Authors: Parker Bilal
‘By the way . . .’ he grasped Makana’s arm as they surveyed the lobby, ‘I looked up the investigation into the English girl’s disappearance.’ Okasha heaved in a lungful of air. ‘Elizabeth Markham, the mother, was uncooperative, to say the least. They discovered drugs in her room. And she refused to explain what she was doing in this country. Her story was full of holes. As you can imagine, that didn’t go down well. They dismissed her as crazy . . . paranoid. They even considered the possibility that she might have sold the child herself, to make some money.’
Makana tried to square this with the image he had of Liz Markham searching desperately for her lost daughter. Could it have been remorse for her own actions that had brought her back here, year after year?
‘She told me she’d had problems. That’s why she couldn’t come back right away.’
‘Maybe they locked her up.’ Okasha glanced around. ‘Okay, so which ones are they?’
Turning his attention back to the lobby, Makana picked out a couple sitting on a sofa in the far corner as the most likely candidates. A man and a woman, both in their thirties. The woman looked to be slightly older than her companion. Slim and with short dark hair, she was wearing black slacks and jacket. The man beside her was large and red-faced, heavily built, with thinning sandy hair.
‘There.’
Okasha followed Makana’s gaze. As he did so the woman got to her feet and turned to face them. ‘You’ve done it again,’ he murmured, as he led the way across the room. The formalities were dispensed with as briefly as possible. The British detectives introduced themselves as Bailey and Hayden. They weren’t from Scotland Yard, as Okasha had thought, but from something called Special Branch. The woman was the senior of the two, something which it took Okasha a while to grasp. He insisted on addressing Bailey alone and ignoring the woman until Hayden cleared her throat noisily.
‘Just to make it clear, Inspector, this is a formality. We are not here to take any part in the investigation, or to pass judgement on you.’
‘You are looking for a connection to her father?’ Makana asked.
‘Lord Markham is a member of our House of Lords.’ Bailey spoke as if lecturing a couple of schoolboys. Okasha sniffed and threw him a wary look. The intricacies of the English peerage escaped both the inspector and Makana. They had little bearing on a murder investigation in Cairo. If the British felt it necessary to go to all the expense of sending people around the world to please one of their titled subjects, then that was their business.
‘On the telephone, you mentioned that you believe she was tortured before she was killed?’ Hayden enquired.
‘That is correct.’ Okasha nodded briskly. ‘Look, if you have information suggesting this was a political murder then you must share it.’
‘I’m afraid we’re not allowed to do that,’ said Bailey, with a poker-faced expression.
‘They’re playing games with us,’ muttered Okasha to Makana as they descended the steps to the waiting cars. ‘They want to connect this to our terrorist problem.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘Politics. It gives them a big stick to beat us with.’
It seemed unlikely, but while Okasha gave the orders, doors slammed and the convoy raced away, Makana couldn’t help wondering if there might be something he had failed to spot in all this. Could there be a connection between Liz Markham’s death and the recent terrorist outrage?
Okasha had obviously decided to impress the visitors with his security measures. Motorcycle outriders wailed past them with sirens blaring and lights blazing. The circus was coming to town.
‘Is this really necessary?’ asked Hayden.
‘You are our guests. We give you a welcome like a president.’ Okasha was grinning like an idiot. Makana noticed the other officer, Bailey, shaking his head to himself. Clearly, the spectacle served merely to confirm his perception that the police in this country were a bunch of clowns.
When they reached the square outside the Al Hassanain Hotel they were met by a crowd of onlookers and a heavy police presence. Okasha leaped out and started issuing more orders left and right in his usual muscular fashion, making his men jump. It was quite a performance. The entourage jogged up the stairs into the lobby of the hotel. Hayden looked around, taking in the general air of decay. This clearly wasn’t the Hilton.
The manager was a podgy, unhappy-looking man in a
gellabia
. He wore round spectacles and an expression like a sheep being led to the slaughter as he scurried along behind, asking when he would be able to have the room back. Okasha batted him away like a pesky fly.
The blood on the floor had congealed into a rigid brown map stretched out across the tiles. The chair and the bloody strips of towelling had been removed by the forensics team. Hayden and Bailey paced about the room, clearly hoping to find something that had been overlooked. There wasn’t much to see. Okasha had made sure of that. Makana remained in the doorway. He stared at the brown mark and wondered about the woman whose life had ended there.
‘We would like to see the body,’ said Hayden.
‘Of course.’ Okasha nodded. ‘Unfortunately, it cannot be arranged before tomorrow. Today is Friday and the medical officers do not work today.’
‘Don’t work?’ echoed Bailey.
Okasha stood his ground. ‘That is correct.’ He smiled. ‘You should take advantage of the fact – do some sightseeing and shopping. We have the most historic bazaar in the world. Or have you seen the pyramids? I can arrange for a car to take you there.’
‘We’re not here on holiday,’ said Bailey as he pushed by into the hallway. He lit a cigarette and stood glaring into space, pointedly ignoring Makana.
‘That’s most kind of you, Inspector, we’d be happy to accept,’ said Hayden with a conciliatory smile.
‘Very well. A car will remain here to take you wherever you like.’
With that, Okasha stepped out and jerked his head for Makana to follow. They took the stairs down to the lobby and went to a café in a square nearby. Okasha studied his surroundings carefully before choosing a table and sitting down at it with a heavy sigh. He spread his legs and pushed back his coat so that the large pistol in the leather holster at his waist protruded visibly. He eyed everyone in sight warily, like a cowboy in a film, until satisfied there was no immediate threat in the vicinity. He never let his guard down. He couldn’t afford to.
‘We’re wasting our time, playing tour guides for the interfering British.’
Okasha grunted and snapped his fingers in the air for tea, which came faster than Makana had ever seen. He leaned over the table, his big hand plucking a couple of leaves off the sprig of fresh mint set in the middle. He dropped them into his glass where they floated limply, lost tropical islands in an amber sea.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he said. ‘I think I would have lost my temper if I had been alone. Such insolence!’
‘He was just doing his job.’
‘You’re being too generous. Perhaps it is your nature, or maybe the years you spent in their country with your wife left you with happy memories.’
Makana reached into his jacket and produced the newspaper photograph showing Adil Romario standing with Gaber and the group of men. Next to Gaber was the slight man Makana had failed to identify.
‘Can you tell me who that is?’ he asked, holding out the clipping. Okasha’s eyes dropped and he stared at it for a moment before looking up.
‘How do you know him?’
‘I don’t,’ said Makana. ‘He interviewed me when I first came here. He never gave me his name. That’s why I remember him.’
Okasha gave him a long look, and then he nodded. ‘It’s Colonel Serrag of Intelligence. A very important man.’ He handed back the clipping. ‘You want to stay away from him.’ Then he got up and stamped his feet. ‘The British, eh? They still believe they rule this country, like the old days, or maybe they think it’s the whole world now.
Yakhrib beitum.
Can I give you a lift?’
‘No,’ said Makana. ‘I think I’ll stay around here for a while.’
‘Don’t go catching any murderers.’ Okasha wagged a finger at him. ‘At least, not before I do.’
In Arabic the city is known as
al-Qahira
, after the planet Mars – ‘the vanquisher’. In the latter part of the tenth century the Fatimids built an imperial enclave here with high walls to keep the exquisite palaces and their occupants from prying eyes. It soon became the most illustrious city in the Muslim world. The astrologers predicted that the name would bring good fortune. A city named after a distant planet. As if this would keep them safe.
History of another kind was on Makana’s mind. His own personal history. The reasons that had led him to this city. He still found it hard to shrug off certain traits or superstitions, delusions . . . call them what you would. He didn’t believe in coincidence, but couldn’t help thinking that things were often linked together according to some strange predestined plan. In the days of the Fatimids he would probably have been strung up from the very gates of this city, hung, drawn and quartered.
There was more connecting him to Liz Markham’s death than mere happenstance. It wasn’t anything he could prove, more like a nagging premonition. The old bazaar . . . The answer had to lie here. Had her enquiries about her daughter sparked off the events that had led to her death?
People rushed by, calling out their wares, services, greetings, jokes, curses. Life. It was all here. The Khan al-Khalili was said to comprise some of the most valuable real estate in the world; more expensive, metre for metre, than London, Paris or New York. It was subdivided into fractions. The artisans sat cramped in their minuscule workshops, tapping away all day like blind men feeling their way along the lines of their engravings. In the old days the narrow lanes would have been teeming with visitors from all over the world, all eager to strike a bargain; today it was virtually deserted. This was the world he belonged to now. To Liz Markham, searching for her little girl, it would have been a crazy labyrinth. His brief impression of her had been of a determined woman, wounded, angry at herself, at the world. Not the kind of person who takes no for an answer. To keep coming back here all this time testified to her determination. It had taken courage and conviction.
Makana knew he ought not to be wasting time. Hanafi’s generous reward was slipping through his fingers like sand through an hourglass.
There were familiar faces here, people Makana had spoken to over the years: men hanging about in their doorways, chatting across the narrow passageways with their neighbours over the heads of the passers-by. They talked about food and football and the price of gold. They broke off to murmur a greeting whenever a visitor wandered by. Good morning, madam, please step inside, sir. No charge for looking. They could express themselves in every European language along with a phrase or two in Japanese. They had heard about the murder, of course, and muttered darkly about how it was going to be bad for business. The last thing they needed. Many recalled the
magnoona
Englishwoman, who came back year after year, passing out photos of her child. ‘Everyone knew she was crazy,’ said Helmi, an old acquaintance, perched behind the counter of his jeweller’s shop which was no bigger than a large telephone booth and draped with strings of golden scarabs. He had one eye pressed against the lens clipped to his glasses. ‘People said she had been mixed up in something bad, long ago. Many kept away from her, turned their backs. Maybe if they hadn’t, she would still be alive.’
Beside a dusty arch of medieval stone leading to a narrow passageway that threaded its way along the back of the bazaar, close to the old city wall, Makana came across a curious shop he hadn’t noticed before. Away from the bright lights and shiny displays, this corner looked rundown and dull. Few tourists ventured this far. A few battered stalls sold old junk, rusty tools and artefacts. Instruments that a dentist or a vet might have used a century ago. There were carpenter’s planes and horseshoes, heavy old brass keys and iron door knockers. It was the only shop in sight, set back in a dogleg just beyond the stone arch. Perched on a rickety chair outside sat an old man wearing a pair of dark glasses held together with Sellotape over the bridge of his nose. Even the tape was cracked and yellowed. He was wearing a dirty brown
gellabia
and smoking a cigarette. When he spotted him, Makana had the feeling the man had been watching him for some time.
Still, he made no effort to rise as Makana peered through the window next to him. The layers of dust visible spoke of the unlikely collection of objects inside as not having been stirred for decades. Makana spotted little rectangles of wood about the size of a small page with metal plates and edges to them.
‘What are those things?’ he enquired.
‘Printer’s blocks.’ The man tilted his face to stare at Makana. ‘I’ve seen you before,’ he said. His cheeks were hollow and he sucked them in further as he inhaled the blue smoke deep into his lungs. ‘I never forget a face. What are you looking for this time?’
‘A little girl.’ Makana considered him for a moment. ‘She disappeared. An English girl.’
‘A long time ago. Was it something to do with the woman they killed?’
‘It was her daughter.’
‘A bad business.’ The man sucked his few remaining teeth. ‘But why are so you interested? That was more than ten years ago.’