hand. He passed it to Ben.
Ben flipped it over and ran his eyes over the back. Neatly engraved in fine italic script on the gold backplate were the words ‘To Morgan, with love from Mummy’.
Ben looked down at Barada. There were some beads of sweat breaking out on the man’s brow but he was doing his best to look collected. Ben lowered the gun a few inches, still aware of the glowering heavies behind and on either side of him. ‘OK, I’ll take it.’
‘What do you mean, you’ll take it?’
‘I want it.’
‘It’s mine. You can’t have it.’
‘I’m buying it,’ Ben said. ‘Double whatever you paid for it.’
‘Or?’
Ben clicked off the safety.
Barada snorted. ‘What, you stick a gun in my face, you tell me you want my Rolex but you want to pay for it?’
Ben smiled. ‘Do I look like a criminal to you?’
‘So what the fuck are you, some kind of mummy’s boy who wants his watch back? You’re Morgan, right?’
‘Morgan’s dead,’ Ben said. ‘And I think whoever sold you this watch killed him.’
Barada shrugged. ‘Not my concern. I buy and sell stuff. I’m just a businessman. I don’t ask questions.’
‘That’s fine,’ Ben said. ‘But you can answer one for me. I want to know who sold you this.’
‘I forgot.’
Ben laid the Rolex on the desk. Still pointing the gun at Barada, he reached into his bag and took out a thick wad of notes. He slapped them down on the desk beside the watch. ‘That’s forty thousand Egyptian pounds,’ he said. ‘For the watch and the information. I’m guessing that’s a lot more than you paid for it. Give me what I want, then I’ll go away. Nobody has to get hurt. You can buy another watch just like it in the morning. Deal?’
Barada gazed wistfully at the Rolex. ‘It’s a limited edition. No longer produced.’
‘You’re breaking my heart.’
Then Barada’s eyes moved from the watch to the pile of money. ‘Seems like you want this pretty badly. What’s your intention, if I give you this information?’
‘Not your concern,’ Ben said. ‘You’re just a businessman, remember?’
Barada smiled, relaxing a little. ‘I like your style. You’ve got balls, coming in here like this. You want a girl or something? Stick around a while, have a drink.’
‘I want what I asked for. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a name and an address.’
‘Maybe we can do business,’ Barada said. ‘What the fuck. They’re shits anyway.’ He grabbed a pad from his desk, reached for a pen and scribbled two names and an address. ‘Couple of dealers. Lowlife druggy bastards. They live in a stinking rat-hole apartment across the river. Mostly stoned out of their heads. They owed me money, said they didn’t have it. I could have had their legs busted, but I liked the watch.’ He shrugged again and tore the page off the pad. ‘But I guess it’s only a watch.’ He reached for the money and slipped the note across the desk.
Ben picked it up and read it. ‘This information had better be good.’
‘It’s good,’ Barada said, stuffing the money away in a drawer. ‘And if you put a couple of bullets in their heads, nobody’s going to cry over it.’
Ben slipped the note inside his pocket. He lowered the gun. ‘How long since you got the watch from them?’
‘Couple of weeks, give or take.’ Barada paused, looking expectantly at Ben. ‘So we’re cool?’
‘Maybe,’ Ben said.
‘You sure you don’t want that drink? What’s your name, anyway?’
‘Another time.’
Chapter Seventeen
It was after one when Ben found the place, a sad-looking tenement building right next to a breaker’s yard. Everything was marked with neglect. A cat darted out of the doorway as he approached, carrying a struggling rat in its teeth. He walked through an entrance hall that smelled of stale urine and was dimly lit by a flickering bulb. Climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and came to the door he was looking for.
It wasn’t even locked. He walked right in and the stink of the place hit him. He paused, letting his eyes adjust to the blackness. Ahead of him was a short passage, littered with junk. He made his way along it and opened the inner door.
The room he walked into was bathed in the dull glow of a sideboard covered in flickering candles. Wax dripped down the wood, hardening on the floor. Somewhere in the shadows, aggressive rap music blared from a tinny stereo. The air was oppressive, thick with the mixed odours of stale booze and smoke and sweat-the smell of a space whose inhabitants didn’t care about their own lives.
A bare mattress lay on one side of the room and Ben could make out the shapes of two sleeping bodies in the candlelight. A man and a woman, both naked, arms and legs entangled, half covered by a rumpled sheet.
Across on the other side, nearer to the candle-glow, was a table. Ben took in the razor blade, the rolled-up banknotes, the little mound of white powder and the half-snorted line of it that the table’s single occupant hadn’t managed to finish before he passed out. He was slumped on a low stool with his arms spread across the table, his forehead resting on the glass. Ben watched him for a moment. He was breathing slowly, deeply. He looked young, early twenties, scrawny with a patchy beard.
A yard from the table, a second woman was lying sprawled, her bare legs kicked out on the rug. Ben stepped over to her and crouched down to take a look at her. She was maybe twenty and looked European, with dirty blonde hair and what could have been a pretty face if it hadn’t been pressed down against the floor of a dingy drug den. She was just as out of it as her friends. She was wearing some kind of lightweight blazer, striped cotton that had ridden up to reveal her skimpy knickers and an angel tattoo across her coccyx.
Something about the striped garment looked very familiar. Ben reached for a candle and brought it closer to inspect. He was pretty sure it was the same one Morgan Paxton had been wearing in the photo.
He flipped on a light switch. The room was suddenly bright, but that didn’t do much to stir its occupants. The girl on the rug seemed to sense something, and lifted her head a couple of inches. The naked couple on the mattress didn’t move, and neither did the young guy at the table.
Ben turned off the shrill music and walked back over to the table. He leaned down so that his face was just a few inches from the glass. He took a deep breath and blew hard, scattering the white powder into clouds of dust.
That got the attention of the young guy. He suddenly woke up, eyes snapping wide open. He lurched unsteadily to his feet and made to grab Ben by the shirt, shrieking in Arabic, ‘You fuck! You fuck!’
Ben twisted his wrist into a lock and threw him back down. There was no strength in the guy’s wasted arms. He slumped sideways and rolled off the stool, gasping.
The girl on the floor slowly dragged herself across the rug and started burying her face in it, snorting up the fallen coke. Ben hauled her to her feet, moved her to an armchair and lowered her into it. He stripped the blazer off her. ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded in English.
‘I’m not here for that,’ Ben said. He stuffed the blazer into his bag and took out the pistol. The girl started screaming, and it woke the two on the mattress. The naked woman was suddenly alert, staring at Ben in horror and pulling a sheet around her.
‘Get some clothes on,’ Ben said to her. She nodded. Stood up, legs trembling, and started pulling on jeans and a loose top.
‘Now get out of here,’ he said. ‘Don’t come back.’
The women left, staggering out of the door.
Now it was just Ben and the two guys. He stepped over to the one who was still lying slumped on the floor, muttering to himself. Grabbed a fistful of the guy’s hair and dragged him kicking and hollering over to the mattress. He dumped him down next to his friend, who was coming around, struggling into his trousers and groping for his
