by Tom Holt
But it wasn’t me. I’ve been framed…
‘Run!’
Men appear in the distance, shouting and waving their arms. The boy looks round wildly. He stiffens, like a deer hearing a twig break.
I’ll get you for this, you scumbags. One of these days I’ll be back and I’ll bloody well get you…
The boy runs.
Fifteen hundred camels are a bloody nuisance. Fifteen hundred camels laden down with gold, silver, precious stones, lapis lazuli, freshwater pearls, works of art and limited edition collectors’ commemorative porcelain statuettes are about as much aggravation as it’s possible to get without standing in front of a registrar or minister of religion and saying, ‘I do.’
‘Yes,’ repeated Hakim for the fifteenth time, ‘but where are we actually going?’
Aziz, who’d been fending off this question with ‘It’s not far now’, ‘We’re on the right road’, ‘Shut your face’ and similar cunning evasions, finally broke down and admitted that he didn’t know.
‘You don’t know}’
‘That’s what I just said, isn’t it?’ Aziz snapped. ‘Weren’t you listening, or are the holes in the side of your head just for ventilation?’
A man of many faults, Hakim did at least have the virtue of persistence; except that in his case, it wasn’t a virtue. ‘You don’t know,’ he reiterated. ‘We load up all that gold and jewels and stuff and piss off into the desert and you don’t know where we’re going.’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’ A look of indescribable deviousness dragged itself across Hakim’s face, stopping in the foothills of his nose for a rest. It was probably just as well that Hakim had never played poker; his thoughts were so perfectly mirrored in his face that if he ever did sit down to a friendly game of five-card stud, he’d have lost all his money before the seal was broken on the deck. ‘So Akram doesn’t know either,’ he continued. ‘Where we’re going, I mean.’
“Spose not. Why?’
‘We’re heading off into the wilderness with all the dosh, and Akram doesn’t know where we are.’
‘I said, yes. Now if you’ve…’ Slow, or rather glacier-like, on the uptake he might be; but when the penny finally dropped in Aziz’s mind, it did so with quite devastating force. Reining in his mule, and doing his best to ignore the camel that was apparendy trying to lick the wax off his eardrum, Aziz sat for a moment in a surmise so wild it’d have made stout Cortes look like a six-countries-in-four-days American tourist.
‘Are you suggesting,’ he muttered in a low voice, ‘that we sort of, walk off with it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good idea.’
Even as he said the words, Aziz was aware that he was guilty of an understatement on a par with referring to the First World War as a bit of a scrap. For years, a lifetime, far longer than any of them could remember, they’d been amassing this truly awesome hoard of pure wealth; and in all that time, nothing had ever been said about divvying up, sharing out or spending. The thought had never even crossed Aziz’s mind before, for much the same reason that elderly people in wheelchairs don’t try and cross the M6.
‘Hang on, though,’ objected a thief. ‘What about when Akram finds out? He’ll skin us alive.’
Hakim smirked. ‘If he finds out,’ he replied. ‘And if he catches up with us. And if the thirty-nine of us are ready to hold still and let ourselves be skinned by the one of him. Think about it,’ he urged. ‘All that gold and stuff, it’s wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. And a one-thirty-ninth share of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice is -‘ He paused, wrestling with the mental arithmetic. ‘Wealth beyond the dreams of eating cheese last thing at night,’ he concluded triumphantly. ‘Or, put it another way, loads of treasure. Right, then; show of hands?’
Not, you might think, the most democratic way for a thieves’ co-operative to vote in a country governed according to Islamic law; nevertheless, unanimous is unanimous. Admittedly, several of the voters were persuaded to join in the general hand-raising by the feel of sharp metal in the small of their backs; but friendly persuasion is what democracy’s all about.
‘Right,’ said Hakim, ‘that’s settled, then. Soon as we reach the next oasis we’ll have a share-out and work out what we’re going to do about splitting up. That all right with everyone?’
‘Okay,’ murmured the Godfather, ‘what’s the plan?’
Scheherezade, shivering perhaps a trifle more than the slight desert breeze justified, nodded her head. ‘Piece of cake, really,’ she replied. ‘We wait till they come past. Then I give the signal, you all jump out and scrag the lot of’em. Then’
‘Jump outa what?’
That, as far as Scheherezade was concerned, was her cue. ‘I’ve already thought of that,’ she announced. ‘You see that big row of empty jars standing there beside the road?’
The Godfather nodded. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘I think I’m way ahead of you already. Rocco, Tony, you get the guys and go climb into those jars there. I’ll come and join you in a minute.’
The Godfather’s grey-suited companions, who had been expecting at least one nasty brush with bandits and the like, let go a sigh of relief. This, they felt, was rather more like it. By a curious chance, there were thirty-nine of them. By an even odder chance, Scheherezade had laid on a total of forty palm-oil jars.
‘Okay,’ observed the Godfather. ‘Where you gonna hide, then?’
‘Me?’ Scheherezade went through a pantomime of thinking about it. ‘How about behind the tea urn?’ she suggested.
‘What tea urn?’
By way of reply, Scheherezade pointed to a big old-fashioned hospital tea-trolley, on which was mounted an extra large capacity white enamel urn. Wisps of steam rose from the top of it. ‘That’s in case you boys get thirsty while you’re waiting for the caravan to show,’ she explained. ‘I think of everything, don’t I?’
‘Yeah. You done good.’ The Godfather stood up, took a deep breath and hoisted his substantial bulk into the fortieth jar, pulling the lid across after himself. His wife smiled; a long, detailed, intricate smirk that told its own story. Or stories.
Having satisfied herself that her husband and all his henchmen were in their jars and waiting patiently, she turned up the thermostat on the urn’s electric element as far as it would go, until the water came to the boil. As the steam hissed furiously through the vents, she stopped to wonder what the exhilarating buzz she was feeling might be, and realised with joy that it was the Story, surging and expanding inside her brain, as vigorous, powerful and dangerous as the steam itself. Old stories burble and zizz like sleepy bees, lazy in the heat of the summer sun, until something wakes them up and stirs them into angry energy; at which point, woe betide anybody who tries to restrain them in a confined space. That’s Brownian motion, folks; the more you heat the particles, the faster they move and the harder they collide with each other.
She leaned forward and rapped with her knuckles on the side of her husband’s jar.
‘Hey, you,’ she said.
‘You talking to me?’
‘You bet I’m talking to you. You got three wishes,’ she said. ‘And one second to wish them in.’
‘What you talking about, you dumb?’ With a quick twist of the wrist, Scheherezade turned the spigot.
Cue past life.
A young boy stands up in the middle of a ring of his peers
Hey!’What’s going on here? You dumb bitch, you’re spilling…
In his right hand he’s holding a bloodstained stone. ‘Akram,’ says a boy to his left. ‘You again. Didn’t you just leave?’
That crazy goddamn bitch - Ah, shit.
‘Yes,’ says the boy, ‘I killed him. He didn’t show no respect. You gotta have respect, or else what you got?’
Hey! I got three wishes. I wish
Men appear in the distance, shouting and waving their arms. The boy looks round wildly. He stiffens, like a deer…
I wish I was outa this goddamn fuckin
’ jar!
‘Run!’
The boy turns, shrugs. ‘Which way?’ he asks.
His friends look at him oddly. ‘I think you went thattaway,’ they say. ‘If you get a move on, you might just catch yourself up.’
After she’d dealt with the fortieth jar, there was about half a pint of boiling water left. She used it to make herself a cup of instant coffee.
A few minutes later, a long procession of camels appeared on the horizon; about fifteen hundred of them, all loaded down with heavy burdens. Scheherezade stood up, brushed herself off, walked to the side of the road and stood there with her thumb raised.
‘Hi, boys,’ she called out. ‘Going my way?’
The leader of the caravan hesitated. On the one hand, he wasn’t sure that picking up hitch-hikers was appropriate for a gang of thieves on the run. On the other hand - Scheherezade adjusted her veil and hitched the hem of her skirt up another half inch, nearly causing Aziz to fall off his camel.
‘Who’re you?’ he asked.
‘Me?’ Scheherezade’s eyes twinkled perilously through her veil. ‘I’m your fairy godmother. Now then, you’re not going to stay on that mule and let a lady walk, are you?’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
‘There you are,’ said the receptionist. ‘I was beginning to wonder where you’d got to.’
Ali Baba, sprawled on the ground with his head in his own waste-paper basket, looked up and grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Got a bit held up. Many waiting?’
The receptionist nodded. ‘I managed to reschedule most of your appointments, but there’s quite a few that insist on coming in every day on the offchance you might be back. Quite flattering, really, if you think about it.’
Ali Baba got to his feet, removed various bent paper-clips and knobs of dried chewing-gum from his hair, and glanced down as the fax machine printed out the inevitable confirmation slip. Instead of the usual details (sender, time etc) it read:
TRY THAT AGAIN AND I’LL ELECTROCUTE YOU
‘Any messages?’ he asked.
‘On your desk. Oh, and a woman came in to see you. Personal matter, she said.’
Ali Baba described Michelle.
‘No,’ the receptionist replied.
‘Isn’t that Miss Partridge?’
‘Oh, I forgot, she’s a patient.’
He shrugged. ‘I take it she didn’t leave a name.’
‘Not a proper name,’ the receptionist replied. ‘Just said she was Yasmin, and you didn’t give her the slip that easily. Strange girl. Funny clothes, like a lot of net curtains and brass teapot lids.’
‘Oh. Her.’
Sloe-eyed Yasmin, she of the tiny waist and serrated tongue. He had hoped, really and truly fervently hoped, that he’d at least managed to give her the slip; apparently not so.
‘Sharon.’
‘Mmm?’
‘What’s a sloe look like?’
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Barbour?’
‘Sloe. You make gin out of them, I think.’
‘Oh, sloes.’ The receptionist considered for a moment; you could almost hear the filing-cabinet drawers of her mind swishing frictionless on their nylon bearings. ‘Aren’t they the small black things like cocktail olives? Sort of like undersized black grapes, I think. Why do you ask?’
‘Oh, no reason. Look, I’ve just got to slip out for five minutes ’
‘But you’ve just…’
‘ So do what you can to rearrange the appointments and I’ll be back ’
‘Mr Barbour? ‘
‘ Eventually.’
He typed a number into the fax machine, so fast that Sharon couldn’t see what it was. She heard the ululating squeak of faxes shaking hands; then Mr Barbour stuck his hand into the paper feed, someone she couldn’t see said, ‘Scraping the bottom of the barrel what about Goldie Hawn?’ and he vanished. Then there was a brilliant white flash, a zap! and the smell of burning plastic.
‘Mr Barbour’
No reply. The machine chugged, beeped and fed out a slip saying:
I WARNED YOU
- and that was the last ever seen (so far) of Ali Baba this side of the Line.
Cue past life
He’d just got to the bit where he’d been leaning over the last jar, peering in to see if the bandit it contained was substantially dead, and his lovely assistant Yasmin the sloe-eyed houri had tiptoed up behind him and cracked his skull with a two-pound hammer when the memory sequence suddenly froze and he fell out of it into what he recognised as the courtyard of his own house in Baghdad; the place, in fact, where his past life had just cut out, except that there were no oil jars, no boiled thieves and no Yasmin. An improvement, he couldn’t help feeling.
‘Oh well,’ he said.
He rose, a little wobbly but largely intact. Somehow he’d contrived to burn his right hand, as if he’d touched a hot kettle. He wondered if he had anything to put on it.
‘There you are,’ said a girl’s voice behind him. He turned quickly, then relaxed.
‘Hello,’ he said.
‘Where have you been?’ his daughter upbraided him. ‘You’ve got a whole waiting room full of patients. Old Mrs Masood’s been here since before nine. You’re doing a root fill for her, remember.’
‘Am I?’ He thought about what Michelle had just said. ‘I am? Oh good. Tell her I’ll be right through, soon as I’ve found some Savlon ’
‘Some what?’
He frowned. ‘No Savlon? Pity. Never mind. I’ll just wash up and I’ll be there in a jiffy.’
Michelle shrugged and trotted back into the house. A little while later, he followed her. In the bathroom, or what served as a bathroom (he was going to have to get out of the habit of thinking in Realside terms) he scrubbed his hands and took a look in the mirror.
Snow White, it said.
‘Correct,’ he replied. Then he took it off the wall, smashed it, and disposed of the pieces tidily. What with one thing and another, he’d had enough junk faxes to last him a lifetime.
Ah well, he reflected as he dried his sore hand, it’s nice to be back. So, quite possibly, he was still on the run. One of these days, for all he knew, a patient sitting in his chair would turn out to be Yasmin or John Fingers, and then it’d be time for another quick exit, yet one more fresh start in a strange new environment. It made him glad he’d taken the trouble to learn a trade that’d guarantee him a living wherever he went. Me and Doc Holliday, he said to himself; two dentists floating uncomfortably on the ebb tide of adventure. But, until the Story wound itself back to the beginning again, he had work to do, cavities to fill; a sort of purpose. A hero’s gotta have a purpose, boy; it goes with the territory.
‘Dad,’ Michelle called, ‘are you ready yet?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ he replied. Then he finished drying his hands and went to work.
Cue past life.
Michelle landed awkwardly, narrowly avoiding banging her head on the huge flowerpot that someone had left lying about on the kitchen floor. When she looked in it, she found it was full of damp, dead burglar.
‘Yuk,’ she said.
The answering machine/fax chuntered at her and fed out the confirmation slip. It read:
AND STAY OUT
‘A pleasure,’ she replied. ‘Well, guys, I’m back.’
No reply. She clicked her tongue. So her kitchen wasn’t talking to her; offended, probably. It’d get over it. She glanced down at her hand; there was the ring on her finger, where it should be. It was, after all, her ring, given to her by Aunt Fatty on her deathbed.
She counted up to ten, and then smiled.
‘Guys?’ she said.
Still no reply. This puzzled her; earlier, she’d got the impression that her household goods were chattier than Parliament on a bad day. If they had sent her to Coventry, they wouldn’t have expected her to stay there long enough to do more than have a stroll down the main street and a quick dash through the shopping centre.
‘H
ello? Is anybody there?’
Nothing. Not a vibe, good, bad or indifferent. The place was
‘Talk to me. Please.’
Dead, deceased, in there with Queen Anne and John Cleese’s parrot in the short-list for the prestigious Worthington Lifelessness Awards. When she opened the fridge door, a light came on to show that it wasn’t just a power cut. She sat down on the edge of the table and burst into tears.
The ring…
Maybe it was the ring that had conked out. As quickly as she could, she hurried out onto the landing and prodded the call button for the lift.
‘Allrightallrightl’mcomingasfastaslcan,’ the lift muttered. ‘Somepeoplenopatienceupanddownalldayexpectlheythinkldo thisforthegoodofmyhealth.’
Michelle winced. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘wrong number.’ She returned to her flat and closed the door before the tears returned.
This is silly, she told herself, two sodden hankies and a large sheet of kitchen towel later. I’m sobbing my heart out because my blender won’t talk to me any more. But that’s crazy, because it means this whole stupid adventure is finally over, and I’m home.
Home.
Yes, well. Many years ago, she’d met a man who’d been captured by the Japanese during the last war. He’d survived Changi Gaol and the forced labour camps of the Burma railway, escaped, and tracked his way back through jungle, mountain and desert, until eventually he walked down a gangplank at Liverpool with his kitbag over his shoulder, took a train to London, and went home. But when he got there, he found that his house, his street, the entire neighbourhood had completely vanished, turned into a wilderness of bricks and rubble by a flying bomb in one of the last V2 raids of the war. And that, he had said, was what really got to him. He’d made the mistake, he later realised, of believing in the existence of happiness ever after, when he should have known that happy endings, like free lunches and rocking-horse shit, are not in fact as common as the fairytales would have you believe.
She stood up and looked around. Perfectly ordinary flat. Welcome to Reality; where there is only one ending, a dull and inescapable appointment with eternity, never happy by definition. Until then, the story goes on, plotless and meandering, where Hope is a man who offers you sweets if you’ll get into his car. Wonderful. It’s great to be back.
