Dogstar Rising

Chapter Thirty




The moon was a copper coin tossed into the air. It hung there suspended in the clear sky as if trying to decide their fates. It was so bright it was almost like walking in broad daylight. The felucca was moored along the jetty just beyond the stern of the Nile Star. A gnarled figure stood up in the boat as they approached and Makana recognised the hunched outline as Adam. He held up a hand to help Dena step down. She settled herself on one side, arranging a scarf around her head to protect her hair from the cool breeze.

Makana waited until they had cast off. The tall white sail unfurled, fluttered, and then tautened in the wind. The creaking of the mast carried easily over the silent water as the felucca leaned one way and then the other. He moved along the jetty until he found an old rowing boat tied up to a mooring post. Would it bear his weight? It listed badly to one side and silvery water sloshed about in the bottom but there was no other option, the felucca was already slipping away from him, dissolving into the shadows. Stepping down he tripped over a pair of oars. Makana’s skill with nautical craft was fairly limited. Still, how difficult could it be? He felt he ought to be able to handle a simple rowing boat. It took him several minutes before he could untie the mooring rope. And then the boat rocked alarmingly as it began to drift away downstream by itself – in the wrong direction. Fighting the urge to panic, he settled himself in the stern and set the oars in place, trying not to make any noise and failing miserably. The distant sail was shrinking like a white tear falling smoothly down a silky obsidian cheek.

He heaved on the oars and promptly tipped over backwards. Righting himself, he set the oars back in place and tried again. They seemed to have little effect, other than splashing water everywhere. As his grip slithered about he peered at the oily looking puddle between his feet and wondered if it was growing. Was it possible he was sinking? The boat was old, heavy and wide. It resisted his efforts to move and seemed to begrudge him every metre it conceded, as if it was rooted to the spot. He forced himself to focus on just lifting and pulling the oars, trying to find a rhythm. It didn’t help that he was trying to go against the current. In a matter of minutes he was sweating and his back ached and when he looked over his shoulder the white crack in the darkness that was the sail had all but vanished. He could only just make it out.

He lost track of time as he wrestled with the cumbersome oars which seemed to want to go in any direction but the one he tried to direct them. Whenever he eased up he could feel himself slipping back downstream the way he had come. It wasn’t until he was almost level with the felucca that he realised it had stopped moving. How much time had gone by? It felt as though he had been rowing for hours, but a glance at his watch told him it was less than fifteen minutes.

The house was set on the western shore of the river in a broad, flat bay of open ground, trimmed by a thin ribbon of trees. Palm fronds stirred noisily in the breeze, fluttering with silvery light. It stood alone with no other buildings nearby. Just upstream from it lay the rubble of former dwellings whose walls had long since started to crumble into the water. Behind it the land rose in a languorous wave of smooth sand, a hint of the desert that lay beyond to the west. In the moonlight the sand was as flawless as silk. There was no one in sight. The felucca swung in the current, the loose sail flapping like a restless jinn tied in a sack, the wood creaking.

A few lights flickered faintly around the square outline of the house. The nervous flames of oil lamps were vigilant eyes trained on the river. Makana leaned all his weight on the tiller until gradually the boat shifted and conceded to slide in towards the shore. He had been aiming for the ruins, thinking they would afford him some cover, and was unlucky enough to run aground long before the keel struck on the beach. He climbed cautiously over the side and found that the water came up to his knees. He waded up trying not to think of the damage to his clothes. The thick mud sucked him down. His shoes picked up sand, swelling to the size of a clown’s flapping feet as he walked. The broken line of withered trees afforded him some cover as he skirted along the incline to approach the house from the upstream side. As the shadows closed in he moved more carefully, more out of fear of disturbing some nocturnal creature. This was a perfect area for snakes and the last thing he wanted at this point was to step on a cobra.

The house was a simple construction. The front walls were plastered and painted and had been decorated with drawings and ornamental clay plates hung here and there according to Nubian tradition. The front gate stood open to a courtyard that was dark. A solitary lamp burned within, throwing shifting shadows across the walls as he stepped inside. It was the kind of place where tourists could stop on their felucca ride to sip something cold. A stuffed crocodile in a lamentable state provided atmosphere. Dried out and cracked in places, it hung at a lopsided angle from loops of rope over the entrance. The main building was shuttered and locked. The bare earth of the yard was dotted with chairs and metal tables. Down a staircase rising along the wall to his left, the faint whisper of voices trickled from the upper floor.

Elongated skulls, also of crocodiles, were set into little recesses along the staircase wall; more atmosphere for the tourists. Halfway up he could see over the walls. The beach was bathed in white moonlight. The river was like oil, dark and glistening with menace. He could make out the felucca Dena had arrived in. He felt disappointed that she had not trusted him.

The upper floor was a terrace where you could sit and look out over the river. There were chairs and tables and grubby divans along the walls. On the far side was a small bar that looked as though it had been knocked together in a day by a blind man. The bricks were uneven and the plaster had been inset haphazardly with angular shards of broken mirror for decoration. Makana stepped up and the voices went silent.

‘Hello Ramy.’

They were sitting over in the far corner, in the shadows, against the wall. A single oil lamp rested on the low table in front of them. Neither of them said anything. Dena lowered her head and clenched her fists together. Ramy’s face was partially hidden. There was something about it that seemed not quite right. As Makana drew closer Ramy pulled back, further into the shadows.

‘You’re not an easy man to find.’

‘Who are you? What do you want from me?’ he hissed.

‘It’s the man I was telling you about,’ said Dena.

‘I know that, ya beleeda. He followed you here.’

‘Why did you come?’ she implored. ‘Why didn’t you give me a chance?’

‘You mean, you arranged this?’ Ramy was incredulous.

‘No, no,’ protested Dena.

‘I’m not here to harm you,’ Makana said as he approached. Ramy was like a nervous horse that could bolt at any moment. ‘I just want to ask you a few questions.’

‘Questions about what?’

‘Well, for a start, what are you doing here?’ By now he had reached the corner where they were sitting. Ramy slipped a hand under a cushion and when it reappeared it was holding the Beretta.

‘I wondered where that had gone.’ Makana glanced at Dena who looked away.

‘Did Yousef send you?’

‘Yousef?’

As Ramy leaned forwards, the light from the lamp illuminated his face. In the flicker of the flame Makana could make out the curiously twisted surface of the right-hand side of his face. A long, curved welt ran down from his ear, and the flesh around this was covered with a scar that made it scaly and uneven. A gleam of satisfaction came into his eye at Makana’s expression.

‘Why are you here?’

‘I wanted to meet you,’ said Makana. ‘You’re an interesting man. What did you run away from?’

‘Who said I was running from anything?’

‘You know that Meera is dead.’

Ramy jerked the gun at Makana. ‘What have you got to do with Meera?’

‘I think you know who killed her.’

‘Why would you think a thing like that?’

‘I was there when she was shot. I tried to help her,’ said Makana quietly, easing himself down into one of the low chairs facing the divan they were sitting on. ‘I wasn’t fast enough.’

‘You’re the one who went for the gunman?’ Ramy asked. ‘And now you are here. Why? What do you gain out of this?’

‘Nothing,’ said Makana. ‘She was a good person. I don’t think she deserved to die like that.’

‘What has any of this to do with me?’

‘I think you know why she was killed. I think you were helping her.’

‘You seem to think a lot.’ Ramy’s hand opened and closed on the butt of the pistol as if it was becoming slippery from sweat.

‘You can help me out.’ Makana reached into his pocket for the photograph of the three soldiers and placed it on the table between them. ‘I found that in Meera’s study.’

Ramy leaned forward and peered at the picture. After a moment he began to laugh, the loose, crazy laugh of a man whose mind no longer makes sense to him. Makana and Dena exchanged glances.

‘Who is the man in the middle?’ Makana asked.

‘He was a conscript named Abdallah Hamid. A nobody.’ Ramy looked up. ‘He’s dead. Rocky killed him.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ echoed Ramy. ‘Because he’s insane. Because hurting people is what he does best. No, I’ll tell you why, because this man called him a name. A bad name, but nothing worse than you hear any day of the week in the streets. So Rocky killed him with his bare hands. We were in the desert. On a training exercise. There were only three of us. Navigation training. Moving in the night with nothing but a compass and a map. Rocky made me swear not to tell. We made it look like an accident.’

‘You didn’t tell anyone?’

‘I’m not a fool. He would have killed me just as easily.’

‘How do you know Rocky?’

Ramy’s eyes fell. He scratched his chin. ‘I knew him a long time ago. When I was a boy.’

‘You were together in the orphanage, at Wadi Nikeiba.’

‘My father . . . It’s a long story.’

Dena reached for his hand. ‘It’s all right,’ she said gently.

‘You told him?’ Ramy wrenched his hand free, then after a moment he went on. ‘People were already calling him Rocky back then. He was a few years older than most of the boys. He was a bully. He was also a ferocious boxer. One of the priests used to train the boys.’

‘Father Macarius,’ said Makana.

‘Yes. Rocky used to like hurting things, any living thing. He tortured animals, poked the eyes out of a cat once. It was a sickness.’

‘But he never hurt you.’

A deep sigh sounded from Ramy. The gun had dropped until it was resting on his knee. He wasn’t really aiming it at anyone.

‘I was his boy, okay?’ He lifted his gaze to meet Makana’s. ‘Do you understand what that means? I was his boy.’ He ignored the whimper that came from Dena.

‘He took care of you, in return for certain . . . favours.’

‘He took care of me,’ mumbled Ramy.

‘You never told me any of this,’ Dena said. He carried on ignoring her.

‘Tell me about Meera. Why did you decide to help her?’

‘Why? Why wouldn’t I help her? She wanted to expose what that bastard was doing.’

‘He’s still your father.’

‘No,’ Ramy laughed bitterly. ‘He will never recognise me. He’s too ashamed. He has a respectable family. You know what those informal weddings are like, it’s just legalised prostitution. My mother was nothing to him but a whore and I am an embarrassment.’

‘He took you in. He gave you a job,’ Dena implored.

‘He gave me a job because he was afraid I would make a fuss. He made me promise that I would never make any claims about inheritance. He’s happy for me to work for him, but I always knew that one day he would grow tired of me and that would be the end of it.’ He looked up at Makana, as if sure he at least would understand. ‘And now it’s done.’

‘So you helped Meera find the evidence she needed to expose the Eastern Star’s actions.’

‘I caught her one day going through old files and that made me suspicious. I did some checking on her and guessed what she was up to. She couldn’t believe it when I confronted her and told her I had exactly what she was looking for. They had been running money through the company for years. It comes in from one source and goes out to another. They made up the names of hotels, transport firms, caterers. It was all being run by Yousef.’ Ramy snorted. ‘There’s another piece of work. Anyway, Yousef trusted me for some reason. The account numbers were supposed to be destroyed as soon as the transaction was over. But I kept a record,’ Ramy smiled. ‘I thought, one day this is going to be useful. This is going to be my ticket into the good life.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘Then Rocky showed up.’ Ramy stared into space. ‘I couldn’t understand how he had found me, but there he was. One day I walked in and he was standing there.’

‘Running the café downstairs,’ said Makana.

Ramy shook his head. ‘Rocky wouldn’t hang around in a simple ’ahwa if there wasn’t a reason. No, he was running his band of boys out of there. It was just like the old days, except we were all older. He said he needed my help. I hadn’t seen him for five years.’ A shudder went through him. ‘I couldn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t eat anything. I threw up. It was as if I couldn’t get away from him, no matter what I did or where I went, he would always be there.’

‘So that’s why Rocky was there, using the café as a front for his activities?’

‘Sure, they were stealing stuff all over the place. Downtown is a treasure trove if you know what you are doing. They ran their stolen goods through the café.’

‘Cigarettes, for example?’ asked Makana.

‘Exactly, television sets, radios, things they stole from offices and flats in the neighbourhood. They had a kind of storeroom in the back.’

‘What did Rocky want you to help him with?’

Ramy’s eyes flicked up to find Makana’s. ‘Somebody wanted Meera dead. He wouldn’t tell me who, but he was going to take care of it, and I was going to help him.’

‘You don’t know who ordered the killing?’

‘No,’ Ramy shook his head. ‘All he would tell me was that it was going to be a spectacular, headline-grabbing operation. They wanted to use the opportunity to scare people.’

‘You have no idea who they were?’

‘No, but I got the impression it was personal, to do with who she was, I mean. She was married to some crazy professor. All of that they knew. That was why she had to die.’

Someone from Meera’s past, connected to the Eastern Star Bank. Serhan had overheard someone at the shareholders’ meeting saying it was time to clear the slate. Was one of those people Sheikh Waheed?

‘So, Rocky was there to kill Meera,’ said Makana. ‘What did you do then?’

‘I couldn’t deal with it. It was too much. And I liked Meera. I wanted to help her, and now here was this monster that I just couldn’t shake off.’ Ramy glanced at Dena. ‘I thought I’d got away from Rocky. I just wanted to live a normal life.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘I was so stupid. Some people are born lucky and others, well . . .’ He shrugged his shoulders.

‘If you wanted to start a new life down here with Dena, why destroy your uncle’s company?’

‘It wouldn’t have destroyed the company. You know what this country is like. These people take care of their own. There would be a scandal and maybe a couple of people would get fined, or even go to prison, maybe even my uncle. But then who would he get to take care of things while he was gone? You see? I was thinking that then he might really need my help.’

‘All of this is assuming no one found out you had helped Meera.’

‘Yes, well, let’s just say things didn’t work out the way I expected.’ Ramy stared down at the Beretta. He turned it over in his hand as if wondering who had put it there. Makana considered trying to take the automatic away, but decided wrestling with a loaded gun was a bad idea.

‘Rocky wanted me back. He said we were fated to be together, that I could never really get rid of him.’

An involuntary sound of disgust escaped Dena. She put a hand to her mouth, but Ramy gave no indication he had heard. If he had, he was beyond caring.

‘It was all part of the game. He didn’t really care about me. What he wanted was to know that he had me in his control.’

‘You could have resisted,’ insisted Dena. ‘You could have stayed away from him.’

Ramy didn’t even look at her. His voice was dead. ‘I went to see him. He showed me around. He had a stable of young boys, kids he had picked up off the street. Every now and then he lost control and one of them would die. He didn’t care. There were plenty more out there, he said. He locked them up on his roof like animals, living in their own filth, until they were willing to do anything to get out. It brought it all back. The pain and humiliation. The shame of it all.’ Ramy’s chest heaved as he tried to draw breath. ‘I remembered how scared I had once been. Rocky was laughing. I don’t know what came over me. I just thought this has to end. I thought I could take him by surprise. It was stupid. He is strong, and very fast.’ Ramy’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘He beat me, and he held me down and he touched me that way. He said, you’ll always belong to me. After this nobody is ever going to want you. And then he poured acid on my face.’

The story seemed to have left him drained. Ramy’s head hung down. His body racked with silent sobs. Somewhere in the distance Makana could hear an owl. Dena tried to console him, but Ramy pushed her away. ‘Before this,’ he gestured at his face, ‘I thought there was a chance of starting a new life. But now . . . what does it matter?’

‘But it does matter. I don’t care how you look,’ insisted Dena.

‘Well, I do!’ he yelled. Then he grabbed hold of her hair and pulled her towards him roughly, pressing her against the burned side of his face. ‘How long would it take for you to find this disgusting? Six months? A year? Two years?’

‘No, no!’ she sobbed. ‘I love you.’

Ramy flung her away. ‘You should go now,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m very tired.’

‘Yes,’ Dena agreed, wiping the tears from her face. ‘Maybe we should go.’ She got to her feet quietly. ‘I’ll come back in the morning, before we leave. I’ll bring you something to eat.’

Ramy said nothing. Makana had more questions but he could see that he would get no more out of Ramy tonight. He followed Dena down the stairs towards the entrance and out to the beach. A cool breeze was blowing along the river’s edge. In the distance the low curve of the felucca could be made out, with Adam outlined beside it, looking out for them.

‘It’s so sad. I wish there was something I could do,’ Dena sniffed.

Makana paused to glance back at the house. The faint glow of light fluttering from within made him uneasy. Ramy had spent his whole life living in fear and when he finally tried to stand up for himself he had paid a terrible price. He had wanted to help Meera, and he had failed at that too. So he fled the city, his face disfigured, and ran to the one person he thought would be able to give him back his dignity. But even that wasn’t enough. Makana had come to a halt now. He had turned and started back towards the house when he heard the shot. Then he was running with Dena screaming behind him.

Ramy was slumped against the wall with the ugly, twisted side of his face turned towards the light, his expression one of surprise, his white shirt was spattered with blood and his brains were spattered over the wall behind him. The Beretta was still smoking in his hand.