Open Sesame (22 page)

‘Are you all right?’ Fang asked uncomfortably. ‘You don’t look very well. You’ve gone a very funny colour.’

‘I’m not in the least surprised.’

‘Sort of black and white.’

Akram laughed wretchedly. ‘What the hell do you expect?’ he said. ‘My life has just changed. It’s now got credits at the beginning and the end. Just when I thought—’

The jar twitched slightly in his hands, as if it was getting impatient. The sensation of movement against his skin made Akram shudder, and he seemed to reach a decision. Very swiftly, almost aggressively, like a man putting out a fire, he tried to stuff the jar back in its box. But the box was now too small.

‘Think about it,’ said Fang’s voice, greatly to Fang’s astonishment. ‘The thing is here already. Right now, Ali Baba’s got it. He knows you’re this side of the Line. He knows you’ve sworn to kill him.’

‘I gave him my word …’

‘He knows,’ the voice went on, ‘that you’ve crossed the Line. When you cross the Line, you come out of character. If you’re out of character, your word’s about as valid as a Confederate banknote. He knows this.’

‘But I’ve changed,’ Akram protested. ‘I’m good now.’

‘This week,’ the voice replied. ‘Maybe even next week, too. Maybe the next fifty years; but there’s no guarantee. He knows that, too. On this side of the Line, you have no character.’

‘But I don’t want…’

‘He knows,’ intoned the voice, ‘exactly what he did to you, what he tried to do to you. He knows - hey can I have my voice back, whoever the hell you are, nobody said you could use my bugger off, small fry. He knows exactly what he’d do if he was you. In fact, he will be you. And you will be him. You know that.’

‘That’s you talking, isn’t it? You in the jar. Say “bottle of beer”, go on, say it.’

‘Open the jar, Akram.’

Akram stared at the jar. He could see the faint marks of the potter’s wheel; he even fancied he could smell the distinctive smell of the palm-oil it had once contained. He knew precisely what was in the jar. He would not open the jar. When is a jar not a jar?

‘When it’s a door. Open the jar.’

‘I refuse.’

‘You can’t. Remember?’

‘I could take you back where you came from. Maybe there’s money back on you.’

‘Non-returnable. No deposit. Open the frigging jar, Akram, or it’ll be the worse for you.’

‘No,’ said Akram, putting his hand on the lid. ‘You will stay where you’ve been put. You can’t come in here.’

Like a small guided missile Fang shot across the room. In her defence, it should be pointed out that she flew backwards, her legs and arms thrashing wildly; in any event, she smashed into Akram’s hand, knocking the lid of the jar halfway across the room. Akram flailed wildly, trying to catch it; then he hurled himself over the mouth of the jar, but too late. A column of what could have been bees, or flies, or lumpy black smoke, curled upwards out of the jar, turning and twisting and buzzing, fending Akram off as if he was made of feathers. He swung at it wildly with a chair; the chair passed through the column and out the other side, and then smashed into matchwood.

‘Bastard!’ Fang yelled. ‘Look, it wasn’t me, I had nothing to do with —’

The smoke, flies, bees solidified, until they were a solid thing. The jar swelled up, until it was the size of a crouching man, maybe a little larger. The column stopped moving. It was a human shape. It stood opposite Akram, no more than six inches away from him. Akram stared at it; it was just like looking in a mirror; or suppose you’re standing between a whitewashed wall and a very bright light, and you look at your shadow.

‘Go back,’ he said, but his voice was thin and watery. ‘Go back home.’

The thing, his other self, smiled. It was an exact likeness, except somehow dark, shadowy. Do you remember how Peter Pan came across the Line to retrieve his shadow, and all the trouble that caused?

The shadow reached out its hands and feet, and touched Akram, and joined him. ‘I am home,’ he said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘I’m starving,’ Akram said. ‘Let’s eat. I fancy Lebanese.’

‘It’s half past three in the morning,’ Akram replied. ‘In Southampton. If we’re lucky, we might just find an unopened dustbin bag.’

Akram laughed. ‘You always were a pessimistic bugger,’ he said. ‘Now, if my instincts are still working -‘ He stopped still, drawing his other half up sharply. ‘This way,’ he said, and darted off down the street, dragging Akram behind him like a large dog walking a small human.

Just around the corner there was a blaze of light and colour. Exotic music, strings and bells and cymbals, floated across on the languid night breeze. Over the door was a sign saying TRIPOLI RESTAURANT.

‘Damn,’ said Akram. ‘Wouldn’t you just know it. I seem to have come out without any money. I wonder, would you mind… ?’

Fang, snuggled inside Akram’s jacket, peered out. She liked late-night catering establishments, bars, night clubs; because where you have drunken night owls, you have fights, and where you have fights, you run a good chance of picking up the odd dislodged tooth.

‘You two,’ she observed, ‘remind me of something.’

‘Really?’

Fang nodded. ‘I got it,’ she said. ‘It’s like when you’ve got a prisoner and a guard handcuffed together; you know, with the raincoat to cover the chains? Only,’ she added, ‘I’m not sure which of you’s which.’

‘He is.’

A waiter drifted forward and smiled.

‘Hello,’ Akram said. ‘Table for three, please.’

The waiter nodded. ‘If you’d like to come this way …’

‘Or rather,’ Akram amended, ‘two. Actually, make that one.’

‘As you like, sir. Please to follow me. Anything to drink before you order?’

‘No, I mean yes.’ Akram stood still for a moment, his eyes closed. ‘That’s, um, one tomato juice, one triple absinthe, no ice, and do you have any camel’s milk?’

If the waiter was taken aback at all, he didn’t show it.

‘All in the same glass, sir? Or one after the other? Or… ?’

‘Simultaneously, of course. Sorry, I mean, could I have those, er, simultaneously. Thank you.’

The waiter turned to walk back to the kitchen, hesitated and glanced surreptitiously back. An ordinary-looking sort of man, quite large, could easily be from the Old Country except that he sounded English. He was sitting at one of the side tables, and the candle-light seemed to be throwing a larger than usual shadow against the far wall. Occasionally his hand crept to his chest; indigestion? angina? None of the waiter’s business. Neither was he interested in the fact that the man seemed to be holding an animated conversation with himself. When you’re in the late-night catering business, the ones you watch are the ones who don’t talk to themselves.

‘This,’ said Akram to his shadow, ‘isn’t going to work. I mean, listen to us, we can’t agree on anything.’

‘What, you mean like we’re married or something? No, I take that back, we are at least talking to each other. By the way, you haven’t introduced me. Who’s the houri?’

‘Tooth fairy,’ Akram corrected. ‘Shadow, Fang; Fang, Shadow. Better now?’

‘Excuse me,’ said Fang, ‘but can I just get this straight? You’re Akram and he’s your shadow?’

‘And vice versa. On the other side, it’s the other way round. I think. Actually that’s a gross simplification, but let’s leave it at that for now.’

‘So really,’ Fang ground on, wishing she’d never raised the subject, ‘you’re both Akram. Is that right?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ replied the image on the wall. ‘To take the marriage simile one stage further; a happily married couple is two minds with but a single thought. We’re one mind with two entirely different thoughts. Usually, at least.’

‘Ah.’ The tooth fairy nodded. ‘Like a dual personality, sort of thing.’

The shadow shook its head. A split microsecond later, Akram’s head moved too, with the result that a quarter of his camel’s milk went down the front of his shirt. ‘Schizophrenia, you mean? Not really. Schizophrenia is where the left hand knows perfectly well what the right hand is doing, and bitterly resents it. I prefer to think of us as two sides of the same coin. The yin and the yang. The positive and the negative charged particles, both circling the same neutron.’

‘Except,’ Akram interrupted sullenly, ‘somehow he never has any money on him. And when he gets drunk at parties and starts making lewd suggestions to married women, I’m the one who gets thumped.’

‘You exaggerate.’

‘And,’ Akram went on, ‘the curious thing is, the one time in a hundred when the lewd suggestion leads to a result, it’s always my turn to be the blasted shadow.’

‘Ah.’

‘And of course,’ Akram continued, ‘you don’t get a shadow when the light’s turned off. Marvellous.’

It’s always embarrassing for third parties when couples argue in public, and Fang wished she could change the subject. ‘I—’ she said.

‘I suppose it’s the same for everyone,’ Akram was saying, ‘with the extremely important difference that they don’t realise it. But I do. Ever since I was in that bloody jar, the time I found out I was in a story. I found out all sorts of things then that nobody else realises. Big mistake, that.’

‘I agree,’ said the shadow, nodding

(‘For God’s sake mind what you’re doing!’

‘Huh? Oh, sorry.’)

‘Glad you agree on something,’ Fang replied. She noticed that whereas the shadow had finished its drink, Akram still had half of his left. He was wearing the other half. ‘But I still don’t see how you two came to, er, get together. I thought there was something quite other in that jar.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Well,’ Fang replied defensively, ‘the secret of absolute power. The, er, ultimate weapon. That’s what Ali Baba seemed to think it was, anyway.’

‘He was right,’ the shadow replied smugly. ‘You’re looking at it.’

‘You?’

‘That’s right. Well,’ the shadow corrected, ‘us. Together, we make the perfect combination. His skills of stealth, mayhem and cunning; my total lack of moral restraint. Who could ask for more?’

‘What you find in the box,’ Akram explained, ‘depends on who you are. If Ali Baba had opened it, he’d probably have found a fleet of nuclear submarines or a death ray or something. Me,’ he added bitterly, ‘I have to find him.’

The shadow bridled; a difficult thing to do in only two dimensions. ‘The difference between me and a fleet of nuclear submarines,’ he said with dignity, ‘is that I cost less to run and I’m a damn sight easier to park. True, I can’t stay underwater for up to five years at a time, but so what, nobody’s perfect.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘I shall pretend I didn’t hear that. Now then, I fancy the humus to start with, followed by the lamb with couscous and a bottle of the Riesling. It’s all right about the alcohol,’ he added. ‘I don’t have to drive home.’

Akram sighed. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I give in. Let’s just get it over and done with as quickly as possible. I suppose I’ve got to kidnap the girl.’

‘That’s right. Splendid piece of detective work there, by the way. I’m glad to see you haven’t forgotten everything I taught you.’

‘Actually,’ Akram pointed out, ‘it was sheer luck. Anyway, we kidnap the girl—’

‘Nice piece,’ commented the shadow, ‘if you like them long and bony. I’m told that sort keeps better, but I always trade mine in fairly quickly, so I can’t actually vouch for it myself.’

‘And then,’ Akram continued with distaste, ‘we let her go in return for Ali Baba releasing me from my oath. And then,’ he added, ‘I kill him.’

‘Exactly. Won’t that be fun?’

Akram shut his eyes. ‘Won’t it just,’ he said.

The phone rang.

‘Whoozit?’ Ali Baba croaked into the receiver. The digital clock beside his bed seemed to leer mockingly at him, and its eyes read 04:59.

‘Hister Harbour? Hit’s Hisses Utchinson ere, he hum’s harted Weeding hagain hand hoo haid hone hoo hif hat appened.’

‘Could you just hold the line a moment, please?’ Ali Baba put down the receiver and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands while the basic background information files of his brain gradually drifted back on line. Mrs Hutchinson. She’s a patient, extraction, left upper molar, and yes, in a moment of surpassing folly I did say call me if there’s any problems and gave her my home number. That reminds me, who am I and where the hell is this? Ah yes, now I remember.

Tm very sorry to hear that, Mrs Hutchinson,’ he replied, and the facility with which he did so without so much as batting an eye, crossing a finger or growing an extra six inches of nose goes to show that dentistry’s dubious gain was the legal profession’s palpable loss. ‘First thing in the morning, or rather first thing later on this morning, if you could possibly drop by the surgery …’

‘Hut hoo hed, hif hit harts hleeding, hoo’d hum himmediately. Hoo hed …’

I did, didn’t I? I should be hanged, with my own tongue for a noose. ‘Of course, I’ll be right with you. Now, in the meantime, if you’ll just mix up some ordinary table salt with some water…’

Twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. Ali Baba was, of course, on his way to Mrs Hutchinson’s; which is why Akram, taking a deep breath before stating his demands for Michelle’s return, got the recorded message instead. He wilted slightly; even desperate extroverts feel just a bit self-conscious talking to answering machines. After a moment of being disconcerted, Akram cleared his throat.

The message went as follows:

‘Hello, this is, um, me here, I’d just like to leave a message. Er, ready? Well, here goes. Look, you pigfucker, you ever want to see your daughter alive again, be at the entrance to — oh bugger, I can’t read my own writing. No, not them, my reading glasses, the ones on the - thanks, now then, where were we? Entrance to Tesco’s car park in Cinnamon Street, that’s the Bishop Road entrance as you come in from the bypass, not the .. Sorry, just a tick. Yes? Oh. Oh, right. Sorry, that’s not Tesco’s, it’s Safeways, at one thirty tomorrow, morning, and you’d better come alone or else, Okay? Right, er, well, oh God I hate talking into these things. Um. Bye.’

The second message was:

‘Hello? Oh blast. Hello, it’s me again. Did I say not to tell the Police or it’ll be the worse for the girl? Well, um, that’s it for now. Ciao.’