Chapter Twenty-one

EVEN BEFORE THE sons had finished searching the cluster of parking lots, the Saracen had found the road he wanted. He turned on to it, switched off the Cadillac’s headlights and was swallowed up by the long, pot-holed blacktop.

On one side was a municipal dump, and the Saracen made sure that he travelled slowly enough not to raise the flocks of seagulls that attended it or scare the wild dogs constantly roaming its perimeter. On the other side was a wasteland of scrub, its only landmarks the hulks of abandoned vehicles and a canal overgrown with reeds and full of fetid water.

The Saracen slowed at a chain-link fence, nosed the Cadillac through a gate hanging on its hinges and pulled to a stop in a deserted cul-de-sac which serviced what some optimistic realtor had once called an industrial estate. Fronting the road was a shamble of buildings forming an auto-repair yard which was probably a chop-shop, a low-slung warehouse selling reconditioned washing machines and five converted garages used to package lamb delicacies. With food, sometimes it’s better not to know.

Thanks to the pain, the seatbelt around his neck that was as tight as any garrotte, the fever and a galloping infection from the unsterilized scalpel, Tlass had plunged into a twisted and psychedelic unconsciousness. The Saracen opened the door, untied the belt and pulled him out into the rotting silence. The warm air Tlass dragged into his lungs allowed a splinter of reality to enter his fevered world and he managed to hold himself upright, tottering.

‘You do good work with the garrotte – one professional to another, ’ he said through his damaged larynx. With which he collapsed to the broken asphalt and started whispering in weird fragments about God and the heavenly light show.

The Saracen knew where it came from: like people who have had arms amputated and can still feel their fingers, a person who had lost the use of their eyes often saw displays of spectacular lights. The Saracen left Tlass to his private aurora borealis, gathered the things he needed from the back of the SUV then dragged the prisoner by his collar to a garbage skip full of refuse from the meat works.

He saw that, among the reeds and stunted bushes, primeval shapes were moving – little more than pools of greater darkness – and he knew the wild dogs were coming. The meat works was a favourite feeding ground among the stronger ones, and now they could smell sweat and blood they knew that an animal, a large animal, was in trouble.

The Saracen propped Tlass up in the garbage skip. He took the dead eyes out of the icy containers, jammed them back in their sockets and deftly wound a piece of ragged fabric around the man’s head. It looked like a dirty blindfold, but it’s real function was to hold the eyes tight in place.

As Tlass felt a sudden coldness on his fiery flesh, the kaleidoscope of lights faded and, in his madness, he thought they were ministering to his wounds. Sure he had wanted to kill them, but now, like most people subjected to torture, he felt an outpouring of gratitude for even the smallest kindness. ‘Thank you for the bandage, ’ he whispered.

At the thought of the crisp, white dressing his spirits rose and he turned his attention to the suffocating stench of blood, vomit and defecation. He knew from his experience in the secret police exactly where he was – he had been dragged back down into the cells. Pretty soon somebody would come, strip off his clothes and hose him down. The jailers never touched the shit-covered clients themselves, so it would be a pair of female prisoners.

Usually the guards made the women do it naked and, when they were close enough, Tlass had to remember to try to get a feel – the guards always laughed at that. He heard a sharp click of metal. It made him pause; the sound was familiar, like a … like …? Then it came to him through his fever and he laughed – it was just like a pistol being cocked. That was ridiculous – nobody was ever shot in the cells, it was far too messy. And why treat his wounds if they were going to execute him? No, it had to be something else.

‘Who’s there? Somebody there? ’ he called out in what he thought was a strong but friendly tone.

The only person present – sighting down the barrel of an Afghan-era pistol he had taken out of the secret compartment in the bottom of the cool-box – heard him croak the question, the words badly slurred and barely audible, and ignored it. The Saracen was standing six feet away, just far enough, he estimated, not to be hit by bone and blood, aiming at the blindfold covering Tlass’s left eye.

Trying to hear, certain there was someone else in the cell, Tlass held himself perfectly still. The Saracen knew there would never be a better moment. Truly he was blessed. He squeezed the trigger.

Crack! Tlass felt the pain of … and then felt nothing more. A spray of bright blood, bone chips and brain exited the back of his head just as the Saracen sensed a scurry of movement behind and wheeled fast. It was the wild dogs running for cover.

The Saracen turned back, aimed and fired again, this time hitting the dead man on the right side of the blindfold, destroying – with luck – any evidence that the eyes had been surgically removed. His hope was that the investigators would think Tlass himself, having forgotten something, had returned to his office and was robbed and abducted only after he left the institute a second time. That way it wouldn’t even occur to them that anything had been stolen from inside the building.

Obviously, the less they knew the better and, to that end, he was pleased when he heard the dogs returning, loping through the darkness, anxious to eat their fill of the evidence. By then he had parked the Cadillac in the darkest corner at the back of the auto-repair yard, confident that any casual observer would think it was just another vehicle waiting to get chopped. From the back of the SUV, still wearing the plastic gloves, he removed everything that might be of any interest to the forensic experts.

Carrying the cool-box and the rest of his possessions, he set off into the wasteland. He moved quickly and kept the pistol cocked in one hand – just in case some of the dogs decided they preferred their human on the hoof.

At the municipal dump he smashed the cool-box to pieces and scattered everything else from his camp among the piles of refuse. He knew that, two hours after dawn, they would have already been retrieved by scavengers and recycled into the lawless refugee camps.

Apart from the syringe, a cardboard ticket and some loose change, all he had left in the world was a pistol, his father’s Qur’an and the six glass vials. In his view, those tiny bottles made him the wealthiest person on earth.