by Parker Bilal
‘That’s more or less how it was.’
‘What happened to the girl?’
‘She killed herself.’ Gaber’s eyes never left Makana. ‘It was all a long time ago.’
Through the glass behind the desk, Makana could see Hanafi and his daughter talking on the other side of the terrace. She seemed to be crying. Hanafi put his arms out to comfort her, but she pulled away and disappeared from sight, leaving the forlorn elderly figure alone with his sphinxes and his golf deck.
‘Now tell me how all this is going to help you to find Adil?’
Makana glanced over at Gaber.
‘That’s the part I haven’t worked out yet,’ he said finally.
Chapter Eighteen
An hour later, Makana walked into Aswani’s restaurant. It was early for lunch, but after spending the morning in Hanafi’s world he needed to get back down to earth. It was strange, but nothing improved his mood like that place, gloomy as it invariably was. No customers anywhere to be seen today. The reddish-brown marble pillars that adorned the interior were streaked with white which made it look as though worms were crawling out of them, and there was a dull buzzing of flies over the meat counter which Ali Aswani was busy swabbing down with a rag and a bowl of soapy water.
‘There’s someone waiting for you,’ he said, tipping his head towards the rear of the room.
Makana didn’t spot Okasha until he was almost at the end of it. The inspector was seated discreetly out of sight behind one of the big square pillars. He folded his newspaper as Makana sat down.
‘And they say your crimes never catch up with you,’ he said, tapping the story about Hanafi on the front page.
‘What do you think will happen?’
‘With Hanafi?’ Okasha shrugged. ‘Who cares? He’s nothing but an old-time bultagi. There’s a lot on his conscience. How he sleeps at night I’ll never know.’
‘How come he never came to trial?’
‘Because his kind never do. He has people out there doing his dirty work for him, never got his own hands bloody.’
‘And no doubt he pays well to keep his back clean.’
The theme of police corruption was not one that readily brought a smile to Okasha’s lips. On this occasion he managed to limit himself to a blank stare and a shrug. He pushed a large envelope across the table to Makana.
‘What’s this?’
‘Special delivery from London. I don’t know what you did to that woman but she’s worried about you, insisted I made sure you got to read this. So you see? Even I am at the service of the great detective. I am honoured.’
He gave a mock bow as Makana picked up the envelope and Ali came over to set two glasses of tea and a bunch of mint leaves down on the table.
‘Are you eating today?’ Aswani placed a bowl of pickles on the table and dried his big hands on the apron tied around his sizeable girth.
The inspector yawned and rubbed his expanding belly. ‘I have to watch what I eat. I’m getting out of shape. How about you?’
Makana shrugged.‘The usual.’
Okasha clicked his tongue in annoyance. ‘I give in. Bring me some of your kofta, Ali, but only half a kilo.’
Aswani twirled the ends of his moustache. ‘You’re a growing lad, you need your strength.’
‘Okay, make it a kilo. You’ll see me into the grave, I swear.’ Okasha waved him away and leaned his elbows on the table. ‘So, what does she say?’
Makana flipped the open seal on the envelope as he glanced at Okasha.
‘You didn’t even take a quick look?’
Okasha rubbed his broad chin. ‘I can’t read English to save my life.’
The envelope contained a sheaf of paper, which turned out to be a long letter from Hayden summing up the preliminary results of her investigation into Liz Markham’s death. The letter was officially addressed to Okasha, but a yellow note stuck to the front page was for Makana:
The detective hired by Lord Markham to find his granddaughter is named Richard Strangeways. Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate a complete copy of his report. I spoke to him by telephone but he is getting on in years and his memory is not what it was. He cannot recall the name of Alice Markham’s father, which unfortunately is not included in the pages I have photocopied for you. We are working on getting hold of a complete copy but this is complicated by the fact that the agency has moved several times over the intervening years and no one knows where everything is stored. Strangeways is pretty sure that the father of the child was Egyptian and that this was the reason for Liz Markham’s visit to Cairo in 1981. I will get in touch again as soon as I manage to get hold of a full copy. I am sure that Inspector Okasha is grateful for all the help you can give him on the case, and of course I would greatly appreciate it if you could keep me informed of your findings.
Best wishes,
Janet Hayden
‘You seem to enjoy better cooperation with Scotland Yard than I do,’ sighed Okasha, leaning back to run a quick, wary glance around the room. Makana instinctively did the same, his eye catching a shadow flitting past the open doorway.
‘It’s not Scotland Yard. She’s with Special Branch.’
‘Forgive me.’
Makana’s tea cooled as he skimmed quickly through Hayden’s report of her interview with Strangeways before turning to the first photocopied page and beginning to read.
Richard Strangeways had arrived in Cairo on 18 January 1982, almost two months after Alice disappeared. He stayed in the Al Hassanain Hotel, the same place where Liz and Alice had stayed, and where, some seventeen years later, Liz had been murdered. Strangeways questioned the manager, the desk staff, cleaners, cooks and waiters . . . anyone he could lay his hands on. It was not a happy place, he decided. The staff were poorly paid and there was much resentment towards management, which suggested to him they might have been susceptible to bribes; certainly they’d had no trouble taking his money.
Makana wondered how many of them had been interviewed by the police at the time. From the report it was fairly plain that Strangeways did not enjoy being in Cairo. He didn’t seem to like Egyptians much either, but that was perhaps understandable considering the lack of cooperation he received from the police, who hadn’t taken to him. Easy to see why. An Englishman, not even a regular police officer, flies in to start poking around, claiming that he has the blessing of an English aristocrat on his enquiries. Makana could see how that would have gone down. Strangeways had drawn a similar conclusion: ‘They still bear grudges against us. Over Suez, the bad old days when Britannia ruled the waves, and God knows what else.’
Hayden had noted against this on the report the fact that she suspected some personal conflict had arisen between Strangeways and the Cairo police. They seemed to have taken the disappearance of Alice Markham as a slur on their professional ability, something they preferred to cover up as quickly as possible rather than seriously try to solve. The man in charge of the investigation was particularly obstructive. He was named as Inspector Serrag. The same man Makana had picked out in the photograph with Gaber and Adil Romario.
‘Did you know all this?’ Makana asked. Okasha pursed his mouth as if he had just bitten into a lime. He nodded. ‘I tried to raise it with him, but you know how it is. You don’t just speak to someone like Colonel Serrag. You put word around and wait to see if he comes back to you.’ Okasha bit into an olive and shrugged. ‘He didn’t come back.’
The food arrived and while Okasha immediately set to work on it, Makana hunched forward, completely absorbed in speculation. A faint nagging told him this was wrong, that he ought to be putting all his energy into Adil Romario’s disappearance, but he couldn’t shake off the conviction that there was a connection between that and Liz Markham’s death.
Strangeways had once had a good, analytical mind. It came through in his work, in his descriptions of people and the possible links between them. But he’d clearly been out of his depth in Cairo. The language he used became more dense, abstract
even, like a man caught up in an obsession. He was convinced that he’d found himself in the midst of a conspiracy, that the people who met him with smiles and polite apologies were hiding something. The area around the bazaar was ruled by ruffians, mobsters who ran protection rackets, all of whom were, in Strangeways’s opinion, in league with the police. The Englishman did not hide his annoyance at the investigating officers’ lack of cooperation. He went on at length about waiting in vain at division headquarters for a chance to speak to Inspector Serrag. The Egyptians were making him suffer because they were embarrassed by the case and resented being questioned about it by their former colonial rulers.
Besides the copy of the partial report, Hayden had also provided some more detail about Liz Markham’s background. Born into a wealthy family, she had rebelled at an early age. Her father had inherited his title and the young Elizabeth apparently never came to terms with her privilege. The drug addiction began early on and led to her expulsion from a long list of expensive schools in England. She was then sent abroad, to France and Spain. She had run away on several occasions. It was on one of these excursions that she had landed up in Egypt and met the man who became Alice’s father. When Liz arrived back in England, pregnant, her father disowned her and threw her out of the house. Strong-headed and determined, Liz Markham had decided to go ahead and have the child on her own. Again, probably in express defiance of her father’s wishes.
Nevertheless, it was Lord Markham who had hired a detective to find Alice when the child went missing. Why? Makana remembered then what Janet Hayden had told him about Liz Markham having a nervous breakdown. Once back in England she was placed in a mental hospital and her father took over the search. That would explain the lack of input from Liz’s side in the earlier days. In any case, Strangeways arrived in Cairo with little to go on. This might have explained why, right from the outset, he assumed that the disappearance of the little girl was driven by political motives. Makana knew what this meant: Strangeways had blindly followed his employer’s assumption that someone had taken advantage of his gullible daughter going where she had no business going. It wasn’t so different from Makana’s own difficulties in taking instruction from Hanafi.
Besides that, Strangeways had arrived in Cairo at a difficult time. President Sadat, a friend of the West, had just been gunned down by his own soldiers. Egypt was lurching towards radical Islamism, fuelled by anti-Western feelings. This fed into the picture Strangeways painted of a country on the brink of anarchy. He saw bearded zealots everywhere, which only added to his sense of discomfort and personal insecurity. It also coloured his perception of the case. In his eyes Alice was the victim of some kind of jihad or holy war. He clearly believed that kidnapping the grandchild of an English lord would be a feather in the cap of any religious fanatic. Makana sighed as he read this. The Englishman had obviously concluded that the girl would never be found alive, although in the report he delivered to Alice’s grandfather this was couched in more diplomatic terms.
Towards the end of the report, though, Strangeways began to hint at an alternative possibility. No ransom demand had been made and nobody had claimed responsibility for the girl vanishing. This led Strangeways to speculate that Alice’s disappearance might have an explanation rooted in her background. He would have known about Liz’s drug habit, and made the implied connection to the underworld. Was it possible, he wondered, that Alice Markham had been kidnapped by her own father?
At this point the photocopied pages ran out. Hayden had scribbled a note on the last page to explain that she would let Makana know as soon as she had something more. ‘It seems entirely possible,’ she went on, ‘that Liz Markham might have crossed the line and made contact with people in the criminal world. Who did she know? Who was Alice Markham’s father?’ The last sentence was heavily underscored.
Makana paused to mull this over. Fair enough, Liz Markham was not the most reliable mother in the world. She had a serious drug problem and was in all likelihood incapable of taking care of herself, let alone a four-year-old child. What if she had simply found herself in deep water, dealing with characters she didn’t really know, in a city she didn’t understand? Had Liz made a mistake on that occasion, one she spent the rest of her life trying to put right? If she suspected who had taken her daughter, then her repeatedly coming back here made sense. But what if she hadn’t come here looking for her daughter at all but for Alice’s father instead?
It was entirely possible that the father, whoever he was, had not known that his brief relationship with the English girl had resulted in a child. Why had Liz Markham come to Cairo with her daughter in the first place? What had she hoped to gain? Makana tried to put himself in her shoes. She had a drug problem and an illegitimate child. Her father had disowned her and cut off her allowance. If she came here, it must have been to seek help. She’d brought the child along to persuade Alice’s father to help her, which meant that he had money. She wouldn’t have come here looking for a waiter or a pool attendant. Whoever Alice’s father was, he would have to have been someone big . . .
‘So where does this leave us?’
Okasha pushed aside the plates and burped quietly. Makana surveyed the havoc he had inflicted on them.
‘It would really help if I could speak to Serrag.’
‘I told you,’ Okasha wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, ‘Serrag is not going to speak to anyone . . . not me, and least of all you . . . about a case that took place so long ago. Why should the disappearance of a girl all those years before lead to the death of her mother now?’ He raised his shoulders in a shrug. ‘It makes no sense.’
‘This is an ongoing investigation,’ Makana reminded him. ‘There are no certainties as yet.’
‘No certainties?’ Okasha queried. ‘You see, that’s the kind of comment you could only hear from a man with no one to answer to. You live outside the law, Makana, but some of us have to account for our actions. And besides, Serrag is no longer regular police. He’s SSI.’
‘There’s something here that we are not seeing. Why would an Englishwoman be tortured and killed in her hotel room? The motive wasn’t sexual, and no money was taken, so what was it about? The answer has to lie in her past.’
‘Agreed, but all this stuff about the child and the father . . . do you really think that’s relevant?’
Makana lit a cigarette and sat back, considering. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You want to hear what I think?’ Okasha picked his teeth with a matchstick. ‘I think you are chasing straws in the wind.’
Then Makana remembered something Gaber had told him earlier.
‘Does the name Daud Bulatt mean anything to you?’
Okasha shrugged his shoulders. ‘I think he was one of the cheap thugs who used to operate around here, back in the old days.’
‘Can you find out?’
‘What for? Look, Makana, I’m going to find the person who murdered that woman, if only to show those arrogant English detectives that we can do our job. But don’t forget that you’re on our side, not theirs.’
Makana stared out through the open door. ‘Alice would be a grown woman by now.’
Okasha’s eyes hardened. ‘She’s dead,’ he said quietly. ‘Face the facts. Look, I know this is difficult for you. I’m telling you this . . . as a friend. You need to leave this case alone. You have to let it go. Sometimes it’s better to let the past lie. You, more than anyone, ought to understand that.’
The two men stared at one another for a moment, then Makana got to his feet.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Seven years is long enough to forget anyone.’
‘Come on, don’t do that! Hey, what am I going to do with all this food?’ Okasha cried, as Aswani set down yet another plate piled high with freshly grilled kofta. But when he looked towards the door there was no longer any sign of Makana.
Chapter Nineteen
Makana knew Okasha was right. He was mixing things up in his head and was in danger of being swep
t away by his own theorising. Still, he could not help it. Thoughts of his own daughter and where she might have been now had she lived were never going to leave him. Was there really any purpose in going after Liz Markham’s daughter? Was his intuition right? Could there be a connection between Liz Markham’s death and Hanafi’s past, or was that just wishful thinking on his part?
Having just read Strangeways’s report, Makana looked at the bazaar around him in a different way. He imagined how it might have appeared to Liz Markham, scared and alone, with a little child in tow. The memory of Alice Markham was now written into these narrow streets, the cluttered shop windows, the glittering rows of gold and semi-precious stone, the tiny statuettes of goddesses and fiends, idols of another age. All around him was the intricate interplay of colour and inlay, angle and curve, shadow and light. Somewhere in the middle of all this a little girl had fallen through a hole in the world and vanished without trace. Who was he searching for among the stern faces of Horus and Osiris, all staring out at him from eternity? Was it Alice he hoped to find, or his own daughter Nasra?
Makana knew he needed someone who remembered the old days. Someone who had been around here back then. If Serrag was not going to cooperate, maybe he could find someone else who would. It took him only a few minutes to get back to the arch in the old city wall where the vendors had set out their collected piles of junk, their voices ringing back and forth across the narrow alley to the people brushing by. It was a relief to step out of the bustle and turn down the alley towards the dusty old antiquities shop. The area around it was deserted. Hardly anyone seemed to venture into that corner of the bazaar. The wizened old man in the dark glasses was exactly where Makana had left him. He sat, one leg crossed over the other, a cigarette smouldering between his skeletal fingers.