by Parker Bilal
‘Perhaps we should go in?’ she suggested, putting him out of his misery.
The restaurant she’d chosen was supposed to be French, at least that’s what he understood from what she told him on the stairs. There were high-backed booths and quaint lanterns, green-painted panels and columns framed in dark wood. She chose a table over by the window. The waiter was young. He looked Makana up and down in a surly fashion that seemed to ask what a lady of this style could be doing with someone like him. It wasn’t as if he had never set foot in a fancy restaurant before, just that it was not his natural habitat.
‘It’s years since I’ve been here,’ she said, perhaps sensing his discomfort.
He thought it wrong to tell her he’d never been there before, that nothing struck him as more absurd than a restaurant serving French food in a city that excelled in its own cuisine. He had thought the same about the Verdi Gardens, and that set off a train of thought that led back to Mourad and everything else.
‘We haven’t been here five minutes and already you are thinking about work,’ she declared without looking up from her menu, which was the size of a newspaper. ‘Perhaps we should make a rule not to talk about work until we have ordered, or perhaps until we have eaten? Wouldn’t that be better?’
The waiter was hovering somewhere behind Makana’s shoulder. He had been about to ask him to move away, for the simple reason that he needed more time. Now he found himself forced to make a decision.
‘How do you do this?’ He pointed.
The waiter gave him a worried frown. ‘Chicken Kiev, ya basha. They take the chicken breast and slice it open and stuff it before frying it.’
He glanced across the table and Jehan, as he was trying to get used to thinking of her, rather than Doctora Siham, interpreted his hesitation as a logical concern.
‘They don’t use pig meat, do they?’ she asked the waiter.
‘Oh, no, Madame.’ He looked appalled that such a thought could even have occurred to her. ‘They use bastourma, naturally.’
‘There you are, it’s quite safe.’
Makana nodded his thanks and ordered the dish. Better to be taken for a pious idiot than an ignorant one. When the waiter had brought glasses of hibiscus juice for them, they were left alone and an awkward silence fell.
‘You don’t do this very often, do you?’ she said.
‘Oh, no. I try to eat once a day, at least.’
‘I meant . . . like this.’
‘Ordering Russian chicken in a French restaurant? No, I don’t do this very often.’
‘You’re teasing me.’
‘I’m sorry. The fact is that, no, I don’t do this very often. I mean, I can’t actually remember the last time I had dinner alone with a woman.’
‘Really?’ She looked surprised at first and then slowly nodded to herself. ‘You live a quiet life. I respect that. You have simple tastes. You don’t like places that try to be more than they are. You’d be happy in Felfela with a taamiya sandwich.’
‘I think we could do better than that.’
They both laughed.
‘It’s natural, I suppose,’ she said.
‘I was married,’ said Makana slowly, not certain why he was embarking on this subject. ‘When Muna died, well, I thought that side of my life was over.’
‘If there’s one thing my job teaches me it’s that life is terminal and generally a lot shorter than we would like to think. We need to enjoy what we have.’
‘Right now I’m having trouble just thinking of you not as Doctora Siham.’
‘Really?’
‘Well, to start with, you don’t dress like that every day.’
‘I would no doubt be locked up in chains if I did. There would be petitions to have me removed from my post. The bearded ones would have a field day.’ She leaned across the table with a mischievous look in her eye. ‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’re not really religious, are you?’
‘You mean that thing with the chicken? No, I just wasn’t sure what it was exactly.’
‘I didn’t think so.’ Jehan smiled quietly to herself. ‘I’m not usually such a poor judge of character.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’
‘So, you don’t mind if we order wine? Normally, I have to keep up appearances. During Ramadan I fast, but only because my relatives would look down on me and because I think it’s a way of losing weight.’
‘Most people put on weight during Ramadan.’
‘Well, exactly. So it takes some discipline, but it gives you one month of the year when you can convince yourself not to eat all day. You don’t seem to have that problem.’
‘I like to eat, I just keep irregular hours.’
‘My father was like that. He never had time to eat. Always working. Worked himself into an early grave, of course. We kids always ate with my mother or my aunt, often my grandmother.’
‘Both your parents were working?’
‘My mother was a pediatrician, my father a surgeon.’ She held up her hands in mock despair. ‘A family of doctors. Two brothers, one a psychiatrist, the other an oncologist. I’m the only one who works with the dead. The rest try to keep people alive.’
‘Somebody has to, I suppose.’
The wine arrived, a bottle of Omar Khayyam rosé. It didn’t taste too bad. They both lit cigarettes. Makana began to feel a little more relaxed.
‘You make an odd couple, you and Inspector Okasha.’ She was studying him.
‘I hadn’t really thought of us as a couple.’
‘He’s so by the regulations and you . . . well, I can’t imagine such opposites. Except that you do have a moral streak.’ She pointed her cigarette at him.
‘I do?’
‘Certainly. You believe in right and wrong.’
‘Doesn’t everybody, in their own way?’
‘We all claim to, or most of us anyway, but the truth is often far from that.’
The food arrived and Makana discovered that Chicken Kiev wasn’t too bad. He might even suggest the idea to Aswani and see what he made of it. The wine drained steadily from the bottle as they talked. When they ordered coffee Makana was surprised to watch her switch back into her professional role as pathologist. Her tone, her manner, even the way she sat in the chair and gave commands to the waiter. Her hard side resurfaced from one moment to the next.
‘It’s still too early for the tests, but I may have had some success in matching the scratch wounds in the neck to those on the torso.’
‘I paid the Hesira Institute a visit and saw a picture of Estrella’s friends, Beatrice and Jonah. Jonah’s forehead shows the marks of a Mundari.’
‘Interesting. You think he might be our severed head?’ She frowned at him. ‘Wait a minute, I thought you wanted me to go along with you?’
Makana studied his plate. ‘I thought you would be busy. I didn’t want to bother you.’
‘You mean you couldn’t summon the courage to call me.’ He looked up to find she was smiling.
‘I met your old friend, Ihsan Qaddus.’
A shadow seemed to pass over her face, and he was reminded suddenly of that evening in the Forensics Lab when he had caught her sitting alone.
‘Is that how he referred to me, as an old friend?’
Makana realised he might have stumbled onto delicate ground. Whatever had once existed between her and Ihsan Qaddus still touched a nerve.
‘I got the impression you were once close.’
‘You could put it like that.’
‘What happened?’
‘People change, I suppose,’ she shrugged. ‘Today, he’s well connected. Businessmen, politicians, television celebrities, people who are in the news. Highly placed officials, people of influence. Potential investors.’
‘Why did you split up?’
‘I think deep down I knew I could never compete with his ambitions. I didn’t want my career to be limited to standing next to him at soc
ial functions.’
‘Somehow I can’t imagine you fitting into that role.’
‘Well, I’m happy for him. He has done well for himself. He certainly keeps illustrious company these days,’ breathed Jehan. ‘Quite an empire he’s built for himself.’
‘And all on the mud of the Nile.’
She laughed at that, then she peered into her glass. ‘When we were young his ambitions were of a different nature. He wanted to rid the world of malaria, cure polio, things like that.’
‘Sometimes the material world brings more tangible benefits.’
‘I suppose so, but I can’t believe that he’s abandoned all of that idealism. He would have made a fine surgeon.’
‘So when did the interest in this kind of alternative healthcare begin?’
‘I’m not sure, perhaps you should ask him next time you see him.’
Perhaps she was annoyed that he had gone to the institute without her, after promising to do so. Or it might have been the idea of him and Qaddus talking together in her absence. He couldn’t make out why this should upset her, but he had come to accept there were lots of things about the pathologist that he didn’t quite understand.
It was her turn to change the subject.
‘I haven’t been able to link the blood samples we found on the wall to the skin tissue from the head. DNA analyses are expensive and I need to go through a committee.’ She sighed. ‘They like to make us beg, so it might not happen. What do you think this is all about?’
‘I wish I knew. At the moment there are just fragments that don’t seem to connect.’ Makana sat up and lit another cigarette. ‘Supposing the bloodstains from the wall matched the head. Then the same person who was held in Shaddad’s garage was decapitated.’
‘How does that help?’
‘If the head is Jonah’s then how did he end up in that room? What happened to his sister Beatrice?’
‘You think they were both killed, but why?’
‘All I know is that they are supposed to be in America.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘According to Liz Corbis they are going through some kind of transition phase, settling in with their adoptive families.’
‘This Liz, is she the one you went to visit at the Hesira?’
‘Yes, Doctor Corbis, I should say.’ Makana wondered at the question.
‘You seem to be making a lot of new friends in the medical profession.’ Jehan studied her glass for the moment before brushing her own comment aside. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about the adoption programme. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that Americans would want to adopt such old children? I mean, sixteen is almost an adult. I thought people wanted younger children.’
It was a good point, and one that Makana hadn’t given much thought to. He had assumed that the reason these benevolent Americans were adopting Sudanese refugees was that they wanted to help young Christian men and women who had fled the war. It wasn’t about adopting children so much as helping to do good.
‘Tell me about the drug you found,’ he said. ‘Sodium thiopental?’
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘I just wonder if this could be about the drugs.’
‘You mean, because of Shaddad’s involvement?’
‘Not directly, but he’s the head of a major pharmaceuticals supplier. His drivers are engaged in some kind of private enterprise of their own, selling off his products on the side. One of his vans was involved in a collision, perhaps an accident, or perhaps forced.’
‘Forced how?’
‘There were paint marks on the side of the van. It’s possible someone ran the van into the path of the oncoming tanker.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘To silence someone? To get the drivers out of the way? Either way, the driver was never identified. Another driver, Mustafa Alwan, is missing. It’s possible he was in the van at the time of the accident. He was hurt, but instead of staying there he disappeared. Either he ran off, or he was taken.’
‘Shaddad runs a respectable company. I can’t see him being involved in illicit trading.’
‘The other thing is the body in the locker. Where were they taking it?’
‘The furnace you saw out there. They could have been taking the body to get rid of it.’
Makana agreed. ‘At such high temperatures you would get rid of almost everything.’
‘It’s like an incinerator,’ she nodded. ‘All that is left are ashes.’
‘Ashes,’ repeated Makana. ‘Could they be conducting some kind of experiments, tests, with drugs that are unstable, or have side effects?’
‘It’s possible. The manufacture of generic pharmaceuticals in this country generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year.’
‘And these would be drugs for . . .?’
‘Anything, from hypertension to painkillers to Viagra. The market for alternatives to expensive Western products is vast.’ Jehan produced her own cigarettes and he lit one for her. ‘It’s done by a kind of reverse engineering, breaking down an existing drug to see how it’s put together, then they work out how to manufacture it. Sometimes they get it wrong. Impurities get in. People can die from an allergic reaction to some minor element in the formula, or an impurity.’
‘Could the heart attack have been induced by some kind of drug testing?’
‘It’s possible, but we found no trace of anything other than sodium thiopental.’
Another dead end. Still, it shone a new light on Shaddad. Was someone using his network to distribute generic drugs without his knowledge? The one person who might know was Mustafa Alwan, and Alwan was missing.
‘Alwan has a son who suffers from some kind of medical condition. He needs an operation.’
‘Describe him.’
‘Swollen eyes, puffy face. Also he had a kind of yellow tinge to his skin.’
‘I can’t say for sure, but it sounds like it might be a liver problem.’
‘Is that serious?’
‘It could be. Hepatitis, possibly. If that’s the case it can be treated.’
‘How about something more serious?’
‘Well, hepatitis can be pretty serious. It could be liver failure, which is not uncommon, though in someone so young it is unusual.’
‘How is that treated?’
‘Oh, there’s no cure. If he doesn’t respond to treatment he would have to have a transplant.’
‘Can that be done?’
‘In this country?’ She shook her head. ‘He would probably have to go abroad, and that’s not cheap.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Makana. ‘I’m ruining the evening.’
‘Not at all.’ She gave him a wry look. ‘And besides, I hardly thought we would get away with not discussing work.’
There was a brief tussle over the bill when Makana gallantly tried insisting on paying. Jehan refused to hear of it and they ended splitting it. And then they were walking beside the river.
‘You still haven’t told me why you called me earlier,’ Makana said.
‘You’re right,’ Jehan laughed, putting her hand to her forehead. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. The thing is, it was one of my students. When we were going through the basement, one of them bagged all the bones that were lying about.’
‘Bones? What bones?’ A crisp wind blew off the surface of the river and he offered his jacket, which she draped around her shoulders.
Jehan laughed again. ‘It’s silly, I know. The bones the dogs were eating?’
Makana remembered the aggressive dogs in the basement garage. Abu Gomaa’s little hobby.
‘What about them?’
‘Well, it’s nothing really. One of the students suggested that some of the bones resembled human digits. Fingers or perhaps toes. Sometimes it’s very difficult to really tell the difference between human bones and animal bones, especially when they are broken up into fragments. It’s all about the thickness of the wall, and so on.’
/> ‘Wait a minute.’ Makana stopped and turned to face her. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying I’m not sure. Without further analysis we can’t tell.’
‘But it’s possible those dogs were chewing on human bones?’
‘That can’t be right, can it?’ She looked at him and realised her error. ‘Can it?’
But Makana was already gone, jogging back towards the road, looking for a taxi.
Chapter Thirty-three
The air was cold and tinged with damp as Makana made his way down the ramp from the street. He called out several times but there was no reply. The basement was still and oddly silent. Nothing moved.
‘Abu Gomaa!’
His voice echoed through the cavernous basement. There was nothing. Not even the sound of the dogs came back. He moved further into the shadows, wishing he had managed to bring a torch with him. Even Sindbad’s unreliable flashlight would be welcome. Faint slivers of light from the street above bounced through cracks, opening up channels before him. His eyes adjusted and he moved forward from memory, remembering the general layout from the last time he had been here. He could make out the muffled shapes of the cars along one wall. Ahead of him the stairwell. To the right, the service room where the bloody handprint had been found.
He reached the area that was Abu Gomaa’s living quarters. Nothing there. Cardboard boxes. The makeshift bed. The television set was faintly warm. The old man was nowhere in sight. He stumbled over something that turned out to be a long chain. He pulled it up. The dogs were not fixed to the end. Where were they? Did the old watchman have somewhere else to go at night? Had he taken them somewhere? One of his dogfights?
He felt bones cracking under his shoes as he walked on and tried to step around them, wondering where they might have come from. The wind hummed through gaps in the walls. The distant murmur of the traffic. And something else. Another sound. A faint scratching. Something moving deep down inside the building. He moved further inwards, slowly tracing his way towards where he knew the stairwell was.
He stepped through the doorway into deeper blackness. A set of stairs led upwards towards the ground floor and Shaddad’s offices, and he was about to move up these when he realised the sound he was hearing came from below. Running his hand along the railing, he made his way back, testing with his feet as he moved downwards. There was a lower level to the basement.
