“That might be difficult. She died in the basement of a derelict house. After someone took out her throat.”
“Which is what happens,” said the fox, “if you build your city on top of a graveyard. The dead forget to stay dead.”
Raf raised his glass to his lips and wondered why St. Cloud was looking at him, then realized the glass was empty, again.
People nearby looked surprised when the fox made Raf click his fingers but the fox was too tired to care. It needed more champagne and then some sleep. A long dark sleep with no dreams. But most of all it wanted this party to end before Hamzah got round to making more speeches.
It just knew Raf was going to offend the man.
“She was right,” Raf told the Marquis, once both their drinks were refreshed and a nervous young waiter had vanished. “Your woman got it right. I’m not a bey. I don’t belong in El Iskandryia. My name isn’t Ashraf al-Mansur . . .”
He watched the man walk away.
“I doubt I’m even Berber,” Raf added quietly, to no one in particular. “Hani probably isn’t my niece.” He glanced across to where the small girl stood next to Zara, half-listening to someone, half-staring at Raf. “Maybe I’m just someone who got lucky . . .”
“Uncle Ashraf.”
Everyone in the room was looking in his direction, Raf realized. Hamzah, in particular, was waiting expectantly for something.
“He wasn’t listening,” said Hani. She sounded obscurely proud of this fact. “He was probably talking to his fox.”
“His what . . . ?” Zara sounded puzzled.
“It’s a long story,” Hani told her. “Weird too.”
“Well,” said Zara. “Are you going to take Dad’s money this time?”
“Your reward.” Hamzah’s grin had become slightly anxious.
“No,” said Raf. “I really don’t think . . .”
What stopped him finishing his sentence was the anguish that flooded Zara’s face when she realized he was about to hurt her father’s feelings again.
“The thing is . . .” Raf paused.
“Oh really!” said the fox. “The thing is what?”
“The thing is,” said Raf carefully, “my niece needs a dowry. And since she can’t hold property for herself . . .” He didn’t make Iskandryia’s laws and pretty soon he was going to stop trying to uphold them. “I thought perhaps His Highness and Hamzah Effendi . . . As trustees?”
Tewfik Pasha looked shocked, then resigned, Hamzah looked delighted.
“You want all the reward to go to Hani?” It was Zara who spoke.
Raf nodded and saw St. Cloud shake his head in disbelief.
“It’s a large sum.” Koenig Pasha sounded doubtful.
“Good,” said Raf. “Maybe it’ll be enough to keep her out of trouble.”
Hani stuck out her tongue.
Later, when everyone had gone back to talking to each other, mostly about Hani’s fabulous newfound wealth, St. Cloud reappeared at Raf’s side. “Well,” he said, “you won’t take my bribe and you won’t take Hamzah’s . . . That either makes you unbelievably stupid or even more dangerous than I imagined.”
“I’ll settle for a drink,” offered Raf.
“And I’d get you one,” St. Cloud said, “but your pretty little girlfriend thinks you’ve had enough.”
“She’s right,” a familiar voice said in his head, but Raf shushed the fox into silence. There was something about St. Cloud that required absolute concentration.
“Fifty million dollars . . . That’s a lot to turn down.”
Behind his dark glasses, Raf blinked. “Money,” he said flatly, “isn’t everything.”
Or was that life?
“Maybe not,” said St. Cloud. “But if ever I need to buy you, I can see it’ll have to be with something other than cash.”
“I’m not for sale.”
“Everyone is for . . .” The Marquis looked at Raf, then shrugged in disgust. “People like you,” he said, “fuck up the bell curve.”
“I’m impressed.”
“I’m not.” Raf looked round the discreetly lit drawing room. The elegant invitations with their gilt edges, china clay surface and hand embossing had given the party’s duration as 2.30–6.30P .M. and it was now just after 10.30P .M. Raf had sobered up somewhat, mostly with the aid of proprietary alcohol inhibitors and, as yet, no one showed much sign of leaving.
“They don’t dare go,” Zara said.
Raf didn’t ask how she knew what he was thinking, just accepted it as something he’d have to get used to. Like the smell of her skin or the fact she looked better in old trousers and a silk cheongsam than any other woman in the room looked in that season’s Dior. And there was a surfeit of that season’s Dior.
There was one other thing about her. At no time had she tried to shoo Hani away, even though Hani had glued herself to Zara’s side from the moment she arrived to the point she dropped in her tracks, dead to the world. And it was Zara’s Chinese silk jacket that now made do as a blanket, covering the small girl who lay curled up on a sofa.
“Marry me,” said Raf.
It was Zara’s turn to blink.
“You want to get married because I gave Hani my coat?” Zara smiled. “I saw you check to see the kid was okay,” she added, by way of explanation. “Then I saw you notice the goose bumps on my arms. You’re not the only one who can play detective.”
“That’s finished,” said Raf. “I resigned ten minutes ago as Chief of Detectives. Ibrahim Osman gets the job. The Khedive will be appointing a new governor in the morning . . .”
“Koenig Pasha?”
“The Khedive seems keen to take the job himself,” said Raf. “Apparently there’s nothing in law that says the city needs a governor.”
“There’s nothing to say it needs a Khedive . . .” Zara’s voice was louder than it should be. With a rawness that he’d missed earlier.
Raf looked at her. “He proposed, didn’t he?” said Raf, suddenly understanding what had been right in front of his face.
“Oh yes.” Zara’s voice was bitter. “Despite the fact I’m apparently your lover. It seems he simply couldn’t help himself . . . One way and another, it’s been quite a night for proposals.”
“Then I take mine back,” Raf said hurriedly.
“No,” said Zara. “Don’t . . . If you do that, I won’t have the satisfaction of turning you down as well.”
“That’s your answer?”
She was about to nod when Hamzah and Madame Rahina jostled their way out of the crowd. Zara’s mother had changed her outfit, but still wore head-to-toe Dior and smelled of some number Chanel that was impossibly difficult to find. She also sported a scowl and an air of barely restrained fury at the way her husband had hooked his arm through her own.
“So what are you two up to?” Hamzah asked brightly.
“Oh”—Raf glanced at Zara—“I was just asking her to marry me.”
Hamzah’s grin died as his wife yanked herself free. Unfortunately, even on tiptoe, she remained too short to spot the Khedive over the heads of her other guests.
“By the window,” said Zara, “sulking.”
“So,” Hamzah asked, “it’s agreed? You’re going to marry Raf . . .”
Zara shook her head. “Not a chance. But Hani’s busy trying to persuade me to move into the al-Mansur madersa.”
Which was the first Raf had heard of it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Malta and christened in the upturned bell of a ship, Jon Courtenay Grimwood grew up in Britain, the Far East and Scandinavia. Currently working as a freelance journalist and living in London and Winchester, he writes for a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Guardian. He is married to the journalist Sam Baker, editor of UK Cosmopolitan.
Visit the website
www.j-cg.co.uk