The Arabesk Trilogy Omnibus (129 page)

All he wanted was a meeting. It seemed not to have occurred to him that Isabeau might refuse and it was only afterwards, once she’d meekly agreed, that Isabeau realized it had never occurred to her either. And no, he didn’t need an address.

He seemed scarily knowledgeable on most aspects of her life.

Four o’clock would do. He expected her to meet him in the hallway and to let him in. She would recognize him by… His voice had paused at that point. She would recognize him by a copy of that afternoon’s
Il Giornale di Tunisi
, which he would carry under his left arm, folded in three.

And so a small man limped up the tired steps to her apartment block, his black leather coat bigger than it should be, a fedora pushed down over his eyes. The paper he held had a black border round the whole of the front page and was folded to reveal a headline:

L’emiro morto…

And below the news a picture of someone Isabeau had been telling herself for at least a day she didn’t recognize. Only half of his face was showing because of the way Eduardo had the paper folded, but it was that double worry line like a knife flick that gave him away, where the top of his nose met his eyebrows. They’d thought Ashraf Pasha was
mubahith
.
An infiltrator. And then Domus Aurea happened.

“Mademoiselle Isabeau Boulart?”

Respectably dressed in a blue jersey and denim skirt, sneakers without socks. Her lack of makeup made her seem younger than he expected, but then she was younger. All the same, Eduardo wondered if that look was intentional.

“I’m…” Eduardo paused, thought about it. “You don’t really need to know my name,” he said and glanced round the entrance hall. “Where’s the lift?”

Isabeau smiled. “We have stairs,” she said. Whoever the man was, he lived somewhere other than Tunis. The only places Isabeau knew with their own lifts were big hotels and those huge stores in nouvelle ville, the ones with canvas awnings over street-front windows and French names.

“Show the way then.”

She looked at him and he stared back, indicating the stairs with a slight wave of his hand; nothing impolite, just impatient like a man unused to being kept waiting.

“After you,” he said.

Isabeau walked ahead, all five flights, and at the second she stopped worrying about him staring at her bottom and concentrated on climbing, each turn of the stairs widening the gap between them. By the time she reached the third floor’s half landing, Isabeau was a whole quarter turn ahead and he’d lost sight of her anyway.

“Can I get you anything?” Isabeau asked when Eduardo reached the door she’d left open.

“Water,” he said. And then said nothing for a whole five minutes.

On the street below, workmen were busy stringing green-and-red bunting from one lamppost to another and adjusting crowd barriers under the bored gaze of traffic policemen. One of the many street parties would be held there. Enthusiasm fuelled by Ashraf Pasha’s announcement that all the food would be free.
Bread and circuses
… Eduardo was still trying to work out exactly when His Excellency meant.

“You own this?”

“I rent it from the city,” Isabeau said. “My brother also used to live here.”

“You have a bedroom?”

“Obviously.”

“Show me,” Eduardo said.

The sex was perfunctory, almost matter-of-fact. And Eduardo thanked her when it was done. Not daring to show her contempt, Isabeau shrugged, sat up from where she’d been tipped backwards onto her bed and adjusted her denim skirt, smoothing it down over her legs and his smell. She’d known what was coming. Expected it.

For his part, he hadn’t bothered to use a condom or remove her shoes.

“Now what?” Isabeau asked.

“We talk…” Zipping his fly, Eduardo reached for his notebook and tapped it to make it open. “I know you killed Pascal. That’s not the issue.”

Eduardo paused, giving the girl an opportunity to deny it but she just looked at him.

“You want to tell me why it happened?”

Isabeau shook her head. “You don’t want to know.”

“But the others knew? The rest of your group…?”

She spread her hands, neither denying nor agreeing.

“And so when you killed Pascal they covered for you,” Eduardo said. “In itself, that is significant. The way I see it.” He was proud of that phrase. “You stabbed your brother in the kitchen and had someone help you drag his body up to the alley… All those clean stairs,” Eduardo explained. “But first you swapped knives. Probably put your own through the industrial washer.”

Isabeau smiled.

“So what did you do with the real one?”

“There was no real knife,” said Isabeau. “And he died in the corridor outside the chill room. The stab wounds came later. Someone else did those.”

“So how did you kill him?”

“With a leg of lamb,” she said flatly.

Eduardo looked at her.

“It was frozen.”

“Ah…” Eduardo thought about the coroner’s report. A perfunctory half page with a throwaway line noting the victim had obviously smashed his skull on the cobbles of the alley when falling. “And what happened to the leg of lamb?” asked Eduardo.

“We ate it. One night when a shift was finished. Me, the others, even that Egyptian waiter, the one who looked so very much like…”

Eduardo held up his hand, consulted his notebook. “I believe the waiter’s dead,” he said.

Isabeau nodded. “A bit like my brother.”

As she waited for her
turbani
at Gare de Tunis, the first Fez-Iskandryia express to stop there in thirty years and a sign of the West’s sudden faith in the new regime, Isabeau told herself to be realistic. Everything in life had a price, including freedom. And if two perfunctory bouts of unwilling sex with a stranger were it, then there were worse ways to stay out of jail. As well as worse people to have such sex with, much worse.

When he was done questioning, Eduardo had tipped Isabeau onto her back again, pushed up her skirt until it reached her hips and, almost apologetically, grabbed the sides of her new knickers and pulled those down. Unzipping, he’d given himself a few jerks to strengthen his resolve and pushed into her, the toes of his shoes sliding on the tiles…

“I’m pregnant,” Isabeau said, her words enough to startle Eduardo into stopping midstroke. “Did you know that?”

For a second he almost shook his head but the temptation to be seen to know everything was too great, so he nodded instead. All the same, he retreated to the edge of her bed and tucked himself inside his trousers. A manoeuvre made simple by the fact he never wore underwear. Too much extra washing.

“What do you intend to do about it?”

“About what?”

“The baby?”

“I don’t know,” Isabeau said, bending forward to retrieve her knickers. “What do you suggest?”

“I suggest a holiday.” Dipping his hand inside his coat, Eduardo produced an envelope. “I was going to give you this when I went,” he said, looking shamefaced. It contained a fat and tattered wad of Ottoman dollars. Almost no one used Ottoman dollars anymore, except in the suqs and most of those could manage credit cards. Only the very old still insisted on keeping their lives in boxes under the bed.

“Call it severance pay from Maison Hafsid.”

At least they were high-denomination notes. Higher than Isabeau had seen before and in one case higher than she knew existed. To this man though, used as he must be to such things, they were probably small change.

“And this,” said Eduardo, “is also for you.” As the exchange rate stood, the second, far smaller wad of US dollars was worth about twice all the other notes put together. On the black market the dollars were worth maybe five times that.

“You want me to leave,” said Isabeau. Although it wasn’t until later that she realized she was only putting into words what she already knew.

“Wait, Madame DuPuis… You have to wait.”

A railway porter glanced round and saw a young police lieutenant in brand-new uniform stride towards a woman about to clamber through the door of a second-class carriage. Alexandre scowled at the porter and the elderly man decided he had business elsewhere.

“Madame Isabeau?”

Isabeau nodded. No one had ever called her
madame
before. And DuPuis definitely wasn’t her surname.

“These are for you,” Alexandre said as he handed her an envelope. “The Chief told me to deliver them.” Jagged as a tidal pull between rocks, an undercurrent to the young man’s politeness suggested he was less than happy to be hand-delivering notes on the morning the old Emir was buried.

“Thank you.” Isabeau flashed her sweetest smile and watched Alexandre melt. It wasn’t their surliness or even the fact they often seemed to smell that put Isabeau off men, it was the fact they could be so childish, so unbelievably easily led.

“Oh,” said Alexandre, “and I’m sorry…”

Isabeau raised her eyebrows.

“About…” He shuffled his feet, apparently unable to get beyond that word. “About your husband. It was a messy campaign. A just one, obviously, but messy and I’m glad it’s over.” He clicked his heels and gave her a salute, the smartness of which was utterly at odds with the state of his fingernails, which were bitten to the quick.

Once sitting, with her case pushed into the space behind her seat and a
capuchin
from a cart that had passed by on the platform outside, Isabeau ripped the flap on her new envelope, then glanced round. The carriage was almost empty despite this being the first
turbani de luxe
to run for years. Outside, the concourse was crowded, but with people arriving, not departing.
Nasrani
tourists, Nefzaoua up from Kibili to visit recently remembered family, farmers from the High Tell, pickpockets. Few wanted to leave a city when so much was about to happen.

Twenty-four hours of mourning for the old Emir, then seven days of celebration for the new. Isabeau supposed that made sense if she didn’t think about it too hard.

Shaking out her envelope’s contents, she saw two rings slide out and clatter across the table, along with something on a dull-metal chain. The small, official-looking booklet which followed landed without a sound and Isabeau wouldn’t have known the envelope contained a letter of condolence if habit hadn’t made her check inside.

It seemed her husband had died in a police operation, somewhere unspecified, south of Garaa Tebourt while rescuing his superior officer. Isabeau liked that touch. As if any man she married wouldn’t frag all the officers and NCOs first opportunity he got, then head off down some wadi for Tripolitana. As if she’d marry any man…

They were returning his ring, his police tags and a photograph they’d found in his wallet of her wedding day. The face was Isabeau’s although the body belonged to someone else; someone marginally thinner than she’d ever been with less full breasts. The man could have been anyone.

Isabeau was impressed to see they’d had a modern ceremony. She wore white and her husband was in uniform, their priest had a simple jellaba, his beard recently barbered and not at all wild. The room in which they stood was panelled in dark oak and had a photograph of the old Emir on the wall behind. It might have been more useful if someone had thought to write the exact location on the back.

The official-looking leaflet was a pension book made out to Madame DuPuis. At the bottom of the first page a space had been left blank for her signature. A footnote told her she could collect money monthly from any branch of the Imperial Ottoman Bank or arrange to have her widow’s pension paid direct by filling in a form on the last page.

As for the letter, this offered Isabeau the condolences of the state, commiserated with her over all she’d lost and hoped that her future from henceforth would be happier. It was signed with an illegible scribble, although the first letter looked like an A…

CHAPTER 53

Saturday 26th March

“Well,” said Raf, breath jagged and a grin on his face.

“Well what?”

Outside Zara’s bedroom window, crowds were already gathering beyond the gates of the Bardo and Raf could hear the growl of early traffic and clattering as impromptu market stalls were erected.

The police would be along later to take them down but trade would continue all day, stalls going up as soon as the old ones were broken down. Food sellers, hawkers of rice-paper rose petals and purveyors of cheap plastic flags, Raf had even seen his face on the side of a balloon.

The woman lying beside him had already made her opinion plain on all of that. As indeed she had on many other things. It had been the kind of discussion that, in later years, would raise smiles and get described, only half-ironically, as full and frank. At the moment they both still felt slightly vulnerable.

“Come on then,” Zara demanded.
“Well what?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” Raf wrapped one arm round Zara’s shoulders and pulled her on top of him. “How about,
Well, what do you plan to do with your day?
”

She laughed, kissed him back.

So Raf slid down slightly on the bed and took Zara’s nipple in his mouth, sucking comfort from her breast. She watched him as he did so, seeing only the top of his head and feeling his uncertainty.

“Are you all right?”

When Raf didn’t answer, Zara stayed where she was and closed her eyes. They had another hour before they needed to leave and if that wasn’t long enough then the wretched ceremony could wait.

Last night had been difficult. Difficult and different. Zara so nervous her whole body shook. And Raf…? She took him to her room, something she’d done with no other man and stripped to her thong in front of him, only losing her nerve at the last minute. Having sent him to the bathroom, she killed the light and hid under the covers.

Except that when he came back, all Raf seemed to want to do was lie in the darkness and let the moment wash over him. Something impossible for Zara.

“This is not fair,”
she’d said suddenly.

And thinking he knew what Zara meant, Raf nodded agreement and in that second’s movement shut down his night vision until everything in her room became outlines and shadow.