Authors: Parker Bilal
Doctor Medina mopped at his brow with a damp handkerchief. ‘At this rate there’s not going to be much room left in that freezer. You’ll have to requisition another one.’
‘Is there an alternative?’ Sergeant Hamama asked.
‘Formaldehyde. But I would need a lot.’
‘I’ll look into it,’ said Hamama. He stabbed a finger at Makana. ‘I want to know where you are at all times, is that understood? I want to know your every thought the minute you have an idea.’
‘You’re not taking me in?’
‘It’s for your own safety. This is the second murder in a week. I can’t guarantee how people are going to react.’
‘Perhaps you should have thought about that before you sent Sadig down to arrest me.’
‘It’s like I told you, he gets carried away.’ Sergeant Hamama rubbed a finger across his brow and shook the sweat off onto the floor with a flick of his hand. ‘He’s not a bad person.’
‘Does this man have a criminal record?’
‘Ayman? No.’ Hamama snorted dismissively. ‘He was a simpleton, that’s all. Now, I’m going down there to talk to that crowd and then we are going back to the station. Doctor, I want you to start working on this body right away. Do whatever you can and give me the results as you go along.’
‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance of being paid for my services?’ asked Doctor Medina, his voice wavering so that Sergeant Hamama didn’t even have to say a word before he’d managed to talk himself out of his own proposition. ‘No, I thought that might be too much to ask.’ The doctor picked up his bag and vanished down the hill in pursuit of the stretcher. Makana turned to the skinny officer whose name he still hadn’t learned.
‘Did you know him well?’ Makana asked.
‘Ayman? Of course, everyone knew him.’
‘Did he have a wife, a family?’
‘No, of course not.’ The man chuckled. ‘He knew nothing about any of that.’
‘Any of what?’
‘Women, marriage. That sort of stuff. He was like a child, you know? His mind never grew like most people’s.’
‘Was he violent?’
The skinny policeman rocked his head from side to side. ‘He was strong. When we were kids he could wrestle four or five boys at the same time, easily. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone, unless he was provoked, and then, ha, you’d better watch out.’ He laughed to himself, shaking his head at the memory. On the ground flies buzzed angrily over the clot of blood baking in the dust.
A small crowd was gathered around the entrance to the police station. Sadig, who had joined them on the way back, now moved forward and thrust them aside, trying to make amends it seemed.
‘Come on, don’t you have work to do?’ he berated the crowd.
‘Tell us what is happening,’ implored a man with sad, drooping eyes.
‘It’s police business, that’s what, now clear off.’
‘That’s not right. People are being murdered,’ shouted an indignant older man.
‘Who’s to say that we won’t be next?’ added another.
‘You will be if you carry on getting in my way,’ Sadig yelled back.
‘If there is a lunatic among us, we have a right to know.’
‘The sergeant will make a statement when he is ready,’ offered Sadig.
There were more cries and protests as Sergeant Hamama steered Makana up the stairs and through the front door of the old building. The crumbling pillars around the entrance provided a hint of what lay in store inside. The front hall was deserted but for a battered wooden table and a tangle of broken metal chairs in one corner that, in another time and place, might have been considered a modern sculpture of some kind. The walls were pockmarked with what might have been some kind of rot, or perhaps bullet holes. Over the high doors leading to the interior hung an enormous photograph of al-Raïs, the president, gazing down on them. A stern and officious portrait. Although they always looked the same, each of these portraits was unique in its own way, selected for some particular aspect of his character. Makana recalled the picture that hung over Madame Fawzia’s desk at the girls’ school in which Mubarak had almost an expression of benevolence; the father of the nation. But obviously that wouldn’t do in a police station where a more commanding presence was called for.
Passing beneath the honourable Raïs brought them through to the main waiting area. Benches ran along one wall, paralleled by an uneven brown smudge at head height testifying to the number of hours people had spent sitting on them. There was a high counter opposite and a sour acrid tang came from a hall that led down towards a toilet at the back of the building. Hamama led the way behind the counter and into a third room, the inner sanctum, where tables and piles of paper abounded. A larger portrait of the president, this time over a rather faded flag, covered one wall. As he swept in, the bulky sergeant waved him inside his office.
‘Shut the door and sit down,’ said Hamama, throwing his hat onto the table. He went over and twisted the switch on the wall back and forth a few times, muttered and gave it a thump with the heel of his hand. Finally, the overhead fan consented to begin rotating slowly.
The name on the door, hand painted white letters on a small brass panel, made it clear this was Captain Mustafa’s office. Nobody had taken the trouble to remove it yet, possibly out of respect for the former commander of this post, but Hamama clearly had the place marked out as his own.
‘How did he die?’
‘Who?’ Sergeant Hamama looked up irritated from a drawer he was rifling through.
‘The captain.’
‘There was some defect with his car, as I understand it. Bad luck. Could happen to anyone.’ Hamama slammed the drawer shut and looked around him. ‘Ali! Ali!’ he yelled. The door opened and the skinny officer appeared. ‘Go and fetch me some gum.’ He pulled a grubby banknote out of his pocket and held it in the air. Ali stepped across the room and plucked it from his hand and disappeared out of the door again without a word.
‘The captain was a good man,’ said Sergeant Hamama settling himself back into the big chair behind the desk. ‘Old-fashioned, but good at heart.’
Over his head a smaller portrait of the president appeared on the wall, in full military regalia, his chest covered in medals. The neatness of the room, everything about it in fact seemed to spell the exact opposite of the man now sitting behind the desk.
‘Now, I want you to tell me again that you did not kill that man.’
‘You don’t seriously consider me a suspect?’
‘Please, no questions. Just tell me,’ the sergeant stared intently at him. ‘A simple yes or no will do. Did you kill him?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’ The sergeant thumped his hands down flat on the desk. ‘Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it? You understand, I never suspected you of doing it. For what it’s worth you seem like a well meaning sort of fellow, it’s just that you are a stranger in town and people around here have a habit of mistrusting people they don’t know.’
‘And now that you’ve asked me you think they will be satisfied?’
‘Between you and me I don’t care, but I can always say I have questioned you and found you innocent of all charges. Nobody can accuse me of not following up.’
Along the wall to Makana’s left stood a row of grey metal filing cabinets. Over them hung a yellowed map of the area. The kind of map you might see in a classroom, with a wooden bar running along the top and bottom to hold it straight. The paper was dry and cracked, torn along the edges. The colour and detail had faded to such a degree it might have been a pirate’s map of where treasure lay buried.
‘What about Ayman, you said he had no record?’
‘I don’t need to check any records. I know everything there is to know about everybody, and a good deal more than that too.’
The door opened and Ali came in carrying a pink packet of chewing gum which he handed to the sergeant.
‘What’s that?’
‘Strawberry. It’s all they had.’
‘All they had? How can that be?’ Hamama didn’t give the other man a chance to reply. ‘Never mind, just bring us some tea.’ He ripped open the packet and crammed several pieces into his mouth and grimaced, but kept on chewing as he stared at Makana. ‘Okay,’ he conceded finally, ‘Ayman didn’t have a record, not really, but he was this close.’ Hamama reclined in his chair and lifted one boot to the edge of the table to rock himself further backwards. ‘Ayman had a certain fondness for little girls. A few years ago a complaint was made. Nothing came of it because, well, everyone knows he was not right in the head. And his uncle, whose hotel you are staying in, promised to keep a tight control on the boy. He was a boy, really, body like a man, but mind like a child.’ Rubbing his chin, Hamama leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. ‘You seriously think this is some kind of message to the whole town?’
‘I don’t know what the killer has in mind, but I believe there is more to this than merely the murder of these two people.’
Sergeant Hamama chewed in silence. ‘I don’t see that. I really don’t.’
‘Did you question the Qadi’s wife?’
‘No, no.’ The sergeant straightened up a pile of papers on his desk. ‘I couldn’t do that. The man is barely dead and this business of the burial is a little awkward. I can’t tell the woman that her husband is being held in a common supermarket freezer.’
‘You don’t think she has heard by now?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m not risking it.’
‘More than your job’s worth?’ Makana asked.
‘Look, I don’t know how you do things in the big city, but here you have to tread carefully. It’s a small community and we all depend on one another. We live together.’
Makana was staring at the wall map. ‘Where exactly did he die? Can you show me?’
‘Who?’
‘Your predecessor, Captain Mustafa?’
‘Why is this of interest to you?’
‘I’m just curious by nature.’
‘But this has nothing to do with these murders. Don’t you think you ought to be focussing your mind on the killings?’
‘I am, I just need to know certain things.’
After a moment the sergeant stood up. He stared at Makana as if still unsure what to make of him. Finally, he leaned over and tapped a finger on the map.
‘He was out here, just west of the oasis.’
‘What’s out there?’ asked Makana, lighting a cigarette.
‘Not much really. Would you mind not smoking in here? I’m trying to stop.’
Makana dutifully stubbed out the cigarette as carefully as he could before returning it to the packet. He got to his feet and went over to study the map.
‘There’s an old storage depot built by the company that constructed the road, but it has been empty for years.’
‘And these are tracks?’
Sergeant Hamama squinted. ‘The old camel routes through the desert.’
‘They’re not marked, I assume.’
‘No, nothing out there is marked. You have to know your way.’
‘So who would know these routes apart from Bedouins and camel herders?’
‘People guard the knowledge well. You can lose your way easily and never come back.’
‘Who else would know how to use these routes?’
Sergeant Hamama looked at Makana. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Nothing, I’m just curious. Musab Khayr, would he have known?’
‘Maybe.’
‘He was involved in smuggling so I suppose he did.’
‘There are all kinds out there. Smugglers, rebels from some conflict somewhere, common bandits. Not much difference between them if you ask me. Groups of armed men. That’s what it boils down to. You can’t keep track of them and you can’t control them. The truth is you don’t know who you might run into out there.’
‘Why was he out there alone?’ Makana asked as Ali appeared balancing a small tray which he set down on the desk.
‘Who?’
‘Captain Mustafa.’
‘I’ve wondered about that quite a bit.’ Hamama said, settling himself back down in his chair to begin spooning sugar into his cup of tea until there was a layer two fingers thick in the bottom of the glass. He stirred it thoughtfully. ‘The truth is that I don’t really know. Captain Mustafa had his own ways and he didn’t confide in me all the time.’
‘Maybe there just wasn’t anyone around that he trusted,’ Makana said quietly.
‘That’s what I like about you,’ smiled Hamama over the top of his glass. ‘You don’t beat about the bush. Captain Mustafa and I were not the closest friends in the world. We disagreed on a lot of matters, but he didn’t deserve to die like that.’
‘How exactly did he die?’
‘You’re really not going to leave this subject alone, are you?’
‘Once I know all the details I’ll drop it.’
‘Okay. Well, there was an electrical fault. A spark ignited the fuel in the tank. The car exploded.’
‘Isn’t that rare?’
‘What do I know? I’m not an expert. People die in different ways.’ His jaws worked up and down on the gum. ‘Satisfied now? Do you mind if we move on? I mean, you do want to solve this case, don’t you? Because I have a duty to protect the people of this town. I don’t want a mad man wandering around cutting people up.’ Sergeant Hamama set down his glass. He drew a circle with his forefinger on the desk and spoke without looking up. ‘I’ll tell you something, Makana. I don’t know you. I don’t know where you come from, or how you ended up in this place, but I believe in fate. Call me an old woman, but I believe you were sent here for a reason.’ He tapped his knuckles on the desk. ‘I believe that is so, and I think maybe that reason is to find this killer.’