Jon Grimwood: Effendi

For EMC G

from Singapore to England, via Afghanistan

(a hard act to follow)

I saw three faces on one head. One was an angry red, another between pale and yellow, the last like those who live where the Nile rises . . .

—Dante, Inferno, Canto XXXIV

“Of course,” said Ashraf Bey. “We could just kill the defendant and be done with it . . .” He let his suggestion hang in the cold air. And when no one replied, Raf shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Maybe not.”

It was getting late and autumn rain fell steadily on the darkened streets outside, while inside, sitting around their table, Raf's visitors continued to chase the same argument in tight circles. A Grand Jury was in session. If three judges plus a senior detective in a damp, third-storey office could be called anything so imposing, which seemed doubtful.

“An accident,” suggested Raf. “The steps in this precinct are notoriously slippery. Or perhaps suicide . . . Shoelaces, an unfortunately overlooked belt . . . ? One of my people would have to be reprimanded, obviously.”

Raf looked from Graf Ernst von B, the German boy, to a sour-faced politician from New Jersey who insisted everyone call her Senator Liz, neither of whom met his eye. There was also an elderly French oil magnate, but he sat so quietly Raf mostly forgot he was there. Which was probably the man's intention.

“Alternatively,” said Raf, “I could have him taken out to the courtyard and shot. Or, if you like, we could lose the body altogether and just pretend he never existed. One of the old Greek cisterns should take care of that.”

They didn't like this idea either; but then the young detective with the Armani wrap-rounds and drop-pearl earring hadn't expected them to . . . He was acting as magister to their judges. And no one as yet, least of all him, seemed very sure what that actually entailed.

“Justice,” Senator Liz said loudly, “must be seen to be done.” Her voice remained as irritating as when the session had begun several hours earlier.

“Lord Hewart.” Raf pulled the quote from memory. “One of the worst judges in history. And even he never suggested putting a North African trial on American television.”

“That's not . . .” Ernst von B's protest died as Raf flipped up a hand.

“Let's hear what St. Cloud thinks,” he said, and turned to the Frenchman. “Do you think justice needs to be televised?”

“Me?” Astolphe de St. Cloud slid a cigar case from his inside pocket. And though the iridescence of its lizardskin was beautiful, even by the light of a single hurricane lamp, what they all noticed was the enamel clasp: an eagle spreading its wings, while jagged thunderbolts fell from between the bird's sharp claws.

As if anyone there needed reminding that St. Cloud would have been Prince Imperial, if only his father had bothered to marry his mother.

“It depends,” said St. Cloud, “on what Your Excellency means by justice . . .” Shuffling a handful of prints, he stopped at one that showed a young girl with most of her stomach missing. “If we decide the evidence is convincing enough, then obviously the prisoner must stand trial. Like Senator Liz, my only reservation is that, perhaps, El Iskandryia is not quite . . .”

Raf caught the wry amusement in the Marquis' voice and glanced round the room, trying to see it through the eyes of a man whose own business empire was run from a Moorish palace overlooking Tunisia's Cap Bon, and who now found himself in a third-floor office, without electricity, on the corner of Boulevard Champollion and Rue Riyad Pasha, in a tatty four-square government block built around a huge courtyard in best Nationalist Revival style.

At street level the exterior walls to Iskandryia's Police HQ were faced with cheap sheets of reconstituted marble, while glass hid the exterior of the two floors above. Black glass obviously. The architect had been on loan from Moscow.

It showed.

As for the level of comfort on offer . . . A fire burned in a bucket in the centre of the floor, filled with logs from a dying carob. Apparently, the tree had been not quite alive and not yet dead for as long as even Raf's oldest detectives could remember.

Two men from uniform had hacked it off just above the roots, using fire axes. Now chunks of its carcass spat and spluttered as thin flames danced across the top of their makeshift brazier.

Directly above the brazier, suspended from the centre of the ceiling like an inverted red mushroom, hung a state-of-the-art smoke detector. Like almost everything else in Iskandryia since the EMP bomb, it no longer worked.

And behind Raf's head, a window unit that once adjusted electronically to lighting conditions had been rendered smoke friendly, also with a fire axe. Through its shattered centre came flecks of rain and a salt wind that blew in from the Eastern Harbour.

“Justice,” said Raf, “is whatever we decide . . .” His voice lost the irony, became serious. “And since the killing occurred within the jurisdiction of the Khedive, I demand that the trial take place in El Iskandryia.”

Senator Liz shook her head. “Absurd,” she said. “We have to change the location. You cannot expect us to work in these conditions . . .”

“I don't remember anyone asking you to work on this at all.” Wrap-round dark glasses were turned to the woman. The other two he'd chosen. The Senator was different, she'd practically demanded to sit on the Grand Jury.

Actually, there was no “practically” about it.

On her breath Raf could smell gin, while a none-too-subtle miasma of sweat rose from her compact body. If von Bismarck and St. Cloud could manage to bathe in cold rainwater, then so could she.

“Your Excellency,” said Ernst von B, “Senator Liz has a point. It will not be easy . . .” The young German spoke slowly, in schoolboy Arabic, supposedly out of respect for Ashraf Bey's position as magister, though Raf suspected his real reason was to annoy the woman, who spoke no languages other than her own.

“Nothing is ever easy. But the decision is made.” Raf stood up from his chair. And it was his chair because they were in his office. His was the name engraved on an absurdly long brass plate on the door. His Excellency Pashazade Ashraf Bey, Colonel Ashraf al-Mansur, Chief of Detectives .

He'd told his assistant a plastic nameplate was fine but that wasn't how things were done in El Iskandryia. The long plaque had turned up the day after Raf took the job, and once a week, on Thursdays, a Cypriot woman from maintenance came up from the ground floor to polish the sign.

“Excellency?”

Raf turned to find that St. Cloud stood next to him, leaning on a cane with a silver top.

“You were joking about those steps, the accidents . . . I have your word this trial will actually take place?”

Raf nodded. “You do.”

The trial would happen and it would happen soon. In all probability the defendant, one Hamzah Effendi, would be convicted. Raf just wished Hamzah wasn't father to the girl he should have married.

Nine days before the Grand Jury met in an upstairs office at Champollion Precinct, Ashraf Bey sat through a warm Iskandryian evening, bombed out of his skull, at a pavement table outside Le Trianon, drinking cappuccino and listening to DJ Avatar wreak havoc on the words of a Greek philosopher.

The afternoon call to prayer had finished echoing from the mosque on Boulevard Saad Zaghloul and the bells from l’Eglise Copte had yet to begin. If it hadn’t been for a sense of dread hanging over El Iskandryia, this could have been a Monday in October like any other.