by Louisa Young
‘He made her have four abortions,’ I said. ‘What’s that? Isn’t that death? And he’s officially dead anyway – officially, he’s someone else. Someone who doesn’t actually exist.’
‘Pushing someone off a roof and killing them is murder,’ he said.
I stared at my chocolate.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘What does Sa’id think?’
‘He thinks I – he is not certain that I didn’t panic at just the right time in order to distract attention, so that nobody would see if she pushed or not. Can I go to bed now?’
‘Does he?’ said Harry. And looked at me.
And I looked back at him.
‘No, I fucking didn’t!’ I started to shout, but he put his hands on my shoulders and said, ‘I know. I know.’
I was heaving great sighs. Huge sighs.
‘Go to bed,’ he said.
‘What about you?’
‘What about me?’ he said.
I had meant, where was he going to sleep, was he booked in, because if not he could have my room because I was going to sleep in with Chrissie anyway, to keep an eye on her. But it became, for a second, one of those swift-passing moments of sexual tension. Those times, lately, when he’s said, ‘Can I come too?’ and that kind of thing.
We kind of acknowledged it as it flew by. There was a tender tiredness in his eyes as he accepted the offer of my room. I went to the front desk to clarify the changeover. I wanted Lily.
As we parted in the corridor, I said to him: ‘Do you want Chrissie to face a murder trial in a foreign country?’
He pulled his lips inside his mouth and bit them.
‘Either we tell Shezli or we don’t,’ I said. ‘We have to know what we’re saying.’
‘We have to know what she’s saying too,’ he observed.
‘I don’t think she’ll lie,’ I said. In fact I was sure she wouldn’t. This pure new honest self she’d been after. She had many years of dishonesty that she had been fighting off. I didn’t think she would be capable of changing direction now. She was all or nothing for the truth. If she’d killed him she’d be proud of it.
At his funeral. In the back of the ambulance in her fur coat, shouting to me, ‘He wasn’t yours to kill, I would have killed him myself …’ Something like that.
Oh god.
‘Let’s talk first thing,’ I said. ‘You, me and her.’
‘Not necessarily a good thing,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘She knows me as one of her husband’s louts. Remember?’
Prompted, I did remember. Undercover Harry, working for Eddie.
‘But … you’re one of the people she wants to apologize to. You know – the AA apologies. She said so.’
‘Oh. Well. That might be useful.’
‘Couldn’t she be allowed to know the truth now?’
‘Ideally not,’ he said, placidly.
I queried him with my eyebrows.
‘Least said, that kind of thing,’ he said.
‘Did Eddie ever find out you were police?’ I asked, curious.
‘Nope,’ he said.
‘But … couldn’t Ben have told him?’
‘Ben didn’t know,’ he said.
That floored me. ‘But …’ I was remembering the afternoon when Harry turned up with four men in suits and carted Ben away to face his fate … though actually now I come to think of it, it was the four men who did the carting, not Harry. ‘Gosh,’ I said. One of Chrissie’s words that I seem to have picked up. ‘But – risky, though.’
‘Yes,’ he said. Calmly as ever.
Then Harry waited by the door while I went into my room to get my toothbrush and stuff. And to check my messages. There were none. A country and western lyric: ‘Since my phone still ain’t ringing, I assume it still ain’t you.’
I slept well, which was absurd under the circumstances.
FOURTEEN
‘Well, I woke up this morning,
with a black snake in my room,
I woke up this morning,
with a feeling of impending doom …’
I woke late, about nine. This particular morning’s musahourati and muezzins and chromatic variations had passed me by as I slept oblivious. I didn’t feel too bad, physically. But there was a black snake there all right, winding round the feet of my bed, giving me dirty looks, like ‘I’m going to get you’.
Chrissie was sitting up in the bed next to me, white as her sheets, looking somehow catatonic, stretching. Her arms were very thin. She looked over to me and smiled.
‘Good morning, Chrissie,’ I said, kindly.
‘Oh, my days,’ she said, in a slightly gaspy way. ‘Oh, my days.’
‘Tell me something?’ I said, sat there in my single bed beside her like the neighbouring girl in the school dorm. It seemed unseemly to have this conversation before we were even properly awake, but Shezli might appear at any moment. She looked over to me with a sort of daft girlish expression on her face. Gentle but overwhelmed.
‘I don’t think I pushed him,’ she said. ‘I really don’t think I did. I thought he might push me …’ She fell silent. Smiled up at me again. ‘I don’t think I would’ve done that. Am I arrested?’
There was something wrong about her.
No love, I thought – you’re deflated. You’re retarded. You’re … half of her wasn’t there.
I believed her. Yesterday I’d been sure she’d done it. I could admit that, now that I felt she hadn’t. And I wasn’t leaving her here.
I was glad to know that I knew where I stood, that I knew what my next job was. Regarding her, my job was to find the most efficient way of getting her out of Egypt and into some kind of helpful and comforting place in England. This seemed to me absolutely clear. The girl needed help.
‘What happened before?’ I asked. ‘You were in the car …’
‘He was there!’ she said. ‘Well, he was there and we got in the car together and he said he was so glad and he loved me and all that. He was their friend. They didn’t come. They changed their minds. He’d come because he heard I was there. Said he loved me. He was lying, of course. He hates me, I know that. But he’s so vain. Doesn’t know I’m different now. I am different, aren’t I?’ She said this not smugly but beseechingly. ‘What’s going to happen now, Angeline, because I don’t think I can do anything – I’m telling you now because I don’t know if I can even think. Don’t know how long I’ll be able to. Don’t let me drink, will you. I’m feeling very odd.’
She lay down again. She was shaking. I kissed her forehead and rang for breakfast: eggs and toast, omali (named after Shagaratt ad Durr’s murderer), coffee, fruit salad, yogurt. If only I could send her back to London with Harry, know she was safe. But we’re meant to leave today. If Shezli lets us.
I knew why I was looking after her. Why I was so loyal. It was to do with Janie. Something to do with sisterhood. Eddie’s victim women: Janie, Chrissie, and not me. To do with the complicity we all have in what he made us do. Janie wouldn’t have whored herself unless he had offered the opportunity. I wouldn’t have knocked him out, or fucked him, unconscious. Chrissie wouldn’t have aborted her children, turned to drink, sent all those poisonous letters, been a bad mother to Darla, or – who knows – pushed him off the roof of the temple. I’m not suggesting that this excuses us. Just that it explains something. He ruined people. Helped them to ruin themselves.
But he wasn’t going to ruin me.
He’s dead. Oh, I’m glad.
I went in to wake Harry. He was up, in the bathroom. I checked the phone as I waited for him, but the little red light was not flashing. No one had called me in the middle of the night, making any midnight declarations, demanding or offering any midnight explanations.
Harry came out with his towel round his waist, rubbing his hair. Very relaxed we were, breakfast in our rooms and nine o’clock showers. Until, as his arms came down, I saw my name, flying across his bicep, as it had been all these y
ears, as if it belonged there. I tore my eyes from it. And from the rest of him. Went and sat modestly in a chair, slightly averted.
‘How is she this morning?’ he said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘she’s lost it a little. She’s gone a bit wobbly round the edges, if you see what I mean. Out of focus. But she’s compos enough to know that she’s wobbly. She says she didn’t push him. I believe her.’
He said nothing.
‘I think … Harry, I really think that we should not mention her connection with Eddie, but just take her home. If we can – if the police don’t suspect her. The problem is we don’t know what the Germans are saying, or what Eddie said to them, about her, and …’
‘Angel,’ he said, his voice quite quiet. ‘I’m a police officer.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘In London, in Luxor, on Mars, I’m a police officer.’
His voice held the authority that I didn’t often hear, but which when I did made me understand how come he was an inspector at the age of thirty-eight.
‘I didn’t mean that,’ I said.
‘What do you mean then? Because it sounds very much as if you are suggesting that we withhold evidence in a possible murder case.’ He didn’t say it accusingly. More as a quiet observation, just wondering if I’d noticed.
Oh god, so it did. Oh shit.
‘But there is no case, as far as we know,’ I said, optimistically.
‘But if my Egyptian colleagues knew what I know, there would be.’
‘Harry, in the normal run of things I would absolutely agree with you,’ (and I half did anyway) ‘but look at this situation, look at it … It’s too much, Harry,’ I said. ‘There’s no tidy way out …’
‘It’s not for us to find a tidy way out,’ he said. ‘That’s not our responsibility.’
Is this Gary Cooper? Or is it Jobsworth?
‘Have you just metamorphosed into some corporate robot?’ I asked. ‘Are you suggesting that we just hand her over, tell them we think she killed him and bugger off? Is that what you mean? Because this whole mess is a result of what your colleagues thought was a good way of sorting things out and I didn’t notice any of them being sticklers for the bloody law. We are a little bit beyond that, aren’t we? What purpose, exactly, would we be serving by announcing that an already dead man has been murdered? Jesus, Harry, it’s enough of a fucking mess, if we can simply take her away then maybe one life at least can be salvaged …’
‘There’s right and wrong, love,’ he said.
‘And there’s eight million shades of grey along the way. Please. Let’s keep it simple even if it’s not necessarily entirely true. Given that the truth can’t be proven anyway. Maybe he fell. Maybe he was trying to push her. Or maybe he jumped – one last twisted fucking Eddie Bates trick. He knew it was all up and decided to be nasty to his wife one more time. Just to ruin her all the more completely. To frame her. Who knows? Is a court going to find out? Do you want an international incident about this? Englishwoman of uncertain sanity sentenced to death in Egypt for murder of gangster husband formerly thought dead? It’s bollocks, Harry. Bollocks.’
The shutter rattled in the light breeze. A car honked outside. Beep beep, and another honked in response.
‘I’ve found,’ he said, after quite a long pause, ‘that you have to be quite simple about right and wrong. It’s wrong to kill people.’
My heart agreed with him. My head said no. Or was it the other way around?
‘We can’t make it simple, Harry, because it’s not. All we can do is not make it more complicated. I can’t desert her. If you can, then … then do.’
He looked a question at me.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘Just leave. Do nothing. It won’t be on your conscience, or your record, or whatever it is you’re worrying about. Leave it to fate.’
‘Fate and you,’ he said.
‘He could have died when I hit him with that poker,’ I said. ‘But you carried on protecting me, even though I did that to him. Fate decreed that he didn’t die then. My luck. And he did die now. Fate. Chance. Chrissie’s luck. The world’s good fortune that he’s gone. Fair karma, because he escaped his due punishment that he got sentenced to by a court of law. If you can’t be involved, just go away. I won’t hate you. I’ll see you back in London.’
‘You’re asking me to say nothing.’
‘Say it back in London if you have to. Say it to Oliver, and get some backup or sanction or something. Just don’t pitch her into it here, now. Please.’ I thought that was a good offer. A good idea.
‘And don’t pitch me in, either,’ I said. ‘I want to go home. I don’t want to be up as her accomplice.’
He stared at me. Picked his clothes up and went back into the bathroom. Came out fully dressed, and saying, ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ walked out.
‘Harry!’ I shouted after him. ‘Where are you going?’
But he was gone, and I couldn’t tell if any of my words had got through. All I knew was that his had got through to me. But at the same time: if Chrissie had killed Eddie, she had done me a great service, and I would be indebted to her for the rest of my life.
*
Chrissie was still in bed. The breakfast lay untouched on the side table. I ate half of it and then went to close the shutters against the Nile and what lay beyond, but as I tried to I leant against them and felt tears fill me up inside. Where was Sa’id?
*
Our flight to Cairo left at four thirty, our flight from Cairo to London at eight the next morning. There was no way, other than the four-thirty flight, for us to make tomorrow’s flight. Harry’s direct flight back to London left today. Presumably we could get on that. Presumably Harry was going to get it …
I called the hotel travel desk and learnt that yes, the direct flight left at six, and there were places. Five minutes later I was wondering whether the Germans had spoken to Shezli yet – the later it became before he contacted us the more likely it seemed – and how the hell I could get them to tell me what they had said, and what the hell to do about Hafla, when the phone rang and Shezli said, still very polite, that he thought he had requested that we not leave Luxor.
‘We are booked on a flight this afternoon,’ I explained, terribly nicely. ‘I was just seeing about a later flight to make more time for you in case you needed it.’ I wondered if he could perhaps see us sooner rather than later, if he still wanted to talk to Chrissie, as she was upset and keen to get home, and my daughter was expecting me, too, and our holiday was due to finish today … I was my best tourist self. Not a word of Arabic, not a hint of anything out of the ordinary.
‘You may come now to the manager’s office,’ he said.
‘We’ll only be a moment,’ I said.
I roused Chrissie and dressed her: a long sundress, a decent jacket, sunglasses optional. She looked pretty ropey. I forced a cup of coffee down her, and a bit of bread. ‘Come on, darling,’ I said.
‘You’re being very nice,’ she said.
‘Shut up now,’ I said, kindly, and took her shoulders in my hands. ‘Listen. When you were with Nina and Helmut, did you meet a girl called Hafla? A Turkish dancer, who was giving Nina lessons?’
‘She wasn’t called Hafla. Her name’s Fatma. She was a bit snotty.’
‘That’s the one. Where was she yesterday?’
‘Oh. She’s gone away. She was going to meet someone somewhere – I don’t know the name of the place, I heard it but it meant nothing to me. I’m terribly sorry. I’m terribly sorry about all this. Terribly, terribly sorry …’
‘Did she know you, when you met?’
‘Know me? How could she know me?’
‘Of course she couldn’t. Now stay with me, love. Listen: did Helmut and Nina call Eddie Eddie or François? Did they know you were his wife?’
‘Oh – oh gosh. Oh. I don’t know. They … they never mentioned Eddie. I was amazed – God, Angeline, when he turned up yesterday … They did talk about a François. Earlier. But y
esterday I didn’t see them. Eddie gave me their apologies. I might have thought it was rude of them but I wasn’t thinking about that, of course, not that they would have known, of course.’
It actually didn’t make any difference that they hadn’t been there. Fewer witnesses, so that was good. Less opportunity for fuss to be made. But he might have told them she was his wife. He must have enquired about her to work out that she was her. And no Hafla. That was good.
I thought of asking Chrissie to ring Helmut and see if he let anything drop. Then I thought of the promptness with which Shezli learnt of our travel plans, and concluded that the hotel telephone system was not exactly secure.
I made the decision. It was a risk, but it was worth it. We would proceed as if the police did not know who she was.
‘Chrissie, the policeman wants to talk to you. Be as upset as you are. Tell him what you know, what happened. But sweetheart: don’t say you’re his wife. They know him under the fake name. François du Berry. A man you met yesterday morning, through your mutual friends Helmut and Nina. Answer as little as possible. Let them say what they know. Say as little as possible. Then probably we can go. All right?’
She started to cry. I held her a little, and mopped her up, and jollied her along because that was girls like her were brought up with, and I wanted her to feel safe. As safe as possible. As I steered her down the stairs, my gullet was rebellious. Was it sickness, or panic? Or was it just lost love again, back to provoke me?
*
I saw through the doorway that Shezli sat in the hotel manager’s office as if it were his own. Not that I was given much chance to notice, because even as I started to enter I was courteously steered one way and Chrissie the other: her into the room, me on to a sofa outside. I sat, and I amused myself by flexing my pelvic-floor muscles like Chrissie’s yoga book suggested, and I tried to quell the fear. Didn’t work.
I just sat. Flex. Quell. Flex. Quell. Like a chemist’s shop shelf. Shampoo, indigestion pill, shampoo, indigestion pill. Ha ha ha. Another thirty seconds got through. What was she saying? What were they asking?
The longer it takes the worse it is. It only takes three minutes for her to give her version. What’s taking so long?