‘Could the collision with the boy be related to the shooting, Diba?’ Tomasoa asked.
Marouan was amazed at his quick response. ‘If they intended to run down the boy on purpose, they wouldn’t have hit the brakes,’ he said. ‘And even if this was their plan, they would have never left him there on the road like that.’
‘Anyway,’ said Tomasoa, ‘in no time at all that poor child has been upgraded from the victim of a traffic accident to the chief witness of a criminal retaliation. That means that the hit-and-run investigation is no longer an isolated case.’
‘What does that mean for us, boss?’ asked Marouan, who already knew the dreaded answer.
‘That this case will be coupled with the double murder that the MIT is investigating,’ Tomasoa said, ‘and that both of you will probably be added to that team.’
Here we go again, thought Marouan, realizing what this meant. He would be strapped into the straitjacket of a hierarchically led team. If he was lucky he’d be sent out now and then to fetch coffee for the experts. He’d have zero control over anything that happened. Every movement or action that deviated from protocol would immediately stand out. Marouan’s hands were tied. He’d no longer be of any use to the menacing voice with his orders and threats.
Marouan wiped the sweat from his forehead. He realized that little had changed in his life since he’d crawled out of that bus to Marrakesh, the only survivor.
15
A can of iced coffee, two hummus wraps, a snack pack of baby carrots and two cans of Golden Power comprised the haul of Farah’s quick raid on the first service station she came across. With the energy supply in her arms she was queuing at the till, waiting to be served, when her eye fell on the newspaper rack and the black-and-white photo gracing the front page of De Nederlander. She saw a man who looked vaguely familiar and a woman holding a large bouquet of flowers. They stood on either side of a hospital bed and looked into the camera with sad eyes and regretful smiles.
Farah’s heart skipped a beat when she recognized the boy in the bed.
He looked just like he did when he was brought into the Emergency Department. With the eyes of someone who appeared to be caught in his own nightmare.
She snatched a copy of the paper, paid and rushed across the car park. Less than a minute later she was sitting in the Carrera with De Nederlander folded across the steering wheel. As she sank her teeth into the first hummus wrap, her eyes darted across Angela Faber’s emotional account in the article accompanying the photo, headlined ‘My Day in a Police Cell’. Angela Faber recounted how, in the middle of the night, she had seen a seriously injured Middle-Eastern boy dressed as a girl lying in the road, and had saved his life by immediately alerting emergency services.
Farah read about the ‘appalling blunder of the detectives’ who subsequently arrested Angela as a prime suspect in the hit-and-run.
But that was not all.
Under the heading THE PRICE OF MY FAME, Angela’s husband, Dennis Faber, aka ‘star presenter and frontman of IRIS TV’, revealed the drama of being ‘handcuffed and carted off like a notorious criminal’ in front of the cameras while taping The Game of Love. ‘A traumatic experience’, according to Faber, all the more so because he was charged with complicity when, by his own account, he’d been nowhere near the scene of the accident. Faber did not mince words about the police’s actions. ‘You do wonder where this country is headed when two immigrant detectives can get away with making a laughing stock of our legal system with their primitive, un-Dutch behaviour.’
Furthermore, the ‘deeply affected couple’ let it be known that ‘obviously’ they would be filing an official complaint against the police for unlawful deprivation of liberty.
However, ‘an emotional Angela Faber’ stressed that ‘the greatest victim of this sorry affair’ was the little boy himself. ‘So we’ve set aside our own problems to really be here for him today.’ Whereupon Dennis Faber said ‘with immense compassion’ that there was nothing they could do for the ‘poor little mite’ except ‘hope and pray he would be all right’.
Not only did Farah find the hypocrisy insufferable, but she wondered why in God’s name Cathy Marant, of all people, was suddenly looking into the boy’s case. Was Marant aware of Farah’s involvement and was she now trying to incriminate her in this way? Farah got the answer to this question when she turned to the paper’s media section, where the article continued. On seeing Danielle’s name and photo, all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. This article had come about on Danielle’s initiative, no doubt about it. Exploiting the Fabers’ story to her own advantage was a brilliant idea. If Danielle ever decided to leave medicine, there would be a PR job waiting.
According to Danielle, ‘the seriously injured boy was given specialist care and treatment at the ICU of the Waterland Medical Centre.’ Only the visiting hours were missing. How could she be so stupid? She even went on to say that the boy ‘had been the victim of a ruthless gang of child traffickers who had left him for dead in the woods’.
Had it not occurred to Danielle that with this article she was effectively rolling out the red carpet for those very same ‘ruthless’ characters, so they could shut him up for good? But the real shock came at the end of the article when Farah read that Danielle would give her own ‘blood-curdling account of the boy’s discovery’ on The Headlines Show tonight.
Farah’s fury at Danielle’s self-serving behaviour got the better of her grief for Parwaiz. She remembered what Danielle had told her earlier. ‘The case is topical right now,’ she’d insisted. ‘There’s plenty of interest, especially after that television couple were arrested. And tomorrow something could happen that overshadows this story.’
Should Farah have reacted differently to Danielle’s proposal? She’d explained quite clearly why she couldn’t and wouldn’t help her. Was there anything she could have done? Should she have argued her case more forcefully, stressing that it was unwise to attract public attention to this case so soon? Either way, she had refused to be part of Danielle’s plan. Because she’d felt exploited. Now she was paying for this refusal.
She also realized that Danielle’s appearance on The Headlines Show would attract far more media attention than her investigation needed. Her boss Edward wanted her to work ‘under the radar’. Perhaps he’d call off the whole investigation?
Dog-tired, she stared into space, chewing some carrots without tasting them and leaning on the steering wheel so the pressure of her elbows slowly tore the newspaper in two. She tried to make sense of it all, to find a satisfactory explanation for this sequence of bizarre events.
Again, she pictured the boy looking at her after waking from the sedation. Again, she felt Parwaiz’s tight grip. She saw his eyes the moment life left them. The two faces merged with one another. The face of the boy fighting for his life and the face of Parwaiz losing his.
Then suddenly it dawned on Farah that she was the link between two events that were seemingly unrelated.
She checked her watch. She had lost all sense of time. It was past four o’clock. If she hurried, she would just make it to the press conference. Then afterwards she could persuade Edward of the importance of continuing the investigation. No matter what. Even if it meant collaborating with Paul.
16
With one hand Danielle adjusted the tap as she held her other hand under the streaming water to test if it was a good temperature for her bath.
This morning hadn’t gone as smoothly as she’d hoped for. She’d asked Mariska if it was okay for Angela Faber to pay a brief visit to the boy. ‘One minute, no more …’ Mariska’s hesitation turned into a resolute refusal upon seeing the entourage following Angela Faber into the ICU.
‘They’re going to hand me my head for this. It’s not okay!’ Mariska cried as Danielle hastily escorted her illustrious company into the boy’s room. ‘You’ve gone too far, Danielle. Get these people out of here or I’m going to call Security.’
Seeing the boy made Angela
Faber stiffen and she couldn’t manage more than a pathetic ‘Oh my God, my God, what have they done to you?’ Dennis Faber couldn’t contain himself. ‘They saved his life, that’s what they did to him!’ he snorted. ‘And let’s leave God out of it, because God doesn’t have a damn thing to do with this.’
Meanwhile, in the corridor, Mariska was calling Security, loud enough for everybody to hear.
This fleeting visit would have been a complete fiasco if Cathy Marant hadn’t directed the Fabers to stand on either side of the bed and look into the camera as seasoned actors, smiling sadly and filled with compassion.
Marant quickly pressed a bouquet of flowers into Angela’s hands and ordered the photographer, Eric, to take up position so the boy was lying right between Angela and Dennis Faber. It was meant to be about the boy, Danielle reassured herself, but in this photo shoot he was reduced from the main character of his own personal tragedy to a non-speaking extra in a third-rate drama about two celebrities concealing their guilty consciences and empty marriage.
Fortunately, everything was over in no time. Immediately after the obligatory pose, Dennis Faber hurried out of the room again without giving the boy another glance. Cathy Marant grabbed Angela Faber, who was now a puddle of tears, and as quickly as possible manoeuvred her back into the corridor.
‘Now you,’ Eric had said to Danielle, positioning her in front of the apparatus that provided the boy with the medications he needed. ‘We need to stop now,’ Danielle said to Eric, who just kept on clicking.
When she came out of the room with Eric, Danielle caught a glimpse of Mariska’s punishing but above all disappointed expression. ‘I can explain, Maris,’ Danielle tried, but it had little effect. Mariska was fuming.
Danielle and Eric shot into the right lift at the very moment the left lift doors opened and Hospital Security stepped out.
‘That was a close call,’ Eric said with a smile, standing a bit too close to her in the descending lift.
Danielle thought of the boy. She felt like she’d betrayed him.
Only after she saw Marant and her entourage driving away from the staff entrance was she able to breathe a sigh of relief. When she returned to the ICU Mariska was still busy talking to the two security guards. ‘It’s all fine,’ said Danielle to soothe the tension, ‘they’re gone, it’s over,’ and she returned to the boy’s room.
She leaned over him and stroked his fine black hair. He looked through her as if she wasn’t there.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I had to do that. One day I’ll explain it to you and I hope you’ll understand.’
She felt much guiltier than she’d anticipated. She doubted whether her intentions were quite as sincere as she’d previously thought. However, with this brief visit she’d earned herself a place in the spotlight tonight. And on that stage she would tell his story. If he couldn’t, she would. She’d let him speak through her.
It felt like an eternity since Danielle had stood beside the boy’s bed. As soon as she’d left the hospital car park earlier this afternoon, she’d picked up a copy of De Nederlander. At home she read the article with her heart racing and happily concluded that it had gone exactly as she’d imagined. She’d actually put together a circus act, she thought to herself, smiling. She’d positioned the Fabers together in the limelight first, but then she unexpectedly climbed on their shoulders and in one fell swoop grabbed all the attention.
The tub was almost full and she poured big drops of Energy bubble bath with ginseng into the water, sniffed its sweetness and began to undress.
She heard the chirping birds of her mobile go, grabbed her phone from under her clothes, hesitated when she saw it was Farah, but finally answered.
Farah sounded agitated. ‘I read the article in De Nederlander, Danielle. Is this what you meant by informing the public?’
‘It’s exactly what I meant,’ Danielle replied coldly.
‘But you’ve used that poor child! And what do you get in return?’
‘What I get in return,’ Danielle said, ‘is that I can tell eight hundred thousand viewers that his story symbolizes all the horror stories of millions of children who don’t have a voice.’
‘Is that what you’ve arranged with Cathy Marant?’
‘Why are you asking me that?’
‘Because Cathy Marant isn’t interested in stories like this. Marant is all about sensation, broken marriages, celebrities who end up in the gutter and journalists who land people in hospital after a good beating. She only goes for heart-wrenching stories about children when it’s the child of a celebrity, or a goddamn child star. Did that even cross your mind? You’re making a very big mistake trusting her!’
‘What should I do then? Trust you? You’re not going to help me. But Marant is.’
‘Have you even considered the boy’s safety? Or even your own safety? Why are you doing this? What are you trying to prove?’
‘I don’t owe you an explanation. We could have done this together. You didn’t want to. So you’ll just have to deal with the consequences.’
‘Danielle, you’re underestimating the consequences. Don’t do this. It’s going to turn against you.’
‘You know, Farah, I can see right through you. You’re just like the others. It’s all about you. I won’t mention your name tonight, so you don’t need to worry. I’m going to talk about the boy tonight. He’ll finally get the attention he deserves. I’ll see to it. Take care, Farah!’
She hung up, wrapped a towel around herself, walked into the room and noticed how tense she’d become in those few minutes. What if Farah was right? That she’d compromised the boy’s safety? She saw herself fleeing for her life through the knee-high grass in the middle of the night. She heard the screams of the children again. Whatever she did, wherever she went, she’d always hear their cries. For ever echoing in her head.
17
As a boss, Edward Vallent prided himself on his powers of empathy, but as Farah tried to keep up with him on her way to the escalator these were in short supply.
‘So you’re telling me that someone you called uncle suddenly passed away this afternoon, and that’s why you vanished from the radar until now. Is that right? You never even bothered to phone me!’
‘Sure!’ Farah fumed. ‘That’s my first impulse when someone dies in my arms. Let’s phone Ed.’
‘It may not be your first impulse, but a second or even a third one might be nice. Jesus, your tenth impulse, for all I care, but get in touch! You burst in here, just minutes before we’re doing a press conference, while I haven’t had a chance to go through it with you. And as I’m about to tell you what we’re planning to do, you try to shout me down with the improbable story that the man’s death this afternoon had something to do with the Bacha Bazi kid who got run over! Got any other crazy theories, Hafez?’
‘Damn it, Ed. Put like that, it does sound like shit.’
Edward came to an abrupt halt and, seriously pissed off, turned to face Farah.
‘It is a shit story!’
For a moment they faced off like two frozen gladiators. Then the colossus moved again and Farah followed him.
‘No doubt we’re all connected in an I Ching, Ying Yang or Feng Shui kind of way, and all living cells form one big cosmic web of cause and effect, but that’s not something a driven journalist bursting with talent ought to go by! If that’s a path you want to pursue, I suggest you take the first available plane to the highest Himalayan peak and have fun clinking the singing bowls in a Tibetan monastery. But here in the real world we’re still all about facts and analysis. Facts and analysis, Hafez. Ever heard of those?’
Ed was about to walk away but Farah stopped him.
‘You’re a bastard, Ed. A man died in my arms this afternoon, someone I loved like a father. You only give a shit about your newspaper and precious little about the people around you, but that still doesn’t give you the right to act like this.’
Suddenly the fury in Edward’s eyes died down.
‘Okay, Hafez, calm down.’ Again, he was about to walk away, but Farah blocked his path. It felt like positioning herself in front of a revving Hummer.
‘I demand trust and respect,’ she said. ‘Without it I can’t do the investigation, and I’m desperate to do it, Ed. If only to prove you, with your big opinions, wrong, you arrogant dickhead.’
‘I love it when you talk dirty to me, Hafez,’ Edward said with a grin, ‘but we have to go downstairs now and present a united front! If only to keep up appearances. We’ll talk more later. Come on.’
She turned around and felt the flat of Edward’s hand pressing against the small of her back, an antiquated gesture men still regularly used since they saw women as children who needed to be pushed.
When they reached the escalator, they could hear the impatient hum of the gathered journalists and photographers in the central atrium downstairs.
‘Let’s get one thing straight, Hafez: you behave yourself and I do all the talking,’ Edward said.
‘Be my guest, you overbearing jerk,’ she agreed.
As they glided downstairs next to one another, Edward leaned towards her and whispered in her ear. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your loss today. And apologies for earlier.’
She pretended not to hear and kept staring straight ahead.
18
‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!’ Edward exclaimed jovially, as though about to buy a round for the journalists and photographers who had gathered in front of the large screen. Meanwhile he cursed himself for his bad habit of antagonizing those he cherished. It wasn’t until Farah had a go at him that Edward realized just how fond he was of this woman. Perhaps it was the very reason he kept provoking her. To keep feeling how, underneath the heavy armour of his workaholism and professional autism, his small heart continued to beat unconditionally for her.
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