A murder, money, the recent appearance of an unknown heir. Arrange into a winning combination ...
Before the murder, RenSchmiss was just one middle-aged woman's obsession. Now it would be debated in drawing rooms and cafes across North Africa.
If the fat man wanted to keep talking about Thiergarten killers, that was fine with Raf but he knew what conclusion most people would draw from the evidence. And that was before he factored the press into account. The press were there to service the newsfeeds, which meant pictures, syndicated to local feeds all round the world, including Seattle.
Raf sighed.
The beard, hair and any thought of polarized contacts would have to go and the shades make a long-term reappearance. It was just a pity he didn't have time for a completely new face to go with his new name and nationality.
'I'll stay ...' He held up one hand, stopping Felix in his tracks. 'Lady Nafisa was my aunt ...' He was about to say something crass, like duty demands it, when the fat man's mobile started beeping.
It kept beeping while Felix searched his trouser pockets and finally tracked the watch down to his jacket, which was upstairs in the qaa, slung over a silver chair.
'What?' Felix demanded. He made no attempt to keep the irritation out of his voice.
The Minister was on the other end again. Raf knew that from the way the Chief of Detectives suddenly straightened up, pausing mid-stride. One hand came up to smooth his hair, thick fingers once again slicking sweat across his scalp.
'Yes, sir. I'm glad your wife got home safely. I sent one of my best men with her ..." If the Minister noticed the criticism implicit in the fat man's words it didn't stop his list of questions.
'Exactly when did it happen?' Ripping aside the tape that closed off the study door, Felix walked over to the dead woman's desk and half closed her paper, making sure the sticky pages didn't actually touch. It was the midday edition. 'So far all I can say is that it happened after twelve noon,' said Felix. 'Yes,' he said, 'I can state that categorically.' Felix listened to the next request and instinctively shook his head, sending sweat trickling down the bridge of his nose.
'No, Your Excellency. I don't think we should turn the site investigation over to Madame Mila.'
'Yes, I know the General is ...'
'No, I'm not ...'
'If I can just ...'
'Yes, he's still here ...'
It was a one-way conversation after that, Felix's protests fading into silence, broken only towards the end when he nodded abruptly.
'Whatever you want, sir ..." Felix tapped a button to end the call, scowled balefully at his watch and stabbed a switch that put it back on standby.
'You should have got out when you had the chance,' he told Raf. 'The Minister wants you as my official witness.'
'Which means what?' Raf asked, pushing back his own hair. The wind that seeped in through the smashed mashrabiya was hot and sticky, and Nafisa's precious air-conditioning unit would probably have been reaching meltdown, if someone hadn't already ripped its thermostat from the wall, leaving wires trailing.
It might have been Raf's imagination but he was sure her body had already begun to smell.
'What does it mean? It means you stand in that doorway and watch me commit professional suicide. You don't come in the room, you don't interfere and you definitely don't talk while I'm working. Understand?'
No, he didn't. 'What am I witnessing?' Raf demanded.
'Me. While I do this.'
On the marble table where Lady Nafisa had given her lunch for the parents of Zara bint-Hamzah, Felix dumped a battered leather case with reinforced corners and a webbing strap to hold the top tight shut. The words on the strap read Property of the LAPD — do not remove without authorization. Yanking off the strap, Felix waved his hand in front of something that might have been a human head, had it not been made of clear perspex and filled with jumbled electronics. Chunks of crystal memory had been crudely glued to the back.
Its eyes briefly lit red.
'Meet Dr Dee,' said Felix. From the other side of the case Felix pulled a battered camera, a Speed Graphic digiLux so old it had a separate flash unit and came minus a removable memory dump, which was where Dr Dee came in ...
'First off, I'm going to sweep the scene, do crime-scene shots, then body shots. And finally I'm going to examine the body ... Your job is to see I don't plant or remove evidence and that I don't molest or defile the woman's corpse. You got any problems with that?'
Silence.
'Good, then let's get started ...' Felix slid out his hip flask, flipped its lid and downed the flask in one. 'Beats holding your nose or saying prayers every time,' he added sourly, noting Raf's undisguised shock.
Only when Felix was certain that the tiles directly in front of him were clear of clues did he lie flat and sweep the floor with the beam of a tiny maglite. Two blouse buttons showed up immediately, both near the wall. Other than that, there was only debris from the mashrabiya. Lady Nafisa had been as fanatical about outer cleanliness as she had been about the inner kind.
'Why aren't I surprised?' Felix asked, but he was talking to himself. Lifting both buttons using tweezers, he dropped them straight into separate evidence bags, carefully dating and labelling each bag.
It took him no more than fifteen minutes to take positioning shots, with another ten for body shots and five for close-ups of the wound itself. In that time he stopped twice to drink from a second flask and when that ran out he calmly switched to a third and used that instead.
Perspiration rolled from the fat man's face as he worked, and the air around him stank of whisky and sour sweat. But never once did he stumble or even look drunk. He just snapped off each shot, checked the quality on the little screen at the back of the Speed Graphic and moved on, looking for the next angle, his next shot. He had a professional's tolerance for the drug of his choice. Raf had seen it before, up close and way too personal, every single day of the year he had spent in New York with his mother.
Chapter Nineteen
Seattle
Hitting America aged fifteen was different. So different as to be unforgettable in a life where everything was unforgettable. No flight attendant held his hand on the trip out and he travelled regular, legs cramped into a tiny gap between the edge of his seat and the sloped chair-back of the passenger in front.
Next to him sat a black-eyed girl wired into a Sony Dance-Master, the thud of Hold Me Down hissing from earbeads as her long fingers danced over the touchpad of a Nintendo to an entirely different beat. She smelled of toothpaste and a cheap powdery scent. Beyond her was a window seat, empty except for a Tibetan bag with an untouched magazine poking out of the top.
ZeeZee desperately wanted to ask if she'd mind if he took the window seat but didn't know the words ... It wasn't that she didn't speak English. She did. Confidence was his problem. His school outside Edinburgh was strictly single-sex. Which meant tarting the smaller boys was a regular pastime for most of his year: talking to girls wasn't.
PanAmerican called the seats regular but most of the regular passengers were further forward, drinking free vodka shots and eating complimentary cashews while watching Hollywood's finest on the screen in the wall of their bunks.
The seats at the rear of the Boeing were for students, casual workers, girls hoping to find work as nannies: the kind of people who didn't travel often, bought their own tickets and couldn't believe just how few US dollars they got in exchange at the bureau de change. Not that ZeeZee had forked out for his own seat.