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flown before, she insisted she'd flown dozens of times to numerous
destinations. But then he'd told her exactly the same.
What's more, she'd enjoyed the flight. Eduardo knew, because he'd been careful
to ask. And she looked
great. He'd been careful to tell her that too.
The Benz waiting outside Tunis Arrivals was big and black, smarter than
Eduardo could ever have expected, with metal pipes coming out of the engine
and running down either side of the hood. The pipes had been silver to start
with but now they were grey with wide bands of kingfisher blue, like petrol
floating on top of a fresh puddle.
Alexandre, who was young and wore the uniform of a Tunis detective (something
he suspected his visitors might not yet have realized), walked round to the
back door of the Emir's second-favourite car and held it open.
At a nod from the small man, the woman clambered in and smoothed a black dress
covered with red roses down over her pink knees. Leaving her partner still
anxiously eyeing their luggage, such as it was.
"My case . . ."
Ashraf Bey's original call had told Eduardo to buy a new suit, new shoes,
several shirts and a tie. The man had even specified the colour of each: dark
blue for the suit, white for the shirts and red for the tie
(no stripes). He'd said nothing about buying a case in which to put these
things.
"Of course, sir." Alexandre was apologetic. "I should have realized you'd need
your case with you." He picked up the cardboard box with its cheap handle,
wondering at its lightness, and waited for Eduardo to join the woman. Only
then did Alexandre put the case in the well of the borrowed car, beside
Eduardo's feet.
"Where to, sir?"
Eduardo thought about it. "What are my options?"
Alexandre tried not to sigh.
Accelerated entry to officer level and descent from an ex-
colon family that had owned dairy farms in the
High Tell guaranteed he got given the shitty jobs by sergeants who grew up in
the medina or the nouvelle ville, people he'd outrank within the year and who
knew that fact but could never forgive it.
All the same, the fact Alexandre had been warned to handle this job with
discretion meant the anxious-looking man in the rear seat had to be somebody
important. Exactly why that might be became clear when Alexandre opened his
mouth to answer, only to discover that the man sat behind him was already
talking, mostly to himself.
"We could start with the Police HQ, I suppose."
Alexandre nodded.
"Or we could go find the boss . . ."
To Alexandre that meant his colonel. He got the feeling this man had someone
else in mind. "The boss?"
Alexandre asked, in a tone he hoped was politely casual.
"Ashraf al-Mansur . . ."
"You know the bey?"
"He's my boss." Eduardo sounded as proud of the fact as he felt, which was
very proud indeed.
"And my boss too," Alexandre said. "Apparently Ashraf Bey is the new Chief of
Police." That was what he'd been told anyway. It was all change at HQ.
"Actually . . ." Eduardo glanced at Rose and looked embarrassed. "The thing
is, you see . . . I'm the new
Chief." Eduardo tasted the words as he said them and sat up a little
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straighter in his seat.
And, like a good detective, he noticed the way Alexandre immediately did the
same, straightening his shoulders and quickly adjusting his cap. That was when
he realized Alexandre was one of his men.
"I'm sorry, Your Excellency. I didn't know."
"Why should you?" Eduardo said, feeling expansive. "And you don't need to call
me Excellency, sir is fine
. . . All the same, I have a question for you. An important question."
Alexandre froze.
"What do you know . . . ?" Eduardo whipped out a leather notebook he'd bought
at Iskandryia airport, flipped it open, and watched the opening page come
alight. "Let me see, what do you know about a pâtissier called Pascal Boulart?
Other than the fact he was stabbed in an alley behind Maison Hafsid and a
sous-chef was arrested . . ."
It turned out Alexandre knew even less than that. He knew the killing all
right, he just had no memory of anyone having been arrested by the police. As
Alexandre tried to point out, as circumspectly as possible, this might just
mean the murderer had been picked up by Kashif Pasha's men.
Although the military wing of the police was meant to liaise with the civilian
branches, this sometimes failed to happen, very occasionally, obviously.
"Find out if they did," said Eduardo. "And get me files on everyone killed in
the massacre at the Domus
Aurea."
"There were only four." Alexandre regretted the remark as soon as he made it.
"I mean, the fifth one got away."
"Four is enough," Eduardo said firmly. "Now take me to the hotel." He needed a
shower, as did Rose.
And with luck, if the shower was big enough, they could share.
"Hotel . . . ?"
Eduardo nodded.
"You are not staying at a hotel, sir. My orders were to take you wherever you
wanted and deliver your luggage to the Dar Ben Abdallah."
"Dar, maison, hôtel,"
said Eduardo, "it's all the same, you know." He turned to Rose. "In French,"
he explained, "
hôtel means big house, like in
Hôtel de Ville
. Isn't that right?"
Alexandre nodded, not taking his eyes off the road.
On their way into the city all the other traffic moved out of the way. Eduardo
was wondering about this until he remembered the flag. He wasn't sure what the
flag on the hood stood for but it looked very official.
CHAPTER 39
_____________
Sunday 6th March
Palms shaded yellow earth, so that sunlight sketched patterns across the banks
of a narrow stream, highlighting twigs and dead fronds. The water in the
seguia was dirty, the grass edging the ditch and the undersides of the palms
less bright than Zara expected. Only ungrown dates, tiny and green and still
vulnerable to the sand winds, seemed created from a brighter scheme
altogether. This was a world of ochres and earth hues. An Impressionist
umbrella restricted to the palette of a Klee.
Farther along, half-in/half-out of the stream lay a fallen palm with its trunk
ringed like an endlessly extruded pinecone. The crown was gone but, since
fronds extended fingerlike from beneath the sand that covered a newly repaired
footbridge, the reason was not hard to find.
The coolness of the gardens was in welcome contrast to the last fifty miles
across the chott, when the air had been salt and hot, unseasonably so the taxi
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driver had told her, several times.
"I'm here to collect Lady Hana al-Mansur."
Zara stood on the edge of Tozeur's famous grove, home of the translucent
deglet nur and site of a quarter of a million palms fed by two hundred springs
that carried water to the date trees. The only thing to stop her reaching a
small palace on the other side of the stream was a single soldier guarding a
narrow bridge. The palace had been built by one of the old beys or emirs. It
must have been, because only a notable could get away with building a palace
on land historically reserved for growing dates.
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zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plcs-sysunia.htw.pl
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