hand. They greeted each other. The sister’s name was Nidal.

‘Shall we go upstairs?’

They went through the door and up two flights of stairs. Nidal lived alone. Her flat was small, and Abbas had to squeeze his way past the furniture in the small living room. When Nidal turned on one of the lamps he saw how poor she was. The furniture was shabby, there were holes in the rug, the wallpaper had loosened at the ceiling skirting and was hanging down. The only thing that stuck out in the room was a large mirror with a shiny gold frame. It was hanging above a small bureau with a statue of Christ. Nidal lit the incense next to the statue.

Abbas sat down on a chair.

‘I’m going back to Sweden tomorrow,’ he said.

Nidal nodded and placed a bottle of water down on the table in front of him. Abbas poured some water into the old glass while Nidal pulled out a box from the bureau under the mirror. When she turned around she was holding a gold necklace in her hand. Abbas recognised it straight away.

‘The police gave me this,’ Nidal said. ‘Samira once told me that she’d got it from you.’

‘Yes.’

‘She always wore it. I want you to have it.’

Abbas took the necklace. He didn’t know what to say. Nidal was standing almost completely still in front of him. Her thin wrinkled face was almost frozen, as though there was something she didn’t dare, or want to, reveal. Abbas wondered how much she knew. About Samira. About what she was doing. He looked at the necklace in his hand. There was so much he wanted to know, about all the time he didn’t know anything about, but he felt it wasn’t really the right moment to ask. He lifted his head, the incense filled his nose.

‘She was sixteen when she ran away from the orphanage.’

Nidal said it without looking at Abbas, her gaze was focused on the wall behind him. He turned around and saw a small photograph, a black-and-white picture of two girls holding hands, one much older than the other.

‘Is that you and Samira?’

‘Yes. She was three and I was thirteen when we came to the orphanage.’

‘Why did you end up there?’

‘Our parents died in a fire. I was thrown out of the orphanage when I was eighteen, and Samira stayed on. She was blind and they didn’t think that I could take care of her. Every time I went to see her she cried and asked me to take her with me.’

Nidal was still standing, looking at the photograph. She was deep within her past.

‘Then she ran away. I still don’t understand how. Someone probably helped her. She was so beautiful, there were always boys around her. After a while she got in touch. She’d met an older man who worked at a circus and she was living with him now.’

‘Jean Villon.’

‘He was a knife thrower and she was his target girl.’

‘That’s where we met.’

‘I know, she told me about you.’

Nidal said it without looking at Abbas. She turned around and went to the statue of Christ and lit some more incense. Abbas understood that she wasn’t going to tell him any more.

‘Thank you for the necklace,’ he said and got up to leave.

Nidal remained seated. Abbas took a few steps towards the door out in the hallway.

‘She loved you.’

The voice came from behind. Low. Toneless.

Abbas didn’t turn around.

On the way to his hotel, he passed a seafront restaurant, a much nicer one than Eden Roc, with fancy cars parked outside. He saw dressed up people mingling around in the garden inside the stone porch. They all had tall glasses in their hands and the hum of people could be heard all the way out on the street. He passed by the large building and started walking along the low sea wall. Dark rocks crept out into the water below. A lone fisherman sat on one of them. He had a long rod in his hand, a bright red float was bobbing about far out in the water. Abbas looked at the man for a while. He’s trying to scrape a meal together, Abbas thought to himself and started walking again.

He didn’t turn around.

If he had, he would have seen this lone fisherman pulling out his mobile and holding it up to his mouth.

Abbas carried on walking along the waterside, circumnavigating a drunk who was sitting against the stone wall with a
red-and-white traffic cone on his head. His hotel still lay a bit further on. He passed by a dark bus shelter. There were some people standing there waiting for a night bus. Then suddenly he stopped, something was bothering him, something he’d seen.

What though?

Suddenly he remembered.

He had seen the lone fisherman’s bright float disappear under the surface, but the man hadn’t reacted. He hadn’t reeled it in. Why?

Abbas turned around and was hit right across the face.

It was probably an iron bar, wielded by the people standing at the bus shelter. Abbas never had the chance to see. He fell flat against the quayside. When he tried to reach for one of his knives, he was hit over the head again. Blood was spurting out. He curled up on the pavement. Through the blood he saw a large man with coarse hands leaning over him. Two other men were standing next to him. He turned towards the edge of the quay and tried to put one hand up on the wall. Then someone administered a sharp kick to his diaphragm and he collapsed.

They were planning to beat him to death right there.

He was totally defenceless.

It wouldn’t have taken many more blows with that iron bar to stop Abbas el Fassi from ever moving again. It was a large police patrol van with flashing lights that interrupted the assault, coming thundering past the fancy restaurant. The men saw it. Two of them grabbed hold of Abbas and hurled him over the sea wall. Seconds before he fell down towards the rocks, he saw the man with the rough hands. The tattoo. On his neck, just below his ear.

A black bull.

His body bounced down the rocks and landed at the water’s edge. The men above saw the patrol van roaring past. When it had gone they looked down towards the rocks. Then they left.

Abbas was still conscious when he landed in the water.

A few more seconds.

The second before everything went black, a name flashed through his head.

Stilton sat on his bunk, agonising. He’d tried to ring Abbas again. He’d called and texted several times in the last few hours and he couldn’t understand why there was no reply. Every time it went straight to voicemail the lump in his throat grew, along with the dark thoughts in his head. Where is he? Has something happened? Have those bloody hitmen got hold of him? He called Jean-Baptiste even though it was past midnight.

‘No, I haven’t heard anything from him. I thought he’d left with you?’

‘He stayed on.’

‘Oh shit, that’s bad news.’

‘Yes, thanks. I’ll call his hotel. Bye.’

Stilton called the hotel. The comatose porter was able to inform him that Abbas el Fassi wasn’t in his room. But where he was, he didn’t know. Stilton ended the call and got up and sat down again, there wasn’t much space to pace around. He felt the doubts that he’d had on the plane home come creeping over him again. Was it wrong to leave him? Did I bail too soon? But Abbas was the one who’d bought the ticket. He didn’t want me to stay. Should I have ignored it and stayed anyway? But he’s probably capable of looking after himself. He has the knives, after all.

And so he overcame his bad conscience and put the light out. He was just about to sink into the great darkness when he heard a gentle knock on his door. Muriel? Not likely. He put the light on.

‘Yes?’

The door opened slightly, he’d forgotten to lock it.

‘Am I disturbing you?’

Luna’s face was partly shaded in the doorway.

‘I’m trying to sleep,’ Stilton said.

‘Me too.’

‘Standing up?’

Luna smiled and pulled the door halfway open. She was wearing a light-green T-shirt and a pair of grey tracksuit bottoms. She was holding a stuffed bird in her hand.

‘Do you know what this is?’

‘A dead bird.’

‘A sparrowhawk. Sweden’s smallest bird of prey. It lives on small birds and pigeons.’

Stilton nodded. He didn’t have any great ornithological insight.

‘It’s pretty bare in here,’ Luna said. ‘I thought that you might like some company.’

‘From a dead bird?’

Luna took one step into the room and put the bird on the table under the porthole.

‘Sometimes it blinks,’ she said with her back to Stilton. He sank back down into his bunk.

‘Thank you for taking care of Muriel,’ he said.

‘I felt sorry for her. She seems like a good girl.’

‘Yes. Is she asleep?’

‘Yes. It was her who made me think of this. She looked like a little bird when I put her to bed, just a bag of bones.’