‘Another one?’ asked Zisky.
Ben-Roi glanced at his watch – past ten – and shook his head.
‘I think that’s enough for one night. We can go through it all in more detail tomorrow. Like your friend said, young chap like you needs your beauty sleep.’
Zisky rolled his eyes in a mock patronized look, but didn’t argue. He slid from the seat and pulled on his jacket.
‘Next round’s on me.’
‘I’ll keep you to that. And thanks for the notes. Great work.’
Zisky’s eyes twinkled, as though he was pleased by the comment. He didn’t say anything, just nodded, flicked a salute and headed down the bar.
‘Give my best to Joel,’ Ben-Roi called after him.
He got a finger in response, which made him grin. The kid was OK, was becoming one of the team.
Once he was gone, Ben-Roi changed his mind and bought himself a nightcap, a Jameson’s on ice. He popped his head into the back room to check the football score – still one–nil to Hapo-el – then settled back into his seat and texted Sarah, wishing her and the baby goodnight. He got one straight back, wishing him the same, followed almost immediately by a second reply, this one addressed ‘To Daddy’ and signed ‘Bubuxx’. He smiled. Throwing a glance at the barman to make sure he wasn’t looking, he lifted the mobile to his lips and kissed it.
‘And you think
Zisky’s
gay,’ he muttered, pocketing the phone and stretching out his legs. ‘Get any softer and you’ll turn into a fucking marshmallow!’
He chuckled, sipped the Jameson’s and circled his glass on the tabletop, gazing distractedly at a framed print on the wall, retro-Soviet, advertising cigarettes. Some piped music came on, Dire Straits, ‘Brothers in Arms’. The thick, smoky guitar intro weaved through the room like drifting mist. His thoughts picked up the rhythm and went with it, floating this way and that, first to Sarah and the baby, then the spotty guy trying to chat up the woman at the bar, then to Zisky and Regev, then, inevitably, to the case.
This was always his best thinking time, right at the end of the day, when his body was gearing down and his head starting to unclutter, and he allowed his mind to go where it wanted, not pushing things, just kicking back and letting his thoughts meander, weaving randomly through everything he’d discovered tonight, today, over the last couple of days, seeing where they took him.
And where they took him, over and over again, like a visitor always drawn back to the same pictures in a gallery, were to two particular aspects of the investigation.
The girl Maria/Vosgi. She was the person on which it all hinged, absolutely no doubt about it. And, also, Egypt. That was the
place
on which it all hinged. Equally no doubt. Barren, Nemesis, Pinsker, Kleinberg’s flight to Alexandria, the Sinai route used by the sex-traffickers – every thread seemed to intersect with Egypt at some point, all roads seemed to lead there. Egypt was where the answers were. Maybe
the
answer.
He took another sip of his whiskey and slid his gaze from the print to the barman, tracking him as he moved along the counter dabbing at stains with a J-cloth. Their eyes met and the man made a pouring motion, asking if Ben-Roi wanted a top-up. He raised a hand in thank you and shook his head. From the back room came a shout of ‘We’ve
all
shagged your girlfriend, Joni!’ followed by a burst of raucous laughter; Knopfler’s guitar hummed and growled; ice cubes clinked as Ben-Roi rolled them around his glass.
Egypt. There were some things he could follow up himself, or else get Zisky to look into. Calls that could be made, information gathered, background checked. You could only do so much over the phone, e-mail and internet, however. What the case really needed was someone chasing things on the ground. Someone with a know ledge of the country and its language. And that meant putting in a request to National Police Headquarters, from whom official clearance was required for any dealings with foreign authorities, particularly Arab ones. And official clearance could take days. A lot of days, knowing the glacial speed at which the National Police bureaucracy moved. He’d get on to them first thing, set the wheels in motion, but for the moment it looked as if Egypt, important as it clearly was, would have to sit on the back burner.
He sighed and lifted his glass, ready to drain off the last of the Jameson’s and head home, weary now, the day catching up with him. As he did so his eyes crunched, as if he had been struck by a thought. Because of course there was another option. Someone who
was
on the ground. An old contact of his. An old
friend
. They’d worked together a while back, on that extraordinary Hannah Schlegel case, had stayed in touch, although it had been a while since they’d last spoken, twelve months or more, which is why he hadn’t thought of him immediately. He glanced at his watch – late, but not too late – and, almost without realizing he was doing it, pulled out his cell phone.
Four years ago, languishing in the abyss after the death of his fiancée Galia, convinced the rest of his days would be lived in darkness and grief, two people had come along and shown him the way back up to daylight. Sarah had been one. The other . . .
He brought up his contacts list and scrolled through until he came to the Ks. There was only one name there. He smiled when he saw it. It had been way too long, would be good to hear his voice again.
He checked his watch a second time, then moved his thumb across and pressed the dial button.
L
UXOR
Khalifa was on the roof of his apartment block when his mobile went off, sitting on an upturned crate gazing out across the twinkling Luxor nightscape.
He came up here most nights, once he’d got Zenab off to sleep. He would hold her hand, and stroke her long black hair, and sing tunelessly to her until eventually her breathing settled and her body relaxed, and the tight, anxious line of her mouth softened and curled – not so much into a smile, more an expression of relief that the waking was over and she could once again lose herself in the nothingness of slumber. Later the nightmares would come, jagged shards of memory scratching at her subconscious, turning sleep into as much of a torment as wakefulness. For a couple of hours she would be at peace, however, swaddled in a blanket of dreamless oblivion, and he could come up here for some peace of his own, secure in the knowledge that their bedroom window was directly beneath him and if she called out he would hear her and be down in a matter of seconds.
He liked the roof. It was the one part of their new home for which he had come to feel any degree of affinity, particularly at night. By day Luxor could be a dull, monochrome place, the harsh sunlight bleaching away the town’s colour, amplifying its drabness. With darkness, paradoxically, the colour returned: the bright, translucent green of the mosque minarets, the icy striplight-white of the cafés and shops, the garish neon of five-star hotels, a thousand tiny spatters of orange and yellow from the windows and streetlamps and car headlights.
Night transformed the town, cancelling out all the characterless concrete and crumbling architecture, reducing everything to primary colours: clean and bright and simple. Sitting on his crate and gazing out always soothed Khalifa, in the same way that climbing the Qurn and shooting on the police rifle range soothed him. Allowed him to feel, if not better about things, at least not so painfully aware of them.
But now his mobile was ringing and the spell was broken.
He snapped to his feet and fumbled the phone from his pocket, a pulse of anxiety shooting from his chest down to his gut, as it always did these days when he received an unexpected call at an unusual hour. For a brief moment scenarios flashed through his head, dreadful scenarios: sirens, hospitals, running feet, piteous howling. Then he saw the caller’s name and his breathing eased. He sat back down and stared at the phone, rubbing his temple with thumb and forefinger. There was a time he would have been glad of the call, delighted. He owed the man his life, after all; they’d been through a lot together. Tonight his immediate reaction was annoyance that the caller should have rung so late and scared him like that. Annoyance and, also, a dull, weary dread that he was going to have to go through it all again, tell yet another person what had happened and how everything had gone so wrong for him and his family. Relive the whole thing. And then there’d be the embarrassed silence at the other end of the line, the fumbling for words, the blurted I’m-so-sorry-if-there’s-anything-I-can-dos – the reminder, if Khalifa ever needed a reminder, that he had become someone indelibly marked with tragedy. That whatever else he had done and would do in his life, it was this that now defined him.
He dangled the phone, its trill echoing through the hot Luxor night, unable to bring himself to answer, thinking he’d just let it go to voicemail. But then to do so would simply be putting off the inevitable. He couldn’t avoid him for ever, would have to talk to him some time. And he
had
saved his life, that night four years ago, in Germany, when he’d carried him out of the burning mine. He owed him. Whatever his own personal problems, Khalifa took the debts of friendship seriously.
‘Dammit,’ he muttered.
He allowed the mobile to ring a couple more times, steeling himself, staring across at the Elnas Mosque, the slim spike of its minaret seeming to spear the moon like a needle puncturing a duck egg. Then, just at the point when the phone was about to click over to voicemail, he drew a breath, pressed answer and held the handset up to his ear.
‘Hello, my friend,’ he said quietly.
J
ERUSALEM
The moment he heard Khalifa’s voice, Ben-Roi broke into a broad smile and held up his glass as if toasting the Egyptian.
‘Hello to you too, you cheeky Muslim cunt!’
It was how they always greeted each other, with a cheery insult to their respective cultures, a nod to the first time they had met, when they had argued and very nearly come to blows. Traditionally Khalifa would respond by calling Ben-Roi an ‘arrogant Jew bastard’. On this occasion he merely gave a low
hrumph
to acknowledge the joke and asked Ben-Roi how he was doing.
‘Great, fantastic. You?’
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘I didn’t wake you up, did I?’
Khalifa assured him he hadn’t.
‘What’s it been? A year?’
‘At least,’ replied Khalifa.
‘Time flies.’
‘It certainly does.’
‘God knows where it goes.’
Khalifa mumbled something Ben-Roi didn’t catch. He couldn’t be sure, but he got the impression the Egyptian was slightly out of sorts. Softly spoken at the best of times, tonight he sounded positively subdued. Ben-Roi wondered if maybe he should have left the call till tomorrow.
‘How’s Zenab?’ he asked, deciding he might as well push on with the conversation now he’d started it.
‘She’s . . . OK.’ The reply was hesitant, evasive almost. ‘Sarah?’
‘We split up.’
There was a fractional pause.
‘I’m sorry. When?’
‘A few months ago.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘Me too. All my fault, of course. I’m an arsehole.’
Ben-Roi thought Khalifa might pick up on this, throw out some witty riposte, but he didn’t say anything. There was another pause, awkward – the Egyptian definitely seemed out of sorts. Away to Ben-Roi’s right the bar door banged open and the two young women who had left fifteen minutes ago came back in, arms round each other’s shoulders. He watched them as they tottered up to the bar and ordered vodka-Cokes, then:
‘Hey, I’ve got some news.’
The click of a lighter echoed down the line, followed by the sound of inhaling breath.
‘Don’t tell me: you made peace with the Palestinians?’
That was more like it! That was the Khalifa he knew and loved! ‘Even better!’ laughed Ben-Roi. ‘Certainly more incredible.’
He let the comment hang, building things up, then: ‘Sarah’s pregnant. I’m going to be a father!’
He said it loud, relishing the announcement. So loud that the barman and the two young women heard him. The barman gave a thumbs-up; the women clapped and shouted
Mazel tov
. From Khalifa there was nothing.
‘I’m going to be a father,’ repeated Ben-Roi, thinking the Egyptian hadn’t heard him.
‘
Mabruk
,’ said Khalifa. ‘I am very happy for you.’
He didn’t sound it, his tone flat and expressionless, which surprised Ben-Roi. Needled him, in fact. Khalifa was one of the few people he hadn’t yet told – just about the only person – and he’d been looking forward to his reaction, had had it in the back of his mind from the moment he’d decided to call him. The lack of reaction was . . . insulting almost. OK, it had been over a year since they had last been in touch – four since they had seen each other face to face – and Khalifa clearly wasn’t in the best of moods, but even so he would have expected at least some enthusiasm on his part. Fatherhood was a big thing, after all, something to celebrate. And Khalifa wasn’t celebrating. Ben-Roi wondered if maybe he didn’t approve of the domestic set-up, of him having a child out of wedlock. Yes, that must be it. Different cultures, different ways of doing things.
‘Obviously me and Sarah not being together any more makes things a bit more complicated,’ he acknowledged, tackling the issue head on, ‘but we’re still close, and, trust me, whatever happens I’m going to be there for her and the baby. And who knows, once he arrives – actually we don’t know it
is
a he yet, although between you and me I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a boy . . . Anyway, babies change things, you know that, so maybe once he or she arrives Sarah and I might give it another try, see if we can patch things up, you know, start over, the three of us together . . .’
He was rambling. Shouldn’t have had the Jameson’s, not on an empty stomach.
‘The point is, I’m not going to be one of these absentee fathers,’ he continued.
I’m in for the long haul. The fact that me and Sarah aren’t living together won’t affect anything. This baby’s going to have the best home in the world and the most loving parents. I’m so excited, Khalifa.
So
excited. I’m going to be a father!’