Through the three-inch aperture Ben could see a pair of teenage boys behind their mother in the hallway. Both were dressed in T-shirts and shorts, hair tousled as if they’d climbed out of bed in a hurry to see who the mystery visitor was. One was about thirteen, the other maybe a couple of years older. The elder one was trying hard to look strong and protective. Ben guessed that meant there was no father in the household. Behind the two kids, the hallway was littered with crates and cardboard boxes. It looked as though the family were either in the middle of moving out, or moving in. This wasn’t looking promising. He glanced again at the name on his list.
‘Mrs Hassan?’ he said to the woman in Arabic.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘It’s late. What do you want?’
‘I need to talk to your husband, Mrs Hassan. Can I come inside?’
She hesitated, shook her head. ‘My husband’s not here any more.’
‘Where can I find him? It’s important.’
‘Whatever business you had with him, you’re too late.’
‘Where did he go?’ Ben asked. But the look of intense sadness on the woman’s face was already telling him the answer.
She didn’t reply. Hung her head and wiped an eye. The elder of the two boys stepped up to the door, reached for the security chain and unhooked it from its fastening. He opened the door and stood in the doorway, defiance in his eyes, doing his best to bristle and puff out his narrow chest and shoulders. It was a brave thing to do, Ben thought. A boy standing up and being a man. A turning point in his young life. That took a lot of guts.
He smiled at the kid. ‘I didn’t mean to upset anyone.’
‘My father is dead,’ the boy said. ‘Go away. Leave my mother alone.’
Ben cast his eye around the hallway. There was a desolate air about the place. What had once been a family home was now just an empty shell full of memories these people wanted to get away from.
‘Who are you?’ the woman said again, laying a hand on her son’s shoulder. ‘You are not from the police.’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I’m looking for something and I thought your husband might be able to help me.’
‘He was ill for a very long time,’ she said, beginning to cry. ‘He had diabetes. First they cut off one leg, then the other. Now he’s dead. I don’t care what you were looking for. I want you to go.’
He watched the tears streaming down her face, and his heart went out to her. There was little point in apologising for disturbing what was left of her family in the middle of the night.
He turned and left. Heard the door shut behind him as he made his way back down the path to the little gate. The taxi driver was slouching behind the wheel, one arm hanging loosely out of the window. Ben opened the door and climbed in the back seat with a sigh.
‘Where now?’ the driver said lazily.
Ben dug the crumpled list back out of his pocket and unfolded it. Now there was just one name left at the bottom.
Mahmoud Barada. Nightclub owner and entrepreneur on the side. Buyer and seller of pretty much anything he could turn a dollar with.
Ben read out the address to the driver and felt the acceleration press him back in his seat as the taxi lurched away.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the warm leather as the car sped into the heart of downtown Cairo. This was the last chance. If it led nowhere, he was going to have to rethink his options.
His mind drifted until the taxi driver’s voice broke in on his thoughts. ‘We’re there. You want me to hang around?’
‘I won’t be long.’ Ben stepped out of the car.
They were at the end of an unmarked alleyway. Coloured neons flashed on crumbling brickwork and the huddled shapes of people in the shadows. Buying and selling. There was a lot of it going on. As Ben walked up to the nightclub entrance a girl came up to him and offered him a good time. She might have been Somali, and wasn’t more than seventeen. He walked past her and paid some money to the beefy guys at the door. The music was pumping out into the street, a blend of hip-hop and Eastern.
Ben walked inside. As one o’clock drew closer, it seemed that the party was just beginning to groove. The place must have been a warehouse or storage depot at one time. The air was thick with the heat and smell of a thousand tightly packed bodies, black, white and everything in-between. Through the heavy bass throb of the music he could hear half a dozen different languages as people yelled at each other to be heard.
There was a long bar at the far end, where at least a hundred people were jostling and shoving to get served. Above it was a scaffold construction with scantily clad dancers, their bodies shining and writhing in the strobing lights. Around the edges of the room were nooks and tables screened by palm leaves. Couples sat close, heads almost touching so that they could talk in the din.
Ben pushed through the throng that swarmed at the bar.
‘You can’t miss him,’ Abdou had said. And Ben didn’t. Barada fitted the old man’s description of him exactly. He was the only person at the bar who wasn’t trying to get a drink. He leaned on his elbows with his back against the shiny counter, surveying his enterprise with a look somewhere between smug satisfaction and cold contempt. His flowery shirt was open halfway to the waist, buttons straining across his belly. He was about forty, greasy thinning hair tied back in a ponytail, his face pitted with old acne scars.
Ben walked up to him and saw the cold gaze swivel to meet his. Barada gave a curt nod as if to say, What the fuck do you want from me?
Ben’s eye ran across Barada’s broad chest and down his arm. The left forearm sticking out of the rolled-up shirt sleeve was thick and hairy. Around the wrist, flashing in the swirling lights, was clasped a chunky gold Rolex.
Ben moved closer, close enough to smell the booze and garlic on the man’s breath and shout in his ear. Barada looked like he was ready to listen.
‘I have a business proposal for you,’ Ben said.
The man’s face was deadpan. He stared for a beat, peeled his heavy frame off the bar and gestured to follow him. Ben watched the wide back muscle its way through the crowd. Barada spilled a girl’s drink out of her hand and didn’t look back. The hand with the Rolex swatted open a door marked ‘PRIVATE’ and Ben followed him through. The door swung shut, damping the thud of the music. On the other side of it was a dark, winding corridor. Barada kept walking, and Ben walked behind a few paces. A few yards along the corridor, light was shining out of a half- open doorway. Barada thumped on the door, shoved it open, kept walking past.
Two large men appeared in the doorway. Behind them in the room was a low table scattered with beer bottles and a big screen was showing an action movie, cars exploding and machine guns rattling.
The two guys stepped out into the corridor, staring hard at Ben, then followed as Barada led the way up a flight of steps. He shoved open another door and they were inside an office. The decor was seventies porn king. Barada walked around behind a desk, settled heavily into a chair. He motioned to the heavies, who stood either side of the door, hands crossed over their stomachs, gazing at Ben as if just waiting for the command to take him apart.
Ben walked up to the desk and dumped his bag on it.
Barada gazed impassively up at him. ‘So what do you want? You speak English, right?’ He spoke it with the phoney transatlantic twang of someone trying too hard to sound cool.
‘I want to see your watch,’ Ben said.
Barada grimaced, confusion quickly slipping into impatience. ‘You said you had a business proposal.’
‘I do. You let me see your watch, and I don’t kill you. That’s the deal.’ Ben slipped out the CZ pistol and pointed it in Barada’s face. He didn’t take his eyes off the fat man but sensed the sudden shift behind him as the two heavies moved his way.
‘Stay,’ he said.
Behind him, the two guys stopped dead.
‘Back against the wall,’ Ben said.
The heavies backed up. There was silence in the room, just the muffled thump of the beat shaking up through the floor.
Barada chuckled as he peered down the barrel of the 9mm. ‘You’ve got some incredible fucking nerve. These two guys can break you into small pieces.’
‘Take it off,’ Ben said, pointing at the watch. ‘I want to see it.’
Barada hesitated. ‘You some kind of weirdo?’ he demanded. ‘Got a watch fetish or something?’ But he did what he was told. He undid the clasp. The bracelet opened up and he shook it down his wrist and slipped it over his big
