The media – both national and international – had been restricted from recording the protest. But that didn’t stop protestors holding their mobile phones aloft or people in the buildings overlooking the march from recording the event on theirs.
The street ran alongside the Sidi Ali Belkacem cemetery and the Arsat Moulay Abdeslam Park, its peaceful acres of palms, olive trees and oleanders shattered by the noise of the protesters.
Beyond was Place 16 Novembre, where a company of soldiers was positioned. Their orders were simple: to ensure the protestors were halted.
Chapter 49
Marrakesh, Morocco
They exited the hotel by a service staircase. In contrast to the rest of the building, this was an austere area of plain concrete walls and steps, one they’d only have used in an emergency. They were certainly no longer being treated as guests. The man they’d thought was the deputy manager, who was now hurrying them down the stairs, had effectively arrested them.
Sam had contemplated refusing to go, but he sensed that Kamal could have easily summoned assistance. They had no choice. They were, Sam assumed, now helping the Moroccans with a murder enquiry. Obstructing an investigation in a country like Morocco – what they’d be doing if they resisted – was not worth contemplating.
At the bottom of the stairs was a set of metal double doors. Kamal pressed down on a long bar to release them and stepped on to a platform just above the back entrance to the hotel. Against one wall was a line of large metal bins. A skinny mongrel was picking at scraps that had fallen from one. A handful of cars were parked opposite while an open gate led into the street. The door closed behind them with a loud clank, startling Sam and Eleanor.
Kamal directed them down a few steps and towards the vehicles. As they approached the cars he reached into his pocket. Retrieving some keys, he pressed the fob and the lights on the side of a large black 4x4 flashed in response.
‘Please,’ he said, gesturing for them to get in the back.
The 4x4 was soon speeding out of the hotel backyard. It turned left and then right down a street bordered by a stretch of the medina wall. They then veered left, passing into a commercial district. Out of tinted windows Sam and Eleanor watched a ghost town pass by, with shops, banks and cafés all shut. A solitary figure, a bar owner padlocking his closed shutters, looked up at the passing vehicle, his face full of fear.
‘Where are you taking us?’ asked Eleanor.
Kamal raised a hand in response, whether to calm Eleanor or silence her, Sam couldn’t fathom.
Sam reached for Eleanor’s hand and squeezed it. He meant the gesture as both a reassurance and light warning. There was little point attempting to communicate with Kamal. It was clear all would be revealed and Sam saw no reason to aggravate a member of the security services.
He thought of how they’d been duped. How they’d accepted the charming deputy manager as genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of his dead friend’s daughter. How quickly they’d dismissed the idea that this man could be anything to the contrary.
Sam knew little of Morocco’s security services but somehow wasn’t surprised that they placed officers in the kind of large hotels where senior British politicians stayed. And what officer wouldn’t be curious about the sudden arrival of a Cabinet member’s daughter – particularly in the midst of unrest in the city? Now Kamal, thanks to a mix of charm and guile, had managed to extract every last finding of their investigation to date. Sam’s fear, that they wouldn’t look too hard beyond the most promising suspect, Charles Scott, was now growing. He’d persuaded Eleanor to join his hunt. But now, if it destroyed her father and his reputation, what had he achieved?
After about twenty minutes, during which time the car appeared to circuit around the east of the medina, the vehicle began climbing a gentle gradient then, minutes later, took a sharp left. They had now entered a distinctly different district. The banks and offices had given way to a residential area. Large gleaming BMWs and Mercedes sat in the shade of trees. Behind the foliage Sam could see smart new apartment blocks clad in the same soft pink as the medina’s old buildings.
He began to notice men regularly positioned along the pavements. One waved casually at the 4x4 as it passed. As he did, his jacket opened to reveal the unmistakable grip and trigger mechanism of a handgun.
Ahead were the flags of a number of consulates – France, Finland and then the UK. The last flag should have signalled a haven for two nationals caught up with the security services of another country, but Sam knew it was the last place they’d go to, even if they could escape the vehicle.
A little later, the car turned left down another, narrower street, then right through a large opening, two men with machine guns over their shoulders holding the gates open and waving nonchalantly to the driver.
They were now in a courtyard, a functional place far removed from the grandeur of the buildings in the street outside. A Moroccan flag hung over the entrance. As the gates closed shut behind them with a loud clang, Sam shuddered.
He couldn’t help but conclude that the faceless place before him was the kind Amnesty International wrote about, one of a number of security buildings dotted around the Middle East and North Africa. Places where people were taken for interrogation, often never to return.
Chapter 50
Marrakesh, Morocco
The room was, like the outside of the building, austere and devoid of any decoration save for a large framed photograph of the King that hung in the middle of a wall, his rounded, genial face adding the proceedings an extra element of menace. Two windows, thick with dust, let in a weak light from the courtyard outside. Another window, higher up an adjacent wall, offered a glimpse of a roofline and the sky beyond. A rattling fan hung from the ceiling, gently stirring the syrupy air. In the background, they could hear the distant sound of chanting, the muffled roar of an angry mass.
Kamal had now left them and closed the door. They were seated one side of a plain wooden table. Sam noticed there were scratch marks across its surface, about the width of fingernails. He dreaded to think who had made them, and under what circumstances.
In the hallway outside, he heard the banter of colleagues, men joshing with each other, followed by raucous laughter. Sam locked on to that noise, convincing himself, momentarily, that they were just visiting a regular office, rather than a building belonging to the Moroccan state security service. The reality came crashing back with a brief memory of the building’s exterior. There had been no plaques outside announcing its identity or purpose. It was, in effect, faceless and invisible. What went on here was beyond the law.
Eleanor’s face had taken on that determined look Sam was now so used to. But the question she asked suggested it was all front. ‘What’s going to happen?’ she said, her voice quivering. ‘Why have they brought us here?’
Sam could have given her his more paranoid reading of the situation – that they were about to be interrogated by people who, by all accounts, tortured those in their custody. But mindful of her already fragile state, he chose to comfort.
‘We’re helping them with their enquiries,’ he said, hoping he sounded confident. ‘They don’t want riots on their streets, particularly when there’s a chance we can help them solve the crime that’s led to those marches.’
Eleanor nodded, her eyes briefly widening with fear and uncertainty. In the distance, another cry from the marchers went up.
Just then the door opened and they turned to see a man walk into the room, clutching a manila folder. He was tall and broad, and wore a white shirt that strained against the bulk of his torso. The man sat down opposite them, the chair creaking under his weight. He dropped the file on the desk and exhaled noisily. He then cleared his throat – a guttural sound that suggested a history of cigarettes or shisha pipes – and looked up.
His features seemed crammed into the middle of his wide face beneath the thick folds of skin that made up his forehead. There was a deadness to his eyes, as if emotion didn’t r
eally figure in his DNA. Sam had seen eyes like that in his consulting room. Their owners tended to make the worst clients. Men, more often than not, who simply couldn’t make a connection with others because of a total lack of empathy.
‘My name is Maalouf,’ the man said.
For a brief moment, Sam found this strangely comforting. The security services officer who was happy to be identified suggested that this was more of a chat, rather than the beginning of some gruesome interrogation at the hands of an anonymous operative. Sam shook the thought from his head. It could of course mean the exact opposite; the interrogator who started soft, before becoming increasingly aggressive.
‘You think a British man may have killed the Berber girl on the 9th September?’
Sam and Eleanor nodded, both knowing that asking Maalouf why they were here was pointless. The questioning was already underway, and they had no choice but to fully participate. Besides, they couldn’t insist on the British consulate being called, a representative being present. They were, at least for now, stateless.
Sam then quickly spoke up, worried that, if he let Eleanor speak, the confused, angry feelings she felt for her father would start to cloud things. ‘Everything we have learnt so far suggests the British government is trying to cover something up. Certain members of it were dining in the medina the night of the killing and a knife similar to the murder weapon was purchased that day.’
As the words poured out, Sam realised what he was saying. He was accusing his country of a crime.
He was no die-hard, flag-waving patriot, no rabid royalist and, God knows, there was plenty about Britain to gripe about. But until now, he’d believed it was still fundamentally a decent country, not least when compared with others in the world. But loyalty, as he frequently told his clients, was an overrated quality. Why stay loyal, for example, to the husband who drinks and beats you? And why, in their case, stay loyal to the country that’s tried to assassinate you?
‘We have the knife,’ Maalouf said, his face barely registering expression. ‘It has fingerprints on it.’
Sam and Eleanor exchanged glances.
‘We also have a man in custody,’ continued Maalouf, coughing again. ‘I would like you to meet him.’
Chapter 51
Marrakesh, Morocco
The head of the march had now reached Place 16 Novembre and a barricade erected by the company of soldiers. Behind the protestors at the front, thousands began slowing to a halt. Lining Avenue Mohammed V were police with their batons, tear gas and water cannons.
The people who’d made it to the Place first were the youngest, fittest and most vociferous. Still clutching their placards emblazoned with Lalla’s image, they shouted angrily at the soldiers standing by their armoured cars.
The guards’ weapons were – for now – still slung over shoulders, a deliberate signal designed to say that this was not an impending conflict, merely a full stop. The marchers would not be allowed to continue.
To many of the protestors, these soldiers were part of the problem, symbols of a State that had turned its back on them. The volume of their chants began to grow.
The sun beat down on the two opposing sides. It was stalemate.
Chapter 52
Marrakesh, Morocco
Maalouf insisted that Sam alone accompany him to meet the suspect. Eleanor objected, telling Maalouf that this was about her father and that she’d been part of the investigation from the start.
Maalouf held up his hand to halt her. ‘This is not for a woman.’
Eleanor was silenced. Looking at her apprehensive face, Sam knew what she was thinking. It wasn’t that she’d been denied involvement because of her gender, but what was inferred by Maalouf’s comment – that the suspect was clearly in a bad way, most likely beaten or tortured. What did that say about what might happen to them?
Sam followed Maalouf from the room. They walked down the corridor past a series of doors, all closed bar one which revealed a room full of women typing away at computers, before they moved through a set of doors to a stairwell. The stairs were lit by strip lighting which barely illuminated the steps. Sam passed under one light that was blinking on and off, as if the area they were heading towards was a forgotten corner that was rarely visited. At one stage they passed a window that looked out on to the courtyard at ground height, the exhaust pipe of a car visible. They were now below ground, heading to what Sam was sure was the dark heart of the building. A deep sense of dread had enveloped him, adding to the breath-constricting terror that grew with every step he took.
Finally they reached the base of the stairs and, as Sam struggled to adjust to the dim lighting, they moved through another set of doors. The corridor ahead of them, though better lit, made the utilitarian feel of the upper floors look positively upbeat. The walls were rough, unfinished brick work, off which were heavy steel doors with small peepholes at eye level.
Maalouf stopped before one at the end of the corridor and pounded on it with a chunky fist. It was opened by a man in a t-shirt, his face glowing with a sheen of sweat.
With his body now rigid with fear, Sam followed Maalouf inside. The room was windowless but lit with a blue-white overhead light, giving it a bleached, unearthly feel. On the floor in one corner was a man whose torso and arms were held within a car tyre. One of the man’s eyes was fat and bruised, barely a slit. There were cuts to his face, the bottom lip was split and bleeding. A flex, copper wiring exposed at one end, snaked across the room. Sam followed the wire and saw, to his horror, a car battery tucked beneath a table at the other end of the room.
Maalouf exchanged a few words with the man in the t-shirt, then turned to Sam.
‘Do you know this man?’
Sam was struggling to control his thoughts and emotions. Disgust, at what Maalouf and his man had done, complete terror as he tried to communicate lucidly with such people, as well as the knowledge that, were he or Eleanor to put a foot wrong, they would be treated in a similar way.
Sam shook his head.
‘He seems to know you,’ said Maalouf.
He said a few words of Arabic to the man in the t-shirt, who fetched a piece of paper from the table and handed it to Maalouf. Maalouf looked at it briefly, then gave it to Sam.
‘He had this on him,’ said Maalouf.
Sam glanced at the paper and saw two grainy black and white images – one of him, one of Eleanor. They looked as if they’d been taken from a distance, but God knows where.
‘I don’t understand,’ Sam said, the words faltering in his mouth. ‘I thought you said you had a suspect in the murder of the Berber girl.’
Maalouf muttered a few words of Arabic to his colleague who grunted in response. Then Maalouf turned to Sam.
‘This man is a suspect, but not in that case. He was trying to kill you and your friend.’
Chapter 53
Marrakesh, Morocco
‘I don’t understand,’ said Sam.
They were back in the room with Eleanor, to whom Maalouf had briefly repeated the explanation he’d given Sam in the basement cell, of the assassin’s attempt on their lives in the midst of the protest. Sam’s mind was reeling with questions.
‘How did you know he was following us, let alone trying to kill us?’ he asked
Maalouf shrugged. ‘We were following you.’
Of course, thought Sam. After Kamal had spoken to them in the medina that first time, explaining his surveillance of them as concern for his old friend’s daughter, Sam hadn’t expected – or bothered to look for – any further tails. How would they have known there were other men watching them?
Eleanor, who’d seen the pale look on Sam’s face on his return, was subdued, taking a back seat as more and more confusing and distressing information was revealed.
‘We’d seen the man pursue you in his car to the medina that morning, then watched him as he followed you into the crowd. We knew that he wasn’t here to protest. He was not a Berber and he was also moving with too much…’
Maalouf seemed to struggle looking for the right word.
‘Intent?’ suggested Eleanor flatly.
Maalouf nodded. ‘We may have been suspicious of your actions, but we didn’t want you killed. The repercussions of the daughter of a British Cabinet minister being murdered in Marrakesh would have been a headache to resolve.’
Eleanor laughed dryly, Maalouf’s cold analysis of their near-miss with an assassin clearly adding to the absurdity of the situation they found themselves in.
‘Given what you have said about the attempts made on your life in Britain,’ said Maalouf, ‘we must conclude that this man – a Tunisian, it turns out – was hired by the British Government, or select elements within it, to kill you.’
Eleanor let out an enormous breath, the air escaping with an audible tremor. Suddenly, it had been spelt out. Even out here, in North Africa, they were still trying to kill them.
‘You have rattled them,’ said Maalouf, ‘which means you are close to the truth.’
Sam, who had been struggling with the idea of helping – for this was clearly what Maalouf required of them – a man who could oversee a brutal torture like the one that had just been meted out in the basement of the very building they were sitting in, now realised that they had little choice. Maalouf was their new ally. They had to work with him. But the prospect revolted Sam.
It was as if Maalouf could read his mind. ‘You do not approve, do you?’
Sam shook his head.
‘What you saw in the basement is what your Government has frequently asked other countries to do on your behalf since 9/11 and your invasion of Iraq. You may choose to be disgusted, but you are complicit.’
He leaned across the table, his bulk blocking some of the feeble light coming through the window. ‘The march going on today – I imagine you think I’d like to crush them. This is not true. The people out there have a right to justice. One of their own was murdered. Unfortunately the police have mishandled this by arresting the wrong man. So now we have a bigger problem. The Berbers mistrust us. The next man we arrest must be the right one.’ He paused, clearing his throat again. ‘For now we must contain their anger – but with restraint.’
Disorder (Sam Keddie thriller series Book 1) Page 17
