Three women pushing oversized prams are watching him. He ignores them and taps the boiled egg against the table, peeling it slowly, prying off the shell in big pieces so as not to tear the albumen. Taking a pinch of sea salt, he dusts the crown of the egg and bites it in half.
Eggs had been a luxury when he was growing up. Food had been a luxury, to be queued for, haggled over and eaten with reverence. Every day had been a struggle for his mother, who raised six children on the West Bank, earning a few shekels by sewing for neighbors. His father was a man in a photograph; a stranger who spent eighteen years in an Israeli prison before dying of a heart attack at fifty-two. The Israelis wouldn’t return his body to be buried in Ramallah.
The Courier finishes eating and brushes the crumbs from the table. He folds the paper bag, putting it into his pocket. Then he crosses the street, pausing to put on his gloves, tugging at the cuffs and smoothing the soft leather on his fingers.
Taking the stairs he climbs three floors and knocks on the door.
“Come in.”
A voice summons him inside. The receptionist is a lank-haired blonde, barely twenty. Her hips and thighs are pushing against her skirt and her breath reeks of mentholated cough drops.
“I’m looking for Mr. Hackett,” he says in a perfect London accent.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“We’re old friends.”
The receptionist sneezes into a tissue. Blows her nose.
“That’s a nasty cold. You should be home in bed.”
“Uncle Colin doesn’t believe in sick days.”
“Mr. Hackett is your uncle.”
The Courier sits on the edge of her desk, toying with her pencil holder. His nearness makes her feel uncomfortable.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Janice.”
He repeats the name out loud. She doesn’t like how it sounds coming from his mouth.
“Perhaps you should come back later.”
“No, I’ll wait.”
His eyes slowly drop down to her chest, then to the hem of her skirt and her crossed legs. She checks the top button of her blouse self-consciously.
“Where do you live, Janice?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You should go home. Crawl into bed. Stay warm.”
“Someone has to look after the office.”
“I can do that.”
“I don’t know you.”
“Like I said, I’m an old friend.”
The Courier has opened his wallet. He pulls out a handful of banknotes and begins placing them one by one on the desk blotter.
“How much do you earn?”
“Why?”
“Ten pounds an hour… twenty?”
“It’s not really any of your business.”
“What if I offered to cover your missed wages?”
A hundred pounds is sitting on the blotter. Janice looks at the money and trembles, a pool of heat burning on her forehead as though her hairdryer has been left on the same spot for too long.
She stands, picks up her coat, not making eye contact.
“Wait!” he says.
Janice stops. Trembling. She can feel the contents of her stomach liquefying and rushing through her colon. The visitor picks up the banknotes and pushes them into the pocket of her coat.
“Take yourself off to bed,” he says. “I’ll tell Mr. Hackett you went home.”
He touches her shoulder. Opens the door. She wants to run but can’t move quickly in her heels.
Outside on the street, not stopping, she calls Colin Hackett on his mobile.
“Where are you?” she asks.
“In Luton.”
“There’s a man in your office. He sent me home.”
“What do you mean he sent you home?”
“He told me to leave.”
“What’s his name?”
“I don’t know, but he says he knows you.”
“What’s he look like?”
She swallows. “I don’t think he’s a nice man, Uncle Colin. I don’t think he’s your friend.”
8
Even in the muddy half-light, Luca can see the dark liquid stains running down the brick walls and smell the ageing feces and sweat. The damp eight-foot-by-ten-foot cell has no window or furniture, just a soiled pillow and blanket on the floor.
There are six cells side by side in the basement of the al-Amariyah police station. Luca knows this building. He came here once to investigate the deaths of six prisoners who were handcuffed and blindfolded before being lined up against a wall in a courtyard and shot. Witnesses claimed the man who pulled the trigger was a senior Iraqi politician in the interim government. One described it as an unintended act of mercy because the men had been beaten for so long they simply wanted to die.
The corpses were removed by the Prime Minister’s bodyguards and driven off in a Nissan utility. Another witness said they were buried west of Baghdad, in open desert country near Abu Ghraib. Luca imagines these men, naked and still, garlanded with bruises, lying in unmarked graves.
He dreams. He wakes. Reality is such a hazy, shallow state and his nightmares, the recurring ones, are full of the speaking dead and bones bursting out of the ground. How many days have passed since his arrest? They took away his watch, along with his belt and shoelaces. They took away his gun. They had laughed at the size of it. A woman’s gun, they said. One bullet.
For the first few hours he had bellowed through the meal hatch, demanding to contact the American Embassy. When his voice grew hoarse he saved his strength, concentrating on small details like the chain hanging from the ceiling and the discarded length of hosepipe in the corner. He didn’t want to imagine what they were for.
They came for him eventually. He was handcuffed and dragged along an unventilated corridor. A guard slapped the heel of his hand three times against the steel door, which creaked partway open, revealing the apprehensive face of a young soldier. Shoved forward, hard against a wall, Luca felt a stabbing sensation in his forearm. A man in white. A needle in his hand. The room began to dip and sway, rolling like the deck of a ship in a storm. Someone was speaking to him, but he couldn’t focus on the face. What big eyes… such a big mouth… so many questions.
At some point he had fallen asleep or lost consciousness and woken back in the cell. He can hear people outside now… a key rattling in the lock… the hinges groan. The same guards pull him upright, pushing him along the passageway. He needs to pee. The desire borders on torment.
Another room. A table. Two chairs. A single light bulb. A window. A familiar figure. General al-Uzri takes off his jacket. His forearms bulge below the short sleeves of a cotton shirt. His jacket is folded and placed neatly on a spare chair.
“I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” he says. “I trust you have been treated well.”
“No.”
“Perhaps our prisons aren’t quite up to American standards.”
He uses the word “American” like it belongs to a lesser life form.
“Why am I here?”
“You have been accused of killing two unarmed civilians in a village near Mosul.”
“We were fired upon by insurgents.”
“Not according to our witnesses.”
“What witnesses?”
“The men you murdered had wives and families.”
“They were insurgents.”
“You targeted the pickup. You shot out the nearside tires causing the vehicle to roll. Then you stopped and poured petrol over the occupants and set them alight.”
“That’s bullshit! We were fired upon. I can show you the bullet holes.”
“Your driver has given us a statement.”
Luca struggles to breathe. He’s talking about Jamal.
“I don’t have a driver.”
The general laughs. “Such loyalty is commendable, but you have left it rather late to be so protective of your accomplices.”