who could speak a dozen languages and blend in just about anywhere in the world.
Ben stepped inside and walked to the foot of a curving staircase. Graffiti on the wall had been thinly painted over, as though someone was making a halfhearted effort to maintain the place. He climbed the staircase to a landing. There were four doors off it, scratched and worn. One of them opened. An angry-looking young guy came out and walked past him and headed down the stairs, followed by a teenage girl who looked like she’d been crying.
Happy place, Ben thought. He checked the numbers on the doors and walked up another floor. The heavy bass of music throbbed through the walls. A baby was howling somewhere, mixed with the sound of a woman screaming, a door slamming, something breaking. He paused, listening. It sounded like a couple having a violent row. The music thumped on. It was a noisy place. The kind of place you could get stabbed to death in your own room and nobody would hear. Or care.
He climbed another flight. Checked the numbers on the doors again. This was it.
The door to what had been Morgan’s apartment was ajar. He pushed it open quietly and walked in. Whatever police investigation there had been, it was done with now. Although shabby, the room was clean and tidy and looked all ready to move into.
‘Can I help you?’ asked a voice in English.
Ben turned. A burly guy was coming out of the kitchenette. He was heavily bearded, and the dark eyes were locked aggressively on Ben. He wore a vest with a suit jacket over the top of it. In one chubby hand was a metal toolbox with a hammer and a wrench sticking out of it. He might have been a caretaker, but a small-time landlord spotting a Westerner in his place would be more likely to start talking English in the hope of making a quick sale.
‘Flat looks empty,’ Ben said. ‘Anyone staying here?’
‘It’s available.’
Ben pointed at the toolbox. ‘Problem with the plumbing?’
‘No problem. You need a place?’
‘Maybe.’ Ben walked around the room, glancing around him here and there. Through a doorway he could see the small, simple bedroom. The single bed was stripped to the mattress. A neat pile of white cotton sheets lay folded on a chair. A plain chest of drawers with a cheap lamp. Above the bed was a framed print of the Sphinx, to satisfy any tourists who might want to slum it the way Morgan did. The bedroom looked exactly like the photo in the police report-except for the sprawled corpse on the bed, the blood spattered up the wall and the slick of it across the floor.
Now, two months later, nobody would ever have guessed the place was fresh from being the scene of a brutal murder.
‘You got satellite TV and Internet,’ the landlord said. ‘It’s a good deal.’
Ben nodded. ‘Friend of mine stayed here. Know who I’m talking about?’
The big guy made a dismissive gesture. ‘Am I supposed to remember all the people that live here?’
‘What about the ones that die here? You remember them?’
The guy’s face crunched into a scowl. ‘Who are you?’
‘Nobody,’ Ben said. ‘Just someone who doesn’t like the idea that an innocent man got knifed right here in this building. Your building. I wouldn’t like to think that someone talked to someone about the soft Westerner with the gold Rolex. Easy money, if you know where to find it.’
The man’s face was reddening under the thick beard. ‘I don’t like these questions. You want the place or not?’
‘Just thoughts, that’s all.’ Ben reached for his wallet. Shelled out some of the banknotes Paxton had given him. He didn’t bother counting. ‘Is that enough for a week’s rent?’ he asked. He could see from the landlord’s eyes that it was more than enough.
The landlord reached out for the money. Ben pulled it back out of reach. ‘You live on the premises?’ he asked.
The man smiled, less guarded now. The cash had broken the ice. It had that effect on people. He jerked his head upwards. ‘Top floor.’
‘You found the body?’
The man nodded again. ‘The door was open. I could see the blood on the wall.’
‘Did you ever see my friend with anyone? Did he have visitors?’
‘Not that I know of. I never saw anything. But I mind my own business.’
It might be true, or it might not. Time would tell. ‘I’ll take the place,’ Ben said. He handed the guy the money.
When he was alone, he opened all the windows to let some air in. Traffic rumbled past in the street below. He took the slim folder out of his bag. He’d studied the coroner’s and police reports on the plane, and he pored over them again for a few minutes now. The police reports were signed by the officer in charge, whose name was Ramoud. It was just as Paxton had said. The investigation had been pretty cursory.
Ben put the reports aside and looked at the photos again. They weren’t pleasant viewing. It must have been terribly hard for Paxton to see the mutilation done to his son’s body. The pathologist’s assessment was that the murder weapon had been some kind of heavy blade, a machete or similar.
Ben chucked the photos down and looked at his watch. Time was passing and he didn’t want to hang around in Cairo any longer than he had to. He replaced the papers in the folder and slipped it into his bag. Slung the bag over his shoulder. Locked the door behind him and headed back down the stairs into the night air.
He knew exactly where he was going from here.
He hailed a battered Mercedes cab and the driver took him east of the river, to where the streets became narrow lanes and crowded tenements jostled for space among the hundreds of ancient mosques. Ben had the taxi driver pull up and wait for him near the slum settlement of Manshiyat Naser, the place known as Garbage City. He got out and walked through the long shadows of the cramped alleys.
He heard the plod of hooves on tarmac as a donkey cart passed under a faint streetlight. The cart was being driven by a young boy. It was stacked ten feet high with the stinking rubbish that was brought into this part of the city for the locals to sift through for anything they could recycle or sell. A whole industry built on the things people threw away. That was this boy’s future, Ben thought.
The boy’s eyes met his for a fleeting moment, and the cart passed on into the darkness.
Three minutes later Ben was walking in a familiar doorway. The place was worse than Morgan’s apartment building, a lot worse. It hadn’t changed much since he was last here. And he was pretty sure his contact wouldn’t have changed much, either.
Abdou was a guy you went to if you needed something. All kinds of things-as long as they were shady enough. Ben knew a little about his business. He was an entrepreneur with all nine fingers stuck in a lot of dirty little pies across the Cairo underworld. The tenth finger had been the one he’d stuck into the wrong person’s affairs. That someone had snipped it off a long time ago with a pair of bolt croppers-a gentle reminder of his station. Ever since then, Abdou had shied away from dealing in the hotter stuff-the dope, girls and guns-but he still knew all the angles and a lot of people who didn’t always want to be known.
The crumbling apartment building stank worse than the garbage-laden air outside. A yellow light bulb flickered on and off, and the walls dripped with condensation. Ben took the stairs two at a time and didn’t slow down for the door. It burst in and smashed off the wall as he strode into the dark hallway.
Abdou came darting out of his office, a pistol cocked and ready in one wizened hand, his finger-stump clawed around the grip. The bald, gaunt old man might have looked wasted and harmless, but Ben knew appearances were deceptive. Hidden in the shadows, he ducked into a doorway as the Egyptian came running down the hall. He stepped out suddenly. Knocked the gun flying from the old man’s hand.
Abdou swore as he recognised him. Quick as a cobra, his other hand darted inside his jacket and Ben had to twist out of the way as the knife flashed across his ribs. He caught the wrist and spun the old man around into an armlock. The knife dropped to the floorboards.
‘You’re slowing down, Abdou,’ Ben said in Arabic.
Sweat trickled down the old man’s bald skull as Ben held him powerless. ‘Bastard,’ he spat. ‘You promised me you’d never show your face here again.’
Ben shoved his wiry frame back towards the office and sat him down hard in a chair. The walls were peeling.
