Carradine stared at the pitted olive at the bottom of the glass. None of it made sense. The vodka had blunted, not sharpened his wits. He had been active as a support agent for less than twenty-four hours and already felt lost in the wilderness of mirrors.
He settled the bill and walked outside. There was a taxi idling in front of the hotel. Carradine climbed in and asked to be taken to the Corniche. He offered a cigarette to the driver who placed it, unlit, in a recess behind the gearstick. Sated by alcohol, Carradine sat in the back seat texting his father, trying to forget about his responsibilities to the Service and to set aside his doubts about Mantis and Ramón. He enjoyed the sepia light of the Moroccan evening and the movement of the taxi as it weaved from street to street. He wanted to convince himself that there was no deeper meaning to the information he had gleaned from the letter, no dark conspiracy playing out on the streets of Casablanca. But it was impossible. He knew, in the way that you know that a friendship is doomed or a love affair coming to an end, that something was not quite right. He was sure that he was being manipulated. He was certain that he had been sent to Morocco for a purpose that had not yet been made clear to him. The chances of finding Bartok were so remote that the words of warning contained in Mantis’s letter – ‘IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE THEY FIND YOU’ – seemed to Carradine as vague and yet as terrifying as lines from a work of fiction. So why had he been handed such a task?
The taxi stopped at a set of lights. An elderly beggar came to the window, pressing his face against the glass. The driver swore in Arabic as the beggar knocked on the window, imploring Carradine to give him money. He dug around in his trouser pocket for some loose change and was about to roll down the window and pass the money to the beggar when the taxi accelerated down the street.
Carradine turned to see that the man had fallen over.
‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Problème! Arrêtez!’
The driver ignored him, made a right-hand turn and headed north towards the sea. Through the back window, Carradine could see the beggar being helped to his feet.
‘He fell,’ he said in French, thinking of Redmond and his failure to act.
‘They all fall,’ the driver replied. Ils tombent tous.
‘Pull over!’
Again Carradine’s request was ignored. ‘I want to go back,’ he said, lamenting the fact that his French was not good enough to make himself properly understood. ‘Take me back to the old man.’
‘Non,’ the driver replied. He wanted his fare, he wanted to take the tourist to the Corniche. ‘You don’t go back, mister,’ he said, now speaking in English. ‘You can never go back.’
11
By the time Carradine had persuaded the driver to stop, it was too late. They had driven too far from the fallen man. As an expression of his annoyance, Carradine paid him off without a tip and covered the remaining mile on foot.
He found a restaurant on the Corniche where he continued to drink. On top of the two martinis, he bought a bottle of local white wine followed by successive vodka tonics at a bar across the street. Falling in with a group of businessmen from Dijon who knew a place nearby, Carradine found himself at a table in a packed nightclub on the oceanfront drinking Cuba libres until five in the morning. He eventually stumbled back to his hotel at dawn, his mind cleared of worry, his doubts put to rest.
He woke up at midday and ordered room service, necking two ibuprofen with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice followed by three black coffees courtesy of the Nespresso machine in his room. There was a spa on the third floor of the hotel. Carradine booked a hammam, sweating out the night’s toxins in a tiled steam room before falling asleep in an armchair to the sound of panpipes and birdsong. By four o’clock he was back in his room swallowing two more ibuprofen and repenting at leisure the oversized tequila shot he had downed at the edge of the dance floor, the entire packet of cigarettes he had somehow managed to smoke in less than seven hours of music and forgotten conversations. He was fairly sure that at a certain point in the small hours of the morning he had consumed an enormous number of grilled prawns.
Mantis texted just as Carradine was preparing to head out to Blaine’s. Yassine was running late but would meet him on the first floor of the restaurant as close to nine o’clock as he could manage. Annoyed to have to wait another hour, Carradine tried to grab a quick siesta but found it impossible to sleep. He was too tired to concentrate on the book he was reading so instead ordered a hair-of-the-dog martini at the bar, listening to a local jazz quartet murdering standards from the American songbook as he sat beneath an outsized reproduction poster of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. Just before half-past eight Carradine returned to his room, retrieved the French translation of his novel and took a cab to the restaurant.
It was after dark. Blaine’s was not clearly marked. Carradine walked for several minutes up and down Boulevard D’Anfa, eventually locating the entrance at the corner of a poorly lit street lined with shuttered apartments and dusty parked cars. A shaven-headed Moroccan was standing in the doorway wearing a black suit that fitted him like a cube. He looked Carradine up and down, nodding him inside without a word. Carradine climbed the staircase to the first floor. The martini had begun to work through him but he felt no relief from the solemn drudgery of his hangover, only a desire to eat a good dinner and to go back to bed.
He emerged into a well-lit, low-ceilinged lounge upholstered in whites and greys. There was an overpowering stench of fruit tobacco. A woman was moving between the tables singing Arabic love songs with the help of a cordless microphone and a pre-programmed synthesiser. The music was very loud. One section of the room was occupied almost exclusively by heavily made-up, well-dressed Moroccan women in their twenties and early thirties. They were seated alone or in groups of two or three at tables towards the back of the lounge. They stared at Carradine as he walked in. He assumed they were prostitutes and ducked the eye contact. Men sitting nearby in grey armchairs were eating dinner and smoking cigars.
A waiter was cutting up a lemon at the bar. Carradine asked in French if he could have a table for two. The waiter appeared not to understand, indicating that he should speak to an older man standing in the centre of the lounge. The man, who was wearing grey trousers and a white shirt badly in need of a washing machine, showed Carradine to a table on the street side of the lounge, close to a large television showing a football match between Real Madrid and a Spanish team Carradine did not recognise. The Arabic commentary on the game was inaudible above the noise of the music. A young Arab wearing a thawb was seated opposite, watching the match and smoking a hookah pipe. He did not acknowledge Carradine.
A waiter appeared carrying a long-handled frying pan lined with aluminium foil and filled with hot coals. He placed several of the coals on the foil cap of the pipe using a set of metal tongs. An attractive woman in a tight blouse and short black leather skirt was sitting at the table adjacent to Carradine’s, engrossed in her mobile phone. She looked up and smiled provocatively as he sat down. When he placed the novel on the table she made a point of tilting her head and looking at it, trying to read the title from the spine. In different circumstances Carradine might have spoken to her, but he turned away.
A short time later he received a text from Mantis explaining that Yassine did not expect to reach Blaine’s before ten o’clock. This time the delay suited him. He was famished and ordered a lamb tagine. It appeared within five minutes in a burned terracotta pot with a portion of chips piled over the meat. Carradine wondered if this was the traditional way in which tagine was served in Casablanca or if word had got through to the chef that he was British. In any case he ate it all, washed down with a beer, and was restored to something like his usual self. The manager cleared away the tagine and brought Carradine a plate of fruit – ‘on the houses’ – as well as a second beer. Carradine had line of sight to the top of the staircase and kept an eye out for Yassine while watching the game.
The match had just ended in a two-a
ll draw when a slim, moustachioed man appeared at the top of the stairs, furtively looking around the lounge. Several of the women seated near the bar gestured towards him in the hope of encouraging him to join them. But the man, who was bald and wearing spectacles, did not appear to be interested. Instead he turned and looked in the direction of the television. Carradine was the only white western male in the restaurant. The man picked him out immediately, raising a hand in silent acknowledgement as he approached the table.
‘I recognise you from the wedding in London.’
Carradine stood up and shook Yassine’s hand. He had to speak loudly against the cacophony of the music.
‘The wedding was in Scotland,’ he replied.
Mantis’s contact smiled nervously and sat down with his back to the room.
‘My name is Yassine,’ he said. ‘I am sorry to be late.’
His voice had a low, rough quality and his cheeks were pinched and sallow. Carradine assumed he was a heavy smoker.
‘It’s quite all right,’ he said. ‘Kit.’
Carradine poured Yassine a glass of water. The young Arab who had been smoking sheeshah had long since departed, but the woman wearing the black leather skirt was still at the next table. Carradine was aware that she was looking at Yassine out of the corner of her eye.
‘Why did we meet here?’ the Moroccan asked, opening a napkin on his lap.
Carradine was confused by the question. Perhaps Yassine was offended by the clamour of the music or the pervasive stench of tobacco.
‘I was told it was what you wanted,’ he said.
‘By who? London?’
‘Yes.’
The waiter who had earlier been carrying the pan of hot coals came to the table and spoke to Yassine in Arabic. Years earlier Carradine had been to Tanzania with the BBC and had sat in a safari hutch at sunset as impalas, zebras and giraffes gathered at a watering hole. The wild animals had seemed tense and jumpy, turning constantly to check for predators and bolting at the slightest noise or movement. He was reminded of this as he watched Yassine. He suspected that Mantis’s contact wasn’t merely a gopher for the Service, but a fully paid-up agent in a state of unremitting anxiety about being caught.
‘Have a drink,’ he said, in an effort to calm Yassine’s nerves. The Moroccan explained that he had already ordered tea from the waiter, but finished his glass of water in one continuous gulp. He then removed his jacket, placing it beside him on a grey armchair. He was wearing a striped green shirt with a heavily starched white collar. Carradine saw that his armpits were soaked in sweat.
‘I brought you the book,’ he said.
‘Good.’ Yassine withdrew a packet of cigarettes from his jacket. Carradine had borrowed a lighter from the manager and passed it across the table.
‘Here,’ he said. They made eye contact as the flame jumped.
‘Thank you.’
Yassine blew a column of smoke at the ceiling and inhaled loudly through his nose, flaring the nostrils and releasing the breath as though applying a yoga exercise to control his anxiety. The music in the lounge was playing at a slightly lower volume, instruments Carradine could not identify over a fast electronic beat. Yassine briefly turned around to look back into the lounge. As he did so, the woman at the next table tried to catch Carradine’s eye. He looked down and noticed that she had a second mobile phone poking out of the top of her clutch bag.
‘How is our mutual friend?’ Yassine asked, accepting a glass of mint tea. Carradine assumed that he was referring to Mantis.
‘He’s fine.’
‘And you live here now? In Casablanca? You are writing a book?’
‘No, no.’ Carradine wondered how much, or how little, Mantis had told him. ‘I’m just passing through. On my way to Marrakech.’
‘And you have always done this sort of work? You write the books for C.K. Carradine or this is just a cover and somebody else writes them for you?’
Carradine was amazed that anybody could imagine that such a career was possible and laughed as he replied: ‘I write them. That’s my normal day job. C.K. is just a pseudonym. My real name is Christopher Alfred Carradine. Everybody calls me “Kit”.’
‘I see.’
Yassine continued to smoke the cigarette and to study Carradine’s face with such intensity that he began to feel slightly uncomfortable.
‘Why don’t I give you the book?’ he suggested.
‘That would be a good idea.’
Carradine passed the novel across the table. The Moroccan did not open it up or even look at the cover, but instead immediately lifted up his jacket and placed the book on the grey chair.
‘Is this all that you brought for me?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid so.’ Carradine wondered if he had failed to listen carefully enough to Mantis’s instructions. Was some of the money he had been given intended for Yassine and not for the mysterious Abdullah Aziz?
‘No, this is what I expected,’ Yassine replied.
The Moroccan ground out the cigarette and speared a slice of melon from the plate of fruit. Carradine saw the woman at the next table reach down for her second mobile phone, plucking it from the clutch bag.
‘What does our friend think about the political situation?’ Yassine asked.
‘What political situation?’
‘The death of this woman in England. The journalist. The one who hated Muslims?’
‘Oh. Lisa Redmond.’ The name was like an echo chasing Carradine from city to city. ‘I only found out about it yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to speak to London.’
The ease with which Carradine had begun to use the term ‘London’ spoke both to his desire to appear professional and to adapt to the language of the clandestine world. He felt self-conscious doing so, almost to the point of absurdity, but it was also oddly exhilarating to be speaking in real life words that his characters had spoken merely in fiction.
‘It is the first murder of this kind in London by Resurrection. I am right?’
‘That’s right. Up to now we’ve just had beatings, arson attacks, assaults in restaurants and at public meetings. That kind of thing.’
‘And what are you doing about it?’
‘Excuse me?’ Carradine could not prevent himself from laughing. ‘What am I doing about it? I’m just a writer, Yassine. Writers don’t live in the real world.’
‘And yet you are here.’
‘And yet I am here.’
They were silent. Carradine had begun to believe that he was sitting in front of a much sharper, more reflective man than he had first imagined. He tried to change the subject.
‘What do you do for a living?’ The woman at the next table was speaking quietly on her phone. Yassine skewered a chunk of banana and waved the fork in front of his face before answering.
‘I do not want to talk about that,’ he said. ‘Let us not leave this conversation. I am interested to know about Resurrection. What you think will happen. Where you think all of this ends.’
Carradine realised that he was being asked to speak on behalf of the Service. Mantis’s man wanted to know the party line in London, the thinking in Downing Street and Vauxhall Cross. Carradine was happy to run with the conceit.
‘We’re all biding our time,’ he said. ‘We’re all living day-to-day not knowing what the future will bring.’ Yassine appeared to find this answer vague and insubstantial. Carradine endeavoured to be more specific. ‘I’m about to turn thirty-six. My country has been in a permanent state of conflict for almost forty years. From the Falklands to Syria, Great Britain has always been at war. But it’s never affected us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that we were able to go about our daily lives without thinking about the battles British soldiers were fighting on our behalf, without being concerned that our own lives might be at risk. We were oblivious to what was going on. In the last few years, all that has changed.’
‘In what way, please?’
‘The war h
as come to the streets.’
‘This sounds very dramatic. I suppose that I am talking to a writer, so I should expect this.’
Carradine was beginning to like Yassine. Two women, both in figure-hugging dresses and high heels, walked up the stairs, checked their reflections in a mirror beside the bar and made their way to a table on the far side of the lounge. One of them was very beautiful, with long, dark hair, causing Carradine momentarily to think that he had sighted Lara Bartok. But it was just his mind playing tricks. She was too dark, her features too angular.
‘It’s not meant to sound dramatic,’ he said, looking back at Yassine. ‘If you walk down the street in London or Manchester, at any moment you know that a bomb could go off, that some maniac in a van could come ploughing through a crowd and mow down fifty innocent civilians.’ Carradine had seen huge concrete barriers, close to his hotel, protecting a wide pedestrianised boulevard in Casablanca for just that purpose. ‘That was never the case before. We had the IRA, sure. The Spanish lived with ETA. But the existential threat was completely different.’
Yassine removed his glasses and ran a hand across the pointed dome of his head.
‘This word, please. I do not understand …’
Carradine explained what he had meant by ‘existential’ and realised that he was talking too fast and in too much detail. He felt a sudden headache flare at a point deep inside his brain and reached for the strip of ibuprofen he had been carrying around in his jacket.
The Man Between Page 8
