The Ghost Runner

by Parker Bilal

  Ahead of him the tall palm trees protruded high over the walls of the old Ottoman house like sentinels. Trees threshed high above. Makana watched the shadow slip into the next street. When he reached the corner she had disappeared. It was also fairly unlikely that she would have been able to cross the street or get away by some other route. He reached the next corner. Nothing. Retracing his steps, Makana examined the rear door of the big house. It was made of sheet metal, wide enough for a single person at a time. It was locked. He pressed it and got nothing in return. He stepped back to look up and down the street. It was impossible. Nobody could disappear into thin air. She had to have gone through this door. There was no other option. Turning back to the metal door he examined it again, this time more carefully. There was an old-fashioned keyhole for which either the woman had a key or some way of making it open. Makana began to probe around the sides of the door until his fingers encountered a loop of wire. It was set on the inside of the door and you needed slim fingers to reach that far. Makana could barely reach it but eventually he managed to hook the tip of his middle finger over it and push outwards until he was rewarded with a click. The door swung open before him.

  The garden was extensive, overgrown in places, bare and ragged in others. An old Mercedes resting on its wheel rims added to the sense of abandonment. The whole setting seemed to have been forgotten for decades. Makana approached the house. The veranda steps and the balustrade were made of wood in some kind of elaborate style that he assumed was Turkish.

  A short, narrow flight of steps led upwards from the path to a veranda that ran along the back of the house. Beyond this an archway led through to a central courtyard. A gallery ran around the first floor above. He stood for a moment, listening for the sound of anything that moved, but heard nothing save for the hiss of the palm-tree blades sharpening themselves against one another. He moved carefully, going through the house opening doors quietly and closing them again. It was clear from a glance, from the cobwebs and the layer of undisturbed dust on the floor, that nobody had been through them. On the far side of the yard he found a kitchen with a window facing onto the rear garden. It had been stripped of everything including lights and stove. A fireplace in one corner had painted black streaks of soot up the wall. A stone counter ran along under the window. On top of this were signs of more recent habitation. A small primus stove half full of kerosene, ringed by spent matches like a scattering of petals. Also, a tin teapot, some tea, a bunch of withered mint. High up on one of the shelves he found several plastic bags, carefully closed and tied, the cupboard tightly wedged shut to put paid to any inquisitive mice. The bags contained bread, biscuits, a tin of processed cheese from Holland, some soft tomatoes, dates, a couple of gently rotting bananas and a red onion. Makana left the items as he had found them and closed the cupboard quietly. He walked out of the kitchen and along around the ground floor until he came to a bathroom. It must once have been grand. Lined with marble and big enough to park a bus in. A bath was sunk into the floor, deep enough to stand waist deep in and a huge brazier, presumably for creating steam. The walls were decorated with carvings of animals and forests, palm trees and elephants, remainders of a brief flare of decadence that had been quenched by time.

  He climbed the stairs, testing each one with his weight as he went, listening for signs of movement but hearing nothing. On the first floor he followed the gallery around trying each door he came to. The rooms were deserted with no sign of anyone having inhabited the place for years. At the rear of the house, however, the dusty, abandoned odour was replaced by a vaguely familiar scent that disturbed him even as it played tricks on his memory. Uneasily, he stepped inside a large room with a high ceiling and big wooden beams overhead. This would once have been the master bedroom. It had a raised dais on one side where presumably the bed would have stood. Now this area was littered with the personal objects of whoever was staying here. There were blankets and a few personal items. A nylon bag half filled with women’s clothes. There were candles and matches. Makana went through the bag finding a number of medical items in a side pocket. Disposable syringes. Swabs, bandages, surgical blades still sealed in their wrapping along with a startling array of drugs. Makana left all these things as he had found them.

  As he turned, Makana glimpsed a shadow crossing the doorway to the gallery. He ran out and reached the balustrade in time to look down and see the figure disappearing under the staircase below. Moving quickly, Makana took the stairs two at a time. At the back of his mind a warning note told him he was being reckless and in that instant he felt the wood crack beneath him. His foot went through the splintered stair, the sharp edges digging into his ankle painfully and for a moment he was trapped. When he finally tugged his foot free he hobbled down to the bottom. He plunged out onto the veranda and down the steps. The door to the street stood open and when he reached it he looked both ways but there was nobody to be seen.

  Makana limped back into the house and sank onto the veranda steps to examine his ankle. He sat there for a time smoking a cigarette while looking at the garden, thinking about the faint scent he had picked up inside the house. He tried to imagine the place in the old days, inhabited by pashas and Ottomans. Luqman’s old family. Glorious women and pompous men circulating through garden soirées where sumptuous feasts were served by lamps glowing on the backs of tortoises.

  Rubbing his ankle, Makana made to stand up. As he turned to walk down he noticed something. He moved along until he came to a gap in the railing. Using his flashlight he examined the spot where a post appeared to have been broken off roughly and removed. It probably hadn’t been too difficult because the wood was fairly old, but that was what made the break interesting. It was recent. He played the light over the wood of the next post in line to see what colour it was. Green. The same colour as the object that had killed Ayman.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Doctor Medina was in his clinic doing tests of some kind. He looked like a mad scientist in his lab coat and protective goggles, bowed over a counter cluttered with all manner of instruments, plastic hoses, old Bunsen burners and test tubes.

  ‘I thought you had been expelled from our fair community?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Makana. The doctor appeared to be sober, which made a change.

  ‘I could have guessed as much. And now you’ve come to haunt me.’

  ‘I caught a glimpse of our mysterious lady this evening.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Doctor Medina lifted his goggles and gestured towards the table in the middle of the room. Last time Makana had been down here a dead body had been stretched out on it. Now it was laden with what looked like the remains of a small feast.

  ‘I usually eat down here when I’m working,’ explained the doctor. ‘Help yourself. I’m glad you came back. I wanted to tell you about my discoveries.’

  Makana declined the offer of food but he took a seat while the doctor busied himself with a brass coffee pot.

  ‘What discoveries?’

  ‘About the Qadi. Remember I told you that I thought he had been drugged?’

  ‘Some kind of tranquilliser.’

  ‘That’s what we assumed.’ The doctor nodded as he lit the gas burner. The brass coffee pot rested on a rusted iron tripod. ‘The real question was how it was administered.’

  ‘I get the feeling you know the answer.’

  ‘I’ll come to that in a moment.’ The doctor couldn’t help but grin with delight. It took about ten years off his age. ‘Have you ever heard of Ketamine? It is often used for animals, but has the advantage of being odourless. It has no colour and it is tasteless.’

  ‘So it could have been put into a drink?’

  ‘Even more ingenious.’ Doctor Medina, still beaming, placed a bowl of what looked like roasted melon seeds on the table. ‘It is a national vice. We eat these things all the time. It’s the salt.’

  ‘You mean someone coated these seeds in Ketamine?’ Makana asked.

  ‘Mixed into the salt. Our killer is
smart. He, or she, studies the habits of their victims. I took those seeds from a packet in the Qadi’s pockets. Now, when it came to Ayman, the killer chose something different.’ The doctor bent to the refrigerator and produced a transparent plastic bag containing a tiny flake of some kind of brown substance, no bigger than a grain of rice. He set it on the table like a conjurer about to produce a flock of doves.

  ‘And this?’ Makana asked.

  ‘A piece of caramel. I found it in Ayman’s mouth. It was trapped between his upper molars. I analysed it and guess what?’

  ‘Ketamine?’

  ‘Even better.’ The doctor was having a field day. ‘Ever hear of Atropine? It’s a parasympatholytic. Popularly known as Belladonna. Cleopatra used drops of it to dilate her pupils and make her look more beautiful.’

  Makana searched through his pockets and located the wrapper he had found on the hill where Ayman was killed. He placed it on the table next to the scrap of caramel.

  ‘That would have been a small dosage, enough to make him woozy, even knock him out briefly. I found a puncture mark on Ayman’s neck. He was a big man, so my guess is that the killer injected him with more, just to make sure.’

  ‘How sure are you that the mutilation took place after death?’

  ‘It’s fairly simple.’ Doctor Medina looked offended. ‘You have lost faith in my skills?’

  ‘I need to know if it’s possible they were tortured before death.’

  ‘How would that change things?’

  ‘It might provide us with a motive.’

  ‘I see.’ Doctor Medina regarded Makana for a time before shaking his head. ‘It’s not possible. They were sedated before the mutilation, and in this particular case he was actually dead. Atropine was a popular poison in ancient Rome. The Emperor Augustus was murdered by his wife. She injected it into figs.’

  ‘Does that mean it’s easy to come by?’

  ‘It occurs naturally. Atropa Belladonna is part of the Deadly Nightshade family. It’s related to tomatoes and aubergines.’

  ‘Our killer didn’t have to search for it.’ Makana described the supply of drugs he had found in the old house.

  ‘So we have our killer?’

  ‘I think we can assume they won’t be foolish enough to go back there now.’

  Doctor Medina held the coffee pot over the blue finger of the Bunsen burner and waited for it to boil.

  ‘Sergeant Hamama means to close down the case. I’ve already been told to prepare the bodies for collection. They will be buried tomorrow.’

  ‘No loose ends.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Makana studied the toxic blue colour of the filter on the Cleopatra he was holding and considered the wisdom of lighting it.

  ‘You’ve done a good job, Doctor, but if there is an investigating committee from Mersa Matruh they are going to ask questions.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Doctor Medina seemed puzzled.

  ‘They might want to check your credentials as a medical practitioner.’ Makana nodded at the coffee pot which was bubbling madly. ‘Maybe you ought to turn that off?’

  The doctor didn’t appear to have heard so Makana reached across for the gas valve and switched off the flame under the coffee pot.

  Doctor Medina remained staring at the bubbling brown liquid as it settled in the pot.

  ‘I made a mistake, once. A long time ago.’

  ‘Is that why you came here?’

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘I was a fairly idealistic young man. Who isn’t? When I first graduated I went to Palestine, to Gaza, and later to the camps in Lebanon to serve the refugees there. They had nothing. No medicines, no doctors or nurses. They were desperate and they greeted me as a hero. It was a good time, despite the hardship and the suffering. It felt good.’ His voice trailed off. ‘I thought I would change the world. Instead it changed me.’ His mouth glistened with spit and he wiped it with the back of his hand. ‘I need a drink.’ He turned to the small refrigerator tucked underneath his workbench. Producing a rounded chemical flask and a dirty glass from the sink he gulped greedily. ‘How did that happen? Where did doing good turn into something bad?’ He stared through Makana, as if he wasn’t sure he was really there, as though he were addressing a ghost. ‘I came home. I tried to help young women. Do you know how many illegal terminations there are every year in this country? It’s horrible. Most of them are carried out in grubby backstreets by old hags with no formal medical training. The same women who perform the circumcisions. We are hypocrites. We like to pretend we are above all that, that we are good observant Muslims.’

  ‘You tried to change that?’

  ‘Women were dying of septicaemia, bleeding to death on filthy kitchen floors. I helped where I could.’ Doctor Medina paused, staring into space. ‘Until one day I made a mistake. A simple error that comes from working two jobs, sleeping only when I could no longer keep my eyes open. I was so tired I couldn’t see straight. I’m not making excuses for myself, you understand? I’m just telling you how it happened.’

  ‘You lost a patient?’

  ‘A young girl whose family lived in misery. She worked as a maid in the home of a nice, respectable judge who was in the habit of abusing her on a regular basis. She couldn’t afford the scandal, nor the child. Her whole family depended on her income. There were complications. By the time they called me I was too tired to go all the way back across town to see her. It was a momentary decision. I had to sleep. I told them to give her some pain killers and if the fever got worse they should call a doctor. But they were afraid of taking her to a doctor, afraid of the consequences, and so they did nothing and the girl died. She was nineteen.’

  ‘But you don’t know for certain that you killed her.’

  ‘I should have gone!’ Doctor Medina thumped his fist on the table so hard it made his glass jump. ‘If I had gone I could have saved her life . . . and mine.’

  ‘Instead you ran away.’

  ‘I had no choice. Shortly after that I was denounced. I wasn’t surprised. I half expected it. Luckily someone warned me and I managed to get out. I had to flee overnight. I left my belongings behind. I left everything.’ Doctor Medina poured himself another drink. ‘I thought if I went far enough I could get away from myself. But there is nowhere that far in the world. You can’t do it. I tried, Allah knows I tried. But I didn’t make it. I wound up here and for a time everything was good. Nobody asked any questions. I did my work and gradually I built up people’s confidence in me. It’s not easy. It took time.’ The doctor’s eyes were haunted. ‘Then one day a young girl walked into my clinic.’

  ‘One of the Abubakr sisters?’

  ‘Safira. They both came actually. I mean, Nagat brought her. They were both very nervous. They didn’t want their father to find out.’ An absent smile played around Doctor Medina’s face as he recalled that first encounter. ‘I promised them their secret was safe with me. Doctor–patient confidentiality is sacred, I said. They liked that, and then they showed me what he had done.’

  ‘The girls’ father was abusing them?’

  ‘He had broken her arm. It wasn’t the first time. There was evidence of other breaks which had healed badly. Fingers. Toes.’ Doctor Medina paused to take a deep breath. ‘And in the process of examination I discovered she was pregnant.’

  ‘He was using them sexually?’

  Doctor Medina snorted. ‘It’s more common than you might think. People live isolated lives. This man’s wife had died years ago. I suppose there are a million ways to explain it. Nobody talks about it because of the shame.’

  ‘Was it only the younger daughter who was being abused?’

  ‘There were indications that another daughter had also been abused.’

  ‘Butheyna.’

  ‘She left early on and never came back. Nagat was tougher, in a way. Safira was more vulnerable. Do you think I could have one of those?’ The doctor pointed at Makana’s Cleopatras. Without waiting for an answer he reached ou
t. Makana lit it for him. ‘I could show you a thousand reports on the dangers of tobacco,’ Doctor Medina said as he exhaled, ‘but none of them address the question of how to substitute the comfort these bring.’

  ‘Go on with your story, Doctor.’

  ‘It’s the oldest story in the world. A sad old man falls in love with an innocent young girl. I don’t know when or how it happened, all I know is that it did. I did the termination and I set her arm. There was a certain amount of physiotherapy involved to help her recover mobility. In the course of those meetings naturally we talked. We had the most enchanting conversations, right here in this room.’ The doctor glanced around them at the lifeless space they sat in as if wondering how such a dismal place could ever be infused with magic. Makana wondered too how much of this was in the doctor’s head. ‘Such vitality, such imagination. We talked about everything. She wanted to know about the world. Circumstances. What opportunities are there for a girl like that in a place like this? People demand that you conform. It’s what is expected. As a woman your duty is to obey your father, then your husband and finally your sons.’