The Ghost Runner (14 page)

‘What’s going on?’ Makana asked.

‘They’ve found a body in the lake.’

Chapter Twelve

Birket Siwa was a long flat sliver of water that lapped gently at the soft white sand now tinged with red. The air was oppressive and there was barely a ripple on the lake’s placid surface. Seagulls flapped impatiently at a distance. The fish had also already had their fill. The face was ravaged where between them they had torn away strips. Both eyes were now empty pools half filled with grey matter and brakish water. The dead man lay on his side in the sun. His knees were folded up and he looked as if he had been tipped over as he lay kneeling. His belly had been split open and a slithery mass of intestines and vital organs had spilled out. Coated with sand they resembled fat worms coming out of the earth. The stench was suffocating, trapped within a wave of heat. Not a breath of air stirred the water and a strange, almost supernatural stillness hung over the scene. A policeman with a caved-in face and the frame of a scrawny dog stood watching as they arrived, holding a small group of onlookers at a distance.

‘Stay here.’

The springs gave a squeak of relief as Hamama climbed laboriously out of the Chevrolet and balanced his cap on his head. Hitching up his trousers he made his way over. The onlookers consisted of a man and a donkey, on the back of which was perched the impassive figure of a woman, or a girl, perhaps. Impossible to say when she was completely dressed in black and her face was covered. The donkey’s ears twitched. Makana climbed out of the car and immediately felt his feet sinking into the damp sand. As he straightened up the skinny policeman gave a groan and bent over to start retching all over his boots. Sergeant Hamama gave a sigh of disgust, whether at the body or this sign of weakness wasn’t clear. The cause of the officer’s nausea became apparent as Makana drew near. The dead man’s intestines appeared to be alive, wriggling and twisting as handfuls of grey salt eels squirmed and plopped into the sand out of the cavity in the man’s belly. A stench like rotting fish broke over them, a suffocating, sulphorous reek that seemed to stick in the throat. Makana lit a cigarette and at the sound of the lighter Hamama glanced sharply back at him. Then he spat on the ground and hoisted his baggy trousers back up.

‘Who found him?’

Wordless, the skinny police officer gestured in the direction of the couple with the donkey before being overcome by another wave of nausea and he bent over and vomited again.

Sergeant Hamama muttered something to himself and then approached the couple. The donkey shied away and the old man tugged it back into place. The woman sitting side-saddle on the back didn’t move a muscle.

‘Well, what have you got to say for yourselves?’

‘I don’t usually come this way,’ the man began. ‘As Allah is my witness I don’t know what made me do so today. I just saw him there.’

‘All right, okay,’ Hamama was impatient. ‘Did you see anything, anyone at all?’

The man shook his head. The woman remained motionless and silent.

‘Did you touch anything?’

‘No, of course not. I could see he was dead.’ He turned to point over his shoulder to a finger of land that jutted out into the water. ‘I went to the hut over there, to use the telephone. I called my nephew Abdelrahman who sells chickens in the market and told him to go to the police station.’

‘Why didn’t you call the police directly?’

‘I didn’t know the number.’

‘You didn’t know the number?’ Sergeant Hamama repeated incredulously. ‘Okay, does she have anything to say?’

The man turned to the woman and murmured something to her, leaning close to receive her answer. Then he turned to the sergeant.

‘She has nothing to add to what I have just said.’

‘
Al hamdulillah
. Now you get along, but I don’t want you telling everyone in town what you’ve seen here. Is that understood? I don’t want people coming out here and trampling over everything, you understand?’

‘Yes,
effendim
. We won’t say anything.’

‘And don’t forget to give your details to the officer there, just as soon as he’s finished wiping off his face.’

The skinny officer was trying to rub the vomit off his boots by scuffing them into the sand. He sauntered over finally. Hamama rolled his eyes at Makana, then he nodded his head in the direction of the body.

‘Where you were before, as a policeman, did you ever see anything like this?’

‘Some,’ said Makana.

‘You were a detective? You dealt with homicides?’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘Do you believe in fate?’ Hamama regarded Makana carefully.

‘Fate?’

‘I don’t think your turning up here was coincidence. I believe you are here to help me solve this thing.’

‘Is this part of our deal? I mean, if I help you I suppose that cuts down what I owe you for helping me?’

‘This man who has been butchered is not just anybody. He’s our Qadi, or he was.’ Hamama glanced at the remains of the judge. ‘I think that trumps any missing persons case you have.’

‘So we’re even?’

‘Yes, all right, we’re even. Now what can you tell me?’

‘Do you have a forensic team?’

‘Yes, along with our helicopter and specially trained dogs. I imagine they’ll be along in a minute.’ Hamama produced a packet of gum and stuck a piece in his mouth and began chewing.

‘A doctor, at least?’ Makana asked.

‘I suppose it’ll have to be Doctor Medina.’ Hamama tilted his hat onto the back of his head and stared at the ground beneath his feet. ‘It couldn’t have been an accident, could it?’ It wasn’t so much a question as a drowning man clutching at straws. ‘It wasn’t suicide either.’ Hamama rested his hands on his ample hips and stared at the sky. ‘We don’t get many murders here. It’s a peaceful place. People settle their differences quietly.’

They both turned as another car came rattling fast up the stony track. A similar pickup to the sergeant’s, except the bonnet on this police car had been repaced by an olive-green one, from a military vehicle no doubt. The man who climbed out was a rangy, hard figure of a man in his thirties. He reached into the back, lifted out an old canvas stretcher and carried it over.

‘Sadig, this is Mr Makana.’

The new arrival’s face remained impassive. He had one stripe on his arm. Glancing briefly at Makana he nodded in the direction of the body.

‘It’s true then, someone cut the Qadi to pieces? I thought he was making it up when I heard.’ ‘A lot of people are going to be upset about this,’ muttered Hamama. Sadig just grinned.

‘And a few people will be celebrating tonight, that’s for sure.’

Sergeant Hamama sniffed. ‘I didn’t explain. This is Mr Makana.’

‘So you said.’ Sadig took another sideways look at him.

‘He’s come all the way from Cairo to ask some questions about the Abubakr family.’

‘The who?’

‘You know, the big old house out there by the Dakrur road.’

Sadig took a longer look at Makana, in case there was anything he might have missed. ‘I haven’t heard anything about them in years. Didn’t they all leave?’

‘Yes.’ Sergeant Hamama nodded. ‘The place has been abandoned.’

‘Can’t see why anyone would be interested in that.’ Sadig set down the stretcher alongside the dead man. ‘My, my, the Qadi. Who would want to do a thing like that?’

‘You knew him?’ Makana asked.

‘Everyone knew him,’ replied Sadig, without looking up.

‘Let’s try and get him on here,’ said Hamama. ‘Call that idiot over to give us a hand.’

‘You think we should move him?’ Makana asked. Both Sergeant Hamama and Sadig turned to stare at him. ‘Aren’t you going to at least take photographs of the crime scene?’

‘We don’t have time for that. If we leave him out here much longer there won’t be anything left to photograph.’ Hamama nodded upwards where vultures were circling. Already crows were hopping closer.

‘What about the doctor? Shouldn’t we wait for him?’

Sadig chuckled. ‘Doctor Medina? We could be here a week. We’ll be lucky if he’s capable of standing on his own two feet without support.’

‘We need to move him,’ Sergeant Hamama concluded for Makana’s benefit.

It took all four of them, including the skinny policeman. The Qadi was a heavy man and would have been hard enough to handle while still in one piece. The guts spilled out behind them as they wrestled with the slippery body, coated with a layer of brine that gave it a white sheen. By the time they had finished there was blood, guts and sand everywhere including all over their clothes. A yellow plastic sheet was fetched from the coffee shop out on the point and draped over the body to stave off the flies that were closing in despite the afternoon heat beginning to fade. The red globe of the sun flattened itself against the horizon like a balloon from which the air was slowly escaping.

‘This is a small town,’ Hamama said as they drove back into town. ‘Everyone goes to the same school. They all marry one another’s cousins. We have small-town problems and we take care of them ourselves. But something like this . . .’ He shook his head. ‘This is the kind of thing that brings people running and sticking their noses into our business.’ He glanced over at Makana. ‘We have to find out who did this as soon as possible. And you’re going to help me.’

It was still light when they arrived at Doctor Medina’s house on the outskirts of town. A large villa sinking into the shadows, set back in a garden thick with tamarind bushes and fig trees. Old palm trees bowed gracefully over a sandy drive that ended below a staircase on the left-hand side of the building. Wooden shutters on the upper floor were all closed. To the right of the stairs was a large screen door hanging from one hinge that led into the cool, dark interior of a waiting room. A fan turned lazily overhead but the benches were deserted. Sadig and the skinny officer carried the stretcher through another set of doors into the interior.

A tall, dishevelled man appeared. There was a distracted air about him. His shirt collar was askew, the tails hung out of the front of his trousers. His white coat was torn and stained and had what appeared to be burn marks on the sleeve. He stood swaying in the doorway as if unable to make up his mind which way to go, running a big hand alternately over his unshaven chin and through his hair which was thick and greying, pushed back from his forehead in a messy ruffle. There was something boyish and lost about his features and Makana caught the sharp reek of alcohol on his breath as he squeezed past into the examination room, doing his best to hold up his arm of the stretcher before the ungainly Qadi slipped to the floor. Sergeant Hamama stopped off in the reception room to use the telephone on the counter. A worried man. The two policemen placed the stretcher on the wooden table that served as the doctor’s operating table, then retired outside to smoke. Makana and the doctor looked at one another over the Qadi’s corpse splayed out on the table between them. The plastic tablecloth had slipped and the raw guts were exposed. The raucous buzz of excited flies filled the air and the doctor went over and flicked on a blue UV light set high on the wall that hissed every time one of them was drawn in and fried on the electric grille.

Doctor Medina leaned against the row of cabinets behind him and lit a cigarette.

‘And you are?’

‘I’m Makana.’

‘Of course you are.’ Doctor Medina’s eyes narrowed as he inhaled deeply. ‘I see you’ve met our dear Qadi, our little community’s judge and spiritual guide.’

‘I happened to be with the sergeant when the call came in.’

‘A bad time to arrive.’ The doctor’s eyes were deep-set and dark. They examined Makana more carefully now. ‘A visitor? Sightseeing?’

‘He’s an investigator from Cairo,’ said Sergeant Hamama as he stamped into the room, ‘and he’s helping me with this.’ He stuffed pieces of gum into his mouth, his jaws chomping up and down between words. ‘Now, tell me what we have here.’

‘We have one dead Qadi,’ said Doctor Medina. ‘Other than that your guess is as good as mine.’

‘That’s all you can say? Why do you think we brought him to you?’

‘You brought him here because you have no choice.’

Doctor Medina turned and stubbed out his cigarette deliberately in a steel kidney dish that was piled high with butts and ash.

‘It goes without saying that your services are invaluable. Is that what you want to hear? Good, now that you’ve made your point perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me what killed our illustrious friend?’

‘Perhaps I should be more cautious?’ Doctor Medina mused as he removed the tablecloth and leaned over the corpse. ‘I could get myself into a lot of trouble.’

‘You’ll be in more trouble if you don’t co-operate. That much I can tell you.’ Sergeant Hamama thrust his hands into his pockets and glanced mournfully across at Makana. ‘If I go through official channels this could take weeks, and by then I’d be up to here with officials and red tape. They’d drum me back to directing traffic while they took all the glory.’

‘That is the closest I am going to get to thanks.’ Doctor Medina pulled up a surgical mask and peered down the dead man’s throat. He paused, then reached over to the set of instruments laid out on a tray and selected a set of long forceps. A harsh whiff of ammonia was beginning to come off the corpse. The set of forceps came alive, little arms flailing from side to side beneath the doctor’s broad grin. ‘Salt-water crabs,’ he said, dropping the creature into the sink where it could be heard scrabbling about trying to climb up the porcelain sides.