"What's really interesting is that the killer left no fingerprints on his blade . . ." There were, in fact, dozens of fingerprints on the blade, but all of them belonged to the coroner, his assistant or members of the police who'd processed the knife later, when it was being bagged for evidence.
"Why do you think that is?" Eduardo asked.
A boy shrugged.
"Because he wore gloves?" The man who spoke was tall and dark-faced, his hair grey with age. A heavy bruise ripened over one high cheek and his mouth was split. According to a report recently filed by Kashif Pasha's mubahith, Chef Edvard could be a difficult and sometimes violent man. So far there had been nothing to suggest that either of those statements was true.
"Gloves? Possibly," Eduardo admitted. "But then there are none of the victim's fingerprints on the blade either. Which is very odd, because Pascal was stabbed five times . . ." He paused and was disappointed to realize they didn't all immediately see the implication. "Have you ever been stabbed?"
Only Chef Edvard nodded.
"Show me your hands," Eduardo demanded.
There were faded slash marks across one palm and a long cicatrix that vanished beneath his sleeve. In return Eduardo showed the chef his own hands with their wounds from days Eduardo did his best not to remember.
"There were no defensive cuts on the hands of Pascal Boulart. His fingerprints were missing from both blade and handle. Do you know what this suggests to me?"
Ripping the knife from battered wood, Eduardo walked ten paces to the far end of the corridor and threw again. Another bull's-eye. Straight into the middle of the door, where it joined a hundred other cuts.
Behind him, where the corridor gave way to the kitchens, someone clapped, probably mockingly but maybe for real. That was Eduardo's tenth throw and the tenth time he'd put the knife in the door exactly where he wanted it.
A misspent childhood had its uses.
"You try." He pointed to the boy who'd been clapping. A thin youth with a rash on his chin hidden beneath what looked like blusher. "Come on . . ."
Reluctantly Idries stepped forward. Well aware that he had no choice.
The first thing Eduardo had done on entering the cellar was flash his shield. This was gold, maybe real gold, in a crocodile-skin case with a top that flipped up, like one of those little vidphones. It had been left for him at Police HQ, in his office, along with a matte black .45 paraOrdnance and a scribble pad of notes covered with Ashraf Bey's writing.
Eduardo hadn't even known he had an office until a fat man with sweat stains under his arms, a man who wouldn't meet his eye, silently offered him the key. Concerned with trying to make sense of His Excellency's terrible writing, it took Eduardo until the next morning to realize his scowling deputy with the striped shirts and perspiration problem was the old Chief.
In the end, unable to translate Ashraf Bey's notes into any language he understood, Eduardo stored them for safety in the top drawer of his new desk and turned to the files he'd asked Alexandre to bring him. Sometimes in life it was just easier to start over.
And he was right; the files were much more interesting.
"Find me the man with stripy shirts," Eduardo demanded. He had a box on his desk that let him talk to a serious-looking woman in the office outside without having to get up and open the door.
"You wanted me?"
Eduardo indicated a seat without looking up from his files. "You used to run this place?"
The man's nod was sullen. Although he added, "Yes, sir," when Eduardo raised his head from a folder.
"You can have it back once I'm done," Eduardo said. "I don't imagine I'll be staying. In fact"–he stared at the unhappy man–"assume you have total autonomy in everything except the Maison Hafsid case, but first find me . . ." Eduardo glanced down at a crime report. "Ahmed, cousin of Idries, who worked at the Maison Hafsid."
* * *
At first Chef Edvard felt sure Eduardo was there to shut down his restaurant. Given the disaster at Domus Aurea and the fact he'd put an Egyptian deserter on the staff list as Hassan, because that was the only way to get the man through security clearance, Chef Edvard could hardly have been surprised if this was true.
Mind you, if the mubahith had even suspected that second fact he'd already be dead. Chef Edvard's position, held to under questioning, was that he'd assumed the thin-faced blond waiter was just another undercover police officer providing protection.
Neither he nor his staff had ever seen the man before.
"Throw it," Eduardo told the boy.
"What about prints?" Idries glanced back at the others, looking for support. At least that's what Eduardo assumed he was looking for.
"I don't want to trick you," Eduardo said. "I just want to see you throw the knife." Pulling a pair of cheap evidence gloves from his suit pocket, he tossed them across. "Wear these."
The boy threw as expertly as Eduardo had expected. Without even bothering to heft the knife to find its balance.
"Now you," he told a girl hovering silently near the back.
She struggled with the gloves, finally throwing with the latex fingers only half over her own so they flopped like a coxcomb. The knife bounced off the door.
"Try again," said Eduardo as he handed Isabeau the knife and a clean tissue, something Rose insisted he carry. "Get rid of the gloves," he said, "then wipe down blade and handle when you've finished. I don't mind."
She stared at him.
"Throw," said Eduardo.
Without the gloves to hamper her, Isabeau put the blade straight into the door.
"I don't understand," Chef Edvard said into the silence that followed the thud of the blade. "Are you saying Ahmed flung this knife at my pastry cook? That was how Pascal was killed?"
"Of course not," said Eduardo. His tone of voice made it clear he'd never heard anything quite so ridiculous. "Wipe the blade," Eduardo told the girl, "and give it to someone else."
They all threw after that. Taking the handkerchief and carefully wiping clean the knife before passing it to the next person. Even Chef Edvard, his throw little more than a dismissive flick of the wrist that buried the blade in the door at throat height.
"Right," said Eduardo. "Only two more questions and we're done." Plucking the blade from the door one final time, he wiped it on his own shirt and dropped it back into its evidence bag. The stain on its steel blade was rust not blood and its edge was blunt. The only thing this knife had ever been good for was throwing at a door.
"Where's the fat boy?"
Eduardo had read the files, seen the photographs and memorized the names. But just to be safe he'd had the serious-faced assistant at his office type out a list of everyone working at Maison Hafsid and then he'd read them off at the beginning, like doing a roll call at school. He knew who was missing. Ahmed, obviously. Also Hassan.
"Gone," Chef Edvard said flatly.
"Where?" Eduardo demanded.
"We don't know. He just didn't show up today. And he missed his shift at Café Antonio last Friday."
"Let me know if he appears," said Eduardo. "Okay, final question. Where exactly in the alley was Pascal Boulart's body found? I want each of you to show me in turn."
Back at his office desk, a plate of droits de Fatima lifted from Maison Hafsid already reduced to a blizzard of pastry flakes, the new Chief of Police drew up his own list of clues, using a fountain pen he'd found in the drawer.
Blunt knife, broken handle, rusty blade; no fingerprints; damaged door; empty corridor; clean steps. A body that changed position. And finally, most bizarrely, one misplaced murderer.
Eduardo drew circles around each and joined them together as he'd once seen Ashraf Bey do, but because his clues were written in a list one under the other, the links just sank, like lead weights on a fishing line. So Eduardo wrote his clues out again, arranging them in a circle and joining them with new lines. And then, because it looked so good, he wrote it out a third time, folding one copy to put in his pocket and leaving the ot
her on his desk for everyone else to see.
It was only when Eduardo reached the end of the street, still surreptitiously brushing flakes from his pastry-stained fingers that he realized his detective work would go unappreciated. He was the boss. The only person remotely likely to go near his desk was Marie, who stood up every time he came into her outer office. She seemed far too nervous to take such liberties.
He'd just have to show his clues to Rose instead. Then he'd tell her the answer, maybe. Licking his fingers, Eduardo wiped them afresh on his trousers and went to buy Rose some chocolates. Somehow eating always made him hungry.
CHAPTER 41
Friday 11th March
"Your Excellency."
Given that someone had stolen all three door knockers, the barefoot Nubian in the white silk robe had little option but to hammer ever louder on the door of Dar Welham. As a method of attracting Ashraf Bey's attention it proved surprisingly unsuccessful, all but the final knocks being drowned out by the thud of ancient and unserviced fans inside.
Until he made his stop at Kairouan the previous week, Raf hadn't even realized he owned a house in Tozeur, let alone one in the oldest district; but the tall dar with its ochre, geometrically laid brickwork and dark interior had been a wedding present from the Emir to his mother, apparently.
Un présent de mariage.
Isaac & Sons' files were dust-buried on the shelves of their deserted walk-up when Raf and three uniformed officers cut the padlock on the rear and kicked in a door at the top of the stairs.
All it took was Raf presenting himself at Kairouan's Police HQ and demanding the loan of three good officers, bolt cutters and a hydraulic battering ram, one of the small handheld versions. His name alone had been enough to turn his wish list into reality. The officers were uniformed, respectful and obviously experienced. And the really terrifying thing, at least the thing that Raf found really terrifying was that at no point did anyone ask him for any form of identity.
He went looking for a wedding certificate and came back with copies of a deed of ownership, which did just as well. The date he wanted was at the top. While his mother's signature and that of Moncef were at the bottom. Fifty years earlier, on the day after they were married, Moncef had presented his mother with a house in Tozeur and another in Tunis. Fifty years . . .
Lady Nafisa, his aunt, had known this because it was for her that the copies were made by notario Ibrahim ibn Ishaq. Thanking the police officers, Raf had taken one copy of the deed and ordered the men to remove all other documents from the office and have them shredded, then burned. He made the most senior officer repeat that order, all documents, all shredded, all burned.
When Raf left to find Hani, Murad and the Bugatti, the officer was already radioing for backup while the other two had begun to arrange the files into dusty piles on the floor.
Dar Welham, his new house, stood behind the main road from the Palm Groves to Zaouia Ishmailia, on the right, halfway down an alley too old and narrow to merit a name. One side of his street had already been partly rebuilt using traditional yellow brick. Raf's side remained a mess of crumbling façades and locked doorways, with most of the houses obviously empty. Almost all of the triple door knockers, which allowed long-gone inhabitants to know if the person calling was a man, woman or child, had been stolen. As had a number of the old iron locks and the door handles themselves.
The private courtyard of Dar Welham still stank of cat's piss and sewage, although Raf had slopped it down at least three times and tipped buckets of rusty water through the open grilles of the drains. Hani and Murad had concentrated on the inside of the dar, sweeping floors and scrubbing at mineral deposits that had leached up through the floor tiles.
That the dar had electricity to drive its fans at all was a miracle. One involved twisted flex glued direct to rough walls and fed through a large hole into next door's cellar, where Raf jammed open the trip switch of a junction box with half a clothespin. Air-conditioning would obviously have helped. Although being somewhere other than Tozeur at the start of a khamsin wind might have been better.
Sand fall was expected. And Murad kept referring to a chili, alternating that word with khamsin. It had to do with a depression moving into the Gulf of Gebes. One that had kicked the afternoon temperature up to 98°F and threatened to drop sand as far north as Madrid. The local radio station talked about little else.
"Door," Hani said, looking up from a game of chess. She was winning five games to zero. The only way Murad had been persuaded to play again was her promise that this would be his last for the day and her assurance that he'd soon be good enough to beat her. But then, as Murad pointed out, she'd said that the day before as well.
At Hani's feet stretched Ifritah. Panting in the heat.
"What?" Raf put down the deeds to Dar Welham.
"Someone's at the door," said Hani. "I'd go but it's probably for you."
And it was. Apparently Kashif Pasha's messenger saw nothing odd in presenting an envelope featuring an ersatz version of a European coat of arms, one bearing a Western interpretation of an Othman turban, on a silver salver in the style of Napoleon III, overlaid around the edge with Quranic script in beaten gold, bronze and copper.
"Will there be a reply?"
Having read Kashif's message, Raf put it carefully in his pocket.
"No," he said, "I think not."
The Nubian might have come to the door of Dar Welham barefooted and dressed in a white robe but he drove off in a black four-by-four with smoked windows and roo bars big enough to knock down a buffalo.
"Who was that?" said Hani. She stood on the stairs with Murad behind her. A windup radio was in the boy's hand.
"Just one of Kashif Pasha's friends."
"My brother Kashif doesn't have friends," Murad said firmly, then paused, worried that he might have sounded rude. "I mean," he said more politely, "he has only allies or enemies." The boy's voice made no secret of which camp he'd found himself in. "What does the message say?"
"That's private."
Two heads turned to face Raf. Hani's frown now a full-on scowl. "No secrets," she reminded Raf. "Remember? That's what you told me when Aunt Nafisa died. Anything I asked you would answer."
It had been a simple enough promise, made to a crying child who wanted to know why life was so unfair. One that Raf would have liked an adult, any adult, to have made to him. And it was proving impossibly difficult to keep.
"Hani, I'm really sorry . . ."
"You promised."
So he had. "It's from Kashif Pasha," Raf said.
"But that's the Emir's coat of arms," Murad insisted.
"I know," said Raf, "but it's not his message. Kashif and I need to meet."
"You're not going to go . . ." Murad sounded appalled that Raf might even consider it. "Have you listened to the latest news?"
Raf hadn't.
Apparently C3N had been told by St. Cloud that Ashraf Bey was behind the attack on Emir Moncef. Colonel Abad, that well-known war criminal, was mentioned. As was Raf's part in helping Abad avoid being brought to justice. The Marquis even managed to suggest that the bey might be behind last autumn's attacks on the Midas Refinery, jointly owned by St. Cloud and Hamzah Effendi.
"If you go, Kashif will hurt you," Murad said flatly. "I know him."
"All the same," said Raf, "I think I must." Skimming the note, he ran through words he already knew by heart. The message was short. "It seems Kashif's captured the missing waiter," Raf told them both. "He'd like me to be present at the questioning."
Hani opened her mouth and shut it again. "Something else," she said finally. "What else?"
"Because of the current danger," said Raf, failing to extract the bleakness from his voice, "my brother has extended his offer of protective custody to include Zara."
"She's here?"
"Apparently . . ."
"So what do you want Murad and me to do?" Hani asked.
"Stay here," said Raf. "And keep out of trouble. If that's
remotely possible."
Hani's look was doubtful.
CHAPTER 42
Friday 11th March
Three hours after Raf left, men in black jellabas locked off the unnamed alley using Jeeps they swung across both ends, isolating the stretch in between.
Once again the Jeeps had smoked glass, fat roo bars and whip aerials. The man who seemed in charge had dyed hair combed forward like a Roman emperor, a heavy moustache and a black mubahith blouse on without insignia of any kind. Only a slight bald patch and the fact his choice of top accentuated his paunch took the edge off an effect that was, Hani had to admit, still quietly threatening.
"You take a look," she said, handing Murad an old pair of opera glasses. The boy did what she suggested, staring down at the alley entrance.
"Soldiers," he said.
Hani nodded.
"In disguise," she said. "Who's the man?"
Murad took a second look at the mubahith with the weird hair. "No one I recognize," he said, like he wasn't sure if that was good or bad.
"Are they from the Emir's guard?"
"Of course not." Murad shook his head. "All Eugenie's troops are women." He spoke as if Eugenie were still alive. "Those are not women . . ."
Only fear let Hani restrain herself. Some people shouted when they got afraid, others closed down, went silent. That was her. "Look," Hani said, "you think they support Kashif Pasha?"
"You heard the radio," said Murad. "All the soldiers support my brother Kashif."
"Now there's a surprise." Hani sounded like Zara at her most cross. The way the older girl had been those last few days at the madersa before Raf vanished, sharp and snotty but nothing like as cruel as Raf had been with his dark silences and exile inside his own head.
"Kashif," Murad said. "He won't hurt you."
"Yes, he will. And he'll hurt you. And it won't be the first time, will it?"
"He's still my brother." Murad's voice was quiet.
"And the Emir is his father," said Hani flatly. "But he still ordered that attack." She didn't know this, of course, but she knew her uncle and it was obvious he thought so.
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