Girling began picking through the contents of a box. ‘I know. Al-Qadi lost little time in telling me. Where was it, did they tell you?’
She shook her head. ‘Most of what I know about the case comes from snatches of conversations I’ve picked up around the police.’
‘Did you hear any mention of his notes?’
‘Notes?’
‘Al-Qadi was evasive when I asked, but Stansell must have made notes. I know if I were Stansell — and I was on to something as big as he was — I would have hidden them somewhere.’
‘I have heard nothing,’ she said.
‘Then maybe they’re still around.’ He fanned through the pages of a book as he spoke. ‘By the way, you wouldn’t know where a volume of Stansell’s Dispatches wandered off to, would you?’
She shrugged. ‘No. Is it important?’
‘Probably not.’ He carried on searching the box.
‘Do you think you can find him?’ she asked suddenly.
He paused and looked up at her. The dark glasses and scarf made her look like she was in official mourning.
‘I’ve got to.’
‘Tom, this is Cairo, not Kensington.’
Girling tossed the book back into a box. ‘The Mukhabarat are just going through the motions. You know that as well as I do. Stansell needs someone else on his case. Well, I’m here now.’ He looked up at the shelves, the piles of magazines, the newspaper cuttings and all Stamen’s other work props. ‘But I need to get to know him again.’
Girling sat at the desk. He removed the top drawer and began picking his way through the detritus that Stansell kept next to him. It was the sort of junk that filled the drawers of his own desk. Letters awaiting replies; others lying unopened in limbo between the trash-can and the filing cabinet. There was a bottle of typewriter correcting fluid, a pack of Stamen’s business cards held together by a plastic band. Paper clips, endless paper clips. Girling cursed as he pricked his hand on an upturned drawing pin.
‘I don’t suppose he started keeping a desk diary?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she laughed softly. ‘You know him better than that.’
‘And his pocket diary was on him when he was taken?’
‘I guess so. The police don’t have it.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘What?’
‘That the police don’t have his diary.’
For a moment she seemed confused. ‘Did I say that?’
‘Yes.’
She shrugged. ‘A hunch, I suppose. Is it really important, Tom?’ she retorted testily.
‘Everything could be important. Stansell’s somewhere out there and he doesn’t have much time.’
Girling sucked the blood from his finger. ‘What about tapes? The ones he put his interviews on?’
‘The Mukhabarat took them away.’
Girling pulled out another drawer, then stopped. ‘Tell me what happened the day he went missing.’
She had arrived at Stansell’s apartment to find the door swinging on its hinges, the note from the terrorists anchored to the desk by an ashtray. She told him how Al-Qadi and his team arrived, several hours later, followed by the Mukhabarat’s forensic people.
Every now and again, Girling questioned her on details, but for Sharifa, recalling the minutiae wasn’t always easy. Much of the day in question she had been in shock. When he was satisfied he had all she knew, Girling asked her to cast her mind back to the day the terrorists blew the plane.
‘That afternoon Jack Carey ordered him to drop everything and go for the terrorists at Beirut. He spoke to me, because Stansell was out.’
‘Where was he?’
‘Midday he went to a cocktail reception at the Soviet Embassy, but I don’t know what time he left. He didn’t always like to tell me where he was going. That said, I — ‘
‘Yes?’
‘Finding him wasn’t usually very difficult.’
He sensed her reluctance. ‘Go on.’
‘One day it would be the Metropolitan Club, another it would be the piano bar in the Hilton. Or maybe, the English Pub out at Heliopolis.’
‘That doesn’t come as any great surprise,’ Girling said. ‘That was how he liked to do business.’
‘This wasn’t business, Tom. It wasn’t just the odd lunch.’
Girling had a fleeting image of Moynahan, ruddy faced and red eyed, sneering at him during the news meeting. ‘So Stansell drinks. He’s always been a drinker. That’s Stansell.’
He smiled. ‘Stansell always liked a drink, Sharifa.’
She nodded. ‘He wasn’t happy when you left.’
‘It’s not as if I haven’t spoken to him in three years,’ he said defensively.
Sharifa moved over to the window and looked out over Cairo’s skyline. ‘Couldn’t we talk about this later?’
‘I want you to tell me now,’ he said. ‘What didn’t he want me to know?’
She tossed her thick black hair over her shoulders. ‘He kept the copy coming in, but he found it more and more difficult. He’s not young-’
‘You make him sound like a lonely old man,’ he said. ‘A drunk, tired, lonely old man.’
Sharifa looked away.
Girling managed to keep his voice even. He forced himself back to Stansell’s itinerary. ‘But that day, the day Jack Carey called, you didn’t know where he was?’
‘No.’
Girling sat back in the chair. Suddenly, he felt exhausted. He could have slept right there, but he got to his feet and checked the floorboards. None of them seemed loose. He looked beneath the two tables, but there was nothing taped to their undersides.
‘So when did you next see him?’ he asked.
‘Not until the following day. I arrived at the office early and found Stansell already here. He hardly spoke. He just sat at the desk — right there — staring at the piece of paper with Carey’s message on it. Then he got out a map and started writing on it. I don’t know what.’
Girling stopped pacing. Sharifa had removed her sunglasses. She seemed transfixed by the desk.
‘When you were a kid, did you ever put a butterfly that was sapped of strength on to a little bit of sugar?’ she asked. ‘Did you see how it would flex its wings, how the life would come back to it?’
He hadn’t, but he understood.
‘He threw himself into this story like he was a cub reporter again,’ she continued. ‘I knew he was on to something, but he wouldn’t tell me about it. He rarely discussed big stories with me. The day… that day, he returned here late in the afternoon excited about something. His eyes shone, he was short of breath. He called London and held a whispered conversation with someone, Kelso maybe, or Jack Carey.’
‘It was me,’ Girling said. ‘Looking back on it, I think he might have been saying goodbye.’
‘He knew who they were, didn’t he?’
‘He said he did.’ He didn’t bother to tell her about Kelso’s duplicity, or his own shame. She would have got the details off somebody in London.
‘That was the last time I saw him,’ she said.
It was some time before Girling spoke. ‘Did he talk to you about his contacts, at all?’
She shook her head. ‘You know what he was like about the people he dealt with.’
‘The most important thing in Stansell’s life was that little black book,’ Girling said. ‘I wonder if Al-Qadi realizes what he’s got.’
Half an hour later, Sharifa dropped Girling at the apartment in Hassan Assem Street, across the river in Zamalek.
‘Call me, day or night,’ she said.
Girling had decided that he would stay at Stansell’s for as long as it took. He wanted to immerse himself again in Stansell’s shadowy life.
A lone militiaman appeared from the shadows of the lobby. The lift was out of action, forcing him to hump his bags up four flights of stairs. The hasty repairs to the apartment door were readily apparent — nails hammered through the wood to secure the lock, and a shiny new hinge.