Arabesk

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry…”

  Not the response Kamila had been expecting but then, in part, that was Raf’s intention. The fox had a tag from Machiavelli covering emotional sleight of hand, but unfortunately the fox was missing, assumed dead.

  “Well,” said Kamila, more embarrassed than mollified, “you’re here now.”

  “True enough,” Raf said and wondered why he shivered. Then he remembered that he’d thought a lot about such places when he was a child, around the time he got his second kidney replacement.

  Speed had been essential according to his doctor. And it had been this time constraint that made the clinic go through an organ broker. Searching for a matching kidney from someone dying or freshly dead. Of course, going this route was cheaper than growing a new one, but they’d assured his mother that wasn’t an issue.

  Raf had given up trying to remember which bits of him were retreads. Although, occasionally, he’d catch a slight seam of scar where he didn’t expect to see one. Across his ribs or down one arm, and think, what’s that?

  Shadow memories.

  “You all right?”

  Raf glanced up to find Kamila staring at him, eyes anxious.

  “I’m Iskandryia’s new can carrier,” he said. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t,” said Kamila. “I’m not that stupid.” Reaching into her pocket, she produced a floating camera, which she tossed into the air, waiting while it ran self-diagnostics.

  “Friday, 22nd October, 2:38 P.M.,” she announced once a diode lit green. “I am Kamila bint-Abdullah, city pathologist, second grade.” Kamila’s tone made clear what she thought about that. “Also present at the autopsy is His Excellency, Ashraf…” She cleared her throat. “Delete that…is His Excellency, the Governor of El Iskandryia.

  “This is case number 49–3957, Jane Doe…” Kamila’s smile was almost apologetic and Raf realized she’d need a formal identification before the corpse earned itself a name. “The body is that of an apparently healthy, well-nourished female, Caucasian, late teens/early twenties. The body is sixty-four inches long and in total, but minus lungs and heart, weighs…”

  Taking a readout from the autopsy table and the bucket that held the girl’s intestines, Kamila added the two figures together in her head. “…115 pounds. Blonde hair, blue eyes… The skin is of normal texture. There are no scars, moles, subdermal chips or tattoos.

  “Preliminary X-rays and scans reveal no bone fragments, fractures, bullet tracks, knife wounds, needles or objects embedded beyond point of entry. No foreign objects in throat, anus or vagina.”

  Kamila lifted Dawn Hauger’s right hand and examined each finger. “Nails painted, neatly filed and unbroken, no indication of embedded foreign material. No defensive cuts to palm, dorsal side of arm, no damage to webbing between fingers…

  “Which should suggest suicide,” Kamila tossed the comment over her shoulder. “At least it should according to the textbooks.” Her voice was darkly ironic, animosity briefly forgotten. She was good at the job, Raf realized. Her manner professional and assured.

  “Initials H.Q. inscribed on inside of left wrist,” Kamila announced, finishing up the other hand.

  A quick sweep with a UV rod produced no significant areas of flare, though Kamila still took swabs from one corner of the dead girl’s mouth, her nasal area and just outside the vagina. She also swept the pubic area for foreign body hair, despite the fact this had already been done once at the crime scene.

  Using a plastic ruler, Kamila began to measure the wounds, her voice emotionless. The longest cut ran from throat to pubis, the second longest traversed the ribs, just below heavy breasts. Together the gashes formed a cross potent. And it was a cross potent rather than a mere cross, because once again wounds showed short lines cut at either end of each slash. The top one conveniently opened the girl’s throat and the bottom one bisected her pudenda, the other two scored down both sides of her ribs. Though the terms Kamila used to describe their position were cephalic, caudal and lateral.

  “This is too neat,” Kamila said. “Much too neat…” The pause that followed was to let Raf ask a question.

  “I had a look at the crime-scene report,” she added into his silence.

  “How did…?” Of course, her father, sat at his front desk, proud of how well his only daughter was doing. “What did it tell you?”

  Kamila hesitated, replying with a question of her own. “Wouldn’t you expect increased disorganization?”

  “Expect what?”

  Kamila shrugged. “This is the third death. Personally, at this point, I’d be looking for proof of greater risks run, not enough time allowed, less safe crime scenes, fewer escape routes…” She ticked the points off in her head. “Yet, if anything, this killing is more meticulous than the last, which had inherent differences in MO to the one before.”

  “You’re absolutely certain?”

  “Sure.” Kamila nodded. “I pulled out all the files,” she said, pointing to a distant wall screen. “Examined the earlier crime shots. Identical wounds, different MOs. The discrepancy just didn’t get logged.”

  “Why not?”

  Her shrug was expressive. In it was everything Kamila felt about her opposite number at the polizia touristica… But what she said was, “Maybe he’s overworked…”

  On average 1 percent of a city dies each year. Iskandryia had 4 million people. Which meant forty thousand deaths, a quarter of which might merit investigation. Setting aside the poor and the unimportant reduced that figure to three thousand, the vast majority of whom had to be buried by noon (if they died in the previous twenty-four hours), or by the following noon (if they died at noon or after).

  So far this year polizia touristica had dealt with seven bodies. Four drownings and the three butchered tourists, on the last of which she was doing the work for them.

  “My unofficial opinion,” Kamila said hesitantly, “based on observation and on having sight of the autopsy reports of the earlier killings…” She was picking her words with care. “Despite obvious similarities, my unofficial belief is that victim three was not killed by the same person as victim two, because, in the case I’ve examined, the positioning of each cut is more, not less, precise.”

  Kamila nodded to the dead girl’s opened throat, then indicated the matching cross wound at the other end of the upright. “Exact,” she said, reaching for her ruler. “Exactly halfway between chin and breast bone, exactly halfway down the length of the genitals. And again, the ribs… Identical length of cut, identical positioning. Of course,” she said, “I’m not in a position to refute that murders one and two were committed by the same killer.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Raf asked; it seemed a fair enough question.

  “On the record,” said Kamila, “I’m highlighting disquieting aspects of a crime. More than that it’s impossible to say without further work.” Her smile was bleak. “Off the record, I reckon Dawn Hauger was bled to death, then mutilated by someone who lacked the nerve required to butcher her while alive…”

  “You’re saying,” said Raf, “that we’ve got a series of copycat killings…”

  Kamila looked at him. “You disagree?”

  “Yes,” said Raf, nodding. “I think what we’ve got is atrocity by numbers.”

  CHAPTER 34

  22nd October

  What was it with the missing mirrors? The last time the Senator had been invited to meet Iskandryia’s governor, half a dozen ornate Murano looking glasses had covered the walls, making a large room look even larger. Now the old man and his mirrors were gone, their memory etched in lighter patches on age-darkened silk. So what was that about, and was it safe to ask?

  Was it even safe to be alone with this man?

  In front of her sat a killer. Senator Liz couldn’t get that fact out of her head. Not a killer like the General, when war or political expediency dictated, but the real thing. Ashraf Bey had put a revolver to the head of the previous Chief of Detective
s and pulled the trigger, claiming humanitarian reasons. And the really weird bit was, no one in the city seemed to find that remotely odd.

  But then that was Iskandryia for you.

  It seemed the bey might also be behind the assassination in Kabul of Sheik el-Halana, the man who authorized the bombing of the Ottoman Consulate in Seattle. Then there was the death of a Thiergarten agent. And the bey’s rumoured links with the Sultan himself.

  As far as Senator Liz was concerned, the sooner a deal was done and she was out of his company the better. Her only problem, and it was a big one, was that the ostensibly polite young man sitting opposite was obviously not listening to a word she said. And she really did need him to get behind the plan.

  “Your Excellency…”

  Twin ovals of dark glass. Somewhere behind those lenses was the man himself, whoever he was. And White House opinion was divided on that.

  “Tell me,” said the man. “Do you like our wallpaper?”

  “Do I…” Senator Liz looked as put out as she felt.

  “It’s Turkish,” he said. “I was thinking of having it painted. Only that’s going to take gallons of emulsion and I can’t decide on a colour.” He lapsed back into silence, leaving Senator Liz to look around while she decided what, if anything, his comment actually meant.

  Added to the main building in 1803, the chamber they used was too large for a withdrawing room, too small to qualify as a proper ballroom. And at exactly one and a half times the height of every other room on the ground floor, it guaranteed that the roof space above was so cramped as to be useless for anything but storage, but Raf still liked it more than any other room in the mansion.

  Somewhere, hidden beneath its floor covering, were marble tiles, hacked from a quarry by slaves. But none of the tiles could actually be seen because most of the space was taken by two vast Chinese silk carpets, with Bokhara runners and Isphahan rugs filling in the gaps.

  “It’s very nice wallpaper,” Senator Liz said carefully.

  “You’re right.” The man sitting opposite her nodded. “The question is, would it look better painted? And if so, should that paint be white?”

  Senator Liz swallowed a sigh. Pashazade Ashraf al-Mansur looked frighteningly like his father, the Emir of Tunis, and it appeared the similarity might go more than skin deep. The last time the Senator had been allowed into the Emir’s presence, the man had been camped deep on Jubal Dahar, guarded by dark-eyed girls carrying snubPups. His Highness had taken all of thirty seconds out of that evening’s routine to tell Senator Liz that the answer was no, whatever her query was, except for those bits to which his answer was yes…

  Behind the Senator stood an interpreter, redundant from the moment she’d discovered that Ashraf Bey spoke English. Since the interpreter’s day job was actually second intelligence attaché at the US Embassy in El Qahirah, Senator Liz had intended to get on-the-hoof briefings as her meeting with the bey progressed. Now, of course, that was impossible.

  The Senator would have felt much happier if the impressively bulky file in front of her had contained even one sheet of usable information on the man sitting opposite. But he had no vices, apparently. Having saved the life of the Quitrimala girl, he took no reward, though the sum offered had been vast, astronomical… He’d turned down a marriage worth billions, apparently because he wasn’t in love with the girl. He belonged to no clique, no cabal.

  And he had to be insane.

  Three days he’d kept the world waiting. The President in Washington, the Kaiser… Hell, even his own Sultan in Stambul.

  “Your Excellency…” The entreaty stuck in Senator Liz’s throat. But she had a job to do, even if that job wasn’t easy. “Iskandryia…”

  “…is fucked,” Raf didn’t even let her finish the sentence. “You hear that…?” He cocked one ear to the sound of a cherry top blasting past the grounds of the mansion. “Riots in Karmous. One of the co-op banks has folded.”

  “Bad news, nothing but bad news,” said Senator Liz, her voice mournful. It was a sadness that didn’t quite reach her pale eyes.

  “Not necessarily,” Raf said lightly. “For example, we’ve established beyond doubt that Hamzah Effendi is not implicated in the murder of the second girl, the one found on his beach. Unfortunately, the real murderer was killed…”

  “By me,” added Raf, under his breath, in the basement of a deserted house in Moharrem Bey. But he didn’t say that aloud, obviously enough.

  “We also know that the murderer of the first girl shot himself at Lake Mareotis…”

  Raf didn’t know that at all, but a chemical residue impregnating the pouch found with that man apparently matched the drug used to sedate Dawn Hauger at Casino Quitrimala. So it was a reasonable guess.

  “Which means,” said Raf, “three murders, three butchers, each carrying out a near-identical crime to order. Of course, now the third one is also out of action…”

  Elizabeth Elsing blinked, but it was the reaction of her man standing behind her that interested Raf. “You have him under arrest?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

  Raf stared at the interpreter, who looked very much as if he’d like to take back the question, but when Raf answered, he took care to address his words to the Senator.

  “Unfortunately,” said Raf as he put down his coffee cup and leant back, “he also died…”

  “He died?” So intent was the small woman that she almost fell off the sofa from bending too far forward.

  “Sad, isn’t it?” said Raf. “I can, however, tell you that he was German.” Raf flicked open a leather notebook and hit resume, watching as words scrolled up the page. Yet another message from Hani by the look of it and two missed calls from Zara.

  “We’ll be releasing his name later…” Raf flicked shut the notebook and put it back on the table.

  “Advance notification of which,” Senator Liz began to say, “would be very…”

  “Useful. Yes,” said Raf, “I’m sure it would.” Whatever froideur might be about to fall ended as double doors crashed open and Khartoum staggered in, carrying a heavy silver tray.

  Double loops of gold tied themselves in knots up the front of his frock coat. A cravat of yellowing Maltese lace frothed from his neck. And beneath the large silver buckles of his shiny shoes, grey showed against black, where Khartoum had missed patches of dust on their freshly cleaned patent leather.

  “Fresh coffee, Your Excellency.”

  Raf took one look at the old man’s face and swallowed his smile. If Khartoum was dressed like that, then there was a reason. Just as there had to be a reason for the parable Khartoum had told Raf before the meeting began. It had begun by Khartoum asking him if he’d read any of Hani’s stories.

  The answer to that had been no… Although he’d had some read to him.

  “Good.” Khartoum smiled. “Here’s another. A thief creeps into the enclosure of a Sufi master and finds nothing there but sand and dry crusts. As he leaves, understanding his disappointment, the Sufi tosses the thief the tattered blanket from his bed, so that he should not go back into the street empty-handed.”

  “That’s one of Hani’s tales?”

  “No,” the old man had said. “Not yet…”

  Raf watched in fascination as the old man lowered his heavy tray carefully onto the table. A small gilt jug was accompanied by two tiny gilt cups, a Limoges platter of rosewater Turkish delight, dusted with sugar, and a smaller plate, piled high with tiny crescents of pastry. An open cigarette box, made from beaten silver but lined with rosewood, was filled with Balkan cigarillos.

  “I trust Your Excellency needs nothing.” Khartoum gave the tiniest bow and walked backward from the chamber, as if he’d been a majordomo all his life.

  Coffee, tiny croissants, Turkish delight… Limoges dishes and an English silver tray… Somewhere in there, sure as mathematical certainty, was an answer to their sum. Concentrate, the fox would have said. So Raf did, starting with the nothing that Khartoum considered he needed.<
br />
  Zero had been an Arabic understanding. The nasrani who came with their heavy mail and what passed for cooking grasped the numerical concept of something plus something, but zero, the addition, subtraction and definition of nothing, had to be explained.

  The French, the English, the Germans, now the Americans. And before that the Mamelukes and the Arab invaders. He had it! What Khartoum was saying was, given the chance, Isk would again re-create itself. No one ever truly conquered this city… They either passed through or were adopted by the city they thought had fallen to them.

  “What do you want from us?” Raf demanded.

  “Us?”

  “With the city, with me…”

  He faced her across a low table and both of them understood that they’d finally arrived at the real reason why they were there.

  “Iskandryia…” said the Senator.

  “Is in chaos.” Raf shrugged. “We’ve had this conversation. What matters is… Why are you here?”

  “To offer help.” The Senator sat back, forcing herself to relax. Unfortunately, Raf saw her do it. Which just made her stressed again.

  “Help?” Right, thought Raf. Obvious really. “And in return?”

  For a second it looked as if Senator Liz was about to say, there is no “in return.” But something in Raf’s smile stopped her. “The situation is tricky.” She began again…

  Your carpet is moth-eaten, hardly worth buying, the quality is poor, besides it is too small, too expensive and I don’t need a carpet anyway… Raf had heard it often, that opening position in every negotiation. The one that said, out of the goodness of my heart I’m going to agree to rob you blind.

  Tuning out the low drone of the Senator’s explanation, Raf traced the Doppler spore of a cherry top as it raced down Fuad Premier, passed through Shallalat Gardens and vanished along Avenue Horreya. Orders had gone out that afternoon locking down the city. Leave had been cancelled across all divisions of the police, even the morales… The military were on standby, confined to barracks but ready. His Sudanese guard patrolled the streets around the mansion.