There was noise and she turned her head to look. Four or five children were shrieking and laughing. They had broken free from their parents and were gambolling in the open air. Their heads were tipped back, mouths open, arms thrown wide to greet the monsoon. Their small brown feet stamped in the puddles and kicked up dirty water in arcs of spray.
She smiled. She sat for a long time, watching the children and the torrent of rain and thinking of all the places it was falling. It was soaking into the graves of her mother and grandmother back in the village and running in rivulets down the roof of their house in the compound and cascading to the empty yard beneath. She thought how little time it seemed since she had been a small child herself, dancing in puddles and spinning and tasting the rain, and yet, at the same time, how fast life was changing all around her and how dizzy it made her feel.
Chapter 16
Britta was standing inside the main entrance to the administration building, watching the rain. ‘It’s started. The monsoon.’
Ellen ducked in past her, pushing her way out of the downpour. The rain had brought the temperature down but it was also turning the camp to mud. Her boots were caked in it. Sweeping water was rushing along every channel and ditch, carrying all kinds of filth and making it slick and slippery underfoot. She thought of the children who played in it and the overflowing latrines and the speed with which disease might spread.
‘Any more typhoid?’
‘Three new cases. Two severe.’ She looked exhausted. ‘The men had three deaths yesterday.’
Frank was inside, directing two workmen. They were clambering around on stepladders, trying to plug leaks in the roof. The brick floor was uneven and the rainwater had pooled underfoot. He lifted his hand to stop her as she headed past him.
‘Hey. I’ve got a great story for you.’
‘Really?’ People who told her that were rarely right.
‘Don’t you want to hear it? It’ll win a Pulitzer.’
‘Course it will.’
She leant against a stack of boxes and waited. ‘Go on then.’
He took a moment longer with the workmen, then came across to her, pulling a face. ‘Not like you’ll get much done here anyhow. The place is chaotic.’
His hair was dripping with rain and he dried off his forehead with his sleeve. He looked animated, thriving on the confusion and sense of crisis. A homely smell of warm, damp wool rose from his clothes.
‘You know that police guy I went to see?’ he said. ‘He’s got a live one.’
‘A live what?’
‘Suicide bomber. They caught him just in time.’
‘What do they know about him?’
‘Taliban. From the valley.’ He lowered his voice and leant in to her. ‘This is the thing: he’s willing to let you in to see him.’
‘Why?’
‘Go figure. Favour to me, I guess.’ He was watching her with a confused expression as if he were trying to work out why she didn’t seem enthusiastic. ‘I said you’d head over there this afternoon. Right?’
She blew out her cheeks. She didn’t like people giving her stories. She liked to bait her own hook and catch them herself, not be handed a bag of dead fish.
‘Did you meet him?’
‘The bomber. No. Why would I? This police guy was bragging about him, that’s all. He’s pretty pleased with himself. I guess he feels like a big hero.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I got a car and driver you can take. It’s not far.’ He was looking exasperated.
It might make something. All there was here was rain. ‘I’ll need a translator.’
‘You got one? I need all the guys I have.’
Ellen thought of Layla. She’d need Ibrahim’s permission before she drove her out of the camp but a police station would be safe.
A few hours later, Layla was sitting beside Ellen in the back of the car. She seemed nervous. She kept her head bowed, her chador close around her face. She wouldn’t speak. Ellen looked out of the window at the streaks of falling rain and the brown, wet earth, heavy with running water.
She’d reported on countless car bombings, many of them in Baghdad. She remembered one of the first, when she’d been interviewing a family in a bakery about their struggle to make a profit amid rising prices and constant power cuts. They’d been interrupted by a sudden deafening boom. The men, their hands covered with flour, paddles of dough limp in their fingers, stopped talking and lifted their heads, listening. The human world was suspended for an instant. Rising birds let out a sharp frantic cawing, filling the silence. Then noise pitched in again. Shouting and pounding feet against a backdrop of screaming car and shop alarms.
By the time she reached the place, the streets, which had been busy with shoppers and families and passers-by, had cleared. In the distance, a black mound was ablaze in the road. She walked towards it. The street was littered with shards of broken glass which crunched and shifted under her boots. Fragments of twisted metal, splashes of oil. The choking bitterness of explosives mixed in the air with the sickly animal smell of burnt flesh.
Afraid, her translator pulled her back into a doorway. Sirens were approaching, police or ambulance. The vehicle was a mass of shimmering flame. She stood and watched as they arrived, thinking of the unknown people – men, women or children – lifeless inside.
Layla gave a cry. The two of them were thrown forwards into the back of the front seats as the driver slammed on the brakes. He blasted his horn, cursed the donkey cart which had nearly clipped his bonnet and turned across the flow of traffic to stop by the side of the road. Ahead, the entrance to the police station was all high walls and concrete blast blocks.
Layla kept her eyes on the ground as Ellen led her through a series of security checks and clearance gates. Every time a man passed, she pressed close to Ellen’s side. When they were finally through, a young police officer showed them into an anteroom and retreated to get them tea.
It was a functional room, unnaturally chilled by air conditioning and stripped of personality. Ellen sat on one of the low, shiny chairs and looked round. A framed portrait of Jinnah, Pakistan’s founding father, hung on the wall opposite her. Below it there was a moulded emblem of the police force. The ceiling was stained with damp. The old air conditioning unit coughed and spluttered.
The young officer came back carrying a white plastic tray. He set out two cups and saucers of thick milky chai. The blast from the air conditioning wrinkled the surface into skin.
Ellen blew away the skin and sipped her tea. Layla sat with her hands folded in her lap. After some time, a captain, middle-aged and with the first signs of a paunch, came in to brief them.
‘We nabbed this chap red-handed.’ His eyes were lined with tiredness but his cheeks were flushed. ‘He was approaching a police station in the valley, close to the military offensive. I can show you the exact spot on the map. Most peculiar fellow. The chaps on the gate thought something was amiss and went to challenge him. I can tell you, they had a lucky escape.’
‘It was a car bomb?’
‘Absolutely.’ The captain seemed delighted. ‘An old vehicle, filled with so much of explosive. It should have been set off by mobile phone.’ He punched the keyboard of an imaginary phone in the air to illustrate. ‘We’re seeing so often now these phones used as detonators. Dial the number from your own phone, a second phone is all wired up inside and when the call connects . . .’ He threw up his arms to show a huge explosion.
Ellen paused. ‘Surely that’s a way of detonating a bomb remotely? Not a suicide attack.’
The captain nodded. ‘Quite right, madam,’ he said. ‘They can do that as well. But in this case, the fellow was in the front of the car, dialling the number, and the explosives were right there in the back. Boom.’
‘But it failed.’
‘Yes.’ He shrugged. ‘Sometimes it happens.’
He pressed a buzzer and a young officer hurried in.
‘Bring the box.’
He came
back with a plastic container, the kind Ellen’s sister used for storing her children’s toys. The captain rummaged through and brought out a battered phone, sealed in a clear plastic bag and labelled.
‘See?’
He presented it to Ellen, pressing the plastic against the phone’s screen so it was visible. The writing was clear: ‘01 Missed Call’.
‘If ever in your life there was a call you had to miss, this was absolutely the right one.’ He laughed at his own joke.
Ellen considered the phone. ‘And he knew? He knew what would happen?’
The captain scoffed. ‘Of course he is saying to us that he had no idea. He’s an innocent fellow, he says, just following orders and all that.’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘He’ll be telling you all that nonsense, acting the fool, I’ve no doubt. They’re all like that. They set out to kill people, acting so tough, but when once they’re nabbed, they break like that.’ He snapped his fingers.
Ellen looked into the plastic box, trying to see what else was in there.
‘Have you got much out of him?’
The captain grimaced. ‘He’s a stubborn fellow. Saying he doesn’t know anything, no names, no details. They train them, of course. But he may still crack.’
He got to his feet and fiddled with his belt, impatient to move. ‘Chelliay. Let’s go.’ He nodded at them both, taking in Layla’s hunched shoulders. ‘Please don’t feel frightened, madam. No problem. My men are there with you.’
They were shown into a small windowless room. It was cool and smelt musty. They stood uncertainly beside a shabby table in the middle. Four grey plastic chairs were tucked under it but no one invited them to sit. The walls were rough concrete, painted over in a dirty cream.
Ellen felt Layla pressing against her. Her headscarf was tugged so far over her face that her eyes were covered. Perhaps I shouldn’t have brought her, she thought. It’s too much. She reached out and put her hand on the girl’s arm.
An officer came in, leading a man behind him. The prisoner was shuffling, his head bowed. His hands were fastened in front of him in chunky old-fashioned handcuffs. He was a broad man, with powerful shoulders. His hair was lank and unkempt, sticking out in clumps from around large ears.
When he was inside the room and the door closed behind him, the officer kicked out a plastic chair and gave the man a shove towards it. Instead of sitting, the man lifted his head and looked around, dazed. His eyes were large and baffled, as if he expected other people, another place. The side of his face was heavily bruised and, in the centre of the bruise, on his cheekbone, the flesh was open.
Layla stirred, shifting her headscarf to look. She let out a cry: ‘Adnan!’ Her arm trembled under Ellen’s hand. The officer shouted, his eyes furious. His hand moved to the pistol in his holster.
Layla stood still, breathing noisily. Her face had drained of colour and she was staring at the prisoner in horror.
‘Calm down.’ Ellen drew her away from both men, and kicked out a plastic chair for her to sit in. The officer, tense and angry, didn’t move. She bent down and asked her quietly: ‘You know this man?’
‘Adnan.’ Her voice was a murmur. ‘My relative.’
Ellen looked at the officer and at the prisoner cowering behind him, gazing out at Layla as if he were terrified. ‘Is that his name?’
The officer glared. ‘This is what he says.’
‘Well then.’ Ellen drew out a second chair for herself and sat beside Layla. She put her hand on the girl’s knee. Her leg was juddering. ‘If you want to stay, you must be calm and not move from that chair. OK?’
‘OK.’ Her eyes had dropped from the prisoner’s face to the floor.
‘Good.’ Ellen turned to the officer. ‘Now if we could all sit down, perhaps we can start the interview.’
He hesitated, looked from one woman to the other, then roughly pushed the prisoner down into a chair. The man’s legs folded under him as soon as pressure was applied. He sat, blinking out at them. His expression was cowed. The officer stood at his side, watching closely.
‘He is speaking only Pashto,’ the officer said. ‘Are you knowing Pashto?’
Ellen indicated Layla. ‘This young woman will translate.’
She kept her eyes on the prisoner as Layla mumbled her way through the translations of her questions. He had the docility of a child.
‘Tell me what happened.’ Ellen kept her voice soft. ‘Why were you in that car?’
He turned to look at the officer as he replied, his eyes fearful.
‘He says he’s told everything,’ said Layla. ‘He says it’s true, what he’s told.’
‘Of course. But please could he tell me again, now?’
He hesitated. His big clumsy fingers were picking at each other in his lap. His nails were bitten down, their edges bloody. The metal cuffs were scraping back and forth against his wrists, raising wheals.
‘The commander told me to drive. It’s easy, that’s what he said. Another man drove until we were almost there and then I was left alone and I tried and I did it.’
‘Did you know there were explosives in the car?’
Adnan shook his head. He was blinking nervously, looking down at his hands and the knotty surface of the table.
‘They didn’t tell you?’
He shook his head again.
‘So you drove to the gates of the police station. Then what happened?’
‘The gates were shut. They said if the gates were shut, I should stop and telephone that number.’ He looked up for a moment, his eyes brightening as he remembered. ‘I know telephones. Baba showed me one. I dialled the number. But no one answered. And then the guards came and they had guns. Not the same guns as the commander, different ones.’
Ellen looked at the broad features, the panic in his eyes. I believe you, she thought. Either you’re an extraordinary actor or you were set up. She leant closer to him.
‘What did you think,’ she said, ‘when you found out what they’d sent you to do?’
He began to rock softly, shaking his head. The table shuddered where he banged his knee against it and the officer glared.
Ellen persisted. ‘What did you think?’
‘He’s my friend,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t hurt me. It’s not true.’ His eyes were filling with tears. ‘He’s a kind man. He saved her.’
‘Saved who?’
Layla flushed. She didn’t translate the question.
Adnan’s breathing crumpled into sobs. He lifted his large hands to his face, the handcuffs heavy at his wrists. The officer leant forwards and spoke into Adnan’s ear, and whatever he said, it made Adnan sit up straight again and try to stop weeping. He sat, sniffing, his face contorted with misery. His cheeks were blotchy and his nose and eyes thickly wet. The tears and mucus pooled round his chin, gathering to a fat drop which broke free and fell into his lap. As they watched, a second drop formed.
Ellen dug a tissue out of her pocket and went across to him. He tipped back his head instinctively as she approached, as a child might submit to its mother. She dabbed his eyes and wiped his nose and chin clean. He’ll be punished for this, she thought. She put a hand on his shoulder and patted it.
The officer was hovering, disapproving. He made a show of looking at his watch. ‘That’s all?’
He kicked at the base of the chair, gesturing that the man should get to his feet. The prisoner lumbered slowly out, dwarfing the officer at his side.
The captain seemed amused when they told him the prisoner had cried. He clapped his hands, then sat back in his chair, his arms clasped behind his head. A second tray of tea was cooling in front of them.
‘Such a cunning fellow,’ he said. ‘Now you are thinking he’s innocent as a baby. Yes? Am I right?’
Ellen looked at the criss-cross of rough threads at her feet. The carpet had worn through, leaving bald patches where the backing showed. She traced the pattern in her head as she thought about Adnan.
‘Who did he save?’ she said. ‘H
e said the man who sent him, the commander, had saved someone.’
Layla, beside her, stared fixedly at the opposite wall.
The captain looked baffled for a moment. He pulled himself upright in his chair again, reached for the cardboard file with the record of the interrogation and opened it. The pages inside were loose sheets, as thin as tissue paper.
‘He was saying something.’ He was tracing the lines with his finger. ‘His sister or some such relative got out to safety, it seems, and he says they did that for him only. Some personal favour, perhaps.’ He looked up. ‘I should take all of it with a very large piece of salt.’ He closed the file and sat back again in his seat. ‘Trust me.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve heard a lot of nonsense in my time, I can tell you.’
Ellen thought of the man’s large manacled hands raised to his face and of the grateful meekness with which he’d submitted to having his tears dried.
‘What happens to him now?’ she said.
The captain shrugged. ‘Justice must be done.’
Ellen considered. That could take years. ‘He’s being transferred?’
The captain was showing signs of restlessness, glancing over their heads at the clock. ‘Maybe. The higher-ups are still deciding. In a case of this ilk, early intelligence can be valuable.’
‘Did you glean much?’
‘That, I’m afraid, is strictly confidential.’ He smiled. ‘But let us just say that his commander could be a big fish. A very big fish. In fact, almost a whale.’ He laughed at his own wit, then got to his feet, placing his hands squarely on the desk in front of him. ‘Now, ladies, if you’ll be so kind as to excuse me?’
Ellen watched the way he was handling them, deftly closing down the conversation. ‘This whale – is it Mohammed Bul Gourn?’
He looked across at her sharply, the humour fallen from his face, then recovered himself. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Not that tricky character. Really, madam, I’m most surprised you’ve heard of that fellow.’
She said goodbye with a sense of satisfaction. His moment of discomposure was all the answer she needed.
In the car back to the camp, Layla sat with her hands locked together, her knuckles white. Ellen thought of Adnan’s broad fingers as they plucked at each other and the heavy metal handcuffs rubbing back and forth across his skin.
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