Beneath a Burning Sky

by Jenny Ashcroft

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Right at the end of May. I came directly.’

  Olivia, thinking of her conversation with Imogen at lunch, frowned at the timing. ‘Why didn’t Clara get a bodyguard?’ she asked.

  ‘She got taken to Constantinople.’

  ‘Do you know what it’s all about, Ada?’

  ‘No. I’d tell you now if I did, I swear it. I’m sorry I’ve not taken better care of you. I didn’t know what to do, you see, when I realised what was what.’ Ada sighed. ‘You’re trapped, I think, I can’t see no way out for you, but I’ll ’elp ’owever I can.’

  ‘Ada, I don’t know what to say. I’ve been so awful to you.’

  ‘No,’ Ada’s pointy face flushed, ‘not a bit of it.’

  Olivia caught her hand. ‘Thank you.’ It was a stay of execution, nothing more, but in that moment it meant the world.

  As the evening progressed, Olivia’s nerves grew. Ada stayed close, but she could hardly remain with her all night, it wasn’t as though she was going to clamber between the sheets with her and Alistair. Olivia would just have to endure the hours, minutes and agonising seconds between dusk and dawn as best she could.

  But she didn’t know how to. It made her ill in the stomach waiting for it. She had to keep rushing to the latrine.

  Alistair went out before dinner. He didn’t say where he was going, just barked up the stairs that he’d be back later. A note arrived from Imogen saying she hadn’t managed to get a message to Tom; Fadil was right, no one at the ground knew where he’d be. Hopefully they’ll come back tomorrow. I’m staying at Benjy’s tonight. I want to see what else I can find out.

  Olivia undressed for bed shakily, bracing herself in the darkness. She remembered the words in Edward’s note. Get away. She’d never thought of running before. Haring around seeking protection from your abusive husband was hardly the done thing. But she was so much closer to Imogen now – if she were home tonight she would have gone to her. She simply didn’t know the Pashas well enough to involve them.

  ‘What about your sister’s house?’ Ada asked dubiously. ‘It’ll be safe with the police there.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘We could take Fadil.’

  ‘Alistair would just come and find me.’ Either that or Mildred would march her straight home.

  ‘Somewhere else then?’

  ‘There’s nowhere else,’ said Olivia. ‘Isn’t that pathetic? I have no one else.’

  She went to the window. The Bedouins’ lantern formed a puddle of light on the driveway. The mother and her boys would be settling down for the night. Safe.

  Safe.

  ‘Ada,’ she said, ‘I’ve had an idea.’

  She heard Alistair returning much later that night. His horse cantered past, hooves on gravel, the noise startlingly loud through the fabric of the tent. She saw him in her mind’s eye, discovering their empty bed, opening the doors of each of the spare rooms, peering through the keyhole of the locked one at the mound of a body within. Pillows lined up in just the way Sofia had said Clara used to. He might knock the door down, Olivia hoped he wouldn’t, not on this, the first night of her making an escape – she willed him to content himself with the promise that he’d speak to her about it on the morrow instead – but he might. It was why Olivia had come here. He would never look for her amongst peasants, especially ones who despised him; he was too arrogant to even think of it. And if he did alert the police to her absence, well, it would be dawn before they came. Another day. One in which Edward might return.

  She knew she was snatching hours, segments of safety. It was no way to live, not in the long term, but it was the only life she could manage for now.

  She blew a slow breath through her lips. A hand touched her shoulder. It wasn’t Ada’s, she was fast asleep. It wasn’t the Bedouin boys, they were too, curled up at Olivia’s feet. It was the mother, her sad face shadowy in the near-moonless night. The woman who had asked no questions when Olivia and Ada appeared at her door, just beckoned them in, made room.

  ‘No you worry,’ she said to Olivia, touching her fingertips to her heart, then to Olivia’s cheek. ‘No you cry.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ Olivia whispered back. ‘I really never do.’

  The woman shook her head.

  She took Olivia’s hand and laid it on her damp, tear-sopped face.

  At dawn, Olivia and Ada crept back to the house. Fadil was already up and sitting at the front door, gun in lap. He could well have been there all night.

  ‘Can you be ready to leave at eight?’ Olivia asked him. ‘We have to go back to St Aloysius’.’

  ‘Will you tell me why?’ he asked. ‘What you want with that girl?’

  ‘I won’t for now.’ Imogen was right, there was no point. Fadil couldn’t arrest Nailah, and Olivia didn’t want anyone knowing about Clara’s affair unnecessarily. Once Olivia found out the identity of her lover, then she’d go to Fadil, get his help taking the man in. If Edward wasn’t back by then.

  Today, she thought, it all happens today.

  THE FINAL DAY

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Olivia skipped breakfast, so avoiding Alistair, but also food. She’d barely touched her dinner, she was famished. The sunlight, the renewed distance of nightfall: it made things like eating possible again. She asked Fadil to stop at a bakery on the outskirts of town, a squat stone hut that smelt of flour and cinnamon and was bustling with wide-elbowed matrons. Fadil cleared a space for Olivia by the display of sugared pastries; he made her smile by reprimanding the owner for charging her too much.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

  ‘I do,’ he replied.

  When Olivia arrived on the ward, she was relieved to see Nailah’s battered sandals beneath Babu’s screens. No need to gird her loins for a return to the Turkish Quarter after all. She crossed the room. Babu was awake, and Nailah bent over him, stroking his cheek as he smiled. She wore the robe Olivia had brought her. Olivia wondered if it was a good sign, an indication that she was prepared to give in and start talking, or simply that her other dress was dirty and not as nice.

  She held up her basket. ‘I’ve brought breakfast.’ Nailah thanked her. Olivia nodded down at Babu. ‘He has some colour in him.’

  ‘Yes. God is smiling.’

  ‘Is he? I must say this is the first evidence I’ve seen of it in a while.’ Olivia sat in the free chair, skirts spreading around her on the chemically scented floor. She hesitated before speaking, unsure which matter to raise first: Clara’s lover or Tabia’s demise? Feeling as though Tabia might (might) be the easier one to ease into, she said, ‘Nailah, I want to talk to you about your aunt’s death.’

  Nailah’s hand froze on Babu’s cheek.

  ‘Do you know what happened to her?’

  Nailah blinked, then said, ‘Everyone knows.’

  ‘Do they?’ Olivia gave Nailah a long look. ‘I’m not so sure.’ There was a short silence. ‘I think there’s more to it,’ said Olivia. ‘That it’s got something to do with my sister disappearing.’

  Nailah’s expression didn’t move. It registered no confusion. The connection, which still made no sense to Olivia, apparently held logic for her. Olivia leant forward, hands clasped on Babu’s sheets. ‘Nailah, what do you know that I don’t?’ Nailah’s face remained immobile, as if it was stuck. ‘Nailah.’

  She swallowed. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘I think you do.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Either you tell me what it is, or I’ll fetch Captain Bertram to question you instead. He’ll be back soon, or,’ she bluffed, ‘I’ll get one of his men. Better me, surely?’ Nailah shook her head mutely. ‘You can trust me, Nailah.’ Silence. Olivia decided to take a subtler tack. ‘Your aunt lived in Montazah, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She was killed in the middle of the night. What was she doing out on the roads? Why wasn’t she safe at home?’

  Again, Nailah shook her head.

&nbs
p; Olivia exclaimed in frustration: ‘I’ll go to the barracks, shall I? Or the police?’ She made to stand. ‘They’ll take you in, you know, your cousin will be left all alone.’

  ‘No, please.’ Nailah reached out, face imploring.

  ‘Why was Tabia out, Nailah? What was she doing?’

  Silence.

  Olivia turned to walk away.

  ‘She was meeting someone.’ Nailah’s words came like a surrender. Her shoulders dropped. ‘She might have been meeting someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Just a man.’

  ‘A friend?’

  Nailah’s sallow cheeks flushed. ‘A good friend.’

  ‘Tabia was having a love affair?’ Olivia needed it clarified; she was worried the activities of her own immediate circle were leading her to jump to the wrong conclusions.

  Nailah’s colour deepened. ‘Are you shocked?’

  ‘Probably not as much as I should be.’

  ‘Tabia loved him. They were planning to marry, soon. She wasn’t loose.’

  ‘Who was he?’ Olivia asked again.

  Nailah cast her eyes down to the sheet, picking at it. ‘Tabia called him Rohi,’ she said quietly. ‘My soul. A pet name.’

  It was familiar somehow. Olivia frowned, trying to think where she’d heard it.

  Nailah said, ‘The night Tabia died, he took her to the beach.’

  ‘The beach at Montazah?’ Olivia stared, incredulous. What in God’s name was it about that bay that made it such a den of iniquity? To think of it, Tabia and Clara, both there – perhaps even at the same time; Clara lifting her silk petticoats just out of sight from Tabia raising her roughened robes.

  The idea settled like a rock within Olivia’s abdomen.

  ‘How did your aunt die, Nailah?’ She forced the question out, she barely wanted to ask it; she’d become abruptly confident that wherever the answer took her it would be nowhere good.

  Nailah stared across the ward. It was as though she hadn’t heard.

  Olivia asked her again.

  Nothing.

  ‘Nailah.’

  ‘She was murdered.’ Nailah’s eyes widened the instant she spoke, as if she’d swallow the words back if she could. But the pronouncement was already shooting free; it bounced from Olivia’s ear, chaotically off the scrubbed surfaces and crisp linen, filling the ward.

  And there they were. Nowhere good.

  ‘By whom?’ Olivia asked, marvelling at how calm she sounded.

  ‘The… that Bedouin man, his horse.’ It was little more than a whisper.

  ‘What happened to your aunt, Nailah?’

  ‘I… I don’t know. How could I know?’

  ‘But you just said a Bedouin’s horse killed her.’

  ‘What?’ Nailah frowned confusedly. ‘Yes, it did.’

  ‘You’re lying.’ Olivia raised her hand to her forehead. She looked around her, trying to anchor herself in the plain detail of the beds and vases of flowers, to think clearly. A trolley trundled metallically down the corridor outside, street noises floated through the open windows, a child in the far bed made his mother laugh. ‘Did Clara know about this?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Has she been taken by the man who killed Tabia to keep her quiet?’ Olivia was struck by an image of Clara and Edward talking in the darkness on the Sporting Club terrace, the very night after Tabia’s death and the Pashas’ ball. Was Edward involved somehow? Had he been begging Clara not to say anything? Please not. Pleasenotpleasenotpleasenot. Olivia couldn’t think it of him. She couldn’t. ‘Nailah, who murdered Tabia?’

  ‘I can’t… I don’t know.’

  ‘You do, I can see it in your face. You’re involved somehow.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. And my sister was there, wasn’t she, when it happened?’

  ‘Wh — what do you mean?’

  ‘I know you saw her that same night at the beach, with a man she shouldn’t have been with.’ Olivia reached across the bed, seizing Nailah’s icy hands. ‘I want you to tell me who that man was, Nailah. I have to find him. I think he’s taken Clara.’

  There, she’d said it. At last.

  But the way Nailah was staring at her. There was no other word for it but aghast. Actually, that was quite wrong, there were several other words for it: appalled, shocked, horrified. Her face was the pictorial definition of terror.

  ‘Nailah, is he threatening you, this man? To keep silent?’

  Nailah’s mouth formed a silent no.

  ‘Tell me the truth, Nailah, there’s nothing to be frightened of.’

  Nailah shook her head as though there was a great deal to be frightened of. ‘Ma’am Sheldon, please, leave this.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Olivia. ‘Tell me, who was this man?’

  ‘I can’t. I… I don’t… I never saw your sister with anyone.’

  ‘Stop lying. You saw Clara with an Egyptian man at Montazah Bay. Clara was last seen with another such man outside Draycott’s, before she went.’

  ‘I don’t know who that man was, I promise. And I swear to you, your sister knew nothing about Tabia’s death.’

  Olivia took a deep breath. Perhaps Nailah was telling the truth, about that at least. Now she had a moment’s pause, she realised that if Clara had simply been taken to silence her, there’d be no reason for everyone’s concern over her own safety. There’d be no police at the Grays’ house, safeguarding the family. And whilst Clara had been far from herself the day she’d disappeared – and so guarded in her letters from Constantinople – she’d seemed saddened rather than traumatised. Certainly nothing like the kind of shocked one would expect from the witness of a murder. Besides, her melancholy moods had started long before Tabia’s death.

  But Imogen was right, everything was linked somehow. Olivia just couldn’t see how. And she couldn’t for the life of her think what part Clara’s lover played in it all. Not to mention Tabia’s. Olivia’s shoulders sagged. She felt as though she were back to square one, the very worst place to be. ‘I’ll ask you one last time,’ she said to Nailah. ‘Who killed your aunt? And how do you even know about it? Did Tabia’s lover tell you?’

  ‘Ma’am Sheldon…’

  ‘What’s his real name, this Rohi?’

  ‘I can’t…’

  ‘How’s he involved?’

  ‘Please…’

  Olivia threw up her hands and got to her feet. She looked down at Babu staring amicably up at her, and then at Nailah. ‘I felt sorry for you yesterday, I really did. But I don’t any more. Clara could be dead, and you don’t give a damn.’

  ‘I do.’ Nailah’s eyes flooded. ‘Oh, Ma’am Sheldon, I do. Please though, you must say nothing of this to anyone.’

  Olivia gave a bitter laugh and turned to go.

  ‘No, stop. Wait. Leave this alone.’

  Olivia left. As she hastened past the nurses, Sister Rosis called out to her, saying she looked upset. ‘I hope Nailah wasn’t ungrateful, given all that’s been done for her.’

  Olivia stopped, caught by a thought. Someone’s paying for it. She turned back to Sister Rosis. ‘Is the account settled?’ She kept her tone light. ‘Do you need my help with it?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Sheldon, Socrates is forwarding all the bills direct to Captain Bertram. He’s arranging payment with Babu’s benefactor.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Olivia’s smile felt like a knife slash on her face.

  From across the ward, Nailah watched Ma’am Sheldon leave. She didn’t deserve this pain. She wasn’t a bad person; it was the people around her that were rotten, almost all of them.

  Nailah included.

  She felt like she’d been caught on a runaway spiral, carried off the day that he, Tabia’s love, Rohi, had come to tell her of Tabia’s death. Instead of leaping off, she’d stayed on, riding deeper and deeper…

  She let her head fall onto Babu’s sheets. Such a stupid snap about Tabia being murdered. Why had she said it? She should have kept her mouth shut, refused to
tell Ma’am Sheldon anything, no matter her threats to go to the police, have her taken in. Selfish, selfish.

  All she could hope for now was that Ma’am Sheldon would keep her suspicions to herself, and not just because Nailah needed time to get herself and the children away before anyone came to arrest her. She prayed Ma’am Sheldon would stay quiet for her own sake too.

  For if he found out all Ma’am Sheldon had started to guess, there would be only one fate for her: the same one her sister had suffered.

  Chapter Thirty

  They were on their way home, thank Christ. They’d been riding since dawn, galloping hard, eyes locked on the endless dunes ahead as they willed away the distance.

  Edward had been sure that Tabia’s estranged husband would give them nothing. He’d been tempted not to bother speaking with him at all. As they’d approached his hut, and Mahmood had looked nervously up at them, shoulders stooped beneath his loose smock as he clutched a bucket of chicken feed, it had been obvious he was no abductor. He didn’t even know of Tabia’s death until they told him. He hadn’t seen Tabia in years, nor the children. (I was no good for them, you see. Then the sick boy arrived.) He said he had no idea who might want to avenge Tabia’s death. ‘Have you spoken to Tabia’s brother?’ he’d asked.

  Edward had felt his spine crackle. ‘Tabia has a brother?’

  ‘Yes. Jahi. He always visited, he used to work close by. He probably still does. He may know of something.’

  ‘His second name?’ Tom had asked.

  Edward cursed now, thinking of Mahmood’s reply. ‘We need to arrest them all,’ he called to Tom, voice raised above the sound of the wind, their hooves. ‘They’ve all been lying. Nailah included.’

  Tom didn’t protest this time. ‘We need to speak about India too,’ he said. ‘It can’t wait. The ship, it leaves —’

  ‘Not now,’ said Edward, ‘I can’t think about that now.’ He looked to the sun, already beginning its descent in the sky, the haze on the dunes. ‘It can keep until tomorrow.’