There was a stewardess who arrived every time he pushed the button, and who smiled and didn't mind because he was travelling on his own and looked just like she thought English children were meant to look — blond and blue-eyed, the way they did in films.
The fact he wore grey flannel trousers and a cotton shirt with a striped tie helped fix the image in her mind. As did his thick tweed jacket, which he called my coat. His shirt even had links at the cuff made from Thai silver, with tiny dancers embossed on their black domed surface,
The stewardess let the boy be first off the plane, passing him into the care of a second attendant, who smelled strongly of roses and took him straight to baggage reclaim.
'Is that all you've got?' she'd asked, examining the single case he pulled from the executive-class carousel.
He nodded. There was no point telling her the case was almost empty and he'd only brought the thing because leaving it behind would have been rude. The case was a leaving present from his tutor's wife.
'Over there,' he'd said suddenly as they walked into the Arrivals hall. Beyond a vast wall of glass stood a line of white Cadillacs on the slip road outside, their drivers standing by open doors while inside the hall excited families waved frantically. ZeeZee waved back.
'I'll be fine now,' he said firmly and thrust out his hand.
Any fleeting doubt the attendant might have had lost out to the novelty of shaking hands with a serious, immaculately polite eleven-year-old boy. 'If you're sure,' she said.
'Of course.' ZeeZee sketched her the slightest bow.
The woman with the warm scent smiled and shook her own head in disbelief. 'Okay,' she said, 'enjoy your stay.'
'It's not a stay,' ZeeZee said seriously. 'This is where I live now...'
Chapter Sixteen
6th July
Felix felt like a candle melting.
He was tired, he'd had his holiday cancelled and he'd been at the al-Mansur murder scene just long enough to confirm that a woman was dead, there was a traumatized child sat wide-eyed in one corner of the qaa and the Minister's wife, who'd apparently called in the crime, was missing from the scene itself ... And just when it looked like his afternoon couldn't get worse, some dreadlocked trustafarian in shades and a stupid suit came hammering up the qaa steps, puffing like a lunatic.
'Hold it,' Felix barked.
'I live here,' announced Raf, stopping to glance at the fat man blocking his way. From the rye on the man's breath to his thinning hair gone grey and tied back in a lanky ponytail, the fat man had 'American cop' written all over him. Which was weird, given this was North Africa.
'Prove it ...'
Raf had left his office at a run, over-tipped a cab to jump two lights and pounded straight through Nafìsa's knot garden, leaving shredded shrubs behind him. He'd made it from office to steps in five and a half minutes. Obstruction wasn't what he needed right now. Instead of stopping, he began to squeeze between the fat man and the door frame.
A finger jabbed his chest. 'Identity papers,' the man demanded. Even speaking bad French he had an air of authority — derived from more than just age or experience.
Raf hated him on sight. So he made quite sure he got in the first move.
Faced with having his knuckle rupture or stepping backwards, Felix retreated with Raf still twisting the offending finger. Some of the moves Raf had learned on remand were so simple a child couldn't screw them up. That was the idea, anyway.
'Ashraf..." Hani's shout meshed with a blur of movement, the cold click of metal and the touch of a police-issue revolver to Raf's head. Very slowly, Raf let go of the fat man's finger and stepped back.
'You know this person?' the fat man asked Hani, sounding disappointed. As if that somehow meant he wasn't allowed to beat his target to pulp.
Hani nodded, eyes wide. 'That's my new uncle.'
'Identity papers,' Felix said. His left hand kept the Colt pushed against Raf's skull while his right reached for the card Raf extracted from his inside jacket pocket.
'Fucking terrific.'
Definitely American, Raf decided, watching the fat man return his revolver to its hip holster. First language Brooklyn, second Arabic, third very bad French. Which was one better than him.
'Colonel Pashazade Ashraf al-Mansur ... Pashazade? Your dad's a fucking Pasha?'
Your dad. Now there was a concept with which to conjure.
'No,' said Raf, grabbing back his Third Circle laminate. 'He's the Emir of fucking Tunis.' Stepping round the fat man as if he wasn't there, Raf knelt beside Hani.
'You all right?'
'No.' She nodded towards an open door. 'Aunt Nafisa ...'
'Don't let the kid go in there,' said Felix heavily. 'Don't touch anything. And don't even think of getting in my fucking face.' With that he stamped his way downstairs to tape off the crime-scene entrances before anyone else decided to appear.
It took Raf nearly a minute to spot the platinum pen rammed hard between her ribs, its metal end protruding beneath one breast like a witch's third nipple; but then he was stood in an open doorway, on the other side of a rustling strip of police tape that had been hastily strung across the door.
'Shit.' There didn't seem much else to say. And besides, it was hardly the first corpse he'd seen. All the same, it was his aunt, supposedly, and he was surprised at how unmoved he felt. The wound was ugly, the small office was a mess. That was it.
'They murdered her,' whispered a voice behind him and when Raf looked back Hani was there, eyes vast as she stared up at him.
'Who did?'
'The foreigners.'
Somewhere inside Nafisa's office a lavatory flushed, a lock clicked open and before Raf could react an almost-elegant blonde stepped into the tiny room, still wiping her mouth. The door she'd used was hidden behind a Persian rug that hung on the wall from a wooden pole. Except the pole wasn't really attached to Nafisa's office walclass="underline" but to the top of a door. Behind her came the sound of a cistern filling.
'Lady Jalila,' said the woman, introducing herself.
'I'm Raf.'
'Yes, I know ...'
They stared at each other in silence. She'd done a good job of cleaning herself up but the scrub marks on the front of her white jacket didn't quite hide vomit stains. And she very carefully avoided stepping anywhere near the desk as she crossed the dead woman's office.
Her composure held for as long as it took the child behind Raf to turn on her heel and clatter away down the qaa steps. Lady Jalila looked startled.
'You let Hani see this?' The woman's voice was suddenly brittle, her hands shaking. To Raf it looked like the onset of shock.
'No,' said Raf. 'That was you.'
Lady Jalila shot him a puzzled look.
'You were obviously here first,' Raf added.
'I imagine that I was in Nafisa's loo being sick when Hani appeared.' Whatever else Lady Jalila intended to say was lost in a sudden tread of heavy feet below.
'Up here,' she barked. But Felix had got there first. The two uniformed police officers were halted in the courtyard, listening intently to whatever it was the fat man wanted to say.
'Hey, Boss,' said the younger, when Felix finally stopped talking. 'Control said to tell you you're showing up as offline ...'