Pashazade

Chapter Sixteen 6th July

Felix felt like a candle melting.

He was tired, he'd had his holiday cancelled and he'd been at the al-Mansur murder scene just long enough to confirm that a woman was dead, there was a traumatized child sat wide-eyed in one corner of the qaa and the Minister's wife, who'd apparently called in the crime, was missing from the scene itself ... And just when it looked like his afternoon couldn't get worse, some dreadlocked trustafarian in shades and a stupid suit came hammering up the qaa steps, puffing like a lunatic.

'Hold it,' Felix barked.

'I live here,' announced Raf, stopping to glance at the fat man blocking his way. From the rye on the man's breath to his thinning hair gone grey and tied back in a lanky ponytail, the fat man had 'American cop' written all over him. Which was weird, given this was North Africa.

'Prove it ...'

Raf had left his office at a run, over-tipped a cab to jump two lights and pounded straight through Nafìsa's knot garden, leaving shredded shrubs behind him. He'd made it from office to steps in five and a half minutes. Obstruction wasn't what he needed right now. Instead of stopping, he began to squeeze between the fat man and the door frame.

A finger jabbed his chest. 'Identity papers,' the man demanded. Even speaking bad French he had an air of authority — derived from more than just age or experience.

Raf hated him on sight. So he made quite sure he got in the first move.

Faced with having his knuckle rupture or stepping backwards, Felix retreated with Raf still twisting the offending finger. Some of the moves Raf had learned on remand were so simple a child couldn't screw them up. That was the idea, anyway.

'Ashraf..." Hani's shout meshed with a blur of movement, the cold click of metal and the touch of a police-issue revolver to Raf's head. Very slowly, Raf let go of the fat man's finger and stepped back.

'You know this person?' the fat man asked Hani, sounding disappointed. As if that somehow meant he wasn't allowed to beat his target to pulp.

Hani nodded, eyes wide. 'That's my new uncle.'

'Identity papers,' Felix said. His left hand kept the Colt pushed against Raf's skull while his right reached for the card Raf extracted from his inside jacket pocket.

'Fucking terrific.'

Definitely American, Raf decided, watching the fat man return his revolver to its hip holster. First language Brooklyn, second Arabic, third very bad French. Which was one better than him.

'Colonel Pashazade Ashraf al-Mansur ... Pashazade? Your dad's a fucking Pasha?'

Your dad. Now there was a concept with which to conjure.

'No,' said Raf, grabbing back his Third Circle laminate. 'He's the Emir of fucking Tunis.' Stepping round the fat man as if he wasn't there, Raf knelt beside Hani.

'You all right?'

'No.' She nodded towards an open door. 'Aunt Nafisa ...'

'Don't let the kid go in there,' said Felix heavily. 'Don't touch anything. And don't even think of getting in my fucking face.' With that he stamped his way downstairs to tape off the crime-scene entrances before anyone else decided to appear.

It took Raf nearly a minute to spot the platinum pen rammed hard between her ribs, its metal end protruding beneath one breast like a witch's third nipple; but then he was stood in an open doorway, on the other side of a rustling strip of police tape that had been hastily strung across the door.

'Shit.' There didn't seem much else to say. And besides, it was hardly the first corpse he'd seen. All the same, it was his aunt, supposedly, and he was surprised at how unmoved he felt. The wound was ugly, the small office was a mess. That was it.

'They murdered her,' whispered a voice behind him and when Raf looked back Hani was there, eyes vast as she stared up at him.

'Who did?'

'The foreigners.'

Somewhere inside Nafisa's office a lavatory flushed, a lock clicked open and before Raf could react an almost-elegant blonde stepped into the tiny room, still wiping her mouth. The door she'd used was hidden behind a Persian rug that hung on the wall from a wooden pole. Except the pole wasn't really attached to Nafisa's office walclass="underline" but to the top of a door. Behind her came the sound of a cistern filling.

'Lady Jalila,' said the woman, introducing herself.

'I'm Raf.'

'Yes, I know ...'

They stared at each other in silence. She'd done a good job of cleaning herself up but the scrub marks on the front of her white jacket didn't quite hide vomit stains. And she very carefully avoided stepping anywhere near the desk as she crossed the dead woman's office.

Her composure held for as long as it took the child behind Raf to turn on her heel and clatter away down the qaa steps. Lady Jalila looked startled.

'You let Hani see this?' The woman's voice was suddenly brittle, her hands shaking. To Raf it looked like the onset of shock.

'No,' said Raf. 'That was you.'

Lady Jalila shot him a puzzled look.

'You were obviously here first,' Raf added.

'I imagine that I was in Nafisa's loo being sick when Hani appeared.' Whatever else Lady Jalila intended to say was lost in a sudden tread of heavy feet below.

'Up here,' she barked. But Felix had got there first. The two uniformed police officers were halted in the courtyard, listening intently to whatever it was the fat man wanted to say.

'Hey, Boss,' said the younger, when Felix finally stopped talking. 'Control said to tell you you're showing up as offline ...'

'His Excellency?'

Both uniformed officers nodded as one.

'Felix here,' the fat man announced, flicking a switch on his watch and then punching a button. Other than that, he said nothing for the next few minutes, just turned a deeper shade of red. 'Yes, sir,' he said when the call was finishing. 'I'll make sure she gets every courtesy extended. And, yes, I'll remember it's easier for you if I don't turn off my connection.'

'My Lady.' When Felix looked up to where Lady Jalila stood staring down into the courtyard, the politeness in his voice was at odds with the contempt in his eyes. 'The Minister thinks it might be best if you went straight home.'

'Does he indeed ...' Lady Jalila headed for the qaa steps, nodding for Raf to follow.

'Presumably he's sending a car?'

'No,' said Felix. 'He's sure one of these officers will be delighted to drive you. That is, if you don't mind travelling in a squad car?'

Lady Jalila sighed heavily. 'If I must.'

'So all I need now,' said Felix, 'is to know when it would be convenient for me to call on you ... ?'

'On me?' The woman stopped in her tracks. Her voice made it sound as if Felix had suggested they book into the nearest Ramada for a quick afternoon of bestiality and child abuse.

'There has been a murder.' Felix glanced from Raf to Lady Jalila and then at Hani who was coming out of the kitchens with Donna in tow. What he thought about having his crime scene littered with a bey, children, cooks and the wife of his boss was obvious, if unprintable.

Chapter Seventeen Seattle / New York

The third time ZeeZee arrived in America he was almost sixteen and his previous trip was a memory he didn't take out of the box and dust down too often ...

There'd been no waiting stretch limo that earlier time, no one to meet him, not that he'd expected either and not that he minded. And besides, he'd proved quite capable of catching a Carey Bus and unloading his almost empty case outside Grand Central. He ditched the case in a gash bin on 42nd. There was nothing inside except a school coat and he didn't need that any more.

The yellow cab he stopped to take him to the apartment his mother was borrowing on the Upper East Side parked up illegally while he ran inside to get the fare. And when he discovered his mother wasn't home, he borrowed the $10 from a uniformed doorman and was vaguely surprised when the elderly black man assured him that his Seiko automatic wasn't needed as security for the loan.