I KILL

by Lex Lander

  Giving me a long look he opened a drawer in his desk and restored to me that intrinsically worthless yet indispensable document.

  ‘The dossier on you remains open. It may never be closed. Am I speaking clearly enough for you?’

  His features were so composed, so bland, it was impossible to tell whether I had just received a serious warning-off or no more than an exhortation to “watch my step”.

  He rose slowly and with a kind of majesty. ‘You and Miss Power are booked to fly out by Air Maroc tomorrow morning. To Barcelona via Madrid. This gives you the rest of today to see the Consul about the arrangements regarding Miss Power’s uncle.’

  ‘Nice of you to organise everything,’ I said, with a cynical smile.

  His face altered in some subtle way, became as bleak as a Siberian landscape.

  ‘Just don’t come back, Mr Whoever-you-are,’ he said. ‘Ever.’

  Fifteen

  From Police Headquarters I drove directly to the Consul’s private residence in the sleepy suburb of Boubana where, it being Saturday and the Consulate closed, I had deposited Lizzy.

  The Consul’s wife, a homely woman with the abstracted air of someone whose physical person and spirit were in two different places, conducted me through the surprisingly modest bungalow to a yard at the rear, abutting onto the Christian cemetery. The Consul was there, in a faded deckchair encircled by paperwork. There too was Lizzy, in skinny jeans and a crop top, horizontal in a swing seat. A tablet was propped on a cushion inches from her face, her iPod plugged into her ear. In passing by I pecked her cheek, was rewarded by a pale smile.

  The Consul left off poring over diplomatic bumph, glad, I suspected, of the excuse.

  ‘Can I offer you something, old chap? Orange juice, grapefruit juice?’ He indicated twin carafes on a rustic table under the dome of a cedar tree, the only mature timber the yard contained.

  ‘Nothing stronger?’ He didn’t rise to the hint. ‘Orange then, please.’

  Tumblers in hand, ice cubes chinking, he and I strolled down the crazy-paved path that wound through a labyrinth of flowering shrubs.

  The Consul opened by saying, ‘We cabled Mrs Power’s brother-in-law, Alistair, several days ago. We’ve also informed the Consulate in Barcelona. Mr Power has not, so far, replied.’

  ‘And the Consulate?’

  ‘They acknowledged. I telephoned them this morning, in the absence of a reply from Power, and asked them to verify the address.’ He halted and sipped at his drink. ‘I gather you have to leave tomorrow.’

  ‘“Have to” is right. They’re deporting me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He spoke as if it were to be expected. I glanced sharply at him.

  ‘Did you protest on my behalf?’

  As we came to an area screened by shrubbery he halted again. ‘Let’s get this straight, Melville, I’m having no diplomatic incidents here. If Ramouz wants you out, you’re out. Look at it from his perspective: since you came, he’s had a kidnapping, a killing, and a serious assault. Tourists like you he can do without.’ He consulted his orange juice as if it were his oracle. ‘Don’t make waves, there’s a good fellow. You have to think of the girl’s safety.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said heavily. ‘That’s what he said too. But suppose I left without her, that would make her safe, wouldn’t it?’

  The Consul looked dubious. ‘In that case, who would take care of her?’

  ‘Take care of her? She’ll be sixteen soon. She doesn’t need a nanny.’

  ‘Your compassion does you credit.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I said under my breath. He was good at making me feel bad.

  ‘Commissaire Ramouz feels you ought both to leave Tangier,’ he went on, taking my protest as null and void. He made a clicking noise with his tongue against his teeth as he pondered. ‘I imagine he believes Elizabeth is also in danger.’

  ‘But only,’ I persisted, ‘because of her association with me.’

  I took a swig at my orange juice while he worked out further objections. The yard was full of the scent of flowers, and bees were everywhere busily harvesting pollen, hopping from bloom to bloom. The Diplomatic Service, I noticed, was not short of funds for horticultural projects; the yard was not only exquisitely maintained but well-watered. And the price of Moroccan metered water is said to be on a par with the price of wine.

  The late afternoon sun switched off abruptly as it sank behind an adjacent, two-storey house. The insect noise abated, as if the sun’s decline were a signal to down tools and go home. We strolled on, the Consul massaging his dimpled chin.

  ‘Let me put it another way … Ramouz tells me the chances are almost nil of Mrs Power being found … alive.’ His voice fell to a whisper for, as we emerged from the shrubbery, we came in sight of Lizzy. She was watching us covertly, no doubt aware she was the topic under discussion. That her well-being was to some extent being picked over.

  Poor kid. To have her fate batted back and forth between this affable but weak diplomat, governed above all by the soft option, and me, dealer in death, whose only loyalties were to the great gods Dollar and Bacchus, and who simply wanted out. I was again shamed by my readiness to abdicate responsibility. Yet even had I been willing to take Lizzy under my wing on a short-term basis, my qualifications for the post were meagre.

  ‘Let me put a proposition to you.’ The Consul steered me onto another path that looped away from the house, keeping us out of Lizzy’s earshot. ‘At some point, at the very least until she is eighteen, we will have to place Elizabeth in care. At the moment this uncle in Barcelona is our best bet. Indeed our only bet to date. If we pay your travel and accommodation expenses, will you …’ He became flustered, rolled the tumbler back and forth across his forehead to cool it. ‘Will you take Elizabeth to Barcelona and deliver her to him?’

  Deliver her. To the Consul, Lizzy was a package. True, the package was human, and therefore lip-service must be paid to its sensibilities. But, these formalities apart, the only criterion was safe conduct away from A (the Consul’s domain) to B (Barcelona or anyplace else where a sanctuary of sorts might be found for it).

  My liking for the man had turned to dross as he unveiled his buck-passing solution. No matter that I was neck and neck with him in the scramble for an easy exit.

  ‘That’s not a proposition,’ I remarked, keeping my animus tightly screwed down. ‘It’s a bloody, king-size favour. But don’t worry, Ramouz has already asked on your behalf.’ I laughed without humour. ‘Only he didn’t ask.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Consul’s gaze was set in a straight line ahead.

  ‘Could it possibly be Ramouz was doing your bidding? Making it official, just in case I refused?’

  Twinkle, twinkle went the little eyes.

  ‘You’ll do it then?’ No denial, no attempt even to justify his subterfuge. ‘Royal Air Maroc flight RM017, from Ibn Battouta Airport at 11.30 tomorrow morning. The tickets will be waiting for you at the hotel.’ A smirk. ‘First class, naturally.’

  ‘Such generosity,’ I sneered. ‘When it comes to sidestepping its obligations, HM Government’s purse strings are ever loose, eh?’ He made no comment, a dumb admission of the truth of my slur. ‘You say you haven’t made contact with this Alistair guy. How do you know he’s still there, or still in Spain, even?’

  ‘We don’t, not for certain. Elizabeth tells me he emailed her mother in April and he was still living in Barcelona then. Elizabeth tried to email him this morning, but the message was rejected as undeliverable. He must have changed his email address, which doesn’t necessarily mean he’s changed his physical address. If it turns out that he’s moved on, you’ll have to contact the Consulate in Barcelona – a Mr Alan Rees, for preference. They’ll organise accommodation while they decide how to play it. You may be required to stay on there until Power is traced.’

  ‘Detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure,’ I murmured. ‘Presumably Elizabeth has her passport. Her mother might have been carrying it when she was abducted.’ A
desperate, last-ditch tactic, bound to fail.

  ‘No problem in that direction, old chap. I checked with her.’

  As we sauntered on, I contemplated my sneaker-clad feet, comparing them with his, diminutive in supple white moccasins that shouted money. Like many senior diplomats abroad he most likely had private means and a generous expense account. The hardships, major and minor, that touch the lives of ordinary mortals, would not disturb his lot.

  ‘Just supposing Lizzy’s uncle isn’t there,’ I said, ‘be his absence temporary or permanent, what’s to stop me doing a runner and leaving your Barcelona crowd holding the baby?’

  As we came around a curve in the path and in view of the terrace, Lizzy was coming to meet us with purpose in her stride. She was done with sitting passively on the sidelines.

  ‘What’s to stop you … er, doing a runner,’ the Consul hedged, in the tone of a holy man confronted with blasphemy. ‘Well, a couple of things, I would have thought. The police might yet trace Mrs Power. How would it look to her if you had ditched her daughter?’

  The sneaky bastard had it all figured out.

  ‘And the second thing?’

  Now he smiled with real warmth, the cherub in him glowing through.

  ‘Your conscience, old chap, your conscience.’

  The airline tickets were indeed at the hotel front desk. I didn’t even have to ask for them. In expediency the Diplomatic Service moves with the speed of an antelope.

  Lizzy said curiously, ‘Aren’t those airline tickets?’

  I nodded. ‘Let’s go where we can talk.’ I took her elbow and propelled her upstairs to the bar, to a secluded corner table, where I ordered the usual poison for me and a beer for her.

  No sooner had the waiter gone when she said, ‘You’re leaving me, aren’t you?’ Her eyes were big and round and dewed with unshed tears.

  ‘No,’ I said roughly. I threw the tickets on the table between us. ‘Two tickets, please note. One for you and one for me.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, blinking. ‘I thought …’

  ‘Don’t think,’ I snapped, snatching the vodka from the waiter’s tray. ‘Just … trust me.’ Which was asking a lot since I didn’t even trust myself in this matter.

  ‘But we can’t go, Alan,’ she said, and my heart turned over at the anguish in her voice. ‘We’ve got to stay here until Mummy … until she comes back.’

  ‘Look, Freckles …’ I took both her hands in mine; hers were trembling. ‘The police believe it’s dangerous for us to stay on here any longer. Now, for myself I don’t give a damn, but I can’t take chances with you.’

  ‘I don’t mind taking chances. This will be like running away.’

  It was. But it wasn’t my choice. I tried to explain as much. I explained that Ramouz was expelling me from Morocco, and that the Consul required me to convey Lizzy to her uncle.

  ‘Will you come back here afterwards to wait for Mummy?’

  ‘I can’t come back. The Police won’t let me on account of that man I killed.’

  ‘But he deserved it!’ She sniffed. ‘I haven’t got a hanky.’

  I passed mine across and she blew her nose lustily into it. She laughed shakily.

  ‘Now I’ve made it all snotty.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ I said. ‘Look, there’s Yusuf.’

  The bell-boy was hovering by the entrance, trying to catch Lizzy’s attention.

  ‘Go and talk to him,’ I urged. ‘Tonight’s your last chance for a date.’

  ‘Stuff that. I don’t want a date.’

  ‘It’ll help take your mind off things.’

  She gave me a beseeching look. ‘If you’re not going to come back for Mummy, what will you do? After you’ve handed me over to Uncle Alistair, I mean.’

  ‘Stick around in Barcelona, what else?’ I hadn’t really thought about it but it wouldn’t inconvenience me to stay on for a week, say, to see her properly settled. And hope still remained, fast diminishing, that Clair might turn up unharmed.

  ‘I’ll find an hotel near your uncle’s place and we’ll phone the police here every day for news about your mother. Okay?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Sulkily.

  ‘Good girl.’ I touched her cheek lightly with the palm of my hand and she sandwiched it with hers. It was an extraordinary, intimate gesture and it startled me. The flesh of my palm seemed to burn.

  ‘Go and put Yusuf out of his misery,’ I said sharply, to cover up my confusion, and that, hiding her heartache behind a brittle gaiety, is what she did.

  A pair of cops drove us to the airport. Ramouz’s private escort service making sure we didn’t miss our flight. When they deport you from Morocco they do the job properly. We even had flashing lights to make us feel important.

  Like most third-rate airports Tangier-ibn Battouta is a modern but uninspiring supermarket-like structure with a lot of glass and metal, and an apology for a control tower, set down in a suitably flat slab of otherwise non-productive land. The single runway looks the same as runways the world over.

  After passing through the police barrier, travellers trek across the apron, which is overlooked by the usual viewing area for goodbye wavers and plane spotters. Some compulsion made me glance up there as our passenger crocodile shuffled across towards a Royal Air Maroc Boeing 737. It was a glance that brought me to a shocked standstill, causing the passenger behind to blunder into me.

  ‘So sorry,’ he murmured in best Queen’s English, though the fault was all mine. I wasn’t paying attention, anyway. I was transfixed by two broad silhouettes at the viewing platform rail, and the interest was strictly mutual. The bigger of the two was Christiaan, the beefcake boy, in a black sleeveless T-shirt that accentuated his bulging biceps, the sun’s rays striking his golden locks and creating a halo effect that was surely not merited. His companion, his equal in width but a few inches shorter, was less casually attired in short-sleeved beige shirt and matching slacks, and was reported to be in distant Amsterdam.

  ‘De Bruin.’ My lips formed the name of their own volition.

  A tug on my sleeve and Lizzy’s ‘Tired already?’ dragged my eyes away. The tail of the crocodile was passing by.

  ‘What’s the matter, Alan?’ She was quick to sense all wasn’t well.

  ‘I think I’ve forgotten my wallet …’ Indecision anchored me to the asphalt, locked the muscles in my legs.

  ‘No, you haven’t. You had it when you bought me that magazine.’

  The last straggler detoured around us and I looked up once more at the platform. A number of observers still leaned against the rail, some waving to emplaning relatives or friends, but the Dutchmen were gone, a conspicuous gap marking the spot they had occupied.

  Unthinkingly, seeing only a red mist of hate, I started back to the terminal.

  ‘Alan!’ Lizzy’s yell followed me and reason returned as swiftly as it had departed. As a persona non grata deportee, I would never be allowed back through the police barrier. Actually, I would never get as far as the barrier: our escorts were standing by the departure lounge door, conscientiously making sure the plane didn’t leave without us.

  ‘Alan, they’re waiting for us.’ Lizzy’s plaintive cry, accompanied by her wrench on my arm, turned me back towards the airliner.

  ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ she demanded, holding on to me tightly, as if a puff of wind would blow me away.

  ‘I saw somebody,’ I said, done with pretext. ‘I thought I recognised him …’

  She was not slow to get my drift. Her hand went to her mouth, her step faltering.

  ‘To do with the kidnapping?’ she said breathlessly, too damn sharp for her own good.

  ‘Yes … I mean, no. I was mistaken.’

  She looked over her shoulder. Now I was doing the hustling.

  ‘Come on, Freckles. I told you it was a mistake.’

  By then we were at the foot of the boarding stairs, and being welcomed by a hostess in a fetching Arab rig of Air Maroc red and green. We were th
e last to board. Within minutes, as we coupled our seat belts, the engines were winding up. For speed and simplicity the procedures at these smaller airports leave the Heathrows and JFKs standing.

  ‘Are you sure it was a mistake?’ Lizzy said, peering out through the oval window.

  ‘I told you.’

  She seemed to accept this. As we taxied to the runway she flipped through her magazine, not reading, just turning pages. When the takeoff proper began she dumped the magazine instantly, sitting up rigid in her seat – from exhilaration, as it turned out, not fright.

  ‘I’m nuts about flying,’ she declared, face flushed.

  The grey strip of concrete dropped away and we headed westward in a steep climb, crossing the massive parapet of dunes, nature’s breakwater, holding back the Atlantic.

  ‘It looks so clean,’ Lizzy remarked of the sea, and these were her last words during the entire fifty-five minute flight. Which suited me, since it left me free to try and fit this new piece into the unfinished jigsaw puzzle surrounding Rik de Bruin. Had he come to the airport to make sure I really was leaving? How did he know which day and which flight? Mulling over this latest development started up a pulse in the healing wound on the side of my head. I touched the spot cautiously, smoothing my hair over the strip of band-aid that the doctor had earlier substituted for the original dressing. The pain was gone; all that remained was a mild discomfort from the pull of the stitches and a bald patch the size of a 2-euro coin.

  I gave up on de Bruin and fell into a doze from which I was awakened by Lizzy shaking my arm and piping, ‘Seat belt, Alan,’ in my ear. Minutes later we touched down at Madrid where we were to make our connection via the Spanish domestic carrier, Spanair, to Barcelona.

  As we drank tasteless machine-made coffee in the transit lounge, Lizzy sank into gloom, her short vividly-patterned dress seeming suddenly frivolous, even disrespectful, like a loud suit at a funeral.

  ‘We shouldn’t be here, you know,’ she moaned. ‘We shouldn’t have left my mother.’

  It rang like an accusation and it cut deep. Privately I raged against Ramouz, against the Consul, and, of course, against de Bruin. For Lizzy’s benefit I maintained a neutral front and recycled some empty reassurances about the cops knowing best. It might have helped if I believed it.