The Ghost Runner

by Parker Bilal

  ‘I have no intention of letting it do so. I came here because my wife confronted me. She accused me of having deceived her and asked for a divorce. Of course she did not mean this seriously. To a woman of her age and social standing divorce would make no sense. Still, I understand that her pride was hurt. When I asked her how she had learned of these things she told me about you. I came to see where my money had gone.’ Ragab allowed himself a smile, presumably because this was the closest he could come to a joke.

  ‘Well, while we’re talking about money, I haven’t actually—’

  Ragab cut him off. ‘Please, let me finish. You have been spying on me for over a week now. Spying on me. I think you at least owe me the chance to speak my piece.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Makana, gesturing for him to continue. For his part, Ragab stood apprehensively, hands clasping and unclasping behind his back.

  ‘The truth is, I understand the work you do, perhaps better than you think. I myself have employed people much like yourself, which perhaps explains why my wife had to reach out beyond the familiar circle of associates to find you.’ Ragab stopped himself from going on. Clearly there was some kind of barbed comment on the tip of his tongue which he felt was best left unsaid.

  ‘Mr Ragab, your wife suspected you of infidelity. There’s nothing particularly remarkable about that. She wanted to know the truth and she has a right to try and find out. She believed you were keeping another woman, perhaps even another wife, and she worried this would have consequences.’

  ‘That is a very liberal, and if I may say so, convenient explanation.’

  ‘In my experience most cases can be resolved amicably. What I bring to the marriage, if you like, is a degree of openness.’

  Ragab smiled again. ‘You missed your calling, sir. You would have made a fine lawyer.’ Pushing his hands into his pockets, Ragab moved towards the window to look out at the river. ‘My wife has a lively imagination. As a young woman she was drawn to a career in the theatre, although I am glad to say that common sense prevailed. Nowadays she is a keen patron of the arts, and knows a good number of artists personally.’

  ‘That must be nice for you both,’ said Makana. It wasn’t that he had anything against the theatre as such, although he had not visited one since his wife was a university student. ‘Frankly, the only thing that interests me at this moment is that girl lying in the clinic and how she got there. I assume that is why you are here.’

  ‘You assume correctly.’ Ragab looked momentarily taken aback. He dropped his head for a moment and stared at the floor.

  ‘So let’s drop all this business of your social credentials. You don’t have to impress me. Why don’t you tell me why you are paying for Karima’s medical care. Is she your daughter?’

  ‘She isn’t, or rather, she wasn’t . . . Karima passed away two hours ago.’

  The image of the creature in the hospital bed came back to him. It was hard not to feel relief for anyone who had suffered so much and yet Makana felt his heart tighten a notch.

  ‘The doctors did everything they could but they were unable to save her.’

  Ragab swayed on his feet and Makana gestured for him to sit. This time Ragab hesitated only for a moment before lowering his frame into the chair. It was a new addition. The carpenter had tried to persuade him to part with the old wicker chair that had been on the awama when he first moved in and had been on its last legs. Makana couldn’t bring himself to throw it away so instead conceded to the purchase of a Louis XIV wooden chair that resembled a throne. It was more comfortable than it looked and had stout carved legs and heavy arms. The carved back was inlaid with mother of pearl. It had been lovingly restored by the carpenter and seemed more suited to the palace of a khedive of old than to Makana’s awama. It wasn’t a Bentley, but still.

  ‘Why did you register her as your daughter at the clinic?’

  There was a long silence. Finally, Ragab stirred. He passed a hand across his face.

  ‘That was necessary for technical reasons. My policy covers members of my family. It is not a big issue, but it avoided certain problems in admitting her. I wanted the best treatment for her and the alternative would have been to leave her to the state medical system, which as I’m sure you know would have been tantamount to a murder sentence.’

  ‘So you lied to get her admitted.’

  Ragab blinked. He didn’t like being accused of lying. ‘The director of the hospital is aware of the details.’

  ‘A theatre lover perhaps? Happy to bend the rules for an old and loyal client?’

  ‘Something like that.’ The faint suggestion of a smile flickered around Ragab’s lips. Amused perhaps at the ease with which the world arranged itself around his needs. ‘You don’t like me. I can tell.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘None, maybe. Perhaps it could be an advantage.’

  ‘Did Karima kill herself?’

  ‘That’s why I wish to employ your services.’

  ‘You want to employ me?’

  ‘You seem surprised. I don’t believe in letting sentiment cloud one’s decisions. You clearly know your job. For an entire week I was unaware that I was being observed. And your past reputation is well documented.’ Ragab nodded beyond Makana at the array of newspaper clippings pinned to the wall above the desk, most of them written by Sami Barakat. ‘I checked up on you and made a few calls. Apart from that I consider myself a good judge of men, Mr Makana. I believe you will do your utmost to pursue this matter to a conclusion. Contrary to popular belief, money does not buy commitment. It buys obedience, devotion to the source of the money, but not to the task in hand. Commitment is a commodity one cannot buy for love or money.’

  ‘I’m honoured,’ murmured Makana, inhaling smoke deep into his lungs.

  ‘There is another reason, which, once I have explained the outlines of the case to you, I am sure will lead you to the same conclusion.’

  ‘You have my attention.’

  Ragab’s big hands had stopped gripping the arms of the chair. As he spoke he appeared to be more at ease.

  ‘Most of the people I employ for surveillance or investigative work have a history. That is to say they are usually retired from the police or intelligence services. This has advantages, of course, because they can draw on old contacts for information from within. But in this case, I believe that could be the source of a conflict of interests.’

  Makana stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Is this connected to your relationship to the girl?’

  ‘Eighteen years ago I was appointed to defend a young man in court. His name was Musab Muhamed Khayr.’ Ragab brought his fingertips together in a steeple and lowered his chin in concentration. ‘He was a delinquent, a petty criminal charged with selling contraband, mostly cigarettes and alcohol smuggled from Libya. I found him to be not only an unpleasant man to deal with, petty and violent, but also untrustworthy. I hardly believed a word he told me. Still, despite my feelings about him personally, or my disapproval of his actions, I had been entrusted with his defence and this was what I carried out to the best of my abilities.’

  Makana noted an air of old-fashioned righteousness about Ragab. A man resigned to the fact that chivalry was dead, that the world was full of people lacking in moral fibre. It was a hard burden to bear, but he was doing his best.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Makana.

  ‘Musab was sentenced to five years. It was a harsh sentence, especially for his wife, but he did not help himself by being impertinent towards the judge who naturally took a disliking to him. The smuggling of alcohol is regarded with some severity by many in the judiciary.’

  ‘He was expecting you to get him off the charges?’

  ‘Exactly, he thought he would not go to prison. It astonishes me sometimes how people allow themselves to be deluded in this way.’

  ‘It’s an astonishing world.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ragab nodded solemnly. ‘Anyway, as the case came to a close I discovered that Mus
ab’s wife Nagat was living in quite sordid conditions. She occupied a room not fit for a cat, above a garage in Imbaba. I went to visit her in the course of my preparations for the trial. She had just discovered she was pregnant. Her husband didn’t even know yet. She had no source of income. I took pity on her.’ Ragab faltered. ‘I can’t explain why. My own father died very young and my mother struggled to bring us up, perhaps the sight of this young woman struck a chord.’

  Makana wondered if there was more to it than that, although it seemed to almost go against the grain, a man of Ragab’s standing to become involved with the wife of a common criminal, but human nature was nothing if not unpredictable.

  ‘So you helped her,’ he said.

  Ragab got to his feet and paced around the room as he spoke. ‘There were practical matters to do with the case which meant that I saw a good deal of her. She was distraught, as you can imagine. Being pregnant with her husband in prison was not an ideal situation. I did my best to reassure her.’

  ‘How exactly? Did you give her money?’

  ‘Yes, and with little chance of seeing it reimbursed, I might add. I also arranged for her to move into a cleaner, more comfortable place. I even found some work for her in the office of a colleague. It wasn’t much, but it provided some income. I used my contacts with a local mosque that provided medical assistance to make sure she received adequate treatment. When she decided to start a business of her own, I also helped her a little with that.’

  ‘You went to a lot of trouble,’ said Makana, ‘considering how you felt about her husband.’

  ‘That was precisely the reason I felt compelled to help his wife. She struck me as being a victim herself, having been taken in by this man at a young age. She had been blind to his faults, she said, but the pregnancy had opened her eyes. She wanted nothing more to do with him.’

  Ragab’s large eyes blinked. The way he told it, the story certainly didn’t do any damage to his reputation. Benevolence, after all, was a highly valued virtue. Although it seemed like a lot of effort for the wife of a client he didn’t even like. Maybe Nagat truly had stirred some measure of compassion from Ragab’s childhood memories of his struggling mother. On the other hand, maybe she had stirred something else.

  ‘You can call me a sentimental fool, but the fact is that I felt protective towards her.’

  Although in his fifties, Ragab dressed and carried himself like a somewhat older man. Now, silhouetted against the dying light, he appeared younger than his years. Makana wondered how much the domineering Mrs Ragab knew of this story.

  ‘Perhaps I allowed myself to go too far.’ Ragab licked his lips. ‘When the child came I was seized by feelings I was not familiar with. I wished to protect it, to take care of it in some way.’ There was a mournful slant to his eyes as they lifted to find Makana. ‘My wife and I did not have the good fortune to be blessed with children of our own, and I suppose all of those pent-up feelings found an outlet in this little girl.’

  ‘Karima.’

  ‘Yes, exactly, Karima.’ Ragab turned away and Makana saw him wiping a hand across his eyes. ‘She never had much luck, poor child. Her mother died a couple of years ago, after a long illness. Since then she has run the shop alone. Still a child and yet so grown up.’ He turned to face Makana squarely. ‘She didn’t deserve to die such a horrible death.’

  The conversation was interrupted as Aziza appeared carrying a tray on which stood a brass coffee pot and two small cups. Makana noticed that she had exchanged the worn and patched shift she had been wearing earlier for a bright dress covered in red flowers. She even had a glittery gold pin in her hair.

  ‘Anything else I can do, ya basha?’ she asked as she set down the tray and poured the coffee.

  ‘No, Aziza, that will be fine.’

  The girl then managed to withdraw from the room backwards. Something she had picked up from the television no doubt. A documentary about ancient emperors and kings? Perhaps he ought to pay her something? So long as it didn’t go through her mother’s hands.

  ‘So Karima was born while Musab was in prison,’ Makana asked as he spooned sugar into his cup. He left Ragab to help himself.

  ‘That is correct. Nineteen eighty-four, during his first year inside.’

  ‘She was still a small child when he came out.’

  ‘That’s right. She was barely five years old.’

  ‘What happened when Musab came out of prison?’

  ‘It appears that Musab underwent something of a transformation while in prison. It happens all too often. Faced with brutality they begin to question their motives. In those dark places of the soul a lot of men find comfort in turning to religion.’

  It was a familiar story. Aside from the pressures on inmates to conform, there were plenty of advantages to joining one of the Islamist groups. The prisons were crowded with jihadists of every shape and shade, and many of the guards sympathised. With the right connections many of the hardships could be alleviated.

  ‘By the time he was released in nineteen eighty-nine he had become a member of the Islamic Jihad group.’ Ragab returned to his seat and reached for the tin sugar bowl. Perhaps he didn’t quite have the qualms his wife did about mixing with the common people. ‘Those were difficult times.’

  Makana needed no reminding of 1989. It was the year everything changed for him. A new regime came to power and suddenly his position as a police inspector in Khartoum was thrown into doubt. And it wasn’t only in Sudan. In Germany, the wall came down between east and west. In China, revolting students had seized Tiananmen Square. In Afghanistan, the final Soviet troops were being withdrawn.

  ‘The world was in turmoil. You know this from your own country. It was a time of great victory for Islam, and many went from here to join the Mujahideen.’

  ‘So Musab joined the holy struggle,’ said Makana.

  ‘He joined at the wrong time. The war in Afghanistan had been won. The Egyptians who had fought with the Mujahideen were returning home. Their victory there had led to some euphoria, the sense that the jihad was a global mission to revive Islam. Musab went abroad. Where he went I cannot say. I heard that he had been in your home country, Sudan, but also visited parts of the Soviet Union that were trying to break away: Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan. They were trying to ignite a jihad there, to carry on the fight after Afghanistan. He spent nearly five years away. When he returned he associated with the same group of Islamist radicals as before. They had declared war on the Egyptian state. To cut a long story short, his name emerged in a plot to assassinate the Minister of Justice. Musab claimed it was a set-up. His militant days were over, he said. I managed to pull a few strings. I knew the Danish ambassador personally. We played bridge with him and his wife. I convinced him that Musab was a worthy case for political asylum. It was the only solution.’

  ‘Why go to all that trouble for him? Surely he was no longer your problem?’

  ‘You are right, but I had become close to his wife and daughter. I suppose I was trying to protect them.’

  ‘By sending him away?’

  ‘Nagat had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him. She had started her own business by then and was doing all right without him.’ Ragab set down his coffee cup slowly. ‘My first impression of the man has proved to be the most enduring. Dishonest and cowardly, a delinquent and petty thief. When he came out of prison he had taken on a . . . let us say, a more spiritual aspect. He grew a beard, wore traditional clothes, and spoke of piety and conviction, but underneath he was the same.’

  ‘Let me ask you a question.’ Makana paced across the room. ‘Am I right in thinking that you suspect Musab of having caused the death of his daughter?’

  ‘You are a perceptive man, Mr Makana.’ Ragab paused to gather his thoughts. ‘I have no proof. I have nothing, just my own instincts, but I am convinced that Musab was behind this.’

  ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but I understand that Musab has been abroad all these years.’

  ‘Sev
en years to be exact,’ Ragab confirmed with a nod.

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘Who knows? Through one of his old contacts, perhaps? Anything and everything is possible, but that is why I wish to hire your services.’

  ‘Even if he were able to effect something like this, to arrange a fire from abroad, what would his motive be?’

  ‘Jealousy.’

  ‘Jealousy?’

  ‘This is difficult for me to explain, but Musab got it into his head that I was Karima’s father.’

  ‘Where would he get an idea like that?’

  ‘Karima was born during Musab’s first year in prison, Nagat must have become pregnant just before he was arrested. He might not even have known. Musab was unbalanced, paranoid. It isn’t hard to imagine how such ideas entered his head. You touched on it yourself. These people don’t understand kindness. I tried to help his wife and therefore he suspected there was an ulterior motive.’ Ragab exhaled slowly. ‘I don’t think he ever quite believed my denials.’

  ‘Assuming you are right, why would Musab wait so long to take his revenge?’

  ‘Who can explain what goes on in the mind of someone like that?’

  Makana stepped out onto the stern deck where the sounds of the city filtered across the river. Ragab followed him out. The whirr of bats flitted through the darkness in the trees above them.

  ‘The Musab I knew was a vicious man and a coward. Everyone who knew him testified to that fact. The wife, Nagat, died some years ago of a kidney disease. All that was left was Karima.’

  ‘And you’re sure Musab couldn’t come back here himself?’

  ‘Oh, no, that is out of the question. The state would arrest him immediately and throw him back into prison where he belongs.’

  ‘What about contacts? Who does he still know?’

  ‘Oh, there are plenty of people who remember him. He has contacts in the underworld. Criminals, murderers. It wouldn’t be hard to find someone to do this. I can provide you with a list.’ Ragab straightened up. ‘All I am asking, Mr Makana, is that you bring me the evidence. Show me who did it and I will take care of the rest. I will make sure they get the justice they deserve.’