‘Vous allez regretter cette parole.’ You will regret that word.
A moment later the same uniformed officer who’d arrived with the inspector showed up to inform him that the hotel search was complete and nothing had been found.
‘Can we now go to Fouad’s?’ I demanded.
‘We first need to make an inventory of all the goods you are taking with you.’
This process took another half-hour. Every object I was moving into the new room that Picard found for me down the corridor had to be registered in a police log. After the journals, the papers and notes, the laptop computers, our respective clothes and toiletries had been documented, I was allowed to put the crucial items in a backpack. Picard called Mira back and told her that she should pack up all our clothes and move them with our suitcases to Room 212, and also deal with anything left in the bathroom or elsewhere. Again I sensed that she wanted to make contact with me. Again the presence of others thwarted her.
‘All right, we will now go to Chez Fouad,’ Moufad announced.
I hoisted the backpack onto my shoulders.
‘Surely you should leave that behind in your new room,’ Picard said.
‘And discover it all not here, but with the police when I return?’
‘I appreciate your confidence, madame.’
As we were leaving, Picard asked to speak to me for a moment.
‘I will have to charge you for the new room in which I am putting you until the police allow me to redecorate the one that you and your husband have destroyed.’
‘I had nothing to do with—’
‘I must inform you that, in addition to the five hundred dirhams per night for the new room, I estimate that, to replace the chest of drawers, repaint and repair everything in your old suite . . . it will be around eight thousand dirhams.’
8,000 dirhams was $900. Absurd. Especially as just two of the drawers were smashed, and the hand-painted chest itself remained undamaged. There were only three long blotches of blood on the wall, most of which would come off with soap and hot water. But I was too stressed to argue with this oily little man. So I said:
‘I will pay for the extra room tonight. We have paid the entire month for the suite in advance. Your lawyer can speak to my lawyer about the cost of the alleged damages.’
‘That is not satisfactory, madame.’
‘Nor is your attempt to gouge me for money at a time like this.’
I walked off down the stairs to the foyer, the hefty backpack strapped across my shoulders.
When I reached the front desk part of me wanted to make a break for it; to dash out into the dark alleys and byways of Essaouira and run to Fouad’s and find my husband sitting there, his head bandaged, nursing a glass of red wine, sketching mournfully, a sad smile crossing his face; me rushing into his arms, so relieved to find him alive, willing for the next few days to push aside the terrible things that had caused all this madness, and simply be happy that he was out of danger. Even though the other part of me seriously doubted I could stay in this marriage. And that gut feeling was overshadowed by the guilt I felt about springing the trap on him, which I’d known would send him into a downward spiral. That was the worst part of all this. Had I simply confronted him, face to face, with the urologist’s bill, at least we could have yelled at each other and worked out some sort of resolution, even if it meant the end of us as a couple. But instead I took the cruel option. Leaving those documents out, accompanied by my note suggesting he should die . . . that was vindictive. Like most attempts at revenge the blowback had now badly singed me.
A tap on the shoulder. The inspector was by my side.
‘OK, we can go now,’ he said.
‘If it turns out he isn’t there . . .’
‘Then he isn’t there.’
I checked my watch: nearly half-past nine. Hours since he fled the room, unseen by anyone. As we began to walk down the back lanes towards the souk my gaze was fixed on everyone who came towards us, who lurked in a doorway or was slumped against a wall. This must be how the parents of a missing child feel: the desperate horror of knowing that the centre of their lives has disappeared, and hoping against hope that he or she will suddenly stumble out in front of them, ending the nightmare from which there is no other release.
It took less than ten minutes to reach Chez Fouad. The six tables on the little veranda out front were all packed. Fouad was taking an order when he caught sight of me. From the way he tensed – and then tried quickly to mask his distress – I sensed that he must know something about Paul’s whereabouts. But when the inspector approached him – flashing his badge, giving him the suspicious once-over – Fouad played dumb.
‘Of course I know Monsieur Paul,’ he said. ‘One of my best customers. Always sits at the corner table over there. We have a collection of his drawings behind the bar.’
‘And the last time you saw him here?’ Moufad asked.
‘When he left at four o’clock.’
‘You’re certain he didn’t return?’ I asked.
‘Madame, it’s me who poses the questions,’ Moufad said.
‘And it’s my husband who’s missing. I also know Fouad, so . . .’
‘When Monsieur Paul said goodbye to me at four that was the last time I saw him today.’
‘Surely someone has seen him since then,’ I said.
‘I’ve been on duty here since three. Had Monsieur Paul shown up again I would have seen him.’
‘Could you ask any of the other waiters?’
‘I am the waiter, as you well know, madame. Had he been here I would tell you.’
As he said this I glanced down and saw him rubbing his right thumb manically against his forefinger. The inspector was glancing elsewhere. When he informed Fouad that he wanted to ‘look around the kitchen and any storage room’, Fouad said he had carte blanche to search wherever he wanted. As soon as Moufad had gone inside the café I turned to Fouad and said:
‘I know you know where Paul is. You need to tell me – is he all right?’
‘Can you come back later?’
‘Not easily. They have a cop positioned at the door of the hotel, under orders to follow me everywhere. They think I hurt Paul.’
‘Find a way of getting back here before midnight.’
‘Please, please, let me know if my husband is OK.’
But the inspector emerged from inside, asking Fouad to come with him.
‘Be back before midnight,’ Fouad whispered, then disappeared. I was momentarily free of my police escort, but knew if I vanished now it would just raise more suspicion. But how would I be able to get out of the hotel later and find my way here?
There was a moment when I thought I could dash off into the night now, hide somewhere for an hour, then creep back and learn the truth from Fouad. But as soon as I took a few steps away from the café, a uniformed police officer emerged from the shadows. Saluting me he said:
‘Madame, I have been instructed to ensure that you don’t leave this immediate area. So please return to your table and await the inspector.’
I had no choice but to do as ordered. When Moufad returned a few minutes later with Fouad he told me that he had searched the entire inside of the café, and there was no sign whatsoever of my husband’s presence.
‘I will now have you escorted back to the hotel. I will be sending my men to the bus station and the taxi rank to see if he tried to leave town. We have our contacts there, so if he did board a bus or arrange a car to take him elsewhere we will know.’
‘And if I want to go out again?’
‘Then one of my men will accompany you.’
The officer who’d stopped me from leaving the café took me back to Les Deux Chameaux. When I walked past the front desk Ahmed informed me that Mira had moved all our clothes and personal effects to the new room, and that Monsieur Picard was demanding 500 dirhams now before I would be allowed to go upstairs. I handed over the cash, telling Ahmed:
‘Please inform Monsieur Pic
ard that I consider him to be nothing less than un connard.’
I could see that Ahmed was both shocked by my choice of insult and struggling not to grin in agreement. He insisted on carrying the heavy backpack upstairs and I followed him to Room 212. It was tiny – a small cell with a narrow single bed, a sink, a view of the wall in a nearby alleyway, an elderly bathroom with peeling paint.
‘Couldn’t you find me something else?’
‘Monsieur Picard told me that you have to sleep here tonight. When the boss returns tomorrow—’
‘I will call him “un connard” to his face. Could you please ask Mira to bring me some mint tea.’
‘Très bien, madame.’
As soon as he closed the door, I sat down on the bed, threw open the backpack and dumped out its contents. I reached immediately for Paul’s journal. Its rear pocket revealed a shock: my husband’s passport. On one level this was a relief, as it indicated that he wasn’t planning to leave town or country. But like me, Paul went nowhere in Essaouira without this important piece of documentation. Why had he dashed off without it? Unless, in the anguish of discovering that I had learned his nasty little secret, he simply ran out, not knowing what to do next. Which increased my sense of guilt tenfold.
Then another discovery in the same pocket hit me like a donkey kick. A small three-by-five photograph of a young woman, no more than early twenties. Moroccan, yet with certain features that hinted she might be of mixed parentage. A rather beautiful young woman with a cascade of jet-black curls. Slim, perfect skin, lightly rouged lips, stylish: a tight black T-shirt and jeans that managed to highlight her long-leggedness. Moroccan-French I decided – and one who could easily be labelled a heartbreaker.
I stared at the photo in quiet shock for several moments. This deepened further when I turned it over and saw the following inscription:
From your Samira
Absence always makes the heart grow fonder.
With all my love
S xxx
She now had a name. Samira. A young woman – almost four decades his junior – who had sent a photograph of herself to my husband, expressing her love for him.
‘L’absence rend le coeur plus affectueux.’
Not just her love for Paul, but a statement that being apart from him was causing her to yearn.
Samira. La belle Samira. Whose handwriting was highly calligraphic – as if she’d used a special italics pen to write this declaration, signing it with a little heart next to her name. I tossed the photograph onto the bed, away from me, my head reeling.
I grabbed his journal. Page after page of his tortured penmanship. With Mira arriving any moment bringing tea I didn’t have time to decipher it. Instead I whisked through the entire journal, looking for some sort of indicator of where this Samira might be found.
A stroke of good luck. On a page creased in half, and partially decorated with sketches of . . . oh God, this was too hard to bear . . . her face . . . I opened the fold to read:
I have to find a way of getting Samira back in my life. Robin will freak – to put it mildly. But she has to know the truth sometime . . . though if she found out all the truth I would lose her for ever.
So there it was: the second secret he’d been harbouring for some time now. The other woman. How could I have been so naive? How did I not see this life in parallel that he was having? And how did he meet this Moroccan beauty . . . whom he was desperate to get back into his life?
The other woman. The stuff of cliché.
And a younger woman who lives at: 2350 rue Taha Hussein, Casablanca 4e.
No phone number. Damn. No email. I flipped open Paul’s computer. The strangest feeling hit me, of unease about violating his privacy; yet another part of me simultaneously castigated myself for even allowing guilt to enter the current equation. I didn’t know Paul’s password for his computer – and it was very much locked. I tried several combinations of possible passwords – I knew that our joint bank account was robinpaultogether. That was his suggestion. Simply typing it made me well up again.
A knock at the door had me scrambling to put everything away, ensuring that the photograph of Paul’s beloved was slipped back into the inside pocket of his journal. When I opened the door I found Mira there, holding a tray of mint tea, looking as though she wanted to be anywhere but here. I ushered her inside. As soon as I shut the door she asked where I would like the tea. I pointed to the chest of drawers.
‘You know something, don’t you?’ I asked.
She looked at me, wide-eyed, as if I had caught her in the act of theft, and shook her head several times. I saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.
‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ I said.
That’s when a shudder ran through her body. Reaching into the pocket of her djellaba she pulled out a $100 bill.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I should have never taken this . . .’
‘Did my husband give this to you?’ I asked.
More tears.
‘I told him I didn’t want it. But he pushed it into my hand. “This is what I make in two weeks,” I told him. He just shrugged and said it was a little thank-you if he could . . .’
She seemed on the verge of breaking down.
‘You didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘Yes, I did. Because I took his money in exchange for showing him a way out of here that avoided going by the front desk.’
‘Did he say why he wanted to sneak off without anyone knowing?’
‘Of course not. He just said that he needed to “vanish without a trace” – his exact words. He gave me all this money after asking me if I knew a hidden passage out of the hotel.’
‘And do you?’
Mira now looked even more perturbed by this question.
‘I should never have helped him.’
‘Did he say he was running off?’
‘All he said was: “Can you find a way for me to disappear without being seen by anyone? And can you keep a secret and not tell anyone that I left?”’
‘So why are you telling me now?’
‘Because you’re not anyone. You’re his wife. He’s done something bad, hasn’t he?’
‘Nothing criminal – just hurtful.’
‘I let him escape.’
‘All he was doing was running away from himself.’
Silence. I could see that thought lodging in her consciousness, and leading to more confusion.
‘Did my husband say where he was going?’
She shook her head, then added:
‘I insisted on bandaging his head before he left.’
‘What had he done to himself?’
Pointing to the bed – and asking my permission to sit down – she positioned herself on the edge of the thin mattress, grasping onto it as if it was keeping her afloat.
‘I heard a lot of noise before I came into the room. It sounded like he was throwing himself against the wall. Deliberately smashing his head. When I opened the door I saw him run towards the wall and take the entire blow against his head. The room was madness, as if it had been torn apart. When he collapsed on the ground and I started running out the door to get help, he shouted at me not to. Then he apologised for yelling, and asked if I could find a bandage for his head, again begging me not to mention this to Ahmed or anyone else. So I ran and found a bandage and some hot water. When I got back Monsieur Paul was sitting on the bed, looking as if he might pass out. I cleaned up the wound and wrapped his head in a bandage, as there was a lot of blood. I told him that he had a very large lump on his forehead – already blue-black in colour – and that he should really see a doctor, in case he had a concussion. They can be dangerous, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Yes, they can be dangerous. What happened next?’
‘He asked me if there was a way out of the building that would avoid the front desk.’
‘Did he say why he wanted to sneak out?’
‘No.’
‘I suppose he didn’t want a
nyone to see what he’d done to himself.’
‘I wouldn’t know. He seemed very . . . unstable. I was worried that, after injuring himself, it mightn’t be a good idea for him to go out. But he said he had to see a friend.’
‘Did he tell you the name of the friend?’
‘The man who runs the café. He asked me again if I knew a way out the back of the hotel. When I told him I didn’t want to get into any trouble he gave me this . . .’
She brought out the crumpled $100 bill.
‘I was shocked when he insisted on giving me so much. I told him I didn’t want his money and that Monsieur Picard would be furious if he discovered that I had helped him sneak away . . . especially with the state of the room. But he told me that Monsieur Picard would get money from you to pay for it – and the one hundred dollars was a gift to me for helping him out and not saying anything. But I really can’t keep it.’
She proffered the creased bill, making me wonder if Paul had a stash of American dollars he hadn’t told me about.
‘Of course you must keep the money. I will give you an additional three hundred dirhams if you show me the back way out of here.’
‘But the police . . . they will get very angry with me . . . maybe get me into trouble if they find out that I have helped you.’
‘They didn’t know you helped Paul. They won’t know that you helped me. Anyway, I will be back in an hour or so. What did he take with him?’
‘Take with him? Nothing. Once I had bandaged his head he stood up and said he could walk, and gave me the money. I asked him to wait in the room, then returned when I was certain it was safe for him to go.’
‘Where’s that secret way out of here? Will I be able to get back in by myself?’
‘Please, madame, if they catch me aiding you . . .’
‘I will take the blame.’ I reached into my pocket for the cash and thrust it upon her.
‘You and Monsieur are being too generous.’
No, what we are being is very American: thinking that money can buy our way out of everything. Mira looked at the cash. I could see her hesitating.
‘I will come back in twenty minutes,’ she said at last. ‘Ahmed will be on a break then. We won’t have much in the way of time, because he only gets fifteen minutes off. But as long as you are ready when I return . . .’
The Heat of Betrayal Page 11
