Stolen Hearts

by Elise Noble

“Yes, but…it happens.”

  “And how does he act when he’s been drinking?”

  “I saw him shove a man once.”

  “Any idea why?”

  Omar shook his head, taking a pace back as though he regretted opening his mouth in the first place. Black understood why—locals stuck up for locals. There was an informal code, something he’d seen the world over. Omar had just broken it.

  “Can I take your order?” he asked. Buyer’s remorse.

  Black decided to let it go—for now. Years of work with covert informants had taught him when to probe and when to back off. Omar might be useful in the future, but not if they scared him away now.

  “What fruit juices do you have?”

  “Mango, strawberry, guava, orange, or lemon with mint.”

  “Mango mixed with strawberry, plus the chicken salad. Emmy? Aurelie?”

  Predictably, Emmy did not go for the salad.

  “Orange juice, no straw, a chicken-and-cheese pizza, and fries.”

  Aurelie ordered lemon juice with a vegetable kebab, and Omar hurried off, leaving Black time to send a message to Bob before he contemplated their next move.

  Black: Can you find a friendly cop who’ll give us an update on that body? $$ on the table if needed.

  If there was one good thing about operating in this part of the world, it was that people were easier to bribe. A hundred bucks could buy you a cop, and once he’d sold out, the leverage was there forever. Back in the US, a much more cautious approach was needed. Getting a politician on side—the president, for example—took years of careful planning, not to mention deep pockets.

  “Tell us more about Youssef and Carmela,” Emmy said, taking a sip of her orange juice, which had arrived remarkably quickly. Seemed the kitchen staff didn’t have much else to do that afternoon. “How did they meet?”

  “Cleaning the beach. There’s an environmental group that organises teams of people to pick up litter every so often, and we both went.”

  “They began dating straight away?”

  “A few weeks later. He started bringing us free chicken, except Carmela was a vegetarian, and when I saw the tiny cages the birds are kept in, I stopped eating it.”

  “Was he offended?”

  “No, not really. He brought us mangoes instead. And dates. So many dates. That was when Carmela agreed to go out with him—she said she’d go for dinner if he’d quit with the fruit.”

  “Did she feel pressured?”

  “No, she treated it as more of a joke.”

  “So when did he get pushy?”

  “Later, when they got serious. He kept telling her that she could do better for herself, that she was too smart to wait tables and she could have a good career if they moved to Italy. More money, a big house, a car. One time, she told me he sounded like her father.”

  So far, Aurelie hadn’t painted Youssef out to be a murderer, more a man with ambitions he couldn’t fulfil alone. A man who wanted to live vicariously through his girlfriend.

  As Aurelie walked them through what she knew of Carmela’s life over lunch, a picture of a girl who was happy with the little things emerged. No known enemies, didn’t owe anybody money, no issues with her family other than a desire to fulfil her own dreams rather than theirs. Outside of work, she liked to go to yoga classes and read books on the beach. A simple life. The only noteworthy point concerned her backpack, the one she’d been wearing when she died. Aurelie recognised it as Carmela’s, so either she’d been carrying it when she vanished, or the killer had somehow obtained a duplicate, or worse, whoever took her life had access to her apartment. Which put the spotlight back on Youssef again.

  Tomorrow, Black would speak to the man and form his own opinion.

  CHAPTER 9 - BLACK

  BY MORNING, INFORMATION had begun trickling in, the results of an overnight search performed by Mack, Blackwood’s head of all things computer-related, who was based in Richmond, Virginia. Carmela Conti, one month shy of her twentieth birthday and the middle child of three, had grown up in Salerno and showed little inclination towards adventure until she’d decided to explore the world. Local news articles detailed her winning a local talent contest aged five, baking cookies for the homeless aged nine, and celebrating an excellent set of exam results aged eighteen. Her sole indiscretion had come soon afterwards when she got arrested for handcuffing herself to a fashion designer’s gate to protest his use of fur. No charges were brought, and within a month, she’d left the country, travelling first to Greece and then to Egypt.

  Her parents were two of six partners in a well-established accountancy practice, and both of her brothers worked there too. The firm’s website showed four corporate clones, a world away from the relaxed photos of Carmela that Aurelie had scrolled through on her phone after lunch yesterday.

  Youssef al-Masri didn’t appear to have an official record of any sort, hardly surprising in this town. What did you have to do to get arrested? Either insult the government or play your music too loudly outside the chief’s house, if recent rumours were any indication. He posted on social media most days, usually arty pictures of the town, and his composition wasn’t bad. Carmela popped up a few times, the latest three weeks ago, and in that photo, they’d both been smiling, arms around each other.

  “Ready to go?” Emmy asked.

  They’d woken early and gone running before the sun came up. Ten miles, and when they finished, Emmy had taken a shower, settled on a sunlounger with a book, and begun counting the minutes until the bakery opened. Black felt she was taking this whole vacation thing a little too seriously.

  “I’ve been ready for an hour.”

  The chicken shop gave its address as Assalah Square, although in reality, it was on one of the dusty side streets nearby. Stacks of wire cages outside held the live birds, and as they parked in front, a woman left carrying a rooster by its feet, wings flapping. Eating chicken in Dahab was more of a DIY affair—no ready-plucked, plastic-packaged carcasses there.

  Emmy paused to examine the bedraggled creatures in their tiny prisons, timid and picking at their feathers. No food, no water. The top cage held a single white rabbit, cowering in the inch of shade provided by the sign above its head. Best Chicken in Sinai.

  Inside, Youssef sat behind a dusty counter, smoking as he studied his phone.

  “You want chicken?” he asked, head still down.

  “Actually, we’d like to talk.”

  Now he looked up. And up. And up. Black stood six feet six and three quarters, and he’d had to duck to walk through the door. Youssef’s eyes widened, then dropped to Emmy’s chest. Asshole.

  “Talk? What about?”

  “Carmela Conti.”

  Youssef flipped the phone in his hands. A nervous gesture, or habit? When he saw Black looking, he shoved it into a pocket.

  “What about her?”

  “We’re friends of Aurelie’s and also private investigators. She’s asked us to look into Carmela’s—”

  “I didn’t kill her! I loved her!”

  Interesting. Youssef’s first reaction was to deny the crime, not be thankful for an additional investigation into the death of the woman he claimed to love.

  “That’s not what we’re saying. Not at all. But we’d like to find out a little more about what happened.”

  “The police asked these questions.”

  “When did they visit?”

  “Yesterday. I already tell them I wasn’t here. I was in Cairo, and I didn’t come back until Thursday evening. You can ask the bus driver. He’s my cousin’s friend.”

  “We’ll ask him. Can you give us his details?”

  Youssef read out a name and phone number, and Emmy jotted them down, which was all for show since they were both recording the conversation anyway.

  “And how long were you in Cairo?”

  “A week. Two weeks.”

  “Which one?”

  “Why does it matter? The police said Carmela—” Youssef’s breath hitched.
“They said she died six or seven days ago.”

  That at least fit with Black’s guess. He’d studied death extensively, both the best ways to effect it and the processes surrounding it, and when they found the body, he’d estimated she’d been in the water for three or four days. The temperature of the water, the activity of the marine life, the amount of flesh left—they’d all pointed to that time frame.

  “It matters because we’re trying to establish a timeline. Humour me.”

  “Humour? There is nothing funny about this situation.”

  Uh-oh, lost in translation. Black switched to Arabic, pleased by the look of surprise on the kid’s face. “The more time you waste, the further we are from finding Carmela’s killer.”

  Youssef hurriedly counted on his fingers. “Eight days. I was in Cairo for eight days. Plus two days on the bus.”

  “And why did you go there?”

  “To visit friends.”

  “For eight days?”

  “I have a lot of friends.”

  “Hmm.” Black nodded noncommittally. As far as he’d been able to ascertain, Youssef had lived in Dahab his whole life, and although people moved around, it seemed unlikely he’d built up a vast network in Cairo. “Can you give us their contact details too?”

  “What right have you got to ask that? You’re foreigners.”

  “None whatsoever, but innocent people generally cooperate. Don’t you want to see Carmela’s murderer found?”

  “The police will do that.”

  “The police have stopped looking. They think she killed herself.”

  No, Youssef hadn’t been aware of that little snippet of information. He opened his mouth, closed it again, then stared at the far wall as he tried to digest the new development. Black gave him space. There was something pleasing about watching a man squirm. Not happiness, exactly, more self-satisfaction. For a contract killing, an execution, the feeling was intense but oh-so-fleeting, but in a carefully planned investigation, the high could be achieved over and over. Perhaps that was why Black preferred to focus on detective work nowadays, although if anyone asked, he had a pre-prepared spiel extolling his desire for justice.

  A woman came into the shop, dressed head to toe in a burka, and there was an awkward silence while she counted out a handful of grubby notes to pay for that day’s dinner. Finally, she ambled off with a trio of squawking chickens. Must’ve been a special occasion.

  “So, where were we?” Black asked. “Your friends?”

  “I can’t give you their details. GDPR forbids it.”

  For fuck’s sake. “That law doesn’t even apply in your country.”

  “But the sentiment is there. I do not feel they would be happy with me sharing their personal information.”

  “Perhaps you could ask them? Since it would help to clear your name.”

  “I already told you—”

  “Eight days? You could’ve gone to Cairo and back twice in eight days. Think about it.”

  Youssef gave that some consideration. “Okay, I will think about it. I will call them.”

  So they could all get their story straight?

  “You say you went to Cairo and you returned on Thursday. Did you speak to Carmela while you were away?”

  “I called her every day.”

  “Every day? Presumably she stopped answering at some point?”

  “Yes, on…on…” He dug around in his pocket for the old-model iPhone, the screen cracked in a starburst. “Last Saturday I speak to her. See?”

  Sure enough, there was a call to Carmela’s phone that lasted twenty-three minutes just after four o’clock in the afternoon. Black held out a hand.

  “May I?”

  He wanted to check the number behind the name. More than once, he’d seen suspects change the names of their contacts to disguise the true nature of their communications. But the number matched the details they’d gotten from Aurelie, and while Black was at it, he checked the call log. Youssef’s next attempt to speak to Carmela had been at eleven the following morning, and that call had gone unanswered.

  Although there was a possibility Carmela had been alive on Sunday but decided not to answer her phone for whatever reason, it seemed more likely, considering the state of her body, that she’d died sometime between last Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. If Black was forced to guess, he’d say Saturday evening because then her killer could have loaded her body into a vehicle and driven it to its watery grave under cover of darkness. Nobody wanted to keep a corpse around all day, especially in the Egyptian heat.

  “Why didn’t you report Carmela missing when you came back?” Black asked. “Weren’t you worried?”

  “Some, but Carmela was a free spirit. She say she was going to Italy to visit her family, so I thought that was where she’d gone.”

  “What about her luggage? Is that missing from your apartment?”

  “I checked. One of her bags was missing, and she never carried much stuff.”

  “Which bag? What did it look like?”

  “A backpack she buy here. Purple coloured, and it say ‘Love Life, Love Dahab’ on the back. Carmela always say she loved Dahab.” For the first time since they got there, Black detected a hint of wetness in the man’s eyes, and he wiped them with one grubby sleeve. “I already tell the police she took the bag. What can you foreigners do that they can’t? You should leave me and my friends alone.”

  Black sensed they weren’t going to get much more out of the man today. Better to leave him to marinate in discomfort while they did some digging, then come back for another shot if necessary.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Since I was eight. My father owns the shop.”

  “Family business? You have siblings?”

  “A sister, but she’s too young to work with the chickens.”

  “Must be a tie, having to look after the animals every day. Did Carmela help you out?”

  An emphatic shake of the head. “She didn’t come here.”

  Another premature denial?

  “What, never?” Emmy asked. “Why not?”

  “She hated seeing the chickens in cages.”

  “Can’t say I blame her. Why haven’t they got any food and water?”

  “My father only allows it once per day, otherwise they make too much mess.”

  “That’s cruel.”

  A shrug.

  “How would you like it if you were locked in a cage and fed once a day? Get them some damn water.”

  “I can’t. It is not—”

  But Emmy was already on her way through the door at the rear of the shop. Nice power play, plus they could get a look at what was back there. Youssef skirted the counter and hurried after her, but not fast enough. Black heard a faucet running.

  “This is private,” Youssef snapped. “You must leave.”

  “Hey, I gave you a chance, and now I’m giving you a hand,” Emmy told him. “Where’s the birdseed?”

  “My father will not be happy.”

  “I don’t give a shit. If he gets pissy, send him round to talk to me. I’m staying at the Black Diamond Hotel. Bowls? Where are they?”

  “Under the sink.” Youssef turned sulky.

  “Good. I’ll fill them, and you can put them into the cages.”

  Dirt streaked the walls of the back room, together with some reddish-brown stains that looked like blood. Feathers drifted across the floor in the breeze from the open door. How long since anyone had cleaned the place? Black could practically taste the E. coli, although the room smelled like death. Could somebody have killed a woman in there? It bothered Black that they hadn’t yet ascertained a cause of death. He wanted to see a copy of the autopsy report, but since the police thought she’d drowned, he wasn’t sure it warranted the effort. Would it be worth the paper it was written on?

  What were the other options? Engage a new medical examiner? Tricky without stepping all over the police chief’s toes. Black could possibly engineer it through h
is contacts, but the power struggle would undoubtedly impede the rest of the investigation. How feasible was it to steal a body? They’d need a refrigerated truck, and—

  “What’s with the rabbit?” Emmy asked from the front of the store.

  “My father thought people might like to try an alternative to chicken, but it wasn’t popular. Nobody wants to buy the last one.”

  Hardly surprising. When Black strolled outside and squinted into the grimy cage again, he realised how scrawny the creature was. Somebody ought to put it out of its misery. He had a knife with him. Should he offer?

  Hmm, possibly not. Emmy had her sad face on, and with a sinking stomach, Black realised what she was thinking.

  “Diamond, no.”

  “How much?”

  Oh, hell. In past years, his darling wife had come home with a horse possessed by the devil, a Doberman puppy, and a damn jaguar. They already had enough animals, and as she kept saying, they were on vacation.

  “Emmy, no way. You’re not buying a fucking rabbit.”

  CHAPTER 10 - EMMY

  ZENA OPENED THE gate to our terrace at the hotel, speaking before she got fully inside. We really ought to put a lock on that thing. What if we’d been indulging in a few extracurricular activities? She’d have been scarred for life.

  “Grandpa said to tell you that the chef’s doing a barbecue tonight. Hey, is that a bunny?”

  I glanced up from my spot on the tiny lawn. “Yup.”

  In the space of a little over a minute, I’d managed to acquire both a rabbit and a pissed-off husband. When I’d bundled the trembling bag of bones up in a spare sweater from the car, Black had given me that thin-lipped look he normally reserved for politicians he didn’t like very much and muttered something about stew. Still, he’d stopped at the veterinarian’s on the way home and waited while my accidental acquisition had a check-up and fluids, so I’d make it up to him later.

  Nowhere in Dahab sold hutches since rabbits tended to be dinner rather than pets, so I’d cobbled together some shade with an old wooden fruit box, bought a bale of hay, and raided the hotel kitchen for fresh veggies. Now the rabbit was staring at me, eyes wide as she contemplated her new-found freedom.