The Heat of Betrayal (40 page)

‘I could be,' Aatif said. ‘We got little sleep last night, we've been on the road for hours . . .'

‘Where are you sleeping tonight?' Mr Abbou asked.

Aatif shrugged.

‘We have a small guest room in the back. It's very simple, but clean. You are most welcome to stay. And I would be honoured if you were to eat with me. There is a nice restaurant just two minutes from here. Then, tomorrow morning, I can introduce you to one or two merchants I know. We can discuss all this over dinner.
D'accord?
'

Aatif smiled his trademark shy smile.

‘
D'accord
.'

I asked Aatif if I could borrow his sister's ID card for a few more days, but said I would mail it back to him if he gave me his address.

‘Please keep the card. My sister would have been pleased to know that her identity was put to such good use.'

I glanced at my wrist and realised my watch was no longer there. The last vestige of my father. My sole inheritance. Gone now for good. But being someone who appreciated life's manifold vagaries – ‘You gotta play the hand you're dealt,' as he so often told me – he would, I was certain, agree that the money raised on his one and only asset had ended up in the right hands.

‘It's eleven minutes past nine,' Mr Abbou said.

That would mean Casablanca by midnight. I reached for a pad on the desk and wrote out my email address, handing it to Aatif.

‘Here's how to contact me,' I said. ‘Send me the wedding photographs.'

He stood up and again took both my hands in his own. Saying:

‘
Allah ybarek feek wal
'
ayyam al-kadima
.'

I smiled and repeated the benediction back to him.

May Allah bestow his blessings on you in the days to come.

Ten minutes later, I was back beneath the burqa and speeding towards Casablanca. Mr Abbou had insisted on walking me to the Mercedes that Mahmoud would drive. As we reached this venerable black vehicle – it dated from the early 1980s, I was told – I handed Mahmoud the slip of paper on which Ben Hassan had scribbled his address.

‘No problem,' Mahmoud said. ‘We have GPS.'

Mr Abbou handed me his card, telling me his mobile phone number was written on the back.

‘If there is any problem whatsoever you call me,' he said. ‘I can't get you a passport, but I have connections should difficulties arise. And by the way, the drive to Casablanca is on me.'

‘That's very kind of you.'

‘Consider it a mitzvah,' he said.

Mitzvah. Jewish karma. I laughed.

‘I never thought I'd hear Hebrew being spoken in Marrakesh.'

‘Life is surprising.'

‘Yes, I am somewhat aware of that.'

‘And a mitzvah should always be rewarded with a mitzvah.'

‘How true – and how rare.'

Now I took his hands in my own.

‘Very good doing business with you,
monsieur
.'

‘And you,
madame
.'

With that he opened the back door of the Mercedes and ushered me out of his life.

Fifteen minutes later we had cleared Marrakesh and were on the
autoroute
heading north. We had agreed that if we were stopped by the police or questioned at a checkpoint, Mahmoud would explain that he was my father's driver, and that I was a woman with mental challenges etc.

But in the two and a half hours I was in this vehicle we were never stopped once. Sitting in the back, drinking in the air conditioning, I fell into a subdued daze. There was one checkpoint on the outskirts of Casa but the officer simply looked in, saw a besuited driver and a veiled woman in the back seat, and waved us on.

At around midnight we pulled up in front of the apartment building that Ben Hassan called home. I handed Mahmoud two thousand dirhams – despite his protests that his employer had said I wasn't to pay him – and asked him to wait for me outside for an hour.

‘If I don't come downstairs within an hour, you can head back to Marrakesh. But if I do need you before then . . .'

‘I'll be waiting.'

The truth was that without the false passport I hoped Ben Hassan would provide, I would hit the end of the line. But just in case he was out for the night, or if the situation turned tricky, at least Mahmoud might be persuaded to drive me to Tangier. I would then have to find a black marketeer for a way out of the country. My hope was that, if I flashed ten thousand dirhams in front of him, Ben Hassan would come up with the necessary goods and even get me north to the ferry for Spain by morning.

I got out of the Mercedes and loitered by the front door until a young couple came out of the building. Before the door could slam behind them I had raced inside and up the five flights of twisted stairs to Ben Hassan's apartment. I rang the bell. No answer. I rang it again. No answer. So I held it down for the better part of a minute.

Then, out of nowhere, the door opened. Ben Hassan, his capacious kaftan stained with sweat, looked as if I had got him out of bed.

He seemed just a bit confused to find a woman in a burqa standing in front of him. I pulled the veil back. The shock on his face was considerable but he swiftly wiped it away.

‘So . . . the most wanted woman in Morocco drops in to say hello.'

I pushed past him into the apartment, saying:

‘I need a shower and a passport.'

HOT WATER FROM
a shower spray. Proper soap and shampoo. A toothbrush and toothpaste. A large towel. A bed with clean sheets. And before that, a late-night supper and several very welcome glasses of wine.

Basic comforts can seem like tremendous luxuries when you have been denied them for a considerable length of time.

As cautious as I was about being in Ben Hassan's presence I also knew from before that he had a nurturing side. Seeing me exhausted and rank, he roused Omar from bed and set him to work. On my way to the bathroom I was handed one of Omar's freshly laundered light cotton djellabas. Given his slightness – and all the weight I'd lost – it actually fit me. He also saw to it that the clothes I was carrying with me were thrown into the washing machine. When I emerged from the shower (having spent almost twenty minutes under its blessed downpour), dried and changed into the clean djellaba, I found that a small supper had been laid out for me.

The wine was balming. And the pastilla – a pie made with cinnamon, harisa, almonds and a very dead pigeon – was quite delicious. I had decided on the way from Marrakesh that my strategy with Ben Hassan would be to say nothing about Paul and the entire fraudulent loan for Samira's apartment. My desire here was to get a new passport and make it to Tangier as quickly as possible. But when Ben Hassan offered hot water, clean clothes, supper and a bed for the night, my debilitation won the argument. While drying off in the bathroom I inspected the marks on my face and legs. The bruising from the beating had virtually vanished, but my cheekbone felt fragile to the touch, and the deep rings under my eyes made me look like a haunted insomniac. The facial sunburn was still apparent but subsiding, but there were still severe scars on my legs. I knew that I had to see a doctor as soon as possible about STDs and any lasting vaginal injuries. Just as I probably needed an MRI on my face and head, and to deal with the slight ringing that was still omnipresent in my ear. Had he burst an eardrum when he'd slammed his fist against my left ear, then kicked me in the head?

I wondered: How much did Ben Hassan know of all this? As he'd called me ‘the most wanted woman in Morocco' he was evidently aware that I was still being sought in connection with the disappearance of my husband. No doubt he'd also seen the television footage of the charred body in the desert.

But I was going to mention none of this. I would accept his bed and food for the night, and clean clothes. I would negotiate a price for the passport, and would hopefully be on my way by midday tomorrow.

So I ate my pastilla and drank my wine and let Ben Hassan do the talking.

‘I must say, from what I've learned of your exploits, you've been quite resourceful,' he said. ‘Sorry about the abuse you received. Though I am no doctor, my untrained eye tells me you might have a bone or two broken around your left eye socket. Still, your attacker did get his comeuppance, did he not? And as I am not the police, who am I to pry into how you burnt that man to death. Or what you were doing with him in the desert.'

I stared straight at his corpulent face.

‘That young man and his accomplice seized me off a street in Tata, drugged me, drove me out into the middle of the Sahara, raped me and left me to die.'

‘And you struck back.'

‘I never said that.'

‘Of course you didn't. Nor did his accomplice.'

‘So he has been found?'

‘That's for you to find out. But as your hope is, I presume, to be out of the country tomorrow . . .'

‘Can you facilitate that?'

‘For a price.'

‘And what is your price?'

‘Let's discuss that in the morning.'

‘I'd rather discuss it now. I need a false passport. You are the one person I know in Morocco who can provide me with such a document. Here I am.'

‘Availing yourself of my hospitality.'

‘I can leave,
monsieur
.'

‘And go where? Back into your native garb? How clever of you to go behind the veil to get through all those tiresome checkpoints. How did you manage the identity-paper problem?'

‘I found a solution.'

‘I'm certain you did.'

‘So how much for a false passport?'

‘We are all business tonight.'

‘I need to know your price.'

‘I presume you were robbed of everything.'

‘That's right. And I am not going to take out a loan with you.'

‘Smart woman. But if you have no cash to hand . . .'

‘I have a little.'

‘And how did you manage to obtain that?'

‘I sold what jewellery I had in Marrakesh.'

He made a point of carefully studying my left hand.

‘Indeed. All vestiges of your marriage vanished.'

‘Except the mental scars.'

‘You must have done well, given that your most collectible Rolex is also no longer on your wrist.'

‘I had some debts to settle.'

‘Ah yes, I figured that someone must have aided and abetted you in evading the police. And he must have cost plenty.'

‘Actually, he might have been the most honourable man I've ever met.'

‘I'm so pleased for you – honourable men being so infrequent in your life.'

‘Present company included,' I said.

‘So . . . I am right in presuming that you have little money.'

‘You told me your standard price for a false passport was ten thousand dirhams.'

‘I also told you that was my rate for friends. If the individual is problematic – as in, wanted by the police – the price trebles. So I am afraid thirty-five thousand is the amount needed.'

‘Twenty thousand is what I can pay – and that must include transport up to Tangier. I'm certain you can get Omar to drive me.'

‘That will be an additional five thousand dirhams.'

‘It's only a few hours' drive.'

‘But think of the risks involved in getting you there.'

‘I can put on the burqa and use the ID papers I've got. Then, when we're at the port, I'll change back into my normal clothes and use the passport you've given me to leave.'

‘My, my, you have this all worked out already. Most impressive. But there is still risk involved for myself and Omar. Still, as a way of showing goodwill, twenty-five thousand dirhams all in.'

I put out my hand.

‘Deal.'

He seemed supremely uncomfortable taking my hand. As before his felt like a hot, damp cushion.

‘What time can I get the passport tomorrow?' I asked.

‘As it is now almost one-thirty in the morning I will want to sleep until ten. It will take an hour or so to put the passport together. I have the camera for the photograph. I will need to get the appropriate entry stamp made in the document, and also have it logged on the immigration computer system. That involves me contacting an associate who does this sort of thing. I have decided, given your facility with the language, that you will be French. But even at the Port of Tangier the immigration officers now have computers. My associate has a way of ensuring that your date of entry will pop up when they scan your passport . . .'

‘And does this cost extra?'

‘Of course not. It's all part of the overall fee. Tomorrow we can choose a name for you. Nothing too absurd. We'll sleep on it.'

‘Fine. I could certainly use some sleep.'

‘Your bed awaits.'

‘One last question – in my absence have there been any sightings of my husband?'

‘None whatsoever since you tried to chase him down in Ouarzazate.'

‘How did you know about that?'

‘I have my sources.'

‘Like his other wife?'

‘Perhaps. And I know full well that you are desperate to ask why I didn't give Samira the money that Paul borrowed for her apartment? And whether I contacted Paul, telling him that, by helping buy his daughter and grandson an apartment, he could atone for his absence from Samira's life?'

‘Did I even indicate that I was concerned about this?'

‘My source in Ouarzazate informed me that you certainly seemed vexed by it. The truth is—'

‘The truth,
monsieur
, is that dealing with you is like walking through a hall of mirrors. Nothing is ever real. So be it. I don't need to know why Samira didn't get the money. Or if you set all this up as a trap to ensnare my now vanished husband. Let that be on your conscience . . . if you have one. You will be getting two thousand seven hundred dollars from me tomorrow for one hour's work and a five-hour drive to Tangier which you yourself won't have to make. Our business is therefore done for the night. I thank you for the hospitality.'