Secret Skin (23 page)

The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. Here was an impotent man who wanted to build towering edifices to his unborn progeny. Freud would have loved him.

He looked away for just a second, processing my understanding. ‘You have recordings that could jeopardize the future we have planned for him. So I am forced to make a deal with you. But you can also be useful to me.’

‘A deal?’

‘One which only a fool would refuse. If you write this story involving my family how much will you make?’

‘I’m not sure. A few hundred, a few thousand maybe, but the money…’

‘…isn’t important, yes I’m sure. So of course you will turn me down when I offer you let’s say an introducer’s fee of one percent of Sunset Heights' book value?’

‘What?’

‘Mr. Bryson, surely you can figure out what one percent of 300 million is? We will make believe that you provided the professional introductions between Lawrence and myself. For that you shall have a fee, all legal, all above board.’

‘One percent?’ I worked it out. ‘Jesus…how much?’

‘What’s more, I will give you your story, only Orsa will be the central feature, me, my family and anything to do with us will be omitted.’

‘Why? Why Orsa?’

‘I told you, the legacy I want to leave has to be real, not the fiction created by Orsa and Lawrence. But Orsa resists.’

Stunning. He’d just confirmed what I knew about Sunset Heights and, if his offer was to be believed, three million dollars as well. Not only was it the inside line on a killer story but enough cash to set me up for life.

But.

But what? Take the freaking money.

‘That sounds too good to be true,’ I said. ‘Why would you want to give me so much money?

‘Ah, there you go, typical journalist, making assumptions. It’s not my money.’

I got it. ‘Orsa,’ I said.

‘Yes, Orsa.’

‘Let me guess, he won’t be around to spend it?’

‘You are more perceptive than you look.’

‘So you are going to kill him?’

He didn’t answer.

‘What happens if I say no? The hell with you and your money?’

‘Let me make it easy for you.’ He shouted to the lone workman, ‘Come.’

The man shambled over; he was older than he first looked. He had the body and frame of a teenager but the grey hairs of the early thirties. He was small from malnourishment and scared. Unlike a cocky journalist who had grown up with an expectation of food, education and a place to sleep, he couldn’t say no to Akbar.

Akbar grew tired of waiting for him. He grabbed the shaking man and pulled him to the floor’s edge. He held him in one hand by the leather work belt he wore and leaned the man forward until he teetered over the sheer drop and the swollen mists below.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ I said.

I’d find out soon enough.

Tears streamed down the laborer's grimy cheeks as he shuffled along the unfinished edge of the 52nd floor. The foothold that would have stopped him plunging into the thick cumulous smog in the manmade valleys below didn’t exist. Only one thing prevented him from falling between the half-built towers of Dubai’s brave new Arabian world. The hand on his work belt. Akbar’s other hand was on the laborer's collar.

‘You don’t want to be responsible for this man’s death,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

Quiet unruly sobs pulsed through the workman’s chest.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course I bloody well don’t.’

Akbar bared his teeth. ‘That’s the trouble with you people,’ he said, ‘you have no idea of responsibility, you are given everything, herded into your shops and your election booths, you do nothing. You have no idea how to be responsible for your own lives let alone anyone else’s. I take responsibility for life and death. This is why I will let him fall. That is power, power over yourself and power over others.

‘Power?’ I said. ‘Is that what you think this is?’

‘Hah,’ he said, the laborer squirmed in his grip, ‘I imagine that in your country you are what they call a “bleeding heart liberal”. I am confident that given the choice you won’t let this man fall to his death.’

Akbar prodded the laborer in the small of his back. The laborer whimpered but didn’t resist as he swayed over the dizzying heights.

‘Face facts, you just couldn’t live with yourself. You would never sleep.’

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘Let us have a trial run. I will give you 24 hours to bring these recordings to me. One sleepless night to see how you get on, hey?’

‘Okay, okay, look I’ll get you your damned recordings just let him go. He has nothing to do with this.’

‘Oh but he does. He is my guarantee.’

‘Guarantee of what?’

‘If you decide to flee the country, if you think you have choices, then this man,’ he shook him, ‘what is your name?’ The man was too terrified to answer. Akbar steadied his grip and leant him even further over the edge, ‘Your name!’ On tip toes there was nothing but the draught between the trembling laborer and the drop.

‘Mani’ he said, sobbing like a child. Then he started to talk quickly in his own language, a panicky little prayer, no fight in him at all. He’d been taught to think he was worthless so long he believed it.

Akbar gloated. ‘Bryson, you have one day to decide whether you want to take Orsa’s money and write the story of his demise, or I can accept the Russian’s offer to kill you. If you go anywhere, talk to anyone, send these recordings of yours to anyone then our little worker bee here will die.’

He swiveled Mani’s tear streaked face towards me. ‘Am I getting through to you?’

I seized the moment and the laborer and used my weight to drag his small frame from Akbar’s hands to the safety of the hard floor.

I rolled off him and heard Akbar laugh.

‘I’ve already made my decision,’ I said, rising to my feet.

He cocked an eyebrow, ‘So tell me.’

I ran at him. But he moved quickly for an old man. He side stepped and left nothing but the void for me to run into. Then his knuckles slammed into my throat. I grasped for breath and staggered back, stunned, suffocating on my own larynx, grateful for the reprieve.

He seized me with both hands and swung me out over the edge until I was in the same position the laborer had been. I struggled to breathe, and hung there, lame, watching the city, the irresistible pull of gravity beneath me.

The towers of Business Bay tapered off in a line beneath us, the mirrored facades of Sheikh Zayed Road glittered in the distance. The five-star view made my eyes blur.

For the first time in my life I didn’t feel that strange attractor that normally drew me to the edge of a cliff or the rail of a high balcony.

Instead I arched back and tried to shift my centre of gravity away from the sucking vertigo below. The strength of his grip prevented me from being anywhere other than where he wanted me to be.

Wraith like wisps of humidity drifted out of the smog filled abyss. I imagined my impact on the hard ground beneath.

The muscles in my stomach clenched into a nauseous fist and tried to punch out.

You’re supposed to see your life flash before your eyes at these moments. Everything is supposed to become clean and pure and simple.

I pictured the seven figure pay-off I’d receive if I simply said yes to Akbar.

But I couldn’t. Could I?

I cursed the terrible beauty of certain death below and my own insatiable hunger for something more meaningful – for someone meaningful – the folly that brought me there in the first place.

***

I watched myself dangle over the building’s edge with Akbar’s hands on my belt and collar. A peaceful disembodied perspective of a helpless man running out of time.

The man struggled, then failed to breathe. When panic flared in those familiar eyes my attention snapped back into my own body. The will to live just too strong to sit back and give up. Back arched, arms flailing, I grabbed Akbar by his hair and tore. A handful pulled free. He shrieked. I ran my hand over his face and clawed desperately for his eyes, to gouge that soft flesh, to inflict more pain before my inevitable fall.

He jerked me back inside and slammed me to the floor.

Then the gray-haired devil stood over me and grinned with smug satisfaction as I struggled to inhale after his blow to my throat. The air began to flow into my lungs again. I cried out. Happy to be hurting. To be alive was wonderful; to be scared a joy.

He looked down with that benign smile of his and kicked me.

‘Hey,’ he said. ’You either live or you die; only you can decide.’ He stuffed a business card into my shirt pocket. ‘Call this number when you have what I want.’

He left me struggling for breath on the cold grey floor of his aspirations. Mani crawled after him trying to figure out what he had done wrong.

It took some time before I could breathe normally again. The 52nd floor was empty apart from the sad figure of Mani huddled in the corner. I sat up and looked out over the city and let the rising warm air soothe my aches and pains. My lips were devoid of moisture, cracked like a wall in one of the badly built suburbs. I tried to moisten them and considered my options.

Three million dollars.

That was a lot of options.

My dry lips tore when I smiled.

That was better than death right?

I looked to where the laborer sat quietly with his arms wrapped around his legs.

Three mill’ and Mani would live. That was a good thing right?

Of course it was, we’d both live, where was the downside?

I could buy Yasmin‘s freedom. That would shut Newman up, and my nagging conscience.

Screw my conscience, take the money, keep it, spend it. Fuck Mani, Fuck Yasmin, Fuck Newman, Fuck Akbar, Faisal, Khadim, Orsa, fuck everybody. That was me, set for life.

A no brainer right?

Mani was staring at me. I was saying all this out loud. Some crazy white man talking his own head off.

I smiled at him and gave a cheerful little salute.

‘Hey,’ I said in greeting.

He nodded his head, unsure of the correct response. I smiled again nodding back.

The phone was still in my pocket, but the casing had cracked when I hit the ground. The display beneath it was undamaged and the red record button flashed a message: memory full.

I unplugged the earphone jack put it back in the correct socket and listened to the recording. I could hear Akbar’s words but only faintly. I wouldn’t know if they were any use until I got them on the computer and listened to some decent playback.

‘C’mon,’ I said to Mani, holding out my hand.

He grabbed it and I pulled him to his feet. I rested a hand on his shoulder and guided him to the lift. He pressed the call button and we waited.

On the way down the lift operator glared at me, his loathing barely concealed. He knew someone had scared his friend and he thought it was me. The man’s thick moustache twitched as he asked a few subtle questions of the laborer in a shared language. From the way he spoke to him Mani was clearly the confused runt of the litter.

I could sense the protectiveness of the lift operator as I pretended to look out over the wisps of clearing fog that evaporated into the desert behind us. Finally, he looked me in the eye and gave a brief nod of approval.

‘Okay,’ he said to me in English and smiled.

When the gate opened at the base of the building, the atmosphere had changed, someone had raised the roof while we were gone. Invisible only minutes before, seemingly endless columns of concrete and metal now rose from the sand.

A large group of men in blue uniforms rushed over to us, the men who’d left the floor when we arrived. They caught sight of Mani and one of the men began to shout at me in what I thought was Hindi. His colleagues joined in.

I let go of the laborer and pushed him towards the angry crowd, they inspected him and then focused on me. One man in particular, taller and rangier than the rest jabbed a finger in my chest, jerked his chin at me and began to shout in my face.

The foreman who had reluctantly left Mani upstairs pushed his way to the front. Made his own inspections and then spoke to me in heavily accented English.

‘You,’ he said. ‘What did you do to him?’

‘I…’ began but didn’t finish my sentence, the lift operator put his hands on my shoulders and talked to them for me. The champion of my cause.

A couple of the men shouted back at him but the foreman told them to be quiet. I understood that much.

He asked for confirmation from Mani, who nodded agreement and managed to string a few words together. All heads turned and I was looking into a wall of bright smiling eyes set against the burnt faces of the Indian men, their skin almost black from the extreme temperatures in which they worked.

‘Haaah,’ one man called out at me, then said something that made the others laugh.

The lift operator tapped me on the shoulder. ‘It’s okay now,’ he said and shook his head, ‘You go.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

I moved out into the crowd of men and the foreman caught my eye. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘that man, that Arab, is he a friend of yours?’

‘Definitely not, no.’

He shook his head and sucked his teeth. ‘He is a bad man, a very bad man. Thank you for Mani. He is helpless.’

‘No problem.’ I said.

‘He has a young wife back home, and children, his children are not like him up here,’ he said, tapping his temple. ‘We take care of him.’

‘I can see that,’ I said, nodding approval.

We walked in silence a little way.

‘Where is your car?’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I may need a little help.’

***

The men forgave me the first time I revved the car too much and covered them in sand. The second time I did it the foreman yanked the keys off me and got behind the wheel. I joined the six men who had come along to help.

One of the men, the tall one who’d shouted at me, rotated his forefingers slowly. One over the other, then rapidly, his hands flew wide and created an explosive gesture. He pointed at me and laughed. He then repeated the slow turn of the wheels gesture again, whipping one hand off ahead of him.

‘I get it,’ I said, ‘I was going too fast…’