None of which he mentioned to his host, the man who'd put the price of a billion dollars on his daughter's dowry. With Hamzah, he stuck to practicalities like explaining what he wanted doing with the qaa, and why ...
So when Hamzah suggested getting the qaa blessed and then immediately amended his suggestion to getting the whole house blessed, Raf was surprised. He didn't have the industrialist pegged as religious. It turned out that Hamzah wasn't, but it was a good point all the same.
'My mother died in a fall,' said Hamzah. 'It was only after a mullah blessed the site I could bear to go back into the garden. I was nine. At nine you can see things that aren't there.'
And at twenty, thought Raf ruefully, and twenty-five. And, for all he knew, thirty ... Maybe for life. Maybe with some things, once they were in there, they were in there for ever, like Tiriganaq. Further conversation was cut off by a distant bell. The lawyer had made it from one side of the city to the other inside twenty-five minutes.
'Look,' said Hamzah, 'I can't pretend I liked your aunt but Hani's okay, so here's what I'll do for you ...' He smiled at his own words. 'I'll get a team over there tonight. Because what's the use of owning a construction company if you can't rustle up a few builders?'
Walking over to a pair of French windows, Hamzah shot two bolts, then neutralized an alarm by tapping five digits into a small keypad next to the window frame. Raf's time was up. 'Leave this way,' he said, opening the door to let in a warm night wind. 'You'll find the walk more interesting.'
Chapter Twenty-eight
7th July
For the girl in the water, illumination came not from the city lights strung out along the shore nor from far-distant stars whose distance was measured in countless millennia, because those were half hidden behind fat clouds. No, illumination dribbled from her fingertips in fractured Morse and spun in nebular swirls around her feet. Whole constellations burned around her shoulders and flowed over her skin like glittering smoke in a high impossible wind. She was the night and the night was her.
Zara had been coming to this beach to swim at night since she was seven, though it wasn't until three years ago she'd started smoking blow to make the liquid constellations come closer.
She'd brought Avatar out here once, one evening just before she went to New York. Some ideas needed to be left as ideas and that was one of them. He'd hated the water, he hadn't wanted to get undressed in front of her and one of his new ear-studs had rusted and given him an infection. And later, when she was on a plane and it was too late to say sorry, she realized he'd resented being asked to come out to the villa anyway. So would she, if she'd been born in a slum and Villa Hamzah was where she wasn't allowed to live.
So Zara went back to only coming here late and only coming alone.
Getting here from her room was easy. A short drop from her window, little more than her height even back then, five easy paces across a strongly made tiled roof, then down a short length of heavy iron drainpipe, the old-fashioned kind complete with regular brackets bolting it to the wall. Chance worked in her favour sometimes.
Swimming like this had been the one thing she'd missed while living in New York. No pool came close. As a child, she used to believe that she'd have been happiest being a street kid, if she could still have come here at night. Now she knew it was only money that gave her the freedom to swim like this, in the salt dark, alone, naked ... But even money had its flip side, though you probably had to be there to believe that.
This was her world. Alone, untroubled, with the whole amniotic Mediterranean as an immersion tank. Her mother hated the sea.
Zara sank under a wave, letting warm blackness close over her head as air dribbled from her lips, and felt herself slip slowly until her toes touched the bottom. The rocks were velvet with algae, seaweed flicked around her calves and ankles like sharp grass.
Raf was shouting, only he didn't shout, he never shouted ... He stopped, thought about that for a split second and then started shouting again. Waves lapping dark rock were his only answer.
Triangulation: he had the concept before he had its name. Noting where he now stood, Raf next glanced back to where he'd been standing, triangulating the position of the head when he first saw it.
It should be ...
Eyes skimmed the dark water until they saw a figure break surface. Somewhere nearby the shouting started again. And inside his head came a rolling litany, mostly composed of Oh, fuck, shit and God ...
'Present and correct,' said the fox.
Raf's suit ripped across the shoulder as he yanked off his jacket, sleeves revealing red silk as they turned inside out like snake skin. Kicking off his shoes Raf pulled the black tee over his newly cropped head, dropping cloth onto wet rock without thinking. His heart was a steady hammer.
'Chill,' ordered the fox and Raf's cardiac rhythm steadied. He couldn't see the animal but it sounded near. Sounded full-size, too, as tall as he was, with a voice that stuck its claws into his memory and ripped.
'Nictate your inner eyelids.' Raf did what the fox suggested. Experience showed this was usually safer. 'Now get out there.'
The water was warmer than Raf expected, salt like blood, and phosphorescence clung to him as he swam. The swimmer was further out than Raf had thought and the heavy cloth of his trousers dragged Raf back like a chute, slowing him down. But he swam steadily, closing the distance between them.
Clear the mouth of vomit, lift the chin ... pinch the nose, take a deep breath and blow ... take your mouth away and watch the chest fall...
He was pretty sure he could do mouth-to-mouth. Resuscitation too, if necessary. Find the top of the arch of the ribs ... two fingers on it and heel of the hand on breastbone , .. press hard on the lower half of breastbone ... The number of apparently random facts Raf could pull out of his head always surprised him. Not least because he'd never been that good at turning up to lessons
When Zara broke the surface she was behind him. She didn't stop giggling until Raf turned and moonlight suddenly lit his face.
'You.' Zara sounded genuinely shocked.
'Yeah,' said Raf tightly. 'Me ...' He was about to say something truly vicious but Zara's shoulders broke the surface as a wave sucked back in the undertow. Bare skin, no strap for her costume. It took Raf a second to process what his eyes had seen and his adrenal system had reacted to already.
She swam naked.
'Who did you think it was?' Raf demanded.
She didn't answer, not at first. 'This is my beach,' Zara said finally. 'You're trespassing.' That's who she thought it was, some idiot trespasser.
Raf shook his head. 'Your father told me to ...'
Shit and double shit.
Did Hamzah expect this — and what did it say about him if he did? Raf lent back into the water and kicked for shore, still swearing at his own stupidity. Back on shore, he didn't bother with shoes, jacket or tee-shirt, just rolled them into a untidy ball and stamped off towards the Villa. He didn't care how many lawyers the man had in there.
'Where are you going?' Zara shouted from the water.
To get a lift home,' Raf said angrily. 'You think a taxi's going to pick me up in this state?'
Try walking,' she called. 'It's what ordinary people do.'
Raf turned back and stared. 'Hani's at home,' he said coldly. 'Her aunt got murdered yesterday. This morning Hani left the house for the first time ever, to watch her aunt be buried. We're sleeping in the courtyard because she's too frightened to go back indoors. It's late. I've been away longer than I said I would. Which bit of that don't you understand?'