This room had been the choice of visiting couples, back in the days before the General did his deal with the Mufti and the morales suddenly became a problem. It was somewhere wives could buy their jaded husbands a whore or two for their birthday, to do things that didn’t get done at home. Most of the visiting women just watched, a few joined in. All were married, rich and decently connected. Respectable members of the kind of families who donated funds regularly to the police.
The accord had changed all that.
For the first time in a hundred years girls from poor families returned to wearing the hijab, while Iskandryia’s mesdames made do with headscarves and dark glasses, altogether more elegant and not remotely to the Mufti’s liking. The property laws were revised to exclude female heirs, driving alone after dark became a criminal offence for women, and to go out with bare arms was to invite some fanatic to scratch his disapproval into your skin with a metal comb . . .
Raf had heard Zara on the subject. She was old enough to remember the city before it started to change. Felix too, the old Chief of Detectives, had been less than impressed with the General’s decision to sign an accord.
All trades had been hit, brothels included. Not that they actually closed. The brothels of Iskandryia were both an institution and tourist attraction (which was altogether more important). Along the Corniche several could be found in the grander houses, where chambers were by the night, cash was forbidden and anything less than a gold card strongly discouraged.
Of course, visiting tourists were billed variously for cultural excursions, theatre groups or an art exhibition. That way everybody was kept happy, from the punters to the card companies and the brothels. Especially the brothels, because embarrassed punters had a habit of getting home, then denying they’d ever visited the place that billed them and that made the card companies very unhappy.
This maison was different, though . . . Somewhere for Iskandryia’s own residents. It paid its local taxes, plus a little extra to Police HQ and in return found itself on the police database as an information source, which gave it some protection should the morales decide to call. The fat man had approved identical deals with brothels all across the city.
Raf and Eduardo were lovers, at least they were according to the Madame downstairs. That was how she’d explained Raf’s request for a double chamber to her girls. Officially, of course, homosexuality didn’t exist in Ottoman North Africa. In practice, it was almost universal, if staunchly illegaclass="underline" a society that placed a premium on female virginity, made premarital sex a killing matter and then made it too expensive for most men to get married before their midtwenties was bound to need an easy acceptance of the inevitable, whatever the law said. And that was quite apart from the one in ten men born with little physical interest in women.
“What do we do now?” Eduardo asked.
“We fill the time,” said Raf. “Until it gets dark.” Walking over to the window, he examined the chamber’s mashrabiya, which looked out over the canal, taking in its two sets of shutters. One set closed it off from the street directly below, the other closed off the actual balcony from the room in which he stood.
“You,” said Raf, pointing to the girl he’d selected at random when he first arrived. “What did you say your name was?” She didn’t, or he’d have remembered it.
“Justine.” It was meant to sound French, Raf guessed. From her skin and the black roots to her short hair, he’d have said moriscos, but he’d been in Isk less than four months and he wasn’t Felix. His predecessor had been famed for his ability to read origins at a single glance.
“Can you get me a drink?”
She looked doubtful. “What would Your Excellency like?”
“Wine,” said Raf, “white and chilled, something dry.”
Justine looked more doubtful still.
“Anything you can find,” Raf said and she fumbled at the lock, then scurried from the room.
Raf sighed. He was tired of people being afraid of him. Maybe she was afraid because in her terms he was rich . . . To be honest, in Justine’s terms he was probably beyond rich. Even though he could barely afford Donna’s and Khartoum’s wages and repairs to the al-Mansur madersa were beyond his wallet. Maybe she realized he was police. Or perhaps it was just that he dressed in a suit and wore dark glasses indoors.
Probably it was all of those things. The girl was afraid of everything—of the punters, of her Madame and of time’s winged chariot—he could see it in her eyes. If he asked, she’d say she was seventeen, but Justine had a good ten years on that. She was older than he by maybe three years, older than she could afford to be in her trade.
“Will this do?”
Justine held up a dusty bottle of Cru de Ptolémées, two tooth mugs and a handful of ice cubes. Her breathing was ragged from having run upstairs.
“Thank you.” Raf smiled at her and nodded towards the balcony. “We’re going out there,” he told Eduardo. “I’ll see you in an hour or so.”
“What do I do?”
Raf glanced round the chamber. “Whatever.”
The wine tasted as sour as Raf expected, but all the same he smiled as he poured some for Justine.
“Salut.”
“I can try again?” Justine suggested, having tasted it.
“No.” Ice cubes clinked as Raf dropped a few into her glass. “Who knows?” he said, giving her mug a quick swirl. “This might help.” In fact, chilling it made no difference, but Raf finished his glass anyway and, when the sourness was gone, refilled. When that was done, he drank most of hers as well.
Sitting back against a shutter, the one he’d told Eduardo to bolt from inside the chamber, Raf examined the balcony, as he examined everything . . .
Straight ahead, beyond an intricately carved screen could be seen fragments of the darkening city; while folded back, against the sidewalls of the mashrabiya were plain shutters that could be used to close off the screen against afternoon heat or cold night air.
He sat in a little world, boxed in on all sides.
“Your turn,” said Raf, handing back Justine’s glass.
She drank a little and gave him back what was left. “You can tell me,” she said finally, when the weight of his silence got too heavy for her to bear. “Some men find it easier to talk.”
He was not some men, Raf wanted to tell her. He was him, however unsatisfactory that was. And there were days when he wasn’t even sure he was that. When the noise inside his head reached out for the rest of him and his fingers froze and his neck ached and a knot that writhed like an injured snake appeared in the pit of his stomach, leaving him breathless and filled with dread.
Those were the days he needed the fox most. And now the fox was dying and it looked like for good this time.
“Tell me,” Justine said, taking the empty glass from his fingers to put it carefully on the floor. “What’s troubling you?” Her question was as practiced as the butterfly touch of her fingers on his wrist. Even the slight tilt of her head looked like something she’d learnt. All the same, Raf felt a need to answer.
“I’m going to kill someone,” he said flatly.
“When?” Justine kept her expression masked and her question simple.
“Tonight,” said Raf.
“Me?”
He shook his head and felt a single tear slide under his shades. “Not you, not me. Not those two.” He nodded his head backward to the room behind. “Just a man.”
“One man?”
“With luck . . .”
“Without luck?”
He thought about it. “Several,” Raf said slowly, “maybe more.”
Justine nodded as if this was to be expected. “And this makes you sad?”