Jon Grimwood - Effendi

Sound he adjusted by opening and closing his inner ear. So far, so predictable, if somewhat simplified. Unpredictability started with the fox, which now spat static, swore and raged inside his head.

The police bike on which Raf sat came with twin headlamps, featuring the very latest in multielement cluster/light guide technology, but he’d disconnected them at the same time as he cut the wires to the brake light and both sets of indicators. The reflectors he’d ripped off by hand. Matte black alloys went with a racer-noir engine cage and a light-swallowing paint job. The whole bike was gloriously transparent to CCTV.

The paint job was fresh and done by a garage at cost. A lot of people in the city suddenly wanted to be friends with the new Chief of Detectives. As it was, Raf practically had to order his local store to start charging full price for groceries and only the threat of taking his business elsewhere had convinced the manager Raf was serious . . .

“You certain some fuckwit intends to snatch her?”

Raf wasn’t sure whether to nod or cry, so he nodded. The fox might be back but it had rebooted to a default personality. And Raf had always thought the fox was the stable one while he suffered the glitches.

“Says who?” demanded the fox.

Said every snitch on the precinct’s payroll, every cut-rate whore trying to cop a plea, even a few semihonest members of the public too afraid to leave their names. Rumour had hit the streets on steroids and been breaking lap records ever since.

The why changed with every telling, but the what was rock-solid, whispered from under veils and escaping like smoke in the cafés from between half-open lips; somehow, and it was a very indeterminate somehow, tables had been turned on Hamzah, the man himself had been made the proverbial offer that can’t be . . . only he had, and as of now, Hamzah’s kid was a walking target. Everybody but everybody who was anybody, who knew that kind of thing, already knew it. Hamzah included.

“Daddy’s rich?”

“Come on,” Raf muttered crossly.

For a while the fox said little, so Raf went back to worrying about Hani, because some days that felt like what he did best.

Just before leaving home, Raf had asked the kid if there was anything she needed, meaning toast or hot chocolate before bed, and she’d looked at him, her arms like sticks and small face serious, flicked her dark fringe from darker eyes and said, “more time.”

So that was what he was trying to give her. Time and space. Life’s great shortage for those who already had the luxury of water and food. Since the incident at the warehouse, Zara hated him, fair enough. Raf could live with that, but Hani’s mistrust really hurt. He saw it in her every silence, her refusal to eat when he was in the madersa’s huge kitchen, in sideways glances and half-conscious flickers of fear.

Most of the time Raf managed to convince himself that it was just his imagination. And then he’d come home to some unguarded look or catch a muttered reassurance from Donna to Hani, as the kid was sent to kiss him good night before trundling off to bed.

Puddles, Hamzah had said, surprising Raf, the one time they talked. Adults might labour upstream against their grief but children step in and out of sadness, trailing it after them in damp footprints. Only to step back into misery when the ground behind them begins to look dry.

“I’m fine,” Zara insisted.

“No, you’re not.” There was a determined expression on her mother’s face. “Major Halim’s absolutely right. What you need is some air.” Madame Rahina glanced at her husband for support but Hamzah was staring pointedly into the bottom of a brandy glass.

One of the advantages of dinner at Maxim’s was that it held an international drinks licence. Alcohol might be frowned upon, but it was not illegal.

“Air,” said Madame Rahina. “A good idea . . . Don’t you agree, my love?”

Hamzah pretended to wake with a start. He knew exactly what was going on and had done from the moment his wife first mentioned inviting the major, but he trusted his daughter to do only what she wanted.

“I think it’s up to Zara,” Hamzah said carefully. “Personally, I’m going to concentrate on pudding.” The thickset man picked up a leather menu and held it in front of him like a shield.

Despite herself, Zara smiled.

The major smiled back and inside her head Zara shrugged. He was handsome in a flinty, movie-star kind of way, what with his granite jaw, brown eyes and hair just a little longer than Army regulations allowed. And he probably hadn’t expected his off-the-cuff suggestion to be pounced on quite so hard by her mother.

Besides, some problems were best got out of the way.

“Sure,” said Zara, pushing back her chair. “Why not?” She waited for a second while the major tried to catch the attention of the maître d’, then shrugged. “No sweat,” Zara said. “I can stop it myself.” And with that she reached for the emergency chain, which looped its way down one wall, and yanked.

Crockery hit the floor. Some from their table or others, but mostly from the arms of a stumbling waiter who’d been stacking plates in an opposite corner.

A woman screamed.

The tram stopped.

“Is there a problem?” The maître d’ was white-faced with anxiety, his French accent as broken as the Limoges china around his feet.

“Of course there’s a problem.” Zara grabbed the menu from her father. “Look at this. You haven’t even got chocolate ice cream . . .”

“Cut his engines now.”

“No.” Raf shook his head.

“Come on.” The fox sounded disgusted. “It’s a clean shot.”

It was too. The man stepping down from the abruptly stopped tram had paused to scan Ibrahim Square, one of his hands on Zara’s shoulder, the other thrust deep in his jacket pocket. He said something to the girl and she nodded carefully, but moved away the moment he tried to take her arm.

What reassured Raf was that Zara looked irritated rather than afraid.

And yet Place Ibrahim Pasha was deserted, the restaurant car obviously planned to make good its escape and somewhere below Zara’s feet were catacombs, cut into limestone a thousand years before the birth of the Prophet. Rumour said they spread beneath Pharos in endless dark passageways, rough-hewn chambers and deep oubliettes. Had Raf been Zara, he’d have been terrified.

“Just do it,” said the fox. “Or maybe you’re afraid?”

Of killing if necessary? No, Raf shook his head. He didn’t think so . . . If it wasn’t necessary? Then yes, very. And something else was worrying Raf, worrying him enough to make him rewrite his plans on the fly.

“That uniform . . .”

“So?”

“You recognize?”

“Maybe it’s fake,” suggested the fox.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” said Raf. Dress in the flashiest way possible. A bottle-green cavalry tunic with gold braid and sword knots to sleeves and collar. The kind of outfit guaranteed to make people look and remember. Rather than choose something anonymous like sécurité, whose black uniform made most people glance away, whether it was intended to or not.

Raf stood up, brushed dust from his knees and walked back to his bike.

“Where are you going?” the fox demanded.

“To talk to Zara.” Breaking stock from barrel, Raf folded his borrowed police-issue nightSniper in two, twisting off the tiny laser sight and dropping that in his pocket. The rest he clipped into place down one of the Honda’s front forks.

“Very dinky . . .”