by Parker Bilal
‘Mr Shaddad, I visited your offices with Inspector Okasha the other night. I’m calling to find out if you have managed to get anywhere with the matter of the driver.’
Omar Shaddad laughed. ‘What is it, don’t you people communicate?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I already passed the information to your colleague. One of our drivers failed to report back. He is now officially missing, so it is possible that this is the man you are looking for. I went over all of this with your colleagues. Never mind. Look, I have it here. Do you have something to write with?’
The driver’s name was Mustafa Alwan. He lived in Ramsis, off Shubra Street, and had not turned up for work yesterday and today.
‘Look, Mr Shaddad, you may feel you have already answered these questions but we need to verify every fact. The memory can play tricks and asking the same question can produce different answers at different times.’
‘Very well.’ Omar Shaddad sounded resigned. ‘Go ahead, ask your questions.’
‘Thank you. I understand you own around twenty pharmacies around town. Is that correct?’
‘Eighteen, yes. We opened a new one just recently in Zamalek.’
‘It’s a good business to be in.’
‘My family have been in the business for three generations.’ Omar Shaddad’s tone suggested this was a story he had told countless times before. ‘I have been able to expand in the last few years. Hard work and efficiency, something this country could do with more of.’
‘I’m sure you’re correct, but let me ask you about your drivers. How many are on your payroll?’
‘It varies, but I think we have about seven or eight regulars and then a number of assistants. I couldn’t tell you for sure. I have a manager who takes care of that kind of thing. There are times when we can barely keep our supplies moving fast enough. On the other hand it makes no sense keeping on staff when there is no work for them.’
‘The responsibilities of an employer. I understand. It must take a lot of coordination to keep all of the pharmacies supplied.’
‘And our other clients. Don’t forget that we supply a number of private clinics, as well.’
There was, Makana decided, something rather simple-minded about Shaddad. It made it seem all the more plausible that someone in his employ might have decided to use his van for their own purposes.
‘Very impressive. So, roughly speaking how many places do your drivers visit?’
‘Altogether we supply around twenty to thirty locations on a daily basis and perhaps twice that when you take in occasional orders. Clinics tend to order from different suppliers according to prices. It’s a very competitive market.’
‘I’ll take your word for it. We would appreciate a full list of all the clients you supply.’
‘That’s not a problem, I can have my secretary fax it through, but listen here, I don’t want you annoying any of them.’
‘We try to be discreet,’ said Makana. Not being in possession of a fax machine, Makana gave him the number of the unreliable fax machine that lay under the cracked glass counter of the Komombo Kiosk down the road from the awama, sending a silent prayer as he did so in the hope that it was working.
‘One other thing, Mr Shaddad. Do you have any dealings with a firm called Algorabi Industries?’
‘Algorabi? No, that name doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘They produce steel reinforcement bars for construction.’
‘No, Inspector, we have nothing to do with anything like that . . .’ Shaddad’s voice tailed off as he addressed somebody in the room with him. ‘I can check for you, but before I do, can you tell me what the connection is?’
‘I’m trying to work out what your van was doing on that road.’
‘I’ve told you I can’t help you with that. It’s a mystery to me. All I can do is speculate that the driver, this Mustafa Alwan, was using the van for some kind of personal use.’
‘You mean that might explain why there was a body in the locker?’
There was a long silence followed by a sigh.
‘I hope you appreciate the delicate position I am in. If one of our drivers was involved in something illegal, then it’s important to separate his actions from those of our company. I hope you understand what I mean.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t. You might have to spell it out for me. Are you asking me to cover this up in some way?’
‘No, of course not.’ Makana heard the nervous click of a lighter. ‘All I’m saying is that the two things do not necessarily have to be linked, in my view.’
‘You do accept that the van is one of yours.’
‘Naturally, but I mean, right now we don’t even know if one of our drivers was in it or if it was stolen.’
‘And you think that absolves your company of any wrongdoing?’
There was a long sigh. ‘Perhaps I’m speaking to the wrong person. Inspector Okasha is the senior investigating officer, is that correct?’
‘That is correct, yes.’
‘Look, I’m not trying to cause problems for anyone, but I have my company to think of.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Surely you agree that it’s a little unfair for our reputation to suffer because of actions beyond our control.’
‘With all due respect, Mr Shaddad, the full story could swing either way. If you know more than we do, perhaps this is the time to share it.’
‘I didn’t say I knew more than you do. Not at all. Look, I want to get to the bottom of this just as much as you do, perhaps more so.’
‘I don’t doubt that.’
‘Look, I don’t mind telling you I have plenty of good friends in government, in the Ministry of the Interior.’
‘The world wouldn’t be what it is if you didn’t,’ said Makana.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Shaddad demanded, but Makana had already rung off. Still, it took an impressively short time for word to get back to Okasha, who called Makana as they were sliding in slow motion along the overpass beside the main railway station. Down below, Ramses stood to attention, his granite face impassive to the waves of traffic flowing by it on all sides.
‘Maybe you should check with me before you start going off on your own tangent.’ Okasha didn’t sound happy.
‘I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.’
‘Omar Shaddad is a big man. He has a successful business, which means he has connections.’
‘What kind of connections?’
‘The kind with lots of money attached.’
‘And you don’t want to tread on anybody’s toes.’
‘I just don’t want you charging around with your usual disregard for tact.’
‘Maybe you should have thought of that before you brought me in on this.’
‘You’re not in on anything.’
‘Then what am I doing?’
‘You’re helping our inquiry in an informal sense.’
‘Remind me never to ask you for a reference.’
‘Just don’t make me regret my decision.’
Sindbad dropped him off at the MIMIC offices. He was hoping that Sami might have made some progress with Mourad’s laptop, but Sami was nowhere to be found.
‘He’s not here,’ Rania said, when she caught sight of him. In contrast to the last time he had been there, the place was buzzing with activity. It was a reminder that the collective had been set up not by Sami, who was generally too busy with his own work to spare much time on organisational matters, but by his wife, Rania. A small, energetic figure, she had changed her hairstyle and now her wavy black hair was cut short in a rather bold, modern fashion.
‘Strange, I thought you would know more about his whereabouts than me,’ she said.
‘He stayed with me for one night, Rania. After that I really don’t know what he’s been up to.’
‘It’s okay, I know you two are friends. I wouldn’t expect you to give him up.’
‘If I knew I would tell you,’
said Makana, fairly sure that this wasn’t entirely true. She seemed to read his thoughts, because she gave a dismissive shrug and turned back to her work.
‘I asked him to help me with a laptop.’
‘Try talking to Ubay. If it’s anything technical he will have dropped it on him.’
They were interrupted as someone ran up with something that needed looking at urgently and another with a reminder that there was a call waiting for her. Seeing her coordinate what appeared to be total chaos was a reminder that she was more than capable of handling herself without her husband around, if proof was ever needed. Perhaps independence from Sami was not a bad thing for her. In the beginning Makana knew she had looked up to him tremendously. Sami had been the more experienced of the two. He had already established himself as a hard-hitting investigative journalist. Rania was finishing a graduate course in literature and politics. Like any marriage between career-minded people, their relationship had proved hard work. Eventually, the collective had emerged and they had started working together as partners, trying to tie the strands together in one neat little bundle. Now Sami appeared to have gone rogue, and by the looks of things Rania was learning to live with his absence.
Across the busy studio Makana spotted the lanky figure wearing a good-sized Afro that looked like a throwback to the 1970s and the days of the Jackson Five. At a corner table Ubay sat motionless, staring at a spot on the wall. He gave a start when he found Makana standing over him.
‘Hey, I didn’t see you.’ He sat up with a start, embarrassed at being caught. ‘You know how it is. Sometimes, there’s just so much to process.’
Although he wouldn’t have put it quite like that Makana imagined that he did know how that feeling went.
‘I brought in a laptop the other day for Sami. He said he’d ask if you could get into it.’
‘Oh, yes, the Apple PowerBook with the pictures on it.’ Ubay chortled to himself. ‘The password was no problem.’
‘What pictures?’
‘Let’s just say he has an interesting taste in women.’
‘I have a feeling that might have been his roommate. You can ignore any activity in the last couple of weeks.’
‘Well, that would take care of that issue. Having said that, he’s cautious.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well, despite being password-protected and everything, he went to a lot of trouble to cover his tracks, almost as if he knew someone might come looking. Erasing his browser history, caches, that kind of thing.’ Makana let him continue. Ubay talked as if all this made perfect sense; there was no point in bursting his bubble.
‘What was he trying to hide?’
‘I’m not sure, but I did recover a lot of stuff.’ Ubay looked up as his name was called from the other side of the room. Someone else had need of his skills. He got to his feet. ‘Got to go, sorry, but talk to Sami, I gave him a breakdown of everything.’
‘I would, except he seems to have disappeared.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Ubay glanced over his shoulder in Rania’s direction before motioning for Makana to draw near. ‘There are a couple of places you might try, but don’t tell anyone I said so.’
Normally, Sami was the kind of drinker who simply got swept away with whatever company he was keeping and carried on into the early hours. He didn’t have the serious dedication of a hardened alcoholic. Nevertheless Makana found himself wandering up and down the nearby streets looking into small dark spaces. Bars were not called bars any more, since the word had been banished, so instead they were ‘cafeterias’. There was the Hurraya, the Honololo, the Stella, all of them frequented on a more or less regular basis by Sami, whose taste in seediness was dictated by the mood he was in. Makana tried them all, without luck. Nobody had seen him, or if they had they weren’t letting on. At the Café Riche, the old waiter stared at Makana with the timeless gaze of a veteran who has seen everything.
‘He was here. He’s gone now.’ The eyes roved the length and breadth of the room, taking in the mostly deserted tables as if to make certain. ‘He’ll be back.’
It was the most promising lead Makana had had all day. He decided to put the time to good use and walked for fifteen minutes before reaching a narrow street of low, lopsided buildings near Ramses station. The door to the first-floor flat opened to reveal a boy wearing a striped gellabiya.
‘Is your mother home?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘It’s about your father.’
The door was wrenched open to reveal a woman in her twenties, cradling a baby on her hip. She tugged the boy back out of the way. Her hair was covered by a loosely tied scarf. She might have been considered pretty except for the flat hardness in her eyes that spelled out a bitter and irreversible disappointment in the world. She certainly didn’t seem to regard Makana’s appearance on her doorstep as an improvement.
‘Go and see to your sister!’ she yelled at the boy before turning back to Makana. ‘What do you want?’
‘It’s about your husband, Mustafa Alwan.’ Behind her, the boy stood his ground. He stared at Makana. His face was jaundiced and puffy. He had unusually large eyes, like dark pools in which the light barely registered.
‘What about him?’
A door clicked open at the opposite end of the corridor and a wizened face squeezed itself into the crack.
‘Something I can help you with?’ the young woman leaned out and snapped. It was enough to send wolves howling back to the hillsides. In this case the door closed over a quiet whimper. Makana had stepped back out of her way. The door of the flat swung open behind her, affording him a glimpse of a living room that had recently been refurbished. The walls were painted a garish ruby red that would have been more at home in some of the dives Makana had just visited. In the middle of the room sat a bulbous white sofa, as incongruous as a walrus. The carved frame and feet were ornate and gilded. At least some poor local artisan was being kept in work. Alongside a lacquered wooden table there was a standing lamp with brass fittings and, to crown it all, a glass chandelier suspended in the middle of the air like a golden tree in a fairy tale. The woman resumed her defensive position in the doorway.
‘What do you want?’ she repeated.
‘It’s about your husband. He hasn’t been in to work yesterday and today.’
‘I told them, they should check again. He’s working.’
‘His boss says he hasn’t come in.’
‘Well, he’s wrong. What can I tell you?’ She shifted the child higher up her hip.
‘There was an accident with a van. Did they tell you about that?’
The woman was shaking her head before he had finished speaking. ‘It wasn’t him. I told them they were wasting their time.’
‘They took you to the morgue to identify the body?’
‘I just said that.’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t him?’
‘Are you deaf? I just told you. I don’t know who he is but he’s not my Mustafa. Is that a problem?’ Her eyes ran up and down him in a dismissive way. Whatever he was selling she wanted none of it.
‘Not at all.’ Perhaps Mustafa Alwan had simply run away from home. ‘So where is your husband?’
‘Away on business, like he always is. I don’t care what they say, if he tells me he’s working then he’s working.’
‘Sure, and when did you last speak to Mustafa?’
‘I don’t know. He doesn’t like me calling him when he’s at work. He’s a very busy man, you know. Wait a minute, why are you asking me all this? I told your colleagues everything already.’
‘Well, it’s quite important that we find him. You can appreciate that, right?’
‘It’s always the same with him. He disappears for days and then he comes back. He’s like that. He always says, al haraka baraka; staying busy brings its own blessings.’
‘This must be a difficult time for you, with the police and everything.’
‘You’re a bunch of fools. If he’d be
en in an accident, they would have found his telephone. Mustafa never goes anywhere without his phone.’
It was hard to argue with such conviction. No telephones had been found at the scene, which was strange, or could simply be explained by whoever was sitting in the passenger seat.
‘So you haven’t heard from him?’
The woman shook her head. The child on her hip was eating a biscuit that had painted her face in chocolate. She stared at Makana with mild curiosity. The little boy had come back into view. He stared at Makana. He looked about seven years old, but there was something other-worldly about him, as if he wasn’t really there at all.
‘How are you managing?’
‘We don’t need anything,’ she shrugged.
‘Does he ever talk about his work?’
‘To me, why would he do that?’ She pulled the child more tightly to her. Now, for the first time, Makana saw uncertainty in her eyes.
‘So he never talks about extra work, outside of his usual hours? You know, driving the van. Sometimes he brought home a little extra, right?’ Makana nodded at the room behind her. She glanced back.
‘Hey, what are you trying to say?’
‘I’m just asking if he did a little extra work for anyone.’
‘Look, the moment he walks out this door, I don’t know where he goes, or what he does. It’s another world out there. For all I know he has a whole other family somewhere, but if that’s the case he’d better stay there. You can tell him that from me, when you find him. I’d sooner cut out his heart. You don’t need to worry about us. Mustafa will be back soon.’
While Makana was wondering if she really believed what she was saying, the door slammed in his face.
In a taxi that stalled at every junction they came to, Makana crossed back over the river to Mohandiseen. Coasting the final few metres in the dark, he paid the apologetic driver and made his way down the ramp. Abu Gomaa, the old watchman, shuffled out of the shadows, the walls behind him illuminated by the strange flickering blue light of a television set. They were showing one of the old 1950s black and white films with Ahmed Ramzy and Soad Hosny. The Golden Age of Egyptian cinema. In the gloom the basement was a time capsule, the old man a relic from another age, surrounded by debris and dusty cars, dreaming of a time when the streets were wide and neat and the modern world seemed new. He looked up grumpily as Makana appeared. The dogs leapt up, their chains snapping taut as they began barking wildly. They bared their teeth and reared up on their hind legs. They weren’t that big, but they were furious and had sharp teeth. Abu Gomaa got slowly to his feet.