The Ghost Runner (13 page)

Chapter Eleven

Nagy, the hotel manager, was talking to a stuffed sack of a man in a police uniform when Makana came downstairs the next morning. They broke off when they caught sight of him. On closer inspection the policeman had the broad chest of a former weightlifter gone to seed, though his grip was still firm.

‘Mr Makana, welcome to Siwa. I am Sergeant Hamama, acting police chief for the town. Mr Nagy here tells me you are looking for someone.’

‘A relative on my wife’s side of the family.’ Makana wondered how long this story would hold. ‘Actually, I was planning to visit you first thing today.’

‘So, I have saved you the trouble.’

The sergeant was overweight and out of breath. He was also in bad need of a haircut. His grin revealed a missing eye tooth. The leather holster on his hip had been repaired by some local artesan. The wide stitching made it look like a traditional tribal garment of some kind.

‘We are famous for our hospitality,’ said the sergeant, hitching up his trousers that were in constant danger of falling down. ‘Perhaps I can help you with your enquiries.’

‘That would be very kind,’ said Makana, wondering where all this was leading.

Nagy followed them with a cold eye from behind the front desk as they walked out of the hotel and climbed into a battered dark-blue Chevrolet pickup with ‘Police’ in faded white letters on the side. The windscreen was divided by a forked crack and the doors screeched in protest at being opened and closed. As they rolled off down the street Makana was aware of the attention they drew. He wondered at the wisdom of being seen with the local police sergeant.

‘We are a very small town,’ Hamama began. ‘A very close community. Which means that people are protective. To someone from the outside that can seem a little daunting.’

Makana pulled out his cigarettes and offered them. Hamama clicked his tongue.

‘Thank you, but no thanks. We have clean air out here, I always say, why soil it?’

The pickup clattered along the stony road, past the pockmarked building that was the police station and along out through rows of palm trees. Hamama was chuckling to himself.

‘I’m sure that in the big city you have all kinds of marvellous systems to record births and deaths and all the rest of it. Out here we have our own ways. Out beyond those trees is the desert and there are no rules out there. No government. A lot of people have no idea what year they were born, or what day of the month. How do you fit them into your system?’

They passed a cemetery. Uneven mounds of bare earth. Here and there a simple piece of wood or metal bearing the name of the deceased. Three women draped from head to foot in black walked by in the opposite direction. Their faces were covered by a sheet of cloth so you couldn’t even see their eyes.

‘Are you from here originally?’

‘Born and raised. Spent all of my life here, apart from the years I was in Mersa Matruh training to be a policeman.’

‘So, in a small town like this you must have a pretty good grasp of everybody.’

‘Well, pretty good, but this man is the next best thing to a computer. Amm Ahmed.’

‘Amm Ahmed?’

‘He’s lived longer than anyone and he remembers everything. You’ll see,’ Hamama smiled. The car rocked from side to side as they edged off the road onto a narrow track of deep ruts cutting through the dry mud. The house was so well hidden between the thick palm trees that Makana didn’t see it until they were almost touching it. The adobe walls were cracked and dried with age. They blended in perfectly with the trees that surrounded it.

It was hard to say how old Amm Ahmed actually was. Frail, with a tiny head covered in white bristles, he stood half in shadow just back from the doorway, as motionless as a tree himself.

‘We’ve come to consult you, Amm Ahmed,’ said Sergeant Hamama by way of an introduction. He stood bow-legged in front of his car and simply raised his voice. ‘This man is looking for people from his wife’s family.’ He looked Makana over.

‘What family is that?’ The old man seemed to be a little hard of hearing. Makana raised his voice. There were turtle doves cooing nearby, and somewhere in the distance he thought he could hear a man singing.

‘The husband’s name is Musab Khayr.’

‘I haven’t heard that name around here for a long time. I think he left.’

‘He was married to a woman named Nagat Abubakr, maybe you remember them?’

The old man stepped forward out of the shadow. When he spoke, his adam’s apple jumped up and down and his voice was as high pitched and jittery as a bird’s.

‘Everyone used to know the Abubakr family. But they are gone now. None of them are left.’ He was dark and bony, and knotted like a withered palm that had lost its luxuriant crown. One eye was blue and sightless while the other fixed you like a pin.

‘Are you sure?’ Makana asked.

‘They were one of the richest families around here. Owned a lot of land. But they’re all gone now. You must remember that, Sergeant?’

Hamama gave a laugh. ‘If I could remember as much as you, uncle, I’d be the one living out here with the birds.’

Amm Ahmed muttered something that Makana couldn’t catch. He heard the sergeant hack loudly and spit into the soft earth.

‘What was that?’ Makana asked.

‘Squandered their wealth. Married badly.’ Amm Ahmed chewed on his toothless gums.

‘Is there anybody left who might have known them?’

But Amm Ahmed’s attention appeared to have wandered. He turned away.

‘I’m sorry that wasn’t more helpful,’ Sergeant Hamama sighed when they were back in the car. They watched the spindly figure disappear inside the mud house. ‘His family came here as slaves years ago. Brought up from the south, your part of the world, on a caravan.’

‘Is that singing?’

‘The men working the palm trees sing and others working nearby reply. It’s a tradition.’

The Chevrolet creaked and groaned as they bumped their way through the ruts. Hamama drove with one hand on the wheel, the other bunched into a fist on his thigh. He threw a long sideways glance at his passenger. The engine wheezed as they climbed the incline onto the metalled road and shuddered back in the direction of civilisation.

‘Are you going to tell me what this is really about? Why are you asking about Musab Khayr? And I don’t mean that nonsense about your wife’s family.’

‘A young woman died,’ Makana began, considering the wisdom of lighting a cigarette. Hamama seemed to be trying to make up his mind whether to trust him or not. ‘Karima was their daughter. I was hired to find out who killed her.’

‘Why not leave all that to the police?’

‘The police aren’t interested. They are dismissing it as suicide.’

‘Oh, now I see.’ Hamama chuckled to himself. ‘You’re one of those people who think they know better than the police, eh? Sounds like you’ve done this kind of thing before.’

‘A long time ago.’

‘Very good.’ Hamama seemed amused. ‘You were a policeman once yourself. How would you have felt if civilians started interfering in your work back then?’

‘I’m not interfering. Like I said, the police aren’t interested.’ Makana looked at the sergeant. ‘It’s a girl from a poor family. Nobody cares.’

‘But you obviously do. I’m guessing somebody is paying you for this.’

‘Right, somebody who cared about the girl enough to want to know why she died.’

Sergeant Hamama shifted his bulk as if making himself comfortable. ‘So you tell him the girl was murdered and he pays you to come here on holiday. Not a bad game you’re in.’

‘Almost as good as this folklore trip you’re taking me on,’ said Makana. ‘You have records of births and deaths like anywhere else in the country. I’m not here as a tourist.’

The pickup rolled to a halt. Hamama took a long time to regard Makana.

‘All right, we’ll make a deal. There’s nothing for you here, but I can show you around. You can take in the sights and go home to your master happy.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

Hamama scratched his nose. ‘This person who hired you, what do you call it, your client?’

‘He’s a lawyer.’

‘Okay, so the man is paying you, right? And I’m guessing he’s not short of money. So, we come to some kind of arrangement that is mutually beneficial.’

‘I can’t see how that is of any advantage to me.’

‘This is a small town. You won’t get anywhere without help. If I put the word out nobody will say a word to you, and besides, you heard the old man. That family died out years ago. There’s nothing here for you to find.’

‘Amm Ahmed said the Abubakr family were once big landowners. Do you know where they used to live?’

‘Does this mean we’re partners?’

‘It means, I’m thinking about it.’

‘All right,’ said Hamama. ‘I can work with that. But don’t wait too long. I’m not known for my patience.’ He pushed the car into gear and they rolled along. They drove in silence through the town and out through more trees into an area where the road became dusty and bare as it curved around a small hill. The house, or what was left of it, was on the edge of a dry, neglected field.

‘There it is,’ said Hamama, climbing out and leaning against the front of the pickup.

Makana walked over to take a look. It was clear that no one had lived here for years although it must once have been quite a splendid place. Stepping up onto what might have been a front veranda, Makana wandered through into the rubble-strewn remains of a large courtyard.

‘How long has it been like this?’ he called over his shoulder.

Sergeant Hamama, who was busy tucking a pinch of snuff inside his lower lip, glanced up. ‘Oh, years,’ he said, dusting off his hands. ‘The family owned all of this, as far as the eye can see.’ He ejected a long stream of tobacco-coloured spit.

‘What happened?’

‘The usual.’ The sergeant waved vaguely. ‘They died out, I suppose.’ He went back to staring off into the distance.

Makana finished his walk around the perimeter of the ruined house. It was probably built in the 1920s or 1930s. The Abubakrs would have been landowners back in the days of King Farouk before Nasser came to power and seized the land to give back to the people. When he arrived back at the car, Sergeant Hamama was still leaning on the front of it, watching him with folded arms. There didn’t seem to be much to occupy the local police around here.

From the pocket of his jacket Makana produced the fragment of the photograph he had found in Karima’s flat in Cairo. He moved around, holding it up until he found a position where he thought it might fit. The photograph was several decades old, but the line of the horizon was largely unchanged.

‘What is that?’ Sergeant Hamama craned his neck to look over Makana’s shoulder.

‘I think it’s a memory they took with them when they left here,’ said Makana.

‘You say this girl died in a fire?’ Hamama asked. Makana nodded. ‘And you think the reason has something to do with this place?’

‘I think it has something to do with Musab Khayr. Do you remember him?’

‘It rings a bell. Very faint and far away.’ Sergeant Hamama leaned over to eject another jet of tobacco into the dirt. ‘If he’s the one I’m thinking of he had a reputation as a trouble maker, always getting into fights.’

‘Do you remember what happened to him?’

‘I think he left and no one heard anything more about him.’

‘That sounds like the man I am looking for. This would have been when?’

‘Around the time Sadat was killed.’

‘Nineteen eighty-one. Twenty one years ago.’

‘Like I said, a long time.’

‘Who owns this land now?’

‘
This
land?’ The sergeant turned to survey the plot stretching away behind the house as if he had never seen it before. ‘I don’t know. I can check. It might still belong to the family.’

‘The house must have been something. Shame it fell into ruin.’

‘It’s hard land to work. It’s the salt, you know, in the soil.’

‘Right.’ Makana returned the singed picture to his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes. ‘Who is the senior officer in charge here?’

‘Well, right now that would be me.’ Hamama scratched his belly.

‘Who was in charge before?’

‘Captain Mustafa.’

‘Do you think I could speak to him?’

‘You could,’ grinned Sergeant Hamama, ‘but you’d have to go to heaven first.’

A squawk from the interior of the pick-up alerted Hamama to a radio call. He was still smiling at his own humour as he reached in through the window on the driver’s side. Makana sighed and surveyed the ruin. This was Karima’s family home, but she’d never seen it. The photograph would have been her mother’s. She kept it as a memory, or did it signify more than that? It wasn’t a lot to go on. A fallen-down house full of birds’ nests.

Hamama straightened up, tossing the radio handset in through the window onto the seat. He raised one hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

‘I knew you were trouble when I first set eyes on you,’ Hamama grunted as he wrenched open the door of the car. ‘Get in.’ Makana climbed in as Hamama started the engine. They pulled onto the road and started back towards town at what seemed like recklessly high speed.