The Golden Scales (19 page)

‘How is it you know the victim, sir?’ one of the other men asked hesitantly. The question gave Makana an excuse to turn his attention back to the body lying in the headlights.

‘He was a colleague of my wife’s . . . a friend.’

‘Perhaps we should take a statement from her?’ Mek Nimr suggested. It was meant as provocation. Makana didn’t even look up.

‘My wife is not to be involved in this,’ he murmured, his eyes on the body.

‘I don’t follow. First you say you want to investigate and then you say you don’t. It seems inconsistent to me.’ Mek Nimr glanced casually around the assembled men, to see how many of them were with him.

‘You say she was a friend of his,’ he pressed his superior. ‘This man was an infidel, an atheist.’

‘An atheist?’ Makana laughed. It was almost funny. ‘He was a scientist . . . a biologist.’

‘He taught that we are descended from monkeys.’ Mek Nimr’s voice rose excitedly.

‘How is it you know so much about him?’

‘I read the papers.’ Again his eyes turned away, seeking darkness. Shelter.

Never in their four years of working together had Makana seen him show the slightest interest in any printed matter beyond the captions on the cartoon page. Getting him to write a report was a thankless task. It was easier to find one of the junior officers who could type to help him out. And now suddenly Mek Nimr was an authority on Darwin?

By then the course of events had been set. All Makana could do was stand back and watch his life disappear. Had Mek Nimr known what was to come, that day by the river? It was difficult to imagine that he had no clue. These were dangerous times. Even the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, which had seized power less than two years ago, had become so paranoid that they met only with their weapons drawn and placed on the table in front of them. Within a few months some twenty officers were to face the firing squad. There was a purge of the entire system under way and Mek Nimr had read the writing on the wall early on.

A few weeks later it was official. Major Idris announced that Mek Nimr was to command a new unit of the Revolutionary Security Force, an autonomous body which answered to nobody but the National Islamic Front. It seemed like the world had taken leave of its senses. Mek Nimr in charge of a group of armed thugs? It wasn’t that he was incompetent, far from it. He had worked diligently at Makana’s side. What Mek Nimr lacked was judgement, integrity. Left to his own devices there was no telling what he might do.

The new unit’s duties were not exactly clear. All they seemed to do was tear around the streets in pick-ups, waving their guns in the air, scaring people. But it was all part of the new era. The regular police were sidelined. Religious piety was deemed the only significant qualification. Makana watched the justice system unravelling before him – people were arrested without cause, disappearing inside secret prisons or ‘ghost houses’, undergoing rape, torture and summary execution without trial. This was the order of the day.

It wasn’t as if there weren’t enough cases to attend to. Bodies turned up all the time, discarded on wasteland, by the roadside, in the river. More of them than ever. Cause of death varied: drowning, contusions, asphyxiation. Homicide, once largely a result of domestic strife, had entered the realm of the arbitrary. The victims were students, journalists, members of youth clubs, boy scouts. Usually, the cases would be taken out of Makana’s hands before he had managed to type up an initial report. Still, he carried on, cataloguing all the deaths that came his way, meticulously, as if by sheer force of habit he might keep the world on its proper axis. The alternative was to flee. Afterwards there wasn’t a day that didn’t go by without him wishing he had done just that.

The cases kept coming. On a scale never before seen. Men vanished from their homes. They failed to return from work. They were dragged off buses, or out of taxis. Their cars were found parked by the side of the road with no sign of where the occupant had gone, or why. No official record of them was made in the system. Makana went on doing his job, following the evidence, right up to the inevitable wall he came up against every time. What else could he do? Like a drowning man he struggled, even when he knew he was going down for the last time.

Chapter Seventeen

The sight of Umm Ali and her cross-eyed daughter tending the little vegetable patch that ran in an uneven strip parallel to the river added a touch of timelessness to the scene.

Makana sipped his coffee on the upper deck. He had not slept well, and had woken to discover his body was a mass of cuts and bruises. Getting out of bed was a painful struggle. His elbow and knee ached and when he tried to stand his right ankle protested. Closing his eyes against the glare of sunlight rippling across the water, he was vaguely pondering the matter of whether it was worth visiting a doctor when the telephone began to ring, the long insistent peals echoing out over the water.

A soft morning breeze lifted the pages of the newspaper which lay on the deck beside him, as if Iblis himself were flicking through it. Makana didn’t have to look down to remind himself of the front-page article. He had read it twice already, once the previous night and then again this morning in its full printed glory. Sami Barakat had gone to town on the story that Adil Romario had disappeared. Nobody knew where he was, and, more to the point, nobody seemed too concerned about the fact. Why the big mystery? What was the club hiding?

The story would have shaken a few people out of their beds this morning, which Makana assumed explained the telephone calls. They had begun early and continued at regular intervals ever since. Out in the field, Umm Ali straightened up, one muddy hand to her aching back and the other shielding her eyes. She looked up at him but didn’t say anything. Earlier she had called up to remind him that the telephone was actually ringing, but now she could see that he didn’t want to answer it, and that was his business. After a time she went back to her tomatoes and cucumbers, and eventually the ringing stopped. With a sigh, Makana got to his feet and walked slowly over to the railings to stretch his aching joints.

Sami Barakat wrote in the kind of excitable language that reminded you of one of those hysterical melodramas on television, where people scream at each other endlessly and for no apparent reason. By his disappearance Adil Romario had managed to generate exactly the kind of excitement he had been hoping to achieve in the movies.

‘Who has something to hide?’ blazed the headline on the inside page. At the centre of a spider’s web diagram was a picture of Adil Romario. Lines led outwards in every direction to connect with other photographs. There was Hanafi, of course, whose face the paper’s editors had managed to flatten so that he resembled a bloated toad crouched at the top of the page. To the left was a picture of Lulu Hamra, the actress who had wanted to keep her name out of the papers. Makana had promised to do his best, which had clearly not been enough. He wouldn’t be surprised if she was one of the people calling, although the context of the article was not unflattering. Lulu was described in glamorous terms as the secret love of Adil Romario’s life, who had broken the heart of ‘our hero’. Had the affair really ended, or had they eloped to Spain to be married in a secret ceremony in the ‘ancient site of Muslim glory that is the magnificent city of Granada’? Barakat certainly knew how to pile it on. It read like a concession to those readers who really had no interest in football but might be drawn to a story of tragic romance.

The right-hand side of the page showed Clemenza, looking as despotic as Il Duce, his mouth open as he yelled at the players from the sidelines. This was the theory of most interest to football fans, namely that the Italian trainer was negotiating a lucrative deal for Adil Romario to play in Europe, the most likely buyers being Internazionale and Juventus. Clemenza still had old contacts in both clubs and was likely to make an incredible commission on any sale of the player. Why was he doing it? Because he was not happy with the way he was being treated by Saad Hanafi. More to the point, Sami Barakat noted, how would Mr Hanafi react to such treachery? It was reasonable to assume that he would not let his star player go that easily. How would he seek his revenge?

To complete the element of intrigue there was even a shadowy figure, whose image was blacked out with a question mark over his face. Who was the mystery man on the trail of Adil Romario? The reporter described how in the course of his investigation he had come across a second person hot on Adil’s heels. A rival, had been our intrepid reporter’s first thought, but after extensive checking he had ascertained that this was not the case. So who was he? A scout sent by another football club? Or was he connected to State Security Investigations, the
Mubaheth Amn al-Dawla
? And if so, did the involvement of the SSI mean there was some kind of government interest in the case of Adil Romario’s disappearance? Or could there be some darker link – to the Jewish state, for example? Makana clucked his tongue impatiently. Sami Barakat left no string unplucked. Yet the populistic evocation of yet another Zionist conspiracy was really a foil to set up a more feasible, if less palatable, alternative explanation: was this mystery man linked with Hanafi’s notorious connections to the criminal underworld? Was his past catching up with him? And if so, was it in the government’s interests for this to emerge into the light of day? The possibility of a cover-up was further highlighted by the added detail that the mystery man had apparently threatened the reporter with violence if he continued to pursue the story. It wasn’t hard for Makana to see that the menacing figure with a question mark for a face was intended to be him.

It was a lurid article, but he had to admire the deftness with which Sami Barakat had tied the pieces together into such a provocative tale. It was also courageous. There was a serious edge to the piece, which Makana liked. Barakat was not afraid of stirring things up. Nobody else had dared to speak out openly about Hanafi’s past connections to organised crime. No wonder the telephone was ringing. Everyone knew Hanafi had protection in high places. To their credit, the paper’s editorial staff lined up behind their star reporter, calling indignantly for a government commission to be charged immediately with investigating the matter. It was time to start raising questions about the links between investment in their country and illegal activities, they trumpeted. The piece would receive no real response from official circles, of course, but it implied that Hanafi was no longer as untouchable as he used to be. To Makana’s mind it once again raised the possibility that Hanafi himself was the real target of all this. Could Adil be just a means of attacking him?

The telephone began to ring below once more. With a sigh, Makana realised that he was going to have to answer it. Then he felt, rather than heard, the big man step aboard. He looked down over the railings and saw the gorilla in a suit standing on the lower deck.

‘Mr Hanafi would like to see you.’

‘Yes.’ Makana nodded. ‘I thought he might.’

Descending to the main cabin, he walked straight past the ringing phone.

‘Aren’t you going to answer that?’ The big man remained outside, looking through the doorway.

‘If you leave it for long enough it usually stops by itself.’

The driver sniffed but said nothing. Makana lifted up the remains of his jacket and realised that it was in serious need of a good tailor.

‘Hold on a minute.’

He retrieved another jacket which he pulled on before following the big man up the slope towards the road.

‘You’re pretty light on your feet. I’ll bet you used to box.’

The man’s grin was broad and his teeth dazzlingly bright. ‘How did you guess? I was a light heavyweight. I nearly got an Olympic medal.’

‘Nearly?’

The heavy shoulders heaved. ‘I wasn’t selected for the team in the end, but that was because there was money involved, you know how it is.’

‘Sure,’ said Makana. ‘I know how it is.’

This time he chose to sit in the front, next to the driver. As they travelled at high speed along the riverside to Hanafi’s apartment, the driver kept up a long monologue about his career as a boxer and how he once could have been as great as Muhammad Ali. He seemed like a totally different person from the driver Makana had first set eyes on.

‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Faisal, but I fought under the name of Sindbad.’

‘Sindbad? I like that. How long have you been working for Hanafi?’

‘About six years.’

‘And they treat you pretty well?’

‘Oh, yes. They pay well. I don’t have to worry about anything.’

‘I’ll bet he’s pretty strict about things, that Gaber.’

Sindbad tried to stifle a laugh and failed, giggling like a kid. ‘Mr Gaber likes things to be exactly how he wants them. Otherwise he gets angry.’

‘I’m sure. And how about the old man?’

‘Oh . . .’ Sindbad’s tone changed. ‘He’s not as strong as he used to be. Sometimes you take him somewhere and he forgets what he’s supposed to be doing, so you have to take him back again.’

As Makana climbed out in front of the building, the big man wished him luck.

The guards in the lobby were not talkative today. No smiles or cheery greetings. They led Makana over to the special lift without a word and slid home the security key that activated it. The sombre mood was palpable. As the doors slid open again Makana found Soraya Hanafi and Gaber waiting for him. As he stepped out on the penthouse floor there came a howl from the upper level of the suite and they all turned to look up. Hanafi, dressed in a navy blue dressing gown embroidered with gold crescents, was leaning over the balustrade waving a newspaper in the air.