Jon Grimwood - Effendi

“Safety off,” said a gun.

Raf blinked at the words in his head and felt the cherubs reappear. Nothing had changed except for him and that change was so small, he wasn’t even sure it was real. But then, he’d never been too sure about anything. Mostly he just accepted things. Accepted, then assimilated the accepting. Whatever he needed to become he became . . .

Some people regarded that as a psychologically adaptive advantage. Others knew it as negative capability. A few said, without quite realizing what they said, “There but for the grace of . . .”

And then Raf found himself inside a battle.

Standing beside Ka, Zac said nothing. He’d talked little enough when he was alive and now he was dead he spoke even less . . .

Ka thought that strange.

“Distance?”

“Half a klick and closing . . .”

It was an incredibly stupid weapon and the kid with the amulets didn’t know why the manufacturer had bothered. But then the kid was just that, a kid. Someone too young to make the link between action and . . .

Everything that Raf had ever read about The Hague Convention suddenly ran like water through the parched soil of his mind.

“Did you actually photograph this man?” Raf turned to point at Hamzah who, for the first time since the trial had begun, lifted his head and looked around the well of the court. Maybe it was something in Raf’s voice or else he too could hear clouds growling low like thunder.

Justice. That was what a court was supposed to provide. And he was Ashraf al-Mansur, Ottoman bey and supposedly Governor of El Iskandryia, for the next few hours at least. Raf looked at Zara, then inside himself.

The living saint looked puzzled.

“It’s a simple enough question,” Raf insisted. “Did you photograph Hamzah Quitrimala?”

“Back then?”

“Yes,” said Raf heavily, “back then . . .”

Jean René nodded.

“You photographed Hamzah Effendi as a child?” Raf said slowly, as if trying to get something straight in his head.

“I did. Yes.”

“Describe him.”

Puzzled, the elderly man glanced from Raf to the row of judges who sat watching from their raised bench. Above and behind them, alone at a higher bench sat the Khedive.

“Hamzah’s over there,” said Raf. “Not on the judicial benches. That is, if you need to take another look.”

Jean René hesitated.

“Tell us,” demanded Raf. “How did he look?”

They stared at each other across the well of the court. And somewhere at the back of the bey’s mind, thoughts continued to resonate until their growl manifested as a shiver that ran the length of his spine.

“Nothing unusual,” Jean René said finally. “Scruffy. Wearing a man’s shirt, trousers held up by a broken belt.”

“Broken?”

“The buckle was missing. The belt was tied round his waist. He had bare feet but then they all did. After a while, hot sand and gravel baked their feet to leather . . .”

“You’ve looked at this photograph recently?”

Raf paused, seeing Jean René look uncertain. “It’s a simple enough question,” he said. “Did you dig out your photograph of this murderer?”

“Objection . . .” Zara was on her feet.

The Khedive shook his head. “Objection overruled.” He turned to Raf, eyes hard. “Presumably you have sound reasons for this line of questioning . . . ?”

Raf nodded. He had reasons all right. Half a dozen within his own head. Plus another, still standing, glaring at him. Although his main reason sat at the back of the court beside Khartoum, her eyes spilling over with tears as they flicked between him and Zara.

What was justice anyway?

Nothing most people would recognize. Nothing Hani had ever been given.

“Find the photograph,” Raf demanded. “I want the court to take a good look at this killer.”

Finding the shot took a minute or two of skipping forward and backward, looking for the right image. And all the while, screens flickered with figures that came and went as Jean René trawled angrily through his notebook’s data sphere.

A girl half-buried in a sand dune.

Camels starved to a sack of fur and protruding bone.

A burned-out Seraphim driven by something reduced by flame to the texture of bitumen. Teeth grinning from a lipless mouth.

Images enough to make the ballroom fall silent and its gilded elegance suddenly appear frivolous and out of place. And finally, when it seemed not even the judges could stand another close-up of a dead child, Jean René found the picture for which he’d been looking.

A boy shading his face against the sun as he stared into a hungry lens. The shirt he wore lacked buttons and the trousers had been hacked short in the leg. At his feet rested an open water bottle and a radio.

Half a dozen amulets hung around his neck. Most were beaten silver or brass, with one no more than a bundle of hawk feathers tied tight with a leaf. But the last one, the one that mattered because it led aid workers to get wrong which side he was on, was a small cross carved from bone. The boy’s eyes were hidden by thick dark glasses and a cigarette hung from his bottom lip, tendrils of smoke vanishing into the hot-afternoon air.

Not that much older than Hani really.

“How old would you say this child was?”

“Irrelevant question.” Senator Liz Elsing was out of her chair.

“Overruled,” said the Khedive. “The prosecutor still has the floor, as is his right . . .” Tewfik Pasha’s smile was thin. “Mind you,” he said, “if this is the prosecution, I can’t wait for the defence.”

“How old?” Raf repeated.

Jean René thought about it, looked at the screen, then back at Hamzah, an element of certainty leaving his face. Finally the man shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to tell.”

“Then perhaps we should find somebody who can tell us . . .” Raf stared at the public benches and a dozen cameras clicked. “Presumably the SS Jannah has a doctor . . . ?”

There was silence while the judges tried to work out which of them Raf was asking. Finally, they realized he was talking to the Khedive.

Tewfik Pasha nodded, reluctantly.

“And may I borrow your medical officer as an expert witness?”

The boy scowled, skin darkening under immaculately applied makeup. “Of course,” he said. “Provided the captain also agrees.”

The court recessed while the ship’s medical officer was summoned. And then everyone waited again while a tall German woman introduced herself to the court and was sworn in.

“You are Lena Schultz?”

“I am.”

“And you trained where?”

“Heidelberg . . .”

Raf couldn’t resist glancing at von Bismarck. The young Graf leant forward and Raf knew he, at least, would regard her every word as absolute.

“You are the surgeon for the SS Jannah ?”

She shook her head and dark hair flicked across to touch her cheeks. “I am not a surgeon,” said Dr. Schultz. “I am a general practitioner.”

“I see,” said Raf, sounding as if he didn’t. “Can you tell me why Utopia Lines employ a general practitioner?”

She looked at him.

“Instead of medical software.” Raf paused, wondering how best to qualify his question. “I thought that statistically . . .”

“Some people,” she said heavily, “actually prefer the human touch.” Some people being rich. At least that was the inference.

“Really?” Raf shrugged. “In that case, don’t such people bring their own?”

“It happens, sometimes.” Her tone made it quite clear she didn’t like that question or him. “Now,” she said. “You need me to present an opinion on a medical matter?”