Jon Grimwood - Pashazade

'La.' Raf waved away an even smaller coin the falafel seller offered as change and bit into his warm pitta bread, tasting fresh coriander and feeling oil run into his beard. He hadn't felt hungry when he ordered the pitta, had merely needed something extra to help him blend with the restless crowd gathered around the taped-off entrance of Rue Cif. But now, with his striped and tattered jellaba — that cloak of invisibility worn the length of the North African littoral by the dispossessed — and taamiya in his hands, Raf felt ready to begin fighting his way through the crush.

There was a knot in his stomach and it wasn't all hunger. Although more than twenty-four hours had gone by since he'd last eaten, maybe longer. Raf wasn't sure, because he wasn't wearing a watch, and that was part of blending in too. If he could find a street stall he'd pick up a faux Rolex, something obviously cheap and not real.

What he needed was something suitable for a jellaba-wearing felah, like a cheap Thai fake or the kind of flamboyant G'Schlock copies garages gave free with gas ... Just as he'd needed the budget wraprounds he'd picked up from a 24/Seven in Place Orabi which made the people he was pushing through look amber and ghostly. Some of the crowd had been brought here, like him, by newsfeeds or radio. Most had just followed neighbours or stopped off on their way back from a mosque.

'What the fuck happened?' Raf asked, offering a tiny coin to a woman hawking plums from a woven satchel. 'An accident?' For all he knew the felaheen used ornate politeness when talking amongst themselves but, if so, the woman didn't seem to notice. And if she looked at the stranger with the torn jellaba in surprise it was at the fact he even had to ask.

'They're searching Ashraf Bey's house.'

'He won't be there

The woman spat. 'Of course he won't. He's under arrest. They're looking for proof the pig killed his aunt for the money ...'

'What money?'

There was money,' she said shortly. 'And there's a reward for information. That's what I heard.' The next time Raf looked, the woman was shuffling towards a uniformed officer, ignoring outstretched arms that offered coins for her remaining fruit.

'Out of there.'

Raf was moving in the opposite direction before he realized what the fox had ordered his body to do. Too fast, the fox told him, its voice faint. And Raf halted his panic-driven trot to a slow stroll, pushing his way to the front of the crowd. He was helping kill off the fox, by making it appear in daylight. They both knew that. But the fox had never said anything about it, never criticized.

'Head for Mushin.'

The man he'd come looking for stood like a poisoned dwarf just inside Rue Cif, staring hard at the rear door to the madersa. What did the man hope to find? Raf had no idea. Unless the Minister was just there to be seen by the news 'copters overhead and the ground crews.

'Shield,' whispered the voice in his head and then it was gone, fading to static that fizzled and died. Raf was alone again.

Tossing his half-finished pitta into the dirt, Raf flashed Felix's gold shield at a surprised police sergeant and stepped over the tape before the man had a chance to check the name or protest. The fact that Raf headed straight for Mushin Bey was enough to make the sergeant step back, muttering bitterly about plain-clothed shitheads.

'Hey, you,' said the Minister. 'Back behind the line.' The small man didn't just look like a cinema usher, he sounded like one too.

Raf grinned and flipped open Felix's pass to show the shield and then as the Minister's eyes widened, rammed the barrel of the fat man's revolver hard into the small man's thigh. 'I've got his gun, too,' said Raf, relying on their distance from the crowd and the long sleeve of his own jellaba to keep the revolver hidden.

'You won't ...'

'I just did,' said Raf. He nodded towards the middle of Rue Cif, where the closed-off street stood dark and empty and the crowd and police looked very far away. Take a walk.'

Mushin Bey wanted to complain, to threaten, to promise Raf that he'd be hunted down like a dog — but one look at the hard edge to the young bey's face told him not to waste his breath. This man would kill him if necessary. And all that Raf knew about the Minister, he read written in fear on a weasel face and deduced from panic rising from the man's skin, unsweetened by courage.

He was no more a real head of police than Raf was a real bey. Mushin Bey was a politician, which put him off the list where killing Felix was concerned. The man had needed Felix, rotted liver and all.

'Okay,' said Raf. 'It's murder now you think you can pin Nafìsa on me, but it was suicide when you couldn't. So tell me, who are you protecting?'

'No one,' said the Minister. 'As you well know.' He sounded like he believed it. And he tried to stare back, but his pale eyes slid away from the wraparounds bisecting Raf's face, fear subverting any real anger.

It was a feeling Raf suddenly recognised. Already there was a fragment of worry inside his head telling him to put down the gun and surrender. To give himself up to authority as he always did eventually, once the brief flare of anger had burned out to leave only the taste of failure in his mouth. A death penalty existed in Iskandryia as it did in all Ottoman cities, even the free ones, but he could cut a deal. He didn't doubt that ...

'We know about Felix fixing the autopsy,' the Minister said flatly. 'What did you have on him? Little girls, drugs, payoffs ... ?'

'No one fixed that autopsy,' Raf said crossly, jostling the Minister further back towards an empty area of the street. 'Unless it was you?'

Without intending to, Mushin Bey answered with an instinctive shake of his head so minute it was almost subliminal. Raf believed him. What he found impossible to believe was that the man wasn't covering up for someone else.

'Tell me,' said Raf, 'when did you switch from being certain it was suicide to being certain it wasn't?'

'When you had Felix killed. I assume you suddenly realized he'd stuffed you up with that suicide verdict.'

'When I ... ? He was dying,' said Raf. 'It was a coup de grace.'

And then the Minister explained something that stood Raf's day on its head and made a mockery of the scribbled and intricate chart of connections carried deep in Raf's pocket. Mushin Bey wasn't talking about the shooting. He meant the bomb. They'd found the man who'd delivered it and he was happy to help. The Minister paused for a second and amended that to very happy to help. And what really impressed the Minister, and he was prepared to admit this, was Raf's idea of arranging for the bomb to be delivered to himself. What better way to divert guilt ...

'It was meant for me?'

'Don't ...' The Minister didn't get to the next word because by then Raf was bringing up his gun.

'You know what I think?' Raf said as he flicked back the hammer and positioned the muzzle carefully under the Minister's chin so any bullet fired would be guaranteed to remove most of the back of the man's skull. 'I think you know who killed Lady Nafisa.'

'Me?' Anxiety shrivelled Mushin Bey's face. Panic blossoming until it was only a matter of seconds before the Minister either soiled himself or else started pleading for his own life. And every emotion inside the man was stripped naked except for the one that Raf actually sought.

Guilt would have been enough to make him pull the trigger.

'I didn't murder Felix and I certainly didn't murder Lady Nafisa.' Raf's voice was hard. 'I'm not so sure you didn't, but you get the benefit of my doubt..." That was the kind of crap Dr Millbank used to speak all the time. 'But someone killed them, and if that turns out to be you ...