Hassan reeled, as though striking her had taken the last of his energy, and grasped his leg. She rose unsteadily to her feet, spitting out the taste of him. Finally, with one last pull, she liberated her hands from the rope. She didn’t pause to think, she didn’t breathe to consider; she seized a stone from the floor and launched forward to strike Hassan over the head, then again and again. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the thought whispered, El Masri hasn’t shot me, he must be on my side. She was no longer scared. It had been the doing nothing that had terrified her; there was nothing so frightening as surrender. Hassan tumbled to the ground and she whacked him again.
‘Stop,’ said El Masri, ‘you can stop.’
She panted, staring down at Hassan. He lay at an awkward angle, a broken statue. His beads had fallen from his pocket.
El Masri knelt beside him. He took Hassan’s wrist, gave Olivia a look, and then pointed his gun at Hassan’s head and shot. The sound echoed hollowly into the dunes.
The stone fell from her hand. She backed away. ‘Was he dead already?’ she asked.
‘You saw me shoot him,’ said El Masri.
‘Was he dead though? Did I kill him?’
‘I killed him,’ he said. Then, ‘It’s time for you to escape.’
She stared down at Hassan’s lifeless form. A puddle of blood leached blackly into the sand. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘What will you do?’
‘It’s time for me to disappear too. I am glad I did this first.’
‘I don’t know if I needed you to. I think I might have bitten him anyway, even if you hadn’t been there.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘He’s so dead.’
‘And he was going to kill you. Now go. There’s a storm coming.’
Olivia looked once more at the moving horizon. The stars were disappearing. She stumbled towards Clara’s horse, still tethered to Hassan’s, and unhooked the reins. She lifted her foot to the stirrup, but it was so high, her skirts were so full, and she was trembling too much.
She heard padding footsteps behind her and felt hands on her waist, a hoist. Propelled by El Masri’s support, she pulled herself belly first onto the saddle and up to sitting. El Masri smacked Clara’s horse on the rear, spurring them off. ‘Ride fast and straight,’ he called, ‘don’t stop until you reach the city. There’s an ill wind coming.’
Olivia didn’t need to be told twice. She urged Clara’s horse on into a canter. She’d never ridden on undulating sand before and was unsteady in her seat, but she didn’t slow. The faster she went, the greater the distance between her and the bloody stone she had clenched, the less frantic her heart. Her eyes flicked to the sky, she imagined her parents egging her on, her mother’s voice, She’s going to live, how splendid. Clara’s came too, demanding to be heard. Splendid, absolutely splendid.
A sob broke from her, but she clenched her jaw against any more. She couldn’t break down, not yet. For the wind was up, sweeping through her hair; the torn lace collar of her dress blew away. Her head and cheek throbbed. She cast a look behind her, absorbing the emptiness, the silver curvature of the sands. The stars had gone. Dust blew all around, an ill wind indeed.
Her eyes blurred, but not with tears. Tears didn’t grate, they didn’t burn. Tears weren’t sand. And sand was suddenly everywhere, whipping her face, filling her nose.
Not splendid after all then.
Not bloody splendid at all.
AFTER
Chapter Thirty-Six
Nailah stared through the small window of the office she’d been locked in, and watched as the velvet sky turned grey, then white, and slowly by fractions to a yellow-tinged blue. The empty paddocks lost their night-time mystique of silhouettes, the huts and stables were thrown into bald relief.
A new day after all.
Wings battered as a flock of birds took off from the gateposts. A second later the colonel appeared, stiff as a rod in his saddle, but with a tension in him that looked as heavy as wet mud. His distinguished face was grim beneath his officer’s cap.
Nailah stretched her eyes, searching, but try as she might, she could see no one else with him.
The captain wasn’t there.
The colonel dismounted, tethered his horse, then disappeared into a hut marked ‘Colonel Thomas Carter’. A minute or so later, he came out, slamming the door behind him, and made straight for the room next to Nailah’s, the one Kafele was in. She rushed over and pressed her ear to the map-covered wall. All she could hear was the muffled staccato of the colonel’s consonants followed by indistinct melodies in reply.
She watched the clock on the far wall. Five minutes passed, then six, then eight, then many more.
Hooves sounded outside. She returned to the window in time to see a big-bellied man dressed in an ill-fitting suit arrive with Sir Gray. The colonel must have seen them too, because he left the room next door, went to them, sent their horses off with a stable hand, then led Sir Gray and the fat man into his office.
Nothing happened for a while after that. More soldiers filled the ground. Nailah slumped on the floor.
Eventually the lock of her own door turned. She leapt up as the colonel entered.
‘Is she dead?’ Nailah couldn’t wait another moment to ask.
‘We think so.’ His tone was distant, short. ‘There was a storm, we couldn’t get through, but we found her horse.’ He fingered his neck. ‘A lace collar.’ His expression was cold. ‘My wife’s beside herself.’ He paused. His jaw moved, as though it hurt him to hold it in place. ‘We both are. Captain Bertram’s still out there.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘No one is all right.’ The colonel came further into the room. ‘Clara had children, a baby less than a year old. He’ll never know her. Poor Olivia’s been on her own for years. They both had their whole lives ahead of them.’ He took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘They deserved their lives.’
A man barked orders outside. Nailah started as the door of the neighbouring room opened. There were voices, footsteps. Nailah glanced at the window, then back at the colonel. He nodded. She crossed the room, fingertips resting on the window ledge. Her throat tightened. Kafele was being loaded into a police cart by the fat man who’d arrived with Sir Gray.
‘Where’s he going?’ She had to force the words out.
‘Commissioner Wilkins is taking him to prison,’ said the colonel.
‘No.’ The word nearly choked her. ‘He’s done nothing. I swear it. It was all Hassan. And me. I wrote that first letter to Sir Gray, you can check my hand.’
‘We can’t,’ said the colonel, ‘the letter was torn up long ago, as soon as you sent it.’
‘What?’ Nailah pressed the heel of her hand to her head, absorbing it. To think how scared she’d been of what that letter could do to her, and it had been gone all along. Destroyed.
‘Kafele’s offered to confess whatever Wilkins asks of him,’ said the colonel, ‘as long as you’re left alone.’
‘No,’ she shook her head fiercely, ‘no.’ She turned again to the window, sinking her fingernails into the wooden frame as a policeman shoved Kafele forward, making him stumble, then slammed the barred door shut behind him. ‘He can’t confess,’ she said, ‘I won’t let him.’ She looked back at the colonel, a sob rising in her. ‘Stop them,’ she said, ‘please.’ She clasped her hands, entreating him. ‘You have to let him go. Arrest me instead.’
‘I can’t,’ said the colonel. An unspoken Much as I’d like to wisped through the air. ‘Kafele’s turned himself in; a confession’s a confession, and Wilkins wants culprits. He’d rather have Kafele anyway.’ His lips curled in a sickened smile. ‘You’re a woman, an Egyptian woman. Apparently we’d prefer not to go there.’
‘Tabia was an Egyptian woman.’ Her voice was high, panicked to her own ears.
‘Yes, and as you well know what happened to her has been buried.’
‘And you think that’s right?’
‘Of course I don’t
. But that doesn’t mean I think the rest of it is either.’
‘You can’t let Commissioner Wilkins take Kafele.’
‘What the hell do you think I can do?’ The colonel shouted it. Nailah shrank in her skin. He stared at her, eyes shining as though they stung.
‘He’s innocent,’ she said.
‘So were Olivia and Clara. You could have saved them, if you’d just spoken up.’
‘I came back for Ma’am Sheldon.’
‘Not soon enough. And now they’re both dead. Dead… Alistair Sheldon’s been shot. However reluctant your involvement, Nailah, you were part of it. You have to accept there will be a reckoning, even if it’s not the one you want.’ The colonel stared at the ceiling. A vein in his neck throbbed above his sand-crusted collar. ‘Kafele… he’ll get decades of hard labour at the very least.’
Nailah held her stomach at the thought of him in chains, his face turning old and weary, or worse, puce in the hangman’s noose. ‘When?’ she asked. It came out as a whisper. ‘When will the trial be?’
‘Soon.’
‘He might not be found guilty.’ A thin thread of hope spun within her, weaving between her ribs. It almost reached her heart. ‘There’ll be hearings, I’ll speak for him, the truth must come out. About Tabia too.’
The colonel eyed her disdainfully. ‘There’ll be no hearings,’ he said. ‘The whole procedure will be nothing more than a tribunal. Summary. Wilkins is overseeing the evidence, conducting the interviews; he’ll dress up what’s happened to Clara and Olivia as acts of greedy violence, have it that they were taken for their husbands’ money. Bad Egyptians, wicked Egyptians. Kafele will be punished, everyone else made happy. Believe me, Nailah, it’s in Wilkins’ interest to keep what happened to your aunt quiet. His pockets are so damned heavy with bribe money.’ He shook his head. ‘I doubt anyone would have let it out in the first place. It’s all too ungentlemanly, too unseemly. Too dangerous.’
Nailah stared at her feet. It killed her to hear it stated so baldly: that Tabia had died so cruelly, with her murderers predestined to walk free.
‘Is there really nothing you can do for Kafele?’ she asked.
‘The only hope is if we find Hassan or El Masri. Good old Uncle Jahi. If we can get them to stand trial, have them pledge to Wilkins that Kafele wasn’t involved, then it should be enough to save him. Where are they, Nailah?’
‘I don’t know.’
The colonel looked at her disbelievingly.
‘I don’t, I swear it. I have no idea where they’d have gone.’
‘Then who else has been helping Hassan? There must have been others.’
She told him about Nassar Shahid.
The colonel sighed. ‘Nassar sodding Shahid.’
‘Will you arrest him?’ Nailah asked.
The colonel opened his mouth to answer, but then the door swung open, cutting him off.
Sir Gray was there, his face pale. ‘I’ve seen Fadil coming,’ he said, ‘he has someone on his horse. I don’t know who.’
The colonel went. Nailah followed him to the open doorway. As she looked into the courtyard, she felt her insides convulse. For Fadil was already there, dismounting not twenty feet away, his bloody bandages still wrapped around his head. The dusty body of a lady was draped stiffly over his horse’s saddle.
Nailah watched as he lifted the lady into his arms.
He did it with such gentle tenderness it made her whole soul ache.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Olivia bade Jahi goodbye on the road into Ramleh (she’d started calling him by his first name; ‘El Masri’ seemed too condescending for the man who’d appeared apparition-like through the swirling sands to rescue her). She unravelled the cloth he’d wrapped her face in, and patted his camel with shaking hand, trusty steed. She hated that she’d abandoned Clara’s horse, but there’d been no choice. She hadn’t been able to see, let alone follow, Jahi’s frantic pace. ‘Thank you,’ she said to him, ‘for coming after me.’
‘Please, don’t thank me.’ Jahi looked anxiously at the lightening sky. ‘Will you be all right to go the rest of the way alone?’
She nodded. ‘You saved my life,’ she said, stating the blindingly obvious.
‘I should never have had to.’ Another incontrovertible fact.
He turned to go, he was nearly gone. Two mounted soldiers rounded the corner of the road, their English voices clipped in the warm dawn air. Olivia told Jahi to leave, now, before they saw him. She heard the soldiers say something about arrests, Kafele, Nailah, and then Jahi did the unfathomable. He turned himself in.
Just like that.
Olivia protested against the soldiers taking him until she was blue in her battered face. It hurt to talk, her whole damn body stung, injured had somehow become her default state. She couldn’t remember what it felt like not to ache in at least one part of her body, and it made her angry, it made her absolutely bloody furious. But no matter how loudly she shouted at the two lieutenants that they’d better just sod off, leave, go and play some polo or cricket or whatever it was they were qualified to do over here, for she was damned sure they were no bloody good as detectives, – Hassan had been living right under everyone’s noses, for goodness’ sake – they were having none of it. And nor was Jahi.
The three of them left, leaving Olivia standing like a fool in the empty road with only Jahi’s camel and a stray cat for company. The cat rubbed against her skirt. Olivia looked around her. It was her first time alone and unobserved in weeks. She wished she’d asked the soldiers where Edward was, if he was safely back. She eyed the camel. It eyed her. She started shaking. Now it was all over, and she was doing nothing, fear ran loose within her, grief too. Don’t let it in. You don’t know, not for sure. Not yet. Even as she thought it, her body trembled; every part of her being vibrated with awful feeling. Since there was nothing else to do, she took the camel by its reins, picked up the cat, and set off for home. She was unclear what she was going to do with either animal when she got there, but she felt as though she’d abandoned enough helpless beasts for one day.
The Bedouin mother and her boys were peeling corn when she arrived back. The mother stood. She raised her fingers to Olivia’s face. There were tears in her eyes. Olivia stared back at her. She wanted so much to tell her how sorry she was, but she didn’t have the words.
Her arms ached. Her eyes were gritty.
Where was Edward?
The mother nodded. Olivia nodded back. She thought, I don’t know why I’m nodding, and, I want to go home, I don’t want to be here any more, and, I don’t have a home, not in England, not here. Please let Edward be safe. I need him. IneedhimIneedhimIneedhim.
Ada’s voice cut through the silence. ‘Mrs Sheldon, you’re alive.’ She hastened down the driveway, brown skirts swinging, Fadil with her.
‘Oh God,’ said Olivia, taking in the state of Fadil, ‘your head.’
‘It’s healing. Sayed Bertram found me in the cellar, he got me out. I am fine, Ma’am Sheldon.’
He clearly wasn’t. He was haggard-looking; his skin was a sickly green colour, as if it had no blood beneath it.
He relieved her of the camel. Ada set the cat down and shooed it away. Together they walked her to the house. Fadil told Olivia that he had just returned from the ground. He paused, for a disconcerting length of time. His eyes shone with sadness.
‘Oh.’ Olivia held her hand to her stomach. ‘Oh.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
‘You found her?’
‘She was exposed by the storms. About a mile or so from the oasis.’ Fadil’s cheeks worked. His face folded in on itself. ‘I have failed, Ma’am Sheldon.’ A single tear rolled down his papery cheek. ‘I have failed again. I am so ashamed.’
Olivia wanted to say something, make him understand she didn’t blame him, but she couldn’t breathe. She clawed at the unforgiving bounds of her corset. She was gasping. Clara. Clara. It was abruptly far too real. Her sister… The way she lau
ghed, her voice… Top-drawer; but not. Not. She couldn’t stand it. It couldn’t be… She had been hoping, almost believing; it was only now she saw how much.
Fadil talked on. Edward was still out in the desert. He’d refused to give up looking for her. Olivia gasped again. He wasn’t back? Fadil said no, he couldn’t return. He was afraid, so terribly afraid, that she was gone too.
Unlike Alistair who, gut-wrenchingly, was still alive. Ada said that servants in a nearby house had gone to investigate when they heard the gunshot, then taken Alistair to the military hospital. He was unconscious but assuredly going to live. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Sheldon,’ said Ada. ‘So very, very sorry.’
Olivia couldn’t move. She barely seemed able to do anything. She ran her nails through her hair. Her scalp was thick with sand, it coated her. She could taste it, smell it, her tongue was parched and swollen. Like Clara’s would have been. Until her very last breath. I am rather gasping for a drink. It hurt, God it hurt. Too, too much. She’d been alone. So very alone, with no clue as to how sorely she was missed. Olivia had never been able to tell her, nor how sorry she was for the way their last hours together had been filled with such brooding distrust. Clara had died knowing only that Olivia doubted her, and that she’d forgotten almost every moment of their childhood.
A sob tore through Olivia’s body. ‘I want her back,’ she heard herself saying, ‘I just want her back.’
Edward saw her doubled over as he cantered into the driveway. Fadil and Ada stood awkwardly by her side. Don’t just stand there, he nearly yelled at them, comfort her, for Christ’s sake.
He pulled his stallion to a halt, and dropped to the ground. She turned to him, stared. One side of her face was swollen and covered in dried blood, her mouth too. Her hair was loose, and she was coated with dust. But she was there, real. He was dimly aware of Ada and Fadil leaving, he didn’t turn to watch them go. Neither did she. It was a second of stillness, nothing more. Then they both moved, Edward scooped her into his arms. ‘Thank God, Olly. My Olly.’
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