Beneath a Burning Sky

by Jenny Ashcroft

  Since Imogen was still at the Pashas’ when she called, Olivia sent one of the servants to fetch her, telling them to bring her to Clara’s, then asked Fadil to take her there. She couldn’t go home, not with the chance that Alistair might be there, the sense of Edward in every room. She wanted to scream, lash out, rip at her own hair, anything to get rid of the confusion within her.

  She wished she could see Edward. Against the growing weight of evidence, she refused to believe he’d played a part in Tabia’s death, she simply couldn’t think him capable of it. But she had to know what he knew, and why he’d kept it all from her. For the first time ever, she was angry at him, and she hated it.

  The carriage jerked. Skinny goats stared with bored eyes. The acacia trees rustled in a lacklustre breeze. Olivia’s fury grew, fanned by the stultifying heat, extending to everyone, herself included, for not being able to work it all out and see what everyone else apparently did.

  The police were in Clara’s front garden, smoking beneath the shade of her orange trees. Olivia cursed them silently as she climbed down from the carriage, hating them for all the lies they stood for, and for looking so relaxed, so dispassionately at ease, when they – and everyone else – had failed, so abysmally, to find Clara.

  Fadil took the horses to the stables, she raised her fist to the front door. She held it in mid-air. She turned back to the police, looked up at the house.

  Sometimes realisations took a while.

  Had Jeremy killed Tabia? Was it he who had asked Edward to arrange payment for Babu’s care, out of guilt? And were the police here now to protect the rest of the family because Clara had been taken as retribution? It would certainly explain the hush-hush investigation, all hands on deck to get to Clara, apprehend her kidnappers, bury it, bury them. No one would want it getting out that Jeremy, one half of Sheldon-Gray Limited, bastion of British commercial greatness, had murdered an impoverished local woman. Least of all Jeremy.

  Or Alistair.

  Was that why Alistair was helping with the search? Or did he have Tabia’s death on his hands too? The more Olivia thought about it, the surer she was that he was involved. That was why her own safety was such a concern: she was next on the abduction list.

  She could only assume that Edward was off now chasing a suspect. Tabia’s lover? Did Edward even know she’d had one?

  Quite possibly not.

  Olivia took a long breath. It was him she needed to tell Edward about: Tabia’s lover, not Clara’s. He held the key to Clara’s whereabouts, Olivia was certain of it. But where was he? Who was he? There was only one person who knew.

  Resolve snapped through her. She set off to find Fadil in the stables, intent on sending him back to St Aloysius’ to take Nailah in, sick cousin or no. She cursed herself for not doing it earlier; she’d been too shocked to think straight, that was the problem, wasted time. Enough. Nailah must be made to talk.

  Fadil was brushing the carriage horses down. Hassan was there too, flicking his beads in a corner; El Masri leant against the wall, a piece of straw in his mouth. Olivia narrowed her eyes at him. He really was a good-looking man, even more so for his slight imperfections, that single crooked tooth. Could he have been Clara’s lover after all? Or Tabia’s?

  She wasn’t fool enough to ask.

  She turned to Fadil and said she’d like a word outside.

  She spoke to him in hushed tones, conscious that the other two, El Masri especially, could well be listening. She told Fadil as quickly as possible that he needed to have Nailah arrested, that she was certain the girl held the key to Clara’s whereabouts. ‘I can’t say more now, just please, go and get her.’

  ‘The hospital will never hand a girl over to me,’ he said, ‘even a local one.’

  Olivia frowned. ‘What if I came?’

  ‘It needs to be an officer if we are to convince the doctors, and the lieutenants are all over the city looking for your sister.’

  ‘Then what about the police in the garden?’

  ‘They’re Wilkins’ men, Ma’am Sheldon. Sayed Bertram said not to trust them.’

  ‘Fadil, we have to do something.’

  He nodded, obviously thinking. At length, he said he’d take the carriage to the house to fetch his own horse, then go in search of the lieutenants. ‘You wait here, Ma’am Sheldon. Don’t leave until I’m back. You must promise me that. There is no one, no one at all, you should go anywhere with, but me.’

  Nailah exhaled as she left the hospital. Sister Rosis let her go gladly this time. Babu was responding well to his medicine, he could finish it at home. Nailah supposed she was happy to be rid of them from her clean, white ward.

  Nailah was certainly pleased to be gone.

  On the way home, she banged on Sana’s door, intent on fetching Cleo before she ran. She felt a fierce impulse to hug her, cradle her in just the way she was holding Babu. You’re not alone, little one; I’m sorry for how you must have felt you were.

  But Cleo wasn’t at Sana’s. Nor was Isa. ‘Your uncle fetched them,’ said Sana.

  ‘He’s back?’ The words stuck like marbles in Nailah’s throat.

  ‘Yes, he looked as if he’d raced the whole way over from Ramleh.’ Sana gave a short laugh. ‘I’ve been so curious, you know, about what it is you’re involved with that’s got everyone running around like headless chickens. But, I’m not so sure I want to know any more. There’s something else too, he had another —’

  Nailah didn’t stop to listen. She didn’t have time for it. She hurried away.

  ‘You’re trouble,’ Sana called after her. ‘Nothing but trouble.’

  Nailah let herself into the house. She climbed the stairs, hoisting Babu on her hip, and opened the door to their room, expecting Jahi.

  But he wasn’t there. It was another man who stared across at her from the window ledge, brown eyes fierce and panicked. In his hand he clutched the worry beads Tabia had given him, thumb moving over the central four, each one inscribed with a letter.

  R O H I.

  A gift from those days when Tabia had loved him so well. When he was a man who deserved to be loved.

  Imogen arrived mid-afternoon, full of frustration at having found nothing more out at Benjamin’s.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Olivia, and proceeded to tell her of everything in motion.

  ‘There’s no point in Fadil going to the hospital,’ said Imogen, once Olivia had finished. ‘Nailah won’t be hanging around there, not now she’s let this out. She’ll be planning to run, mark my words. We can’t let her slip away.’ She sucked in her breath. ‘The secrets she’s kept. I’ll go to her house, take some servants with me. You stay here, darling. If Fadil comes back, send him to Nailah’s. We might need his help.’

  Nailah stood immobile under Hassan’s gaze. In times before, he might have stepped forward, taken Babu from her arms, kissed him: this boy he’d said he wanted to be a father to. It was a mark of how far the past weeks had dragged him that he didn’t give Babu a second glance. His only movement was to flick Tabia’s beads, then pocket them. Nailah watched him, remembering how proud Tabia had been of the gift, wrapping it in fine layers of tissue, a ribbon. (‘I’ve been saving for weeks,’ she had said. ‘I’ll give it to him tonight. Perhaps we’ll go for a walk first’ – she’d bitten her lip in anticipation – ‘Rohi.’) Tabia had ever called him so. Cleo had used to make them laugh by following her lead, using the pet name too, back before she’d been afraid of him, in the old days when he would talk to her, tell her fine tales. Jahi, though, he had stuck to his true name. Hassan in turn had only ever called Jahi by his second name, El Masri, the one he went under at work. (‘I’ll call him Jahi when we’re married,’ Hassan would tell Tabia whenever she scolded him for being so formal. ‘He’ll never approve of me until then. He worries I’ll let you down, I think. Like that coward, Mahmood. But I’ll show him, I’ll prove that I deserve you.’)

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Nailah asked him now. Her voice sounded small to her own
ears. ‘My uncle?’

  ‘He’s taken your mother and Cleo away.’

  ‘Why? Where have they gone?’

  He didn’t answer. Instead he asked, ‘Why, Nailah? Why did you drag Ma’am Sheldon into it?’

  ‘I never thought —’

  ‘Thought?’ He said it quietly, almost gently. ‘If only you’d tried such a thing.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. She was going to go to the police, the army.’

  ‘She’s still going to go to them, and soon.’ He frowned. ‘Although I have bought some time for now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He didn’t answer. Instead he told her to tell him everything Ma’am Sheldon knew. Everything. As he fired question after question at her, she reluctantly recounted the sordid details.

  ‘It’s too much,’ he said, ‘she knows too much.’

  ‘Not everything,’ said Nailah miserably.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You’re certain she doesn’t know it was me whom Tabia loved? She has no cause to distrust me?’

  Nailah said no, no cause, then listened, horrified, as Hassan told her what must happen next.

  ‘No.’ She sank to her knees. ‘No. You can’t do this.’

  It was exactly what she’d said to him that first morning after Tabia had died, when he’d come at dawn to fetch her away from the Pashas’, telling her all that had happened to Tabia, what he intended.

  ‘Tabia wouldn’t want this,’ she’d said. ‘You don’t need to do it.’

  He had looked at her as though she baffled him. ‘They trampled her, Nailah, burnt her. Sir Gray can’t go unpunished. How could I let him? No, you must come with me. The children need you. Tell no one why you’re going, or where.’

  She’d gone along with him in a daze. At Tabia’s, he’d handed her a paper and pen.

  ‘We’ll write a letter to Sir Gray, telling him that if he doesn’t go to the police to confess, he’ll pay. You write it, Nailah. No one will recognise your hand. Even if they do, they won’t be able to find you. I’ve leased a room for you in the city.’

  Nailah had tried to resist. But he’d said if she didn’t do as she was told, he’d take the children from her right then, right there, far away to his own family’s village. ‘You’ll never find them. I don’t want to do it, but I’ll stop at nothing to get justice. Write, now. Please.’

  Cleo had tugged on Nailah’s robe and said, ‘I don’t want him to take us away. I’m scared.’

  Nailah had hesitated a moment more, and then written exactly what Hassan told her to.

  He’d left her then, told her to pack, that he’d fetch her and the children later. She’d done her best to parcel up Tabia’s belongings without tears, to be strong. But she’d been so afraid, especially when the captain and Fadil arrived and told her that strange story about Tabia being a cotton worker they wished to help. She hadn’t been able to do anything but nod and tell her own lies in turn.

  How could she have admitted the truth, when a letter in her own hand was already on its way to Sir Gray?

  She had still been numb with terror when Hassan returned to fetch her and the children to the Turkish Quarter. Jahi was waiting for them there. Hassan told him, head high, what he’d had Nailah do, his plan to make Sir Gray pay. ‘I will not let your sister down in this.’

  Jahi stared. ‘Sweet Mother,’ he said, ‘I could kill you.’ He turned to Nailah. ‘I could kill you both. What were you thinking, Nailah, letting him use you like this?’

  Hassan said, ‘I did it for Tabia.’

  Jahi sneered. ‘You did it for yourself. Let this be an end to it. God willing, you’re never discovered.’

  As he stormed from the room, Hassan called, ‘Sir Gray will confess, just watch.’

  If only Sir Gray had confessed. But he’d run away with the family to Turkey instead.

  Hassan had come to visit Nailah the day after the Grays left. He’d told her that he’d spoken with a man, a great man, my friend. Hassan’s friend was disgusted by what had been done to Tabia, he agreed Sir Gray shouldn’t go unpunished. ‘He says we can make Sir Gray take us seriously.’ Nailah told him she didn’t want to hear, to know, Hassan should leave. Hassan had given her a long, troubled look, then did as she asked. He never came again after that. Not once. Nailah had tried to convince herself that he was ashamed. She’d fought to believe, for the sake of Tabia’s love for him, that grief alone had made him act so ill, that he regretted it. She’d sunk herself into the care of Cleo and Babu, her life back in the slums, ignoring the niggling voice warning her that something had grown in Hassan the moment Tabia was shot: a hatred that wouldn’t let him rest. Eventually, she’d almost managed to forget about it.

  And then that news had come that Ma’am Gray had been taken. She’d never forget the moment in the baths when she overheard the women talking, or Jahi arriving to confirm Hassan had done it. She could still smell that overripe watermelon.

  ‘We’d better go inside,’ Jahi had said. ‘We have a deal to discuss, you and I.’

  He’d asked Nailah if she’d known what Hassan was planning.

  ‘No,’ she’d said, ‘but I must go to the police, tell them what he’s done.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Jahi had replied. ‘Hassan says if either of us do, he’ll tell them it was you who wrote that first letter to Sir Gray. You’ll be arrested, Nailah, they’ll match your hand.’

  Nailah had run for the door blindly saying she didn’t care, that they had to do something.

  Jahi had seized her by her wrists, shaken her. ‘Little fool, you do nothing.’ Cleo, hunched in the corner, had started to sob. ‘This isn’t just about you,’ Jahi had said. ‘They’ll take me in too, they’ll never believe I wasn’t involved. Think what would happen to your cousins then. You say nothing, Nailah. Do you understand me?’

  Slowly, knowing how wrong it was, Nailah had nodded.

  ‘The only path now,’ Jahi said, ‘is for me to help Hassan, make sure Ma’am Gray stays safe, and that you’re neither of you found out. I must get you and the children away, find somewhere safe to hide you. It will take time. But hear me: if I get wind that you’re planning to do anything stupid, or hear a whisper of you letting out what’s happened, I’ll take the children from you, long before the police can take us. I will not have them put at risk.’

  Nailah had felt as though a trap was falling around her; she had tried to see a way out of it, breaths coming quicker and quicker at the impossibility of it, as panicked then as she felt now. Her terror had never lifted, not even for a moment, just intensified, reaching screaming pitch the night Jahi had told her that Ma’am Gray had done the impossible and run, escaped from that spot where the twin palms grow, even though there was nowhere but death for her to escape to in the miles of desert around. No water, no shelter: she’d have died within a day, maybe less.

  ‘If they find us out now, Nailah, we’ll hang. Stay quiet. You have no place with Fadil, with Captain Bertram and his colonel. No business.’

  Nailah had tried to numb herself to Jahi’s words, to close herself off from it all. She’d thought that it might be easier to live with herself that way.

  But it wasn’t. It never could be.

  She loathed herself for not speaking out when the captain had come with his colonel to question her, telling them all whilst there was still a chance, however remote, that Ma’am Gray was alive. She’d failed Ma’am Gray. And now she was failing her sister too.

  ‘This doesn’t have to happen,’ she said to Hassan now. ‘It can all end here. I’ll run, tell no one anything else. Please though, leave Ma’am Sheldon alone.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Nailah started at Jahi’s voice in the doorway behind her.

  ‘What is going on?’ Jahi asked again.

  Hassan said, ‘Ma’am Sheldon knows almost all. I told you I feared she did.’

  ‘You are sure?’ Jahi spoke through gritted teeth.

  ‘Yes. She will have to be silenced.
’

  Jahi’s face creased in pain. ‘Surely as long as we get Nailah and the family away, hidden, it’s safe. There’ll be no one left to lead the police to you —’

  ‘They’ll work it out,’ said Hassan, interrupting. ‘You know that. If Ma’am Sheldon is allowed to talk, they’ll question everyone – here, and in Montazah – they won’t stop until they find out who I am, and’ – he paused, gave Jahi a pointed look – ‘who helped me. They’ll track Isa and the children down, come after you. We’ll all pay in the end.’

  Jahi stared, then to Nailah’s horror, closed his eyes and gave a short nod.

  ‘No,’ Nailah said, ‘no. There has to be something else we can do.’

  ‘There’s nothing else,’ Jahi said heavily. ‘If there was, we’d do it.’

  ‘No.’ Nailah cast around in her mind for another way, something that might yet make it right. ‘I could go to Ma’am Sheldon again,’ she said, her mouth running dry at the prospect even as she spoke, ‘explain. I would do that. I would. I can tell her everything, how we meant none of it. Maybe she’ll help us.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Hassan asked. His eyes widened, incredulous. ‘You’ve explained enough. It is us who will fix this, not you.’

  Nailah turned back to Jahi. Unlike Hassan, there was no energy in his face, no life. He looked beaten, exhausted.

  ‘Please, Uncle,’ she said. ‘Please don’t let this happen. I can see you don’t want it.’

  Jahi put his forefinger and thumb to his nose, thinking.

  Nailah held her breath.

  Hassan said, ‘El Masri, we talked about this. You agreed that if she knew what we feared, this was the way it must be.’

  Jahi waited a second more, then slowly inclined his head in assent.

  ‘Uncle, no.’

  ‘I can’t put us at risk,’ said Jahi, ‘especially not you, Nailah. Not the children.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Hassan.

  ‘That is not what I care about.’ Jahi didn’t look at Hassan as he spoke. It was as though he couldn’t. ‘Nailah, it’s time for you to go. I only came here to fetch you.’