by John Elliott
‘Jesus! It’s mournful here,’ Emmet exclaimed. ‘With the rake-offs Alakhin got I sure would be somewhere else.’ He slowed as they bridged a tiny stream. Their destination lay around the bend.
Agnes had already pictured a venerable stone cottage with a kitchen garden at the back and nearby a field with hens and a goat and a dog roaming about somewhere. Instead, a cream-coloured, pebble-dash bungalow sat in a small clearing. Parked in front, on a tarmacked semicircle, stood a battered Second World War jeep. Emmet stopped beside it.
Agnes climbed out the car and went up the four steps to the front door. Her finger was poised to press the bell, but before she could do so the door opened, revealing the figure of a tall, gaunt man. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot.
‘Chief Superintendent Alakhin?’ she enquired.
The man shook his head, keeping the door tight to his body, barring any sight of what lay within.
‘I’m Emily Brown. I have an appointment.’
‘Yes that is quite right. I’m Cameron Sinclair. The chief will be ready soon.’ He stepped back to let Agnes pass. The odour of peppermint on his breath failed to mask the pervasive smell of whisky on his clothes. ‘Perhaps your driver might like a sandwich and a coffee later. I could bring them out.’
‘Mr Briggs is a friend of mine. He’ll come in with me.’
‘As you wish, Miss Brown. Just as you wish.’ An ironic smile accompanied Sinclair’s mock politeness. ‘The chief and I are entirely at your service this morning, or what remains of it. Please come this way.’
Agnes and Emmet followed him through the hallway and down a passage where first he paused briefly to restore a walking stick to a more upright position in its stand and then to tap his knuckles against the glass of a barometer. ‘In here,’ he said, opening a door on his left.
The room was in total darkness. Sinclair moved across it and switched on two large table lamps. Heavy green curtains shrouded the window. The fierceness of the heating made Agnes gasp involuntarily. Sinclair smiled, ‘The chief is old, Miss Brown. He needs the warmth and he no longer cares for the distraction of the outside world. Please sit down. No, not there, that’s the chief’s. He will be with you in a moment.’
‘Veldar,’ Emmet said, blocking Sinclair’s way as he was about to leave. ‘You and I will have a chat about Veldar later.’
Sinclair brushed the brown suede panel of his cardigan with the back of his fingers as if he were dislodging a fly which had inadvertently dared to invade his personal space. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you are referring to, but really this is none of your business. No offence. Now, if you stand aside, I’ll fetch the chief. He’s had his nap. He took it early today. He doesn’t sleep much at night nowadays. You’ll find he is good about the past, Miss Brown. Very good, very sharp. The present, well, he endures it like all of us.’ His mild gaze returned to Emmet who, with a glare, let him pass.
‘What was that about? You know him?’ Agnes asked.
‘I heard about him. People like him take up too much space. It’d be better if it was freed up.’
‘I don’t think he’s important. You’re not going to get hung up on him are you?’
Emmet shook his head. ‘Only a few words for my satisfaction.’ He lowered himself beside her on the far end of the sofa. A clumping sound from the corridor, accompanied by Sinclair’s voice, averted any further discussion of the matter.
The gleaming top of a completely bald head appeared in the doorway, followed by an upraised fleshy face presiding over a corpulent body which inched forward laboriously on two crutches. Alakhin’s upper half was clothed in a voluminous striped red and black dashiki, his lower half in incongruous white duck trousers. His right eyelid drooped more than normal and, as the further consequence of a minor stroke, the corner of his mouth had taken a downward turn. Agnes rose to go over and help him to his chair.
‘Please stay, Miss Brown.’ He paused. ‘I’ll be with you in a twinkle, as Sinclair here would say. Though no doubt the picture of youth, and if I may say so such charming youth, helping crabbed old age would have greatly appealed to him. He takes a sentimental view. Perhaps you’d be so good as to bring us some refreshments, Cameron. A diversion or two. I can manage by myself from here.’
Half turns of his feet swivelling between his supports brought him across the floor to his chair into which, with Agnes looking on solicitously, he gradually lowered himself, resting his crutches beside him. ‘I see you have a daughter’s concern, Miss Brown,’ he continued. ‘I find that entirely fitting. Good day, Mr Briggs. My apologies for not greeting you immediately. I trust you are well and in good spirits. I know of you, of course. Your name was often mentioned to me in the past, but fate decreed we wouldn’t meet until today. Now, I see you still go about in the world while I, well, you can see for yourself.’ He broke off as Sinclair re-entered, carrying a wooden tray, which he laid on the low glass coffee table. It contained, to Agnes’s surprise, a plate with three indisputable joints and a box of outsize matches. ‘Now may God look kindly on our heedless pleasures and forgive me for the impropriety of mentioning his name,’ Alakhin murmured. ‘Leave us, Cameron. We can fend for ourselves from now on. Miss Brown, if you’d be so kind as to light one and pass it to me. Mr Briggs?’
‘Not for me.’
Agnes put one of the spliffs gently in her mouth, lit it and passed it over. She then lit one for herself.
‘What a treasure that man is,’ Alakhin said when Sinclair had gone. ‘How indefatigable. Once, under my command, he fled to pursue his own life, then four years ago he suddenly returned, determined to observe and note the last paltry scintilla of my impending demise.’ He took as deep a drag as his lungs would allow. ‘As you see, I’m truly blessed. A few grams of hashish. A shared silence with strangers. In the time I have left, time has lost its meaning for me, but my chronicler is at hand. He resides in the house.’
‘I need to ask you some questions,’ Agnes said. ‘It’s why I am here.’
‘Go ahead. You have my attention,’ Alakhin replied, ‘but please also ask yourself why you have come and why someone like Mr Briggs is with you.’
‘I’m not sure I follow you.’
‘Mysteries and crimes, Miss Brown. The public prefers the former; Mr Briggs, no doubt, the latter. Did you arrive in Greenlea and decide to pay me a visit, a man you had never heard of? No. Someone directed you to me. Someone whose motives may not be the same as yours.’
‘Chance Company directed me.’
‘A large organisation. A convenient umbrella, which might well shelter an individual or individuals pursuing their own agenda. But please forgive me. I don’t mean to interrogate you. Tell me why you have come and I’ll help you if I can.’
‘I’m looking for my father. Chance Company indicate he could be in Greenlea. I believe you may have information regarding his whereabouts.’ She stopped. Alakhin took another drag and waited. Carefully controlling her voice, Agnes went on, ‘His name is René Darshel. You may know him as Joe May or even Fernando Cheto Simon.’
‘The sins of the fathers, how troubling they are! I knew the man you speak of. Indeed, we were partners in an enterprise briefly many years ago. Sunrise Tea & Coffee. You may have seen their stalls. They provided me with a convenient cover of listening posts through which to glean and sift the gossip of the city, its comings and goings. Information is all, Miss Brown. Detection counts for very little. Your father had money to invest, but our alliance was temporary. He departed. I never saw him again.’
‘But you still receive information.’
Alakhin smiled. ‘Look around you. You’ve formed an impression of how I exist. I see practically no one. Sinclair attends to all my needs. Apart from you, nobody calls. My police days are in the past.’
‘But you heard what happened to him,’ Agnes persisted.
Alakhin smiled ‘We die, Miss Brown. It happens to all of us. Your father, like some others, used to try and resurrect himself in a new persona, but none of
us can cheat time.’
‘Are you saying he’s dead?’
‘I honestly don’t know, but I will tell you what is dangerous. It is the printed word. It’s a mistake to write your memoirs. Oh, I know I am as guilty as anyone. I was tempted by the money, insignificant as it was. Your father, on the other hand, I believe has a sneaking love for notoriety. He resembles the arsonist who can’t resist pretending he’s an innocent spectator, while all the time he’s inwardly proclaiming, “Can’t you see. It’s all my own work.”’
Agnes thought of the manuscript of the life of Fernando Cheto Simon. Did it go on to detail the crimes Alakhin hinted about? She took two quick puffs then laid her joint back on the plate. Beside her, Emmet seemed closed within himself, showing no interest in their conversation. ‘What was he like? Was he your friend?’
‘No. I won’t lie to you. He was not my friend.’ Alakhin breathed out smoke. He reflected for a moment and then said, ‘Once, when I was sixteen or seventeen, I did have a friend. His name was Taji Mohammed. We went to night school together where we studied Mechanics.
‘It was our custom to while away many a late afternoon and early evening down by the port. We’d leave our bicycles at the foot of the outer mole, climb up and walk along its slender curve to the beacon at the end. There, outward bound ships passed close enough for us to see clearly the men on board, and we felt that one day we, ourselves, would be on that deck, looking back, as they did, at two figures standing by the light.
‘At that time, my family expected me to become an engineer, a designer of press tools. You smile, but really it was my own idea, which my father encouraged. You see, in those days, sailors used to leave their magazines in the barber shop where he worked. The ones he thought suitable he brought home. So, whilst he learned to distinguish the latest Pontiac from the latest Chevrolet or Plymouth, I returned again and again to devour the contents of two—they were battered with several pages missing—copies of Mechanics Illustrated. My interest delighted him, for he wanted me to better myself and avoid following in his own haphazard footprints.
‘Taji, though, came from quite a different background. His father had died when he was only three. His mother, in the circumstances, had gone back to her family home. When I met him, his uncles were well-to-do. They ran a furniture-making business, which had become increasingly profitable in the recent past, and they lived in two large houses in town, as well as sharing a villa at Majoul.
‘Since Taji had always obstinately refused to learn cabinet-making or to have anything to do with the business, they had given him an ultimatum—study for a profession or get a diploma in something practical. As their previous loving indulgence now seemed at an end, Taji had listed the disciplines which required the shortest times to complete and, closing his eyes, had let the point of the pencil he was holding come to rest against Mechanics and Dynamics. Thus our meeting was decreed.
‘His real love, however, was music, and as we chatted, looking over the confines of the harbour, about the girls we met or the women we had seen and desired, he would sing the faltering, broken lines of a ghazal or tap out on the stone parapet the pulse of a lament for long lost Al Andalus.
‘One night, when we were filing out of class, he took me to one side and said, “Let’s not come tomorrow. Put on your European suit, you’ve got one haven’t you, and meet me outside the Ciné Raspail at eight.”
‘His invitation, as luck would have it, ensnared me in a string of subterfuges before I was able to leave our apartment the following evening without my mother seeing my unaccustomed mode of dress. All my precautions at concealment, however, proved in vain because no sooner had I reached the alley below than a swarm of neighbourhood kids surrounded me, plucking at my sleeves and jeering, “Ouan beau!” Their taunts and cries drew every curious eye to door and window, no doubt including hers, making any further explanation I had to offer doubly ridiculous.
‘The evening was fine, I remember. As I walked, the walls of the town turned to ochre in the last rays of the sun. Pink surrendered to violet in the onrush of dusk to night. On the boulevards, the raw smells of gasoline and horse manure mingled with the scent of lemon trees. Starlings chattered incessantly above the revving engines and braking squeals of the traffic, and to my surprise and delight, on rounding the corner of Rue de la Grande Armée, an oriole flew off from a pile of abandoned packing cases. A light breeze fluttered the line of tickets in a lottery seller’s outstretched hand as he paraded up and down in front of the Café Picpul, where French women held onto their hats when a sudden gust of wind ruffled and stretched the green and gold awning above the terrasse. Glancing down, I could see that my finely polished shoes of a quarter of an hour ago and my trouser bottoms were covered in fine dust. I stopped at the nearest bench and flicked off what I could with the edge of my handkerchief, feeling every eye was following my slightest move.
‘Taji was already waiting when I got to the Ciné Raspail. He was dressed in a Prince Edward check suit with a fawn gabardine, which I found incongruous, draped over his arm. We embraced and, not for the first time, he kissed me full on the lips. He outlined his plan as we sat and ate an ice cream in Zaforiano’s. Tomorrow was his eighteenth birthday. His uncles had already given him money, and, by the shape he made between his fingers and thumb, it was a sizeable amount. He proposed, therefore, that we celebrate the occasion by going to a brothel patronised by the French—not the very grandest, that would have been foolish and provocative—but a chic one which catered for lesser functionaries and, as he put it laughingly, “Le doux papa de la table soigné.” Needless to say, he would pay for everything.
‘His idea intrigued me. I confess I felt a stirring in my genitals as he spoke, but the risks were high and the dangers of a beating or police arrest strong possibilities. Not even money can open certain doors.
‘“Let’s go where the sailors go,” I counselled, but Taji was adamant.
“Aren’t we at home?” he said. “Isn’t this our city?”’
Emmet raised himself from the sofa. ‘I’m going to have a word with Sinclair. Don’t worry,’ he said, noting Agnes’s concerned look. ‘I’ll behave. Be back in a mo.’
‘I could see how determined he was not to do anything for his own good,’ Alakhin continued when the door closed. ‘A light shone in his eyes and I realised he must have smoked some kif before our assignation. “Where will we find this brothel of yours?” I asked him, for although, like everyone else, I knew where the houses of grand luxe et volupté, frequented by court and government circles, I was ignorant of those discreet places visited only by foreigners.
‘“Don’t concern yourself,” Taji said. “I already know of one.”
‘He then explained how he had followed certain men, whom he had singled out as likely clients over the last few weeks. One of them had turned out to possess a regular four o’clock habit between his sojourn at the café and his return to his agency. The brothel was on the second-floor right of an apartment building three streets away.
‘“Didn’t he spot you tailing him or hanging about?” I asked.
‘Taji smiled and shook his head. “They look at us briefly,” he said, “but they don’t see us. One Arab face or another is of no importance.”
‘We left Zaforiano’s. On the way, I tried to tell him about the oriole, but he wasn’t interested. Out of curiosity, I asked him why he had brought a raincoat when the weather was set fair. “It’s best to leave something” was his cryptic remark. I learned his reasoning was it would give them something to do when they opened the door. “Like a kind of cloakroom, you mean,” I said. He nodded.
‘By now, we were facing a six-storey building in a quiet side street. Wrought-iron balustrades protected its crescent-shaped balconies. A Défense d’Afficher inscription was painted in white at the height of a man’s head to the right of the entrance. The front door itself was decorated with more wrought iron twisted into thin interlacing tendrils. The glass behind looked heavy and opaque.
‘Our footsteps recommenced. Surely by now the whole place was at the ready. “Défense d’Entrer Arabes!” Taji began to sing loudly. If I remember rightly it was a little French love song then in vogue. “Tu me plaîs et je te plaîs, pourquoi pas balader ensemble?”
‘I understood then that he thought his music would open up the brothel door and that the proffering of his coat would keep it open, and I realised exactly why he was my friend and that his courage and gaiety would sustain and nurture me as long as we were together.
‘At that very moment, he turned to me and grinned. His finger hit the bell beside the supposed brothel door with one easy, confident jab. That’s how I keep seeing him, at the beginning of that youthful spree, savouring the joy of expectation before the door opened to him, just as he hoped a woman’s thighs would open for him and she would take his money like anyone else’s and listen, perhaps with some pleasure, to his song as she washed.’
Alakhin paused. He stretched out his left hand as if he expected it to come into contact with something.
‘What happened?’ Agnes enquired, not sure whether to be relieved or not that there were no raised voices to be heard elsewhere in the bungalow.
At the sound of her words, Alakhin returned from wherever he had been and fixed her with his rheumy eyes. He gestured that the joint, which had almost slipped from his right hand, needed relighting. Agnes struck a match and leant over.
