'I'm not "involved", as you put it. If I hadn't picked it up somebody else would have, and there would be no chance of making sure it was returned to its rightful owner. I'll take it back tomorrow, I promise. And then we need never think about it again.'
2
The pursuers finally caught up with the fleeing man in the open area that lies between Rabat's walls and the Chellah, the ancient necropolis that is now a popular picnic spot for tourists during the day, but is largely deserted in the evening. He'd ducked down among the wild flowers that covered the area, but unfortunately one of the men chasing him had seen exactly where he'd gone to ground, and within seconds they had him, slamming him back against a rock.
The rest of the pursuers quickly gathered around the captive, and a tall, thin man with a pronounced hook nose stepped forward from the group. He'd suffered from untreated Bell's palsy as a child, and the right side of his face was frozen. The condition had also robbed him of the sight of his right eye and left him with a milky-white cornea that contrasted dramatically with his dark brown skin.
'Where is it, Hassan?' he asked, his voice calm and measured.
The captive shook his head, and was rewarded by a vicious blow to the stomach from one of the men holding him. He bent forward, gasping and retching.
'I'll ask you once more. Where is it?'
'My pocket,' Hassan al-Qalaa muttered.
At a gesture from the tall man, the two guards allowed the captive to reach into one of his pockets, then another, despair replacing exhaustion on his face as it slowly dawned on him that the object he'd grabbed when he ran was no longer in his possession.
'I must have dropped it,' he stammered, 'somewhere in the souk.'
The tall man gazed at him impassively. 'Search him,' he snapped.
One of his men pinned the captive down against the rock while another rummaged through his clothing.
'Nothing,' the man said.
'You four,' the tall man snapped, 'go back and search the souk. Follow the route we took, and question the stall-holders.'
The four men left the group and ran swiftly back towards the entrance to the souk.
'Now, Hassan,' the tall man said, leaning closer to the captive. 'You may have dropped it, or you may have given it to somebody, but it doesn't matter. It will surface somewhere, sometime, and when it does I'll get it back.' He paused and looked down at the pinioned man, then bent closer still. 'Do you know who I am?' he said, his voice barely more than a whisper.
The captive shook his head, his terrified gaze fixed upon the tall man's ruined face and unblinking sightless eye.
'Then I'll tell you,' he said, and muttered a few words into his ear.
Immediately the captive began shaking his head, sheer naked terror in his eyes.
'No, no,' he shouted, struggling violently. 'It was only a clay tablet. I'll pay you. Anything.'
'This is nothing to do with money, you fool, and it wasn't only a clay tablet. You have no idea – no idea at all – what you held in your hands.'
The tall man made another gesture and one of his men roughly ripped the captive's clothing aside to expose his chest, then shoved a piece of cloth into the man's mouth and tied it behind his head as a gag. They held him firmly against the boulder, arms outstretched, his writhing and twisting achieving nothing.
The captive kicked out violently – his legs were all he was able to move – and caught the tall man a glancing blow on the thigh.
'For that,' the tall man hissed, 'you will suffer longer.'
Reaching into his jellaba, he withdrew a curved dagger with a vicious double-edged blade from a hidden sheath. Rolling back his right sleeve beyond his elbow, to keep the material clear of the blood, he stepped slightly closer. He rested the point of the dagger gently on the man's chest, feeling for one of the spaces between the ribs, then began slowly increasing the pressure on the handle of the weapon. As the point pierced his skin, the captive cried out, a muffled grunt lost in the folds of the rudimentary gag.
The tall man pressed harder still and the front of his captive's jellaba suddenly turned a deep red as blood spurted from the wound. The tall man worked the knife in slowly, his gaze never leaving the dying man's face. When he estimated that the point of the weapon was about to touch the heart, he paused for a few seconds, changed his grip on the knife, then rammed the point home and twisted it sideways, the tip of the blade ripping his victim's heart virtually in half.
'Do you want us to bury him? Or dump him somewhere?' one of the men asked, as the captive slumped onto the ground.
The tall man shook his head. 'No, just drag him over there,' he instructed, pointing towards a clump of slightly denser undergrowth before bending down to clean the blood off the blade of his knife on the dead man's clothing. 'Somebody will find him tomorrow or the next day.
'Spread the word,' he said, as he and his men headed back towards the souk. 'Make sure everyone knows that Hassan al-Qalaa died because of what he did; ensure that everyone knows that if they talk to the police, they will suffer the same fate. And offer a reward for the recovery of the tablet. We must find it, whatever it takes.'
3
Just after ten the following morning, Margaret walked back into the souk with the clay tablet secreted in her handbag. She'd examined it carefully in their hotel room the previous evening, and taken several photographs of it.
The tablet was actually remarkably dull. Perhaps five inches by three, and maybe half an inch thick, it was a light grey-brown, almost beige, in colour. The back and sides were smooth and unblemished, and the front surface covered with a series of marks that Margaret assumed was some kind of writing, but not one that she recognized. It certainly wasn't any form of European language, and it didn't even look much like the Arabic words and characters she'd seen on various signs and in newspapers since they'd arrived in Rabat.
In exchange for her promise that she'd simply go back to the stall, hand over the object and come straight back to the hotel, Ralph had agreed not to come with her.
But when Margaret stepped into the souk and walked through the twisting passageways to the stall, there was an obvious problem. Neither the small Moroccan nor the collection of ancient relics she'd observed the previous day was there. Instead, two men she'd never seen before were standing behind a trestle table on which were displayed rows of typical tourist souvenirs – brass coffee pots, metal boxes and other ornaments.
For a few seconds she stood there, irresolute, then stepped forward and spoke to the men.
'Do you understand English?' she began, speaking slowly and clearly.
One of the men nodded.
'There was a different stall here yesterday,' she said, her words again slow and measured, 'run by a small man.' She made a gesture to indicate the approximate height of the Moroccan she'd seen previously. 'I wanted to buy some of his goods.'
The two men looked at her in silence for a few seconds before exchanging a couple of sentences in rapid-fire Arabic. Then one of them looked back at her.
'He not here today,' he said. 'You buy souvenirs from us, yes?'
'No. No, thank you.' Margaret shook her head firmly.
At least she'd tried, she thought as she walked away, but if the man who'd dropped the clay tablet wasn't there, there obviously wasn't any way she could return it to him. She'd just take it with her, back home to Kent, as a strange souvenir of their first holiday outside Europe, and a reminder of what they'd seen.