He put the second syringe down on the bedside table and pushed it out of reach, just to be on the safe side.
‘I’m going to undo your gag soon,’ he explained and tried to catch his brother’s eye. ‘But first I’m going to give you some of the morphine. You’ll feel the effects very quickly. Your blood pressure and pulse will fall. You’ll feel ill. You might have problems breathing. After that, it’s up to you. You can either answer my questions, or I’ll give you more. And so we’ll continue. Very simple, isn’t it? When you’ve given me the information I need, I’ll give you the antidote. But only then. Do you understand?’
His brother twisted and turned desperately on the bed. There were tears in his eyes. Al noticed that his pyjama bottoms were wet around the crotch.
‘And one more thing,’ Al said as he injected the needle into his brother’s thigh, straight through the fabric of his pyjamas. ‘You can scream and shout as much as you like, but it’s a waste of time. It’s a good mile to the next neighbour. And he’s away. It’s a weekday, so no one will be out walking. Forget it. There now…’
He withdrew the needle and checked how much he had injected. He nodded, satisfied, and put the syringe down with the other one on the bedside table, then pulled the gag off in one go. Fayed tried to spit the face cloth out, but had to retch and turned his head to one side. Al pulled the cloth out with two fingers.
Fayed gasped for air. He sobbed and was obviously trying to say something, but all he managed to do was hawk and retch.
‘We haven’t got much time now,’ Al said. ‘So you should answer as fast as you can.’
He licked his lips and paused for thought.
‘Is it true that Mother thought you were me before she died?’ he asked.
Fayed just managed to nod.
‘Did she tell you something that you knew was meant for my ears only?’
His brother had pulled himself together now and was calmer. It was as if he had finally understood that there was no point in trying to break free. He lay completely still for a moment. Only his mouth was moving. It looked like he was trying to produce some moisture after having had the cloth in his mouth for several hours.
‘Here,’ Al said and held a glass of water to his lips.
Fayed drank. He took several sips. Then he gave a deep cough and spat water, snot, phlegm and loose threads straight into his brother’s face.
‘Fuck you,’ he said hoarsely, and leant his head back.
‘Hmm, you’re not being very sensible here,’ Al said and dried his face with his sleeve.
Fayed said nothing. He seemed to be thinking, assessing what he needed to do to negotiate a deal.
‘We’ll try again,’ Al said. ‘Did Mother say something to you about my life because she thought you were me?’
Fayed still didn’t answer. But at least he lay still. The morphine had started to work. His pupils suddenly dilated visibly. Al went over to the chest of drawers by the bathroom door, opened the coded suitcase and pulled Fayed’s Filofax from under the clothes. He turned to the year planner for 2002 and pulled it out with a tug.
‘Here,’ he said and went back over to the bed. ‘Here’s the date Mother died. And what have you written there, Fayed? On the day Mother died, when you were sitting with her?’ He held the page up for his brother, who turned his head away.
‘June 1971, New York, is what you’ve written. What does that date mean to you? Did Mother tell you? Was Mother talking about that day when you were sitting with her?’
Still no answer.
‘You know what,’ Al said in a muted voice as he waved the calendar around. ‘Dying from a morphine overdose is not as pleasant as people might think. Can you feel your lungs struggling? Can you feel that it’s harder to breathe?’
His brother snarled and tried to tense his body like a bridge, but didn’t have the power.
‘Mother was the only one who knew,’ Al said. ‘But she didn’t judge me, Fayed. Ever. It was hard for her to accept my secret, but she never used it against me. Mother was my soulmate. She could have been yours too, if you’d behaved differently. You could at least have tried to be part of the family. Instead you did what you could not to belong.’
‘I never did belong,’ Fayed wheezed. ‘You made sure of that.’
He was pale now. He lay completely still and closed his eyes.
‘Me? Me? It was me who…’
He resolutely took the syringe of morphine and injected another ten milligrams into Fayed’s thigh muscle.
‘We haven’t got time for this. What’s going to happen, Fayed? Why are you here? Why have you come to see me after all these years, and what the hell have you used the information about Helen’s abortion for?’
It had started to look as if Fayed was really frightened. He tried to gasp for breath, but his muscles wouldn’t obey. A white froth appeared on his lips, as if he didn’t even have the capacity to swallow his own spit.
‘Help me,’ he said. ‘You have to help me. I can’t…’
‘Answer my questions.’
‘Help me. I can’t… Everything… according to plan.’
‘Plan? What plan? Fayed, what plan are you talking about?’
He was about to die. It was obvious. Al felt hot. He noticed that his hands were shaking as he grabbed the syringe with Naloxone and got it ready.
‘Fayed,’ he said and put his free hand under his brother’s chin so he could force him to look at him. ‘You really are in trouble now. I have the antidote here. Just tell me one thing. One thing! Why did you come here? Why did you come to me?’
‘The letters,’ Fayed mumbled.
His eyes looked completely dead now.
‘The letters are coming here. If anything goes wrong…’
He stopped breathing. Al gave him a good thump on the chest. Fayed’s lungs made another attempt to defy death.
‘I’ll pull you down with me,’ he said. ‘You were the one they loved.’
Al grabbed a knife from his bag and cut the tape that bound Fayed’s right arm to the headboard. He had injected the morphine straight into Fayed’s muscle, but now he needed a vein. He slowly emptied the antidote into a blue vein in his brother’s lower arm. Then quickly, so he wouldn’t lose heart again, he taped his arm back to the headboard. He got up and took a few steps. Now he couldn’t hold back the tears.
‘Fucking hell! Fucking hell! All I ever wanted in my life was peace and quiet. No quarrelling! No fuss! I found this little backwater where everything was going well for me and the girls, and then you have to come and…’
He was sobbing now. He wasn’t used to crying. He didn’t know what to do with his arms. They were just hanging at his sides. His shoulders were shaking.
‘What letters are you talking about, Fayed? What have you done? Fayed, what have you done?’
Suddenly he stormed across the floor and bent down over his brother. He put his hands to his cheeks. Fayed’s moustache, the great big ridiculous moustache that he had recently grown, tickled his skin as he stroked his brother’s face, again and again.
‘What have you done this time?’ he whispered.
But his brother didn’t answer, because he was dead.
X
It was just gone two o’clock when Helen Bentley came back into the kitchen. She looked awful. Six hours’ sleep and a long shower had worked wonders for her in the morning, but now she was deathly pale. Her eyes were glazed and she had moon-shaped bags under her eyes. She sank heavily down on to a chair, and greedily took the coffee that Johanne offered her.
‘The New York Stock Exchange opens in an hour and a half.’ She sighed and drank some coffee. ‘It’s going to be a black Thursday, perhaps the worst since the thirties.’
‘Have you found anything out?’ Johanne asked tentatively.
‘I’ve got some kind of overview. It’s clear that our friends in Saudi Arabia were not so friendly after all. There are persistent rumours that they’re behind it, together with Iran. Without anyone in my administration admitting anything, of course.’