The Heat of Betrayal (41 page)

A very long silence followed, during which Ben Hassan got up and poured us both an
eau de vie
. Then he finally spoke.

‘I don't entirely agree with your character assessment of me,
madame
. Yes, I do have my tricky side – and a very long memory for wrongs rendered. But I am also an excellent friend. As I was to your husband all those years ago. And the result . . .'

He held up his two battered, deformed hands.

‘We all have our ways of dealing with the injustices and sorrows piled upon us,
madame
. We all have our ways of getting through the day. And we all have our moments of malevolence . . . even if, in your recent case, the malevolence you meted out on your attacker was wholly merited. Pushed to the wall, some of us surrender to the inevitable. Whereas there are others – like you, like me – who turn feral. And who fight back with the same brutality as that visited upon us. Because we know that, in life, the central preoccupation is still the same as it was when we all lived in caves – survival. You're a survivor. I salute you for it. But don't try to take the moral high ground here. You are exactly like me. You killed to stay alive.'

‘There's a difference here – you killed as an act of revenge.'

‘No – the difference is that, unlike you, I didn't have the opportunity to strike back immediately. Two crushed hands leave one at a profound disadvantage. But I did strike back eventually, to prove I would never again be cowed by such animals. And to let my little community here know that too . . . not that I ever actually admitted to such acts. I didn't need to. Everyone knew. Everyone also knew they could never pin the crimes on me, because I was too shrewd to get caught. But the real lesson that everyone around here gleaned from my strike back was:
Now you know that I will kill to stay alive
.'

Five minutes later, I was alone in the living room. As much as my analytical side wanted to take apart the skewed logic of Ben Hassan's attempts to draw a parallel between us, another part of me simply thought:
By this time tomorrow I will be in Spain. Ben Hassan will cease to have any impact on my life, unless I allow myself to be haunted by his version of morality
. The truth is, haunted I would be. And by so much. But why add Ben Hassan's toxic reasoning to the mix on a night when I was crawling into the first proper bed with proper sheets that I had slept in for weeks?

Having started the day at before sunrise, hearing my friend Aatif being beaten and robbed in the dark, sleep did not take long to overtake me.

Then I was awake and wondering where I was, feeling as though I had been unconscious for a very long time. Getting up and wandering out into the hallway I passed by Ben Hassan in his ‘office'.

‘My, my, you certainly needed your beauty sleep, didn't you?' he said.

‘What time is it?'

‘A few minutes before midday.'

‘Oh my God . . .'

‘Not to worry. Have your shower. I will tell Omar to arrange breakfast for you. Meantime I have a few phone calls to make, and then we can get down to business.'

‘Will there be enough time—?'

‘To take care of everything and get you packed off? Absolutely. Now go. The sooner you are showered and dressed . . .'

I hurried into the bathroom, noting with pleasure that, as before, a hairdryer had been left out for me, as well as my freshly laundered clothes. Ben Hassan was a dangerous customer, but he also knew how to play the thoughtful host. Twenty minutes later I was sipping proper coffee and eating two croissants in Ben Hassan's kitchen. At which point I heard his front doorbell ring. As Omar went to answer it Ben Hassan came into the kitchen.

‘Enjoying your breakfast?'

I heard voices down the corridor.

‘Do you have visitors?' I asked.

‘
We
have visitors. Last night, after you went to bed, I thought about our little exchange. I also considered the complexities of risk, and the fact that there are some clients who are just too hot to handle. Which, on reflection, is most certainly the case with you. Another little matter entered my thinking – I need to keep my friends and associates happy. Helping you flee the country would certainly anger several of the men now down the corridor, all of whom want to talk with you. They are members of the
Sûreté
. Or as you Americans put it – the Feds.'

‘You bastard,' I hissed.

‘I won't contest that. At least be thankful that I allowed you a shower, a good meal and an excellent night's sleep before calling them.'

Then he shouted something in Arabic. Moments later I was surrounded by three men in suits and a uniformed police officer. One of the detectives spoke to me in French, asking me to confirm my name. I told him what he wanted to hear.

‘Now, we would prefer not to use handcuffs . . .' he said.

‘I'll go quietly.'

‘Very wise of you,
madame
.'

With two men in front of me and two behind, I was marched out. Ben Hassan insisted on accompanying us to the front door.

‘Do say hello the next time you are in Casablanca,' he said as a parting benediction. ‘And do remember the subtext to all this – survival is everything.'

I was marched down the stairs and into a waiting unmarked vehicle, accompanied by two police cars blaring their sirens as we shot at high speed across the city. Neither of the detectives with me said anything. I shut my eyes.
Why am I surprised it is ending like this?

The windows of the car were virtually blacked out, allowing me no view of where we were heading. After quarter of an hour I saw through the windscreen that we were entering a modern block of buildings, then driving down a tunnel into an underground garage. Once there all the officers exited their cars before I was allowed to get up. The same deal as before: two in front of me and two behind. I was marched to a door which only opened after one of the cops had punched in a code. The walls inside were painted an institutional green. I was taken up a set of stairs, and then down a concrete corridor until I was steered into a room furnished only with a metal table, four chairs and a mirror – which, no doubt, was two-way, allowing those on the other side to look in on the suspect under interrogation.

The cops deposited me in this room, then turned and left without saying anything. The door slammed behind them with a formidable thud and I heard a bolt sliding into place outside.
Do you really think I'd try to make a break for it?
I felt like shouting. Instead I sat down on one of the chairs, put my face in my hands and thought:
Whatever you do, insist on a lawyer, and refuse to answer any of their questions.

But then, out of nowhere, I heard the bolt being slid back and the door opened. In walked a Western woman, late thirties, dressed in a crisp linen suit and a pressed white blouse, a bulging leather briefcase in her left hand. She came over to me, her hand extended.

‘It is so good to finally meet you, Robin.'

I accepted the outstretched hand, trying to work out who this woman was and why she was here in a Moroccan police station.

‘Alison Conway, Assistant Consul at the US Consulate here in Casablanca. We don't have long, as Inspector al-Badisi and the translator will be here in a moment. But what I wanted to explain before he got here—'

She had no time to finish that sentence, as the door swung open and in walked a man of about forty-five. He had thick black hair, a groomed moustache, and was wearing a light brown suit. He shook my hand and informed me that he was Inspector al-Badisi. He had a dossier of documents with him, which he put down on the table. I asked for water. He shouted out to someone in the hallway. Meanwhile another woman joined us – late forties, severe features, dressed in a dark suit with black hair tied in a tight bun.

‘This is Madame Zar,' the inspector said, ‘who will be translating for me today.'

‘But we are speaking in French now.'

The assistant consul, now seated next to me at the table, put her hand on my arm.

‘I felt it was better, for clarity's sake, if everything discussed here was translated, so there would be no ambiguities.'

‘What's going on here?' I whispered to her in English.

‘Just let the inspector speak,' she whispered back. ‘All will be explained.'

The water arrived. The door was closed. The inspector sat down and opened his dossier, bringing out several copies of what seemed to be the same document. Then he looked up and regarded me with formal severity. As he spoke the translator waited for a pause every few sentences before rendering his words into English for me.

‘
Madame
, on behalf of His Majesty and his government, I wish to offer you our sincere condolences for the ordeal you have been put through. We have, as Assistant Consul Conway can attest, been working very closely with the US Consulate here in Casablanca in the search for you. We are immensely relieved and pleased to have you here, alive and, I hope, reasonably well.'

I said nothing. I just nodded acknowledgement of his very civil words.

‘Now I regret that we must discuss the events that occurred in a sector of the Sahara some forty-three kilometres from the town of Tata. We do know what happened out there—'

I flew off the handle.

‘How can you know what happened? I was there. What happened there was inflicted on me.'

The assistant consul gripped my arm tightly. I shut my eyes for a moment, gathering myself, then opened them and said:

‘I apologise for interrupting you, Inspector. It has been a very long few weeks.'

‘There is no need to apologise,
madame
. On the contrary, it is we who should be apologising to you, considering what you've been put through. As I was saying . . . we are aware of what happened in the desert.'

With that he pulled over what was clearly a prepared statement and began to read it to me. In it he recounted the ‘facts' of the case. How I had been searching for my missing husband in the Sahara and had been drugged with chloroform while leaving my hotel in Tata to catch the early bus to Ouarzazate. The two ‘criminals' were named Abdullah Talib and Imad Shuayb, both twenty-one, both from Marrakesh, both working on a road work project in Tata. They beat and robbed me, knocking me unconscious. But after that, the two thieves argued over how to split the money and goods stolen from me. A fight between them broke out, with Imad stabbing Abdullah to death, and then, in a panic, setting fire to the body and returning to Tata. When he tried to sell my laptop and passport some days later in Marrakesh, a merchant notified the police. Imad Shuayb confessed everything after his arrest and was so ashamed of his crimes that he hanged himself in the prison cell in which he was being held while awaiting trial.

When the inspector reached this part of the narrative my shoulders stiffened. I was about to say something – but again Assistant Consul Conway put her hand on my arm, letting me know that silence was the best option. I knew immediately what the inspector was reading me: the official version of what went down, eliminating the nasty public embarrassment (in such a tourist-based economy) of the revelation that a Western woman had been abducted and raped and left to die under the Saharan sun. I could only begin to wonder if, having had his ‘confession' beaten out of him, my abductor had truly taken his own life or was conveniently suicided to close the case. While part of me was outraged that the rape had been left out of the official statement, the other forensic part of my psyche (the eternal balancer of profits and loss) also understood what the authorities were doing. They were giving me a way out, and one in which no possible legal charges could ever be directed at me, or an investigation demanded by the assailants' families (because even in self-defence, a murder is a murder and must be investigated). The loose ends were being tied up in a manner in which the case would be permanently closed.

The inspector continued, explaining how a Berber family had found me lying unconscious in the desert, nursed me back to life and eventually helped get me to Casablanca. Again I wondered whether they actually knew the names of my saviours or whether this was just more official speak. I interrupted him.

‘That is what happened,
monsieur
. I owe my life to those people who saved me and the man who drove me here.'

The inspector's face twitched, as if he had been caught unawares by this revelation. That's when I knew that they knew nothing of Maika and her family, or of Aatif and the way I had been smuggled here behind the burqa. They had just invented the Berber part of the story as a way of explaining why I had gone missing for several weeks. As such my Berber friends would not be receiving unwanted visits from the
Sûreté
posing all sorts of questions. They would be left alone.

Assistant Consul Conway shot me a look, telling me that I should let the inspector finish.

‘I am pleased that you were helped by our citizens,' he said. ‘And I would like to say – those men who attacked you, those criminals . . . they are not us.'

‘Believe me,
monsieur
, I know that,' I replied. ‘I know that so well.'

‘We have prepared an official statement in English, French and Arabic which Assistant Consul Conway has examined in all three languages to confirm they are one and the same, and which we would like you to sign . . . after, of course, you've had the chance to peruse them. We would appreciate it if you would pose for a photograph with myself. It will be released to the media to show that you are alive and well, as there has been considerable concern here and elsewhere about your disappearance. We have been in contact with the hotel at which you and your husband were staying in Essaouira. All your clothes were packed up and sent here to Casablanca, where they will await you tonight at the Hotel Mansour. It is an excellent hotel and you will be our guest tonight. Anything that you want there you can just sign for. When Imad Shuayb was arrested we recovered your passport.' He pushed this across the table to me. ‘We also discovered that you had a reservation back to New York on Royal Air Maroc some weeks ago that you never used. We have contacted the airline and they have changed the reservation, at no charge whatsoever to you, to tomorrow at midday. We will arrange for complimentary transport to the airport.'