The Golden Scales

by Parker Bilal

  ‘You think that’s why she killed herself?’

  ‘Like I said, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she was murdered and that’s why Vronsky was so angry with Adil. He knew who did it.’

  ‘You’re saying Vronsky had the girl killed?’

  ‘Sure. Why not? All they would have to do is get rid of the body.’ The way she told it made it sound completely obvious.

  ‘How would they do that?’

  ‘Probably they took her out and dropped her in the sea. There are sharks out there, you know, and all kinds of other things.’

  ‘Who was she?’

  ‘Dunya? I don’t know, she just worked there.’ There was something about his response which made her lose her temper. ‘You don’t believe me,’ she said, upset. ‘Why would I make up something like that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe you’d like to get your revenge.’

  ‘I told you, I’m finished with all of them, finished with this country. All I want is enough money to leave. You’re like the rest of them. You think I am just a mixed-up girl whose head needs examining, making up stories for the hell of it.’

  She was scared. Makana kicked himself for not having seen it before.

  ‘You need the money because you’re afraid? That’s why you want to get out of the country?’

  ‘Vronsky is a very dangerous man.’ Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

  Makana decided it was time for him to go. He moved towards the door to the hall, hoping to avoid the psychopathic cousin. He reached into his pocket for the envelope and handed what was left to Mimi.

  ‘Buy yourself a ticket. Get away somewhere. It doesn’t matter where, just out of this town.’

  ‘I have relatives in Beirut.’

  ‘That sounds good. You have my number. You can call me when you’re there.’

  ‘What about Adil?’

  ‘Let me know where you are, and as soon as I know something I’ll call you.’

  Mimi looked down at the envelope and Makana told himself he was a fool. Most likely she would waste it on whatever she was smoking or sniffing and that would be the end of it. Still, sometimes you had to take a chance on people, otherwise where would we all be?

  As he stepped out into the hallway there was a cry from his left. He jerked back instinctively as a tall vase narrowly missed his head. There was a rush of air as it went by and then a crimson flower of enamelled porcelain exploded against the wall. Turning, Makana put his hand to Ramzi’s head and thrust him back and round, using his own momentum to send the youth spinning into the wall. Ramzi’s face crashed into a mirror which splintered, silver shards of glass raining down on him as he fell.

  ‘Ramzi!’ Mimi screamed.

  ‘He’ll be all right.’ Makana turned to look at her. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just go. Go!’

  Makana took one last look at her, and then he turned and stepped over the groaning Ramzi. The boy, his face streaked with scarlet, pointed a finger at him.

  ‘I’ll kill you, I swear it! Next time I see you, I’ll kill you!’

  Part 3

  The Invisible Caller

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Come and fetch me. Muna called him one morning, urging him, pleading. He tried to stay calm, his hand clenching around the receiver in his hand as he listened helplessly to her sobs, as if to the sound of her mind unravelling down the line. She was crying hysterically, unable to get the words out, and there was nothing he could do.

  ‘They are coming for me,’ she said.

  ‘Calm down,’ he repeated. ‘Nobody is coming for you.’

  There was a thump as the receiver clattered down and hit what might have been the desk. A desperate few seconds rolled by with no other sound. Then, finally, the scraping of the phone being lifted again.

  ‘Makana?’ It was Ikhlas, Muna’s colleague who shared the office with her, a small, timid academic with horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘Can you come over here?’

  As he drove to the university Makana had wondered if another girl had been killed. News of murders no longer automatically came to his attention. He was out of the loop, ostracised, shunted aside like a derelict locomotive into a forgotten siding. They could have fired him, of course, or killed him. There wasn’t a day when he didn’t ask himself why they didn’t save themselves the trouble and do just that. An accident wasn’t difficult to arrange these days. But maybe that was too easy. Eventually, he concluded that they enjoyed toying with him, watching him suffer in obsoletism.

  The department was crowded with women when he arrived, all trying to console Muna with cups of tea and words of comfort or advice. They clogged up the doorway to her office and Makana had to push his way through. Muna’s eyes widened when she saw him. She reared back as if in disbelief. Her hair clung to her face, which was swollen and wet with tears. She couldn’t get the words out, stuttering and starting over and over.

  ‘They are coming for me.’

  ‘No one is coming for you.’

  Unable to speak the words, Muna raised a shaking hand and pointed at the door. Makana glanced back. She nodded insistently, so he got up and went over to examine it. There was a large cross marked in chalk on the outside.

  ‘This was waiting for me when I came back from my first class this morning.’

  On the desk was a piece of chalk.

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ she screamed. ‘Don’t try to make it go away. All the other victims had pieces of chalk on them, didn’t they?’

  ‘They’re just trying to scare you,’ he said, as calmly as he could. What did the chalk mean? Was it even supposed to make sense?

  ‘You have to find them! You have to make them stop!’

  ‘I will. I swear. I’ll see to it,’ he promised. ‘But first you need to rest.’ He got her to lie down on the sofa and sat with her for a time, holding her hand, until her eyes closed. When he finally emerged from the room Makana realised he was shaking. Ikhlas came towards him, eyes fixed on him like pins through the thick lenses.

  ‘She must see a doctor.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Makana, like an automaton, a sleepwalker, still shocked by the scale of his wife’s mental collapse. ‘You’re right, of course.’

  ‘My brother teaches in the School of Medicine. I can get him to come over.’

  ‘That would be a great help.’ Makana was distracted, becoming slowly aware of the world around him again. The idea of his wife losing her mind suddenly seemed very real to him. He walked the length of the upstairs veranda, trying to clear his own mind, trying to think. If the chalk was a warning, what did it mean? How far were they prepared to go?

  When he reached the end of the veranda, he leaned his hands on the iron railings and looked down. Beyond a short strip of neglected yellow grass a road ran between the faculty buildings. Just to his right, under a large banyan tree, was a white Toyota pick-up. Makana turned and headed for the stairs, bumping into a man who was coming running with urgent news.

  ‘Not now,’ Makana said, brushing him aside. He took the stairs two at a time, ran the length of the ground-floor veranda, pushing through the crowd of students, and walked, rather than ran, the fifty-odd metres to the pick-up. He saw the man sit up behind the wheel, slowly begin to fold his newspaper. There was an old half oil drum standing nearby, acting as a rubbish bin. Kicking it over, Makana emptied its contents on to the gravel and lifted it high. The windscreen splintered on impact. Then he wrenched open the door and hauled the driver to his feet, pushing him against the side of the pick-up.

  ‘Stay away from my wife, do you hear!’

  The man stared at him impassively. Makana recognised him as the bearded militia man from that day by the river. A long, long time ago, it seemed.

  ‘Why are you following me?’

  ‘We’re just doing our job,’ said the man indignantly. ‘Like you.’

  He did not resist as Makana thrust him back once more against the side of the car.

/>   ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘It’s all over anyway.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘They’re arresting the culprit right now.’ The bearded man smiled knowingly, then jerked his head. ‘Why don’t you go and take a look?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Professor Manute. He’s the one who murdered those immoral girls.’

  Releasing his grip, Makana shoved the man hard for a final time and stepped back. Folding his arms, the man watched him walk away, laughing and shaking his head to himself.

  Professor Manute was being dragged from the history department as Makana arrived. A southerner, he was tall and dark-skinned. He was also old and frail. In his sixties, his head a shock of bushy white hair as he came into view, walking with the uneven gait of a man who had suffered polio as a child. It was patently absurd to suggest this man could overpower a healthy woman in her twenties. He was met by a torrent of abuse, racial and otherwise. A hail of stones flew from the crowd of outraged onlookers, students who had gathered quickly with more coming by the minute – running across the sun-scorched lawns, leaping over low hedges and railings in their haste. Terrified, the professor raised his manacled hands to his head in a bid to protect himself. The militia men who flanked him seemed more concerned with standing out of harm’s way than protecting their prisoner. A chunk of brick found its target, striking the old man’s forehead. Blood gushed from above his left eye. He was pleading with his captors to take him away from this place, but they seemed in no hurry to do so. They prodded him forward so that he walked ahead of them along the path which had now become a gauntlet, lined on both sides by boys and girls yelling taunts and throwing stones and pieces of brick heaved up from the borders of the flower beds.

  As Makana watched, something else flew out of the crowd and the professor crumpled. His two escorts made no attempt to help him up. They watched as the crowd charged in. If something wasn’t done the professor would be kicked to death on the spot. Makana waded in, confident that his uniform would be enough to deter most of the crowd. It worked. They fell back.

  ‘You’re supposed to be escorting this man, not throwing him to the dogs.’ Makana addressed the militia men, helping the bewildered professor to his feet.

  ‘He’s a murderer and a rapist,’ said one of them.

  ‘That remains to be seen. You have to present your evidence.’

  ‘Why are you defending a kafir?’ spat one of them.

  ‘As far as I know, he’s not on trial for his religious beliefs, unless you know otherwise.’

  ‘He must answer for his crimes. He has defiled and murdered good Muslim girls.’

  ‘A proper investigation will decide that. We still have the rule of law in this country.’

  ‘You have no right to do this,’ said the other man, stepping into his path.

  ‘Well, go and lodge a complaint.’

  Just then, two pick-ups of the Revolutionary Security Force roared round the corner, coming to a halt at the end of the drive. Twelve men, all armed with automatic weapons, dropped to the ground. The crowd fell back, their euphoria replaced by fear. Mek Nimr climbed from the lead car.

  ‘This is none of your business, Makana. This man is in our custody.’

  ‘Even if he is a murder suspect, he still has some rights.’

  One of the militia men slipped his AK-47 off his shoulder. Makana pulled his revolver from its holster and levelled it at the man’s head. Mek Nimr was smiling now in that strange, unhappy way of his.

  ‘You’ve gone too far this time, Makana.You leave me with no choice.’

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The light sand swirled across the bare tarmac like smoke, as if the wind were intent on swallowing up the road, wiping away man’s futile endeavours to tame nature and return this place to the wilderness it was meant to be.

  Makana had been awake most of the night, certainly long before Sami turned up in the faded green Datsun early that morning, his thoughts tossing back and forth. Sleepless nights had become commonplace over the past seven years. He appeared more than usually distracted as he got into the car, wrestling with the door to no effect until Sami leaned over and gave it a thump from the inside.

  ‘Patience.’

  ‘You’re sure this thing will get us there?’ Makana glanced over at the Mercedes parked under the eucalyptus tree. It looked a lot more reliable.

  ‘Inshallah.’ Sami shrugged philosophically. Detecting something in the other man’s voice, he glanced over. ‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should anything be wrong?’

  ‘It’s just a question.’

  ‘Nothing wrong.’ Makana stared straight ahead. ‘I slept badly, that’s all.’

  Hesitating only for a moment, Sami started the engine and began pushing the gearstick into place. They crawled patiently through the early-morning traffic and turned south in the direction of Giza until they picked up the road towards the Fayoum Oasis. Once the city fell behind them and the traffic eased, the land opened up on both sides and they were soon driving through flat empty country, the dry air blowing through the open windows already warming up. The thread of tarmac stretched off into the distance. The bulk of the traffic that day consisted of cramped little minibuses carrying commuters to and from distant satellite towns, along with rusty old trucks struggling along, overloaded with livestock or heavy machinery or enormous walls of sacks.

  Off to their right was evidence of what the future held in store for the city as it expanded, growing like some unsightly tumour into the unblemished desert. Clusters of buildings scattered along the roadside provided housing for workers employed in the isolated industrial complexes built by the government to relieve pressure on the capital. Eventually all these dots would be joined up into one big sprawl. New colonies were springing out of the desert like strange oases of brick and cement. For the moment these were just isolated pockets, like remote islands dotted in a vast sea of dust, but that wouldn’t last for long. Ten years from now the skirts of the metropolis behind them would have spread out to swallow up all of this, drowning the silence and emptiness in snarling traffic and ugly concrete overpasses.

  Makana’s hand went out to the dashboard to steady himself as the car swung wildly. Sami was twisting round, groping for a newspaper that was flapping wildly on the back seat. Makana hoped he would toss it out of the window, and was surprised when instead it dropped into his lap.

  The paper was folded to reveal a small article on an inside page. A man named Mohsen Taha had died of a heart attack, a senior aide to the President. The government lamented the loss of such a respected figure who had faithfully served his country for so many years.

  ‘Why am I reading this?’

  ‘It wasn’t a heart attack. He took an overdose of sleeping tablets. The papers are keeping that side of it quiet. It would bring dishonour on the family, and by implication on the government. Nobody wants to upset the President, so it is described as an accident, and buried on an inside page.’

  ‘They will be rewarded in the next world for their discretion.’

  ‘What it also doesn’t tell you is that Taha was being blackmailed.’

  ‘You know this for a fact?’

  ‘Facts are overrated.’

  Makana raised his eyebrows. ‘Coming from a journalist that doesn’t sound reassuring. Who was blackmailing him?’

  ‘Ah, that we don’t know, yet. What might interest you is that Taha was involved in buying out Hanafi’s debt on behalf of a third party.’

  ‘Vronsky?’

  ‘Possibly. According to a friend in the Ministry of Justice, Taha was being threatened with losing his post. There are rumours that a certain weekly journal that specialises in scandal was about to break some big story about him.’

  The warm desert air blew through the open windows, bringing with it the scent of lost kingdoms. Of armies that had marched out into that nothingness and never returned. The traffic had thinned to the
odd vehicle in the distance, dwindling to none at all in places.

  ‘Underneath the beaming smiles,’ Sami continued his account of Hanafi’s financial situation, ‘there is a dark yawning hole. Everyone’s finances took a dip after the Gulf War. No hard currency was coming into the country. People were poor. And the terror threat has been hitting tourism, so that source has dried up as well. Hanafi was as hard hit as everyone else. He just managed to make it look like he was doing better than most.’

  ‘How does that square with the expansion, the new stadium?’

  ‘It doesn’t. Some say that there were some other odd business dealings going on, with money coming in from investors in the Gulf. Without the outside funding none of that would have been possible. You just don’t make that much out of frozen vegetables, and the property market had plummeted. It was a good time for buying land, but at the same time Hanafi’s credit wasn’t what it used to be. Then, about a year ago, the banks started to call in their investments.’

  ‘Do we know why that happened?’

  ‘No, I can’t find out what made them change their minds, but it sounds like one of their major clients in the Gulf was unhappy.’

  ‘Was this after our Russian friend had entered the picture?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe the accountant will be able to tell us.’

  Makana was now sure that Adil’s disappearance had to be related to Vronsky in some way. Vronsky and Daud Bulatt. One seemed to lead to the other and round again in circles. To gain what he wanted Vronsky needed to secure the assistance of government functionaries. Most would be susceptible to old-fashioned bribes. The more stubborn ones, like Taha, say, might have needed more aggressive forms of persuasion. Was that where Farag and his cameras came in? And where was Farag anyway? Makana had called the man’s office several times and nobody ever answered.

  After a time they began to slow down. Sami swung the wheel and they turned roughly eastward and began going back in the direction of the river. This road was even more isolated. Here the wind blew the fine-grained sand directly across their path. It settled in soft pale sheets upon the grey, sun-cracked asphalt whose edges had been crumbled into tarry pebbles by the occasional heavy lorry.