Danuta Reah - Strangers

He seemed to pull himself back from somewhere. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You’ve been on your own. I should have thought.’ He put his arms round her. ‘We could start the evening now. I didn’t mean to make you worry. You look beautiful.’ His smile was deliberately hangdog.

She knew what he was doing, but she couldn’t resist smiling back. ‘And you look shattered. Go and have a shower, and I’ll get us something to eat. Here—’ She gave him the glass of wine she’d barely touched.

He leaned forward and kissed her lightly.

He came downstairs in jeans and a T-shirt, looking more relaxed. She made a quick salad using some of the cold chicken. She poured them each a large glass of the homebrew and they sat on the settee and ate with fingers rather than forks.

When they’d finished, he lay down with his head in her lap. ‘I thought today would never end. But it kept the best bit to the end.’

She played with his hair. ‘Listen, next weekend it will be the end of my first week at work. Let’s go into the desert again.’

‘If I can.’ He looked at her. ‘I don’t want to promise something and let you down again.’

She nodded, not completely happy. ‘I unpacked that last case of stuff that was in the study.’

‘You shouldn’t have done that. I would have…’

‘When? I nearly broke my leg on it twice today.’

‘Right. Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to leave it for you. It’s just been…’

‘It’s OK. It didn’t take long.’ She trailed her fingers across his face. He hadn’t shaved and she could feel the roughness of stubble. ‘I found an article. About this place.’

She felt him stiffen. ‘What article?’

‘The one about the guy who was executed. I put it with your papers. Is it important?’

‘No. I don’t know why I kept it.’

‘Was it someone you knew?’

‘I said…’ His voice was sharp, then he stopped himself. ‘Sorry. I told you, I don’t know why I kept it.’ He pushed himself upright. ‘I’m tired,’ he said. ‘I didn’t sleep well last night. I’m still on UK time.’

Later, lying in bed, she was the one who couldn’t sleep. She told herself it was because she was starting her classes soon, stepping out of the security of the compound and into the strangeness of the Saudi world.

As she floated somewhere between an uneasy sleep and wakefulness, words on a screen scrolled down in front of her eyes:… died of thirst in the desert…executed…never to come back …and she was in the square where they had stood the day they first arrived. It was empty and silent. Her feet were on the patterned stones that vanished into the distance. She was moving forward, reluctant step by reluctant step, to the ornate centre of the mosaic. The shadow from the minaret lay across it like a warning finger. It’s time .

And under the pillars, in the shadows, someone was watching.

Damien watched the shadows playing through the closed shutters as he lay on the bed. Beside him, Amy was lying with her eyes closed, asleep, or lost in her own thoughts. The heat in the city this summer was extreme–he’d recorded forty-four degrees at noon. Even the Saudis were slowed down by it; the old men were absent from the street cafés and the souk had been somnolent in the blaze of the sun.

The temperature was dropping now and against the dampness of his skin the air felt cool. He pulled the sheet up to cover them, and Amy stirred. ‘Damien,’ she said.

He leaned over and kissed her lightly. ‘Who else would it be? No, don’t answer that.’ Her body was outlined against the sheets, long slim arms and legs, a smooth, flat stomach. Her skin was a pale glimmer in the half-light and her mouth was the delicate pink of rosebuds. He could picture her face half an hour before, flushed and warm, her lips the colour of crushed raspberries, and he could still hear her gasps of pleasure as she’d dug her nails into his skin.

She laughed softly and rolled over towards him. ‘Nobody else but you.’ She reached across him to where a bottle of wine was cooling in a terracotta jar, and poured them each a glass.

‘So tell me,’ he said. ‘Why are you here?’ It was rare for them to meet spontaneously like this. The Saudi system made meetings between unmarried couples difficult. Damien preferred it that way. He had his own issues with commitment–his marriage had been enough to warn him away from those deep waters and Amy seemed happy enough with the status quo.

She ran her fingers lightly over him. He could feel himself responding to her and took hold of her wrist. ‘Do you need to ask?’ she said.

‘Amy, I know I need to ask. What’s wrong?’ Amy always kept her own counsel, revealing only as much as she had to about herself. He had said to her once, ‘Has it ever occurred to you that I might do what you want if you just told me what was going on?’ She had given him a veiled look but hadn’t answered.

She hesitated, then sighed. ‘I don’t know. That’s the thing. I was talking to one of the new guys today–only he’s not so new. He’s on his second tour. He must be crazy.’

He knew at once who she was talking about. ‘Joe Massey.’

‘Yes.’ She sounded surprised. ‘You know him?’

‘Not really. And…?’

‘He was here when that man got caught taking the drugs. Remember?’

Haroun Patel.

That was the connection that had been nagging at him. Joe Massey must have been in Riyadh at the time Haroun Patel had died. Majid had mentioned the drug theft the other night.

Damien had known and liked Haroun. He had been intelligent and energetic, a young man determined to do well in life, and not afraid to cut corners on the way. Only he’d chosen the wrong corner to cut and he was gone. The local police had landed every outstanding case of drug pilfering on his head, and then they had cut it off. His trial had been quick and secret, the evidence laid before the judges with no chance for Haroun to plead his case. By that time, anyway, he had confessed his guilt. As far as Damien knew, there had been no diplomatic fuss, no pressure to gain him a fair trial or a more proportionate sentence, just a small and quickly forgotten protest from people who had known him during his time in the UK. Haroun had been one more third-worlder, another immigrant worker trying his luck.

‘I remember,’ he said. ‘Why are you asking?’

Amy sat up, and the sheet slipped away to lie in a pool round her hips. ‘It was just…this Massey guy said something that got me thinking. The case against Haroun never really made a lot of sense…’

‘They caught him with the stuff. That’s all the sense a case needs, here.’

‘I know. But it wasn’t the first theft, and I don’t see how Haroun could have done the others…’

‘You’re right. He probably didn’t. Amy, they caught him with enough stuff to land a trafficking charge on him. That was the crime that got him. The rest was just convenience. They needed a drugs trafficker, they got a drugs trafficker. They just cleared up anything outstanding. He was going anyway, he might as well take some extra baggage with him.’ He was deliberately brutal. He didn’t want her getting involved any further with this.

Amy ran her fingers through her hair. ‘It’s a lousy system. You know that?’

He shrugged. ‘Have you only just found that out?’

‘You seem happy enough with it.’

It was happening already. If they weren’t having sex, it wasn’t long before they were sniping at each other, looking for the weak points in each other’s armour. He knew about the iniquities of the system–he didn’t need Amy to point them out. This was one of the reasons he’d left the diplomatic service. ‘You take their money, Amy. You know the score. It’s just the way it is.’