Open Sesame

by Tom Holt

  ‘Bastard!’ Fang yelled. ‘Look, it wasn’t me, I had nothing to do with —’

  The smoke, flies, bees solidified, until they were a solid thing. The jar swelled up, until it was the size of a crouching man, maybe a little larger. The column stopped moving. It was a human shape. It stood opposite Akram, no more than six inches away from him. Akram stared at it; it was just like looking in a mirror; or suppose you’re standing between a whitewashed wall and a very bright light, and you look at your shadow.

  ‘Go back,’ he said, but his voice was thin and watery. ‘Go back home.’

  The thing, his other self, smiled. It was an exact likeness, except somehow dark, shadowy. Do you remember how Peter Pan came across the Line to retrieve his shadow, and all the trouble that caused?

  The shadow reached out its hands and feet, and touched Akram, and joined him. ‘I am home,’ he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘I’m starving,’ Akram said. ‘Let’s eat. I fancy Lebanese.’

  ‘It’s half past three in the morning,’ Akram replied. ‘In Southampton. If we’re lucky, we might just find an unopened dustbin bag.’

  Akram laughed. ‘You always were a pessimistic bugger,’ he said. ‘Now, if my instincts are still working -‘ He stopped still, drawing his other half up sharply. ‘This way,’ he said, and darted off down the street, dragging Akram behind him like a large dog walking a small human.

  Just around the corner there was a blaze of light and colour. Exotic music, strings and bells and cymbals, floated across on the languid night breeze. Over the door was a sign saying TRIPOLI RESTAURANT.

  ‘Damn,’ said Akram. ‘Wouldn’t you just know it. I seem to have come out without any money. I wonder, would you mind… ?’

  Fang, snuggled inside Akram’s jacket, peered out. She liked late-night catering establishments, bars, night clubs; because where you have drunken night owls, you have fights, and where you have fights, you run a good chance of picking up the odd dislodged tooth.

  ‘You two,’ she observed, ‘remind me of something.’

  ‘Really?’

  Fang nodded. ‘I got it,’ she said. ‘It’s like when you’ve got a prisoner and a guard handcuffed together; you know, with the raincoat to cover the chains? Only,’ she added, ‘I’m not sure which of you’s which.’

  ‘He is.’

  A waiter drifted forward and smiled.

  ‘Hello,’ Akram said. ‘Table for three, please.’

  The waiter nodded. ‘If you’d like to come this way …’

  ‘Or rather,’ Akram amended, ‘two. Actually, make that one.’

  ‘As you like, sir. Please to follow me. Anything to drink before you order?’

  ‘No, I mean yes.’ Akram stood still for a moment, his eyes closed. ‘That’s, um, one tomato juice, one triple absinthe, no ice, and do you have any camel’s milk?’

  If the waiter was taken aback at all, he didn’t show it.

  ‘All in the same glass, sir? Or one after the other? Or… ?’

  ‘Simultaneously, of course. Sorry, I mean, could I have those, er, simultaneously. Thank you.’

  The waiter turned to walk back to the kitchen, hesitated and glanced surreptitiously back. An ordinary-looking sort of man, quite large, could easily be from the Old Country except that he sounded English. He was sitting at one of the side tables, and the candle-light seemed to be throwing a larger than usual shadow against the far wall. Occasionally his hand crept to his chest; indigestion? angina? None of the waiter’s business. Neither was he interested in the fact that the man seemed to be holding an animated conversation with himself. When you’re in the late-night catering business, the ones you watch are the ones who don’t talk to themselves.

  ‘This,’ said Akram to his shadow, ‘isn’t going to work. I mean, listen to us, we can’t agree on anything.’

  ‘What, you mean like we’re married or something? No, I take that back, we are at least talking to each other. By the way, you haven’t introduced me. Who’s the houri?’

  ‘Tooth fairy,’ Akram corrected. ‘Shadow, Fang; Fang, Shadow. Better now?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Fang, ‘but can I just get this straight? You’re Akram and he’s your shadow?’

  ‘And vice versa. On the other side, it’s the other way round. I think. Actually that’s a gross simplification, but let’s leave it at that for now.’

  ‘So really,’ Fang ground on, wishing she’d never raised the subject, ‘you’re both Akram. Is that right?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ replied the image on the wall. ‘To take the marriage simile one stage further; a happily married couple is two minds with but a single thought. We’re one mind with two entirely different thoughts. Usually, at least.’

  ‘Ah.’ The tooth fairy nodded. ‘Like a dual personality, sort of thing.’

  The shadow shook its head. A split microsecond later, Akram’s head moved too, with the result that a quarter of his camel’s milk went down the front of his shirt. ‘Schizophrenia, you mean? Not really. Schizophrenia is where the left hand knows perfectly well what the right hand is doing, and bitterly resents it. I prefer to think of us as two sides of the same coin. The yin and the yang. The positive and the negative charged particles, both circling the same neutron.’

  ‘Except,’ Akram interrupted sullenly, ‘somehow he never has any money on him. And when he gets drunk at parties and starts making lewd suggestions to married women, I’m the one who gets thumped.’

  ‘You exaggerate.’

  ‘And,’ Akram went on, ‘the curious thing is, the one time in a hundred when the lewd suggestion leads to a result, it’s always my turn to be the blasted shadow.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘And of course,’ Akram continued, ‘you don’t get a shadow when the light’s turned off. Marvellous.’

  It’s always embarrassing for third parties when couples argue in public, and Fang wished she could change the subject. ‘I—’ she said.

  ‘I suppose it’s the same for everyone,’ Akram was saying, ‘with the extremely important difference that they don’t realise it. But I do. Ever since I was in that bloody jar, the time I found out I was in a story. I found out all sorts of things then that nobody else realises. Big mistake, that.’

  ‘I agree,’ said the shadow, nodding

  (‘For God’s sake mind what you’re doing!’

  ‘Huh? Oh, sorry.’)

  ‘Glad you agree on something,’ Fang replied. She noticed that whereas the shadow had finished its drink, Akram still had half of his left. He was wearing the other half. ‘But I still don’t see how you two came to, er, get together. I thought there was something quite other in that jar.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Well,’ Fang replied defensively, ‘the secret of absolute power. The, er, ultimate weapon. That’s what Ali Baba seemed to think it was, anyway.’

  ‘He was right,’ the shadow replied smugly. ‘You’re looking at it.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘That’s right. Well,’ the shadow corrected, ‘us. Together, we make the perfect combination. His skills of stealth, mayhem and cunning; my total lack of moral restraint. Who could ask for more?’

  ‘What you find in the box,’ Akram explained, ‘depends on who you are. If Ali Baba had opened it, he’d probably have found a fleet of nuclear submarines or a death ray or something. Me,’ he added bitterly, ‘I have to find him.’

  The shadow bridled; a difficult thing to do in only two dimensions. ‘The difference between me and a fleet of nuclear submarines,’ he said with dignity, ‘is that I cost less to run and I’m a damn sight easier to park. True, I can’t stay underwater for up to five years at a time, but so what, nobody’s perfect.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘I shall pretend I didn’t hear that. Now then, I fancy the humus to start with, followed by the lamb with couscous and a bottle of the Riesling. It’s all right about the alcohol,’ he added. ‘I don’t have to drive home.�
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  Akram sighed. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I give in. Let’s just get it over and done with as quickly as possible. I suppose I’ve got to kidnap the girl.’

  ‘That’s right. Splendid piece of detective work there, by the way. I’m glad to see you haven’t forgotten everything I taught you.’

  ‘Actually,’ Akram pointed out, ‘it was sheer luck. Anyway, we kidnap the girl—’

  ‘Nice piece,’ commented the shadow, ‘if you like them long and bony. I’m told that sort keeps better, but I always trade mine in fairly quickly, so I can’t actually vouch for it myself.’

  ‘And then,’ Akram continued with distaste, ‘we let her go in return for Ali Baba releasing me from my oath. And then,’ he added, ‘I kill him.’

  ‘Exactly. Won’t that be fun?’

  Akram shut his eyes. ‘Won’t it just,’ he said.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Whoozit?’ Ali Baba croaked into the receiver. The digital clock beside his bed seemed to leer mockingly at him, and its eyes read 04:59.

  ‘Hister Harbour? Hit’s Hisses Utchinson ere, he hum’s harted Weeding hagain hand hoo haid hone hoo hif hat appened.’

  ‘Could you just hold the line a moment, please?’ Ali Baba put down the receiver and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands while the basic background information files of his brain gradually drifted back on line. Mrs Hutchinson. She’s a patient, extraction, left upper molar, and yes, in a moment of surpassing folly I did say call me if there’s any problems and gave her my home number. That reminds me, who am I and where the hell is this? Ah yes, now I remember.

  Tm very sorry to hear that, Mrs Hutchinson,’ he replied, and the facility with which he did so without so much as batting an eye, crossing a finger or growing an extra six inches of nose goes to show that dentistry’s dubious gain was the legal profession’s palpable loss. ‘First thing in the morning, or rather first thing later on this morning, if you could possibly drop by the surgery …’

  ‘Hut hoo hed, hif hit harts hleeding, hoo’d hum himmediately. Hoo hed …’

  I did, didn’t I? I should be hanged, with my own tongue for a noose. ‘Of course, I’ll be right with you. Now, in the meantime, if you’ll just mix up some ordinary table salt with some water…’

  Twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. Ali Baba was, of course, on his way to Mrs Hutchinson’s; which is why Akram, taking a deep breath before stating his demands for Michelle’s return, got the recorded message instead. He wilted slightly; even desperate extroverts feel just a bit self-conscious talking to answering machines. After a moment of being disconcerted, Akram cleared his throat.

  The message went as follows:

  ‘Hello, this is, um, me here, I’d just like to leave a message. Er, ready? Well, here goes. Look, you pigfucker, you ever want to see your daughter alive again, be at the entrance to — oh bugger, I can’t read my own writing. No, not them, my reading glasses, the ones on the - thanks, now then, where were we? Entrance to Tesco’s car park in Cinnamon Street, that’s the Bishop Road entrance as you come in from the bypass, not the .. Sorry, just a tick. Yes? Oh. Oh, right. Sorry, that’s not Tesco’s, it’s Safeways, at one thirty tomorrow, morning, and you’d better come alone or else, Okay? Right, er, well, oh God I hate talking into these things. Um. Bye.’

  The second message was:

  ‘Hello? Oh blast. Hello, it’s me again. Did I say not to tell the Police or it’ll be the worse for the girl? Well, um, that’s it for now. Ciao.’

  The third message was:

  ‘Hello? Shit, where the hell can he have got to this time of night? Yes, it’s me. Look, it’s not Safeways, I looked it up and actually it’s ASDA. Okay, it’s the big supermarket on the corner of Cinnamon Street and Landau Way. Turn right at John Lewis and you can’t miss it. Or else. Goodbye.’

  Having played back the tape a couple of times and tried Michelle’s number (answering machine) Ali Baba collected the sword and the gun, drove to his surgery and went to the store cupboard. Inside he found two hundred pairs of disposable rubber gloves, three large boxes of disposable forceps, five thousand doses of local anaesthetic, twenty tubs of impression material, a catering-size drum of instant coffee granules, an empty floor safe and an old-fashioned silver sixpence. He slumped, as if his backbone had just been repossessed by the finance company.

  Wait a minute. The sixpence …

  It goes without saying that all dentists’ surgeries, sooner or later, get infested with tooth fairies. Dentists who find silver sixpences scattered about their premises therefore know the score and although the old-style djinn traps are now illegal (the details are a bit too grisly for print; suffice it to say that a fairy triggering one while foraging for teeth wouldn’t have very long to reflect on the wisdom of being careful what you wish for) but pixie dust, Larsen traps and large, bad-tempered cats generally solve the problem sooner or later. Dentists, in short, know about tooth fairies, in the same way that farmers have a certain familiarity with the habits of rabbits, rooks and pigeons. They know, for instance, that in spite of the name, they don’t just help themselves to teeth, in the same way that cat burglars will also take the occasional dog or pedigree hamster. A sixpence in the tea kitty or the bottom of the petty cash tin speaks for itself. On the other hand, very few tooth fairies go out tooled up with the hardware necessary to prise open safes. Let alone magical safes.

  The logical conclusion therefore was that Akram had teamed up with a tooth fairy. Having run it past his mental panel of scrutineers, Ali Baba filed the fact in the back of his mind, and sat down in his own chair, wondering what to do next. The next thing he knew was the phone ringing; he looked up at the clock on the wall and saw that it was 7.45 am, start of a brand new working day.

  It’d be wrong to call Ali Baba callous or uncaring; on the contrary, he had twenty-odd people coming to see him to be cured of excruciating pain, and he cared about each and everyone of them. He also cared about his daughter, very deeply indeed; but her appointment, so to speak, wasn’t for another eighteen hours. He hoped she’d be all right, washed up, shaved as best he could with a disposable scalpel and his tiny mirror-on-a-stick, and buzzed for the first patient.

  ‘First,’ Akram said, lighting the paraffin lamp, ‘I don’t want you to be frightened.’

  Michelle glowered at him. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Then I’d suggest you cancel the rest of the lessons and ask for your money back, because when it comes to not frightening people, you haven’t got a clue.’

  The corner of Akram’s mouth twitched a little. ‘You don’t seem very frightened,’ he said. ‘Quite the opposite.’

  ‘I’m absolutely bloody livid, if that’s what you mean,’ Michelle growled, tugging vainly at the ropes round her wrists. ‘Doesn’t mean I’m not frightened. You’re the man in the burger joint, aren’t you?’

  Akram nodded. ‘That’s what I do for a living,’ he said, with more than a hint of pride. ‘They’ve recently made me the assistant manager.’

  ‘I see,’ Michelle replied. ‘So creeping up on people and abducting them at knifepoint’s just a hobby, is it? Other people seem to manage with bird-watching or flower-arranging.’

  Akram looked hurt. ‘Don’t be like that,’ he said. ‘I tried to be as nice about it as I could.’

  ‘Sure. Could you possibly spare me a moment or I’ll slit your throat. I should have guessed then you weren’t a real kidnapper.’

  As she said the words, Michelle couldn’t help feeling that situated as she was, bound hand and foot in a lock-up workshop somewhere with a knife-wielding six-foot-five stranger, her tone might usefully be a little bit less abrasive. There was something about the man, though, that entirely failed to terrify her. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe he would cut her throat, if whatever his strange motivation was demanded it. It was just that he’d probably try and be as considerate and unthreatening about it as he could manage, and even at the moment of severing her jugular vein he’d be at pains to make it clear tha
t he still respected her as a person. She knew all about the New Man; well, this was the New Villain. It intrigued her.

  ‘You know perfectly well who I am,’ Akram replied quietly. ‘And I reckon you know why I’m doing this. I’m trying to keep everything nice and civilised, but really, you aren’t making it any easier.’

  ‘So sorry,’ Michelle snapped. ‘So what do you want to do, mix up some mulled wine and play Trivial Pursuit?’

  ‘Play what?’

  ‘Trivial Pursuit. It’s a sort of game where you ask silly questions and move counters on a board.’

  ‘Really?’ Akram raised an eyebrow. ‘Since my time, that. I’ve got chess and backgammon, if you’re interested.’

  ‘Get real, will you? I wouldn’t play chess with you if you were the last man alive.’

  ‘Quite,’ Akram replied. ‘If I was the last man alive, I’m sure we’d be far too busy foraging for food and hiding from packs of killer dogs and things. All right, then, what about canasta? Or mah jong?’

  Michelle stared at him keenly. ‘Are you trying to tell me,’ she said, ‘that you actually have a mah jong set in a hideout}”

  ‘Why not?’ Akram replied with a shrug. ‘Look, I was kidnapping people when you were still … Sorry, different timescale, but anyhow, you get the point. And the first thing you learn about the kidnapping business is, it can get very, very boring. So naturally I laid in a few games. I mean, I Spy’s all right, but…’

  ‘Bet you haven’t got Diplomacy’

  Akram shook his head. ‘Not really suitable,’ he said. ‘I mean, the average kidnap ordeal lasts about one to three weeks, which means the game’d just be getting interesting when it was time to go home. Actually, I remember the time I snatched the Grand Vizier’s nephew and we started playing Racing Genie. Ten days that game lasted. The Grand Vizier paid up on day four, but we couldn’t persuade the little brute to go home until he’d won. And you try deliberately losing Racing Genie without being embarrassingly obvious about it …’

  ‘Racing Genie?’

  Akram shook his head vigorously. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘It’s totally addictive, Racing Genie. You just get completely carried away.’