Dogstar Rising

Chapter Thirty-Four




Sami had been moved to a private clinic in Garden City at his father-in-law’s insistence. Rania’s father was an engineer working for a big German company. He wasn’t rich but he made a good living, which in this day and age was always remarkable in itself. The clinic was small, clean and surprisingly quiet considering its location. Sami even had a room to himself, with a large window overlooking the river and its own bathroom. He was sitting up, staring at the wall when Makana came in.

‘I’ve decided I’m not leaving,’ he said. ‘This is better than where I live.’

‘You’re not paying the bills. This place must cost a fortune.’

‘You know the saying: if you’re not born with money, then better you marry a rich woman.’

‘That particular saying must have escaped me. Anyway, they’re not going to let you stay here forever. Eventually, you’re going to have to go back to work.’

‘You think so?’ Sami cast a mournful look at his surroundings. ‘Then I’d better enjoy it while it lasts.’

‘How are you feeling?’

Sami held up his bandaged hands. ‘They have an expert here, a Bulgarian woman who says I have to try to move my fingers so as not to lose the mobility. The same with my toes.’

‘Bulgarian?’

‘What can I tell you? The world is wide and full of wonder.’ He let his hands drop. ‘The truth is I am going out of my mind. Did you get much out of Ramy?’

‘Ramy had his own problems.’

‘You’d better tell me everything.’

Makana pulled a chair up and they talked for the next hour without stopping.

‘So you’re saying someone decided that it was convenient to kill Meera, not because of what she represented but because she had found evidence of the bank channelling funds to certain privileged members?’

‘Something like that.’

‘But we don’t know who made the decision, nor who carried out the killing.’

Makana reached into his pocket and placed the bloody ten-pound note in Sami’s lap.

‘What’s this?’

‘Whoever nailed you to the deck placed this in your hand first. I left that in a café when I went looking for Rocky. I think this was his answer. It’s why they came for me.’

‘And found me instead,’ Sami said slowly. He turned over the note with his bandaged hands. ‘They wanted you to stay away.’ Sami fell quiet. He lay back and stared at a spot on the ceiling.

‘You probably saved my life,’ Makana said softly. ‘If I had been there that night I would have bled to death before anyone found me.’ By the time he got back to the awama the previous night there was no trace of Bassam, just as he had expected. He had taken advantage of the confusion to slip away. The number he had left behind seemed to have been disconnected. Had Bassam warned them, or had he been smart enough to change one of the digits?

‘You can thank me when I get out of here and can eat at Aswani’s,’ Sami said. ‘What I don’t understand is why Rocky would kill Meera.’

‘I don’t think he actually did it himself. I think he got his boys to do it. The one that turned up in Imbaba that night. He has a small army of young kids. He trains them. The older ones he runs as his lieutenants.’

‘The one who did the shooting and the one on the motorcycle? But why?’

‘Somebody wanted her out of the way. Someone who knew that she was about to expose their money-laundering activities.’

‘Someone high up. An official. The armed forces?’

‘Maybe. Probably not directly, of course, but through an agent of some sort, a hired thug.’

‘According to Ramy, Rocky set himself up running the café in the building for his own purposes, which placed him perfectly so his boys could watch Meera and plan their attack.’

‘A bit risky, wasn’t it? I mean someone might have recognised the killer.’

‘There were a number of boys coming and going. Abu Salem the bawab couldn’t have told them apart. I spoke to one, Eissa, whose arm was broken after the attack.’

‘You think he was one of the shooters?’

‘The motorcycle crashed into a ditch, maybe that’s where he broke his arm. What is it?’

Sami was grinning self-consciously. ‘Rania and I put our heads together and started thinking about Nasser Hikmet.’

‘And?’

‘Whoever killed Nasser took any files he had with him in Ismailia, but we were talking about him and both of us remembered that he was a very cautious person. You could say he bordered on the paranoid. Always seeing conspiracies everywhere. He didn’t trust anyone, even close friends.’

‘So he was paranoid.’ Makana wasn’t sure where this was leading.

‘He kept copies of everything.’

‘Where?’

‘The only place he knew was safe. His mother’s flat. We like to keep things close to home, you know.’

‘Very good. So we need to speak to Hikmet’s mother. Will she talk to me?’

‘She’ll talk to Rania. She’s very good at getting people to open up,’ Sami grinned. ‘She’s with her now.’

‘Rania went to see her already? How long ago did she leave?’

‘A couple of hours ago.’

The look on Makana’s face made Sami wince. He lifted a hand and thumped it on the bed, forgetting the wound and crying out in pain.

‘I’d better give you the address.’

Nasser Hikmet had lived with his widowed mother in a small flat in Bulaq. A humble building that was nevertheless clean and well kept. A narrow entrance led to an inner courtyard that rose up two floors. Open galleries ran around all four sides, with the doors to the flats facing onto these. Looking up, Makana saw the sky divided neatly by freshly washed sheets hung out to dry on lines that ran on pulleys strung across the yard. Small children in ragged clothes had followed him in from the street and now chased each other around, hopping over a stream of blue, soapy water that drained across the uneven ground. Climbing to the first floor he enquired about the Hikmet family. A woman who was busy hanging out more laundry pointed to a door on the second floor. A small boy of about seven appeared at her side, tugging at her elbow.

‘I can show you,’ he said, and without waiting for an answer he led the way.

A woman with enormous eyes opened the door on the second floor. In her fifties and small in stature, she held herself back, peering through the narrow opening as if afraid of the light.

‘Yes, who is it?’

‘My name is Makana. I’m . . .’

The door opened wide and Mrs Hikmet leaned out, looked quickly left and right before grabbing Makana’s arm and pulling him inside.

‘Quick!’ she said. ‘Before anyone sees. They are always sticking their noses in my business.’

The interior of the flat was gloomy. The windows were plastered with newspaper for some reason and Makana had trouble not bumping into the furniture. The air was damp and smelled of wet cloth. The little woman moved energetically past, leading the way into the kitchen. A table in the corner was covered with sheets of wilted newspaper on which leaves of cabbage were spread out as if in preparation for some magical ritual. They didn’t linger as Mrs Hikmet rushed straight though into a living room and switched on the light. In the weak glow from the low wattage bulb, Makana saw a table and a sofa, one leg of which was propped up on bricks, and a television set. All of these had been pushed back to make space for the object which occupied the middle of the room: a gleaming white washing machine, still wrapped in cardboard and sheets of plastic.

‘There it is,’ she gestured. ‘What do you think?’

‘It’s very nice,’ said Makana tentatively. ‘But wouldn’t it be better off somewhere else?’

‘This is where they left it. I told them I couldn’t decide where to put it and they said it would all be taken care of when the engineer arrived.’ She folded her arms and smiled at him.

‘I’m not the engineer.’

‘You’re not?’ Mrs Hikmet frowned. ‘But I thought . . .’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘But when are they going to send someone?’

‘I really can’t say. I have nothing to do with washing machines.’

‘You don’t?’

‘No. I’m looking for a friend of mine who may have come to talk to you about your son.’

‘A friend?’

‘A woman named Rania Barakat. Her husband Sami was a colleague of your son’s.’

‘Rania? Of course, she was here earlier.’ Mrs Hikmet laughed. ‘It’s strange. Everyone is so interested now. All those years when I had to listen to him complaining that no one cared about his work. He had to fight to get it published, you know?’ Mrs Hikmet leaned forward, lowering her voice. ‘After the police had been here I had a visit from some other men. Not the kind who wear uniforms, but you can smell them. In the old days the police were on our side, now we are all criminals to them, just for breathing.’ Mrs Hikmet glanced at the doorway as if expecting to see her visitors standing there again. ‘They went through the whole place, looking everywhere. They took anything with writing on it. Boxes full of papers.’

‘How about his computer?’

‘Only the big one,’ she smiled. ‘I don’t like security people. I don’t trust them.’

‘But you trusted Rania?’

Mrs Hikmet nodded. ‘I was waiting for her, you see.’

‘You were?’

‘Of course. I knew that sooner or later, one of his friends would turn up, somebody who cared about the same things he did.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

‘You don’t?’

‘Not my son. Not Nasser. My husband died when he was only a small baby. Nasser was all I had. They say he killed himself.’ She clutched her hands together. ‘They say he fell off the top of a building.’ She pointed a finger at the ceiling. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Did he go to Ismailia for work?’

‘Oh, he never did anything but work. Always travelling, always working.’ She broke off to stare at the washing machine again. ‘Why did they say someone would come to fix it?’

‘I’m sure it just takes time.’

‘That’s what people always say, but it’s not true. Things could be done much quicker. People are lazy, that’s the trouble. Nasser was never lazy.’ The wrinkles around her eyes deepened as she blinked away tears. ‘That’s why I was determined his death should not have been in vain. If he died for a story he was working on then I owe it to him to give that story to the world. That’s why I gave her the other one.’

‘The other one?’

‘The computer, of course. It’s very small, you see, not much bigger than a box of dates.’

‘And you gave it to Rania?’

‘I showed her where he kept it.’

Makana gamely traipsed behind her into the kitchen and squatted down to look into the cupboard under the sink as Mrs Hikmet pulled back a warped sheet of plywood, cracked and rotten in places to reveal a narrow space underneath, now empty. ‘It’s his secret hiding place.’ Mrs Hikmet smiled. ‘You lift up the bottom of the cupboard. They never found it.’

‘Very clever,’ he said, admiringly. ‘When exactly was Rania here?’

‘This morning. I’m surprised you haven’t seen her, if you’re such good friends.’

‘Well, I’m trying to find her actually. I think she might be in danger.’

‘Oh, dear.’ Mrs Hikmet put a hand to her throat.

‘Did she say anything about where she might go?’

‘Oh no. But then they arrived with the washing machine and I had to deal with that.’

Makana was about to straighten up when something caught his eye. Lodged against the side of the cupboard was a scrap of white card. He reached in and plucked it out. It was folded down, trapped between the floor and side of the cupboard.

‘What is it?’ asked Mrs Hikmet.

‘It’s a business card,’ said Makana, turning it over. There was a telephone number scrawled on the back. A number he had seen before.

Mrs Hikmet was on the move again, talking over her shoulder as she led the way back through to the tiny living room.

‘He was a good boy. Always took care of me.’ She patted the gleaming white washing machine. ‘I told them I couldn’t accept it, that an old woman like myself could never pay for such a thing, but they said he had arranged it all,’ she beamed like someone who had won the lottery. ‘The neighbours will be very jealous.’

Makana examined the machine with renewed interest, for some clue as to what might have happened to Rania. On the side he found a label which gave the address of an outlet in Mohandeseen and the name of the company: Beit Zafrani.