Tree of Pearls Read online

  He looked at me under his sad eyebrows. ‘Have you ever heard of obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty?’ he said.

  ‘Have you ever heard of taking the trouble to gain a witness’s trust before expecting them to tell you all their business?’

  He squinted at me.

  ‘Or aren’t I a witness?’ I said. The food mixer went again in my belly. ‘All I want to know,’ I said, tetchily, ‘is what this is about.’ Not quite true. What I really wanted was for it not to be happening.

  ‘How many things have you got going on in Cairo that might be of interest to the police then?’ he replied.

  I wasn’t going to tell him anything. Not unless he told me first. As I can’t remember which country and western singer said, in big hair and blue eyeshadow: ‘I’ve been to the circus and I’ve seen the clowns, this ain’t my first rodeo.’

  ‘Nothing that I know of,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

  He looked disappointed in me.

  ‘Eddie Bates,’ he said.

  ‘Eddie Bates is dead,’ I replied. That’s the official version and there is no reason for me to know any different. ‘He died in prison,’ I said. I even managed to look a little puzzled.

  ‘François du Berry, then,’ he said. ‘Could we just get on?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I lied. I knew exactly what he meant.

  It was Harry who had told me that Eddie was not dead, but living in Cairo under an assumed name. What I didn’t know was whether Preston Oliver knew that Harry had told me – risking his career and maybe saving my life by doing so. I’m not telling any big policeman who I don’t know anything about this.

  ‘What were you doing in Egypt?’ he said.

  ‘I was on holiday,’ I said.

  He just looked at me.

  Sooner or later one of us was going to lose our temper, and I was afraid it was going to be me. I decided to do it the controlled way. Like the angry posh lady hectoring the Harrods shop assistant.

  ‘I think you’ll find,’ I said, ‘that asking the same question over and over is going to get you nowhere. I have no desire whatsoever to hamper you in the course of your duties, indeed I am happy to tell you anything that may be of use to you, but it is not unreasonable of me to want to know why. Do you think I am a witness to something? Do you suspect me of something? I have to insist that you be specific, because otherwise I’m afraid I can’t help you. You can think about it. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  ‘I think you’ll find.’ What a great phrase. And as for ‘I have to insist’ …

  I found the public telephone, snatched up the receiver and rang Harry at work. Not there. Rang his mobile.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘What is it?’ he said. He can smell urgency. Logically, I would be calling about our domestic and emotional situation, and he would have no business saying ‘What is it?’ to me in that tone. But he could tell.

  ‘Simon Preston Oliver – mean anything to you?’

  ‘Why?’ he said.

  ‘He’s here. Not right here – you know. He wants to know about Cairo.’

  Harry knew about Cairo. Harry knows it all, pretty much. Well … most.

  A moment passed.

  ‘Tell him,’ he said.

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Everything you told me.’

  ‘Does he know you told me about Eddie?’

  ‘Not … not as such. I mean yes, he does, he must do. But we haven’t talked about it.’

  ‘So—’

  ‘I think he’s cool with it, but. But. Slide by it if you can.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll let me?’

  ‘He wouldn’t usually. He’s a snake – he’s brilliant. But in this case, yes – well, he loves me. I think. Shit.’

  Well that was reassuring.

  ‘What’s it about, Harry?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve heard nothing since you’ve been back. Which may be because he’s put two and two together – you and me.’

  The phrase hung between us. You and me. Its other context glowing slightly down the line.

  I wrenched back on course. I’m going to have to get used to this. ‘Is he the bloke you talked to about me before I left?’ I asked. Harry had told me that a senior colleague, doubtful about the wisdom of putting Eddie on witness protection, had told Harry about it, specifically so that someone near to me could know, and remain aware.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’s all right. He’s not Ben Cooper.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. Meaning it.

  *

  Back at the table, Preston Oliver greeted me with ‘And how’s Harry?’

  I laughed.

  ‘You can’t blame me,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you would have spoken to him earlier,’ he said.

  ‘There’s a lot on my mind,’ I said.

  ‘So I would imagine,’ he said, eyeing me. He probably thinks I trust him now, I thought. Well … he’s not top of the list of people I don’t trust.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘In your own words.’

  I reckoned quickly. He knows a certain amount about me. There’s nothing to be lost by him knowing my version. And perhaps he will be nice and leave me alone if he feels that I am cooperating. So I briefly ran through for him some of the things that had been keeping me busy over the past few months.

  ‘A few months ago,’ I said, ‘I started to receive letters – anonymous letters, threatening. I worked out that they were from Chrissie Bates – Eddie’s wife. Then some purporting to be from Eddie. Who I knew to be dead. I’d been to his funeral.’ I had. And I’d met Chrissie for the first time, and it had been very mad, though not as mad as later when Eddie turned out to be not dead at all.

  ‘One said … let me get this right,’ I said. ‘One said that he had put money in an account for my daughter in Cairo, and I was to go and fetch it, and if I didn’t his lawyer was under instructions to give it to the BNP.’

  He raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I don’t like the BNP,’ I said. Understating it rather. You don’t live my life, live where I do (where the premises on the main road go: Irish laundromat, Lebanese grocery, Turkish cab firm, Armenian deli, Irish snooker club, Syrian grocery, Trinidadian travel agent, Syrian butcher, Lebanese café, Jamaican take-away, Chinese take-away, Indian fabric store, Nepalese restaurant, Thai restaurant, Italian restaurant, Ghanaian fabric store, Nigerian telephone agency, Australian bar, Polish restaurant, Pakistani newsagent, Irish café which turns Thai in the evenings, mosque, Brazilian film-makers’ collective, Ukrainian cab firm, Serbian internet café, Greek restaurant and something called the Ay Turki Locali, which may well be Turkish but whatever else it is I’ve never worked out), without developing rather strong views about racism. Mine is that it’s both the most ludicrous and the most evil of injustices. ‘So I went out there, and got the money, and came back.’

  He just looked at me. And then made a little gesture, a little twitching of the fingers: more.

  ‘Your turn,’ I said.

  ‘Did you meet François du Berry?’

  Ah, very good. What a delicate way of doing it. Slipping from the ‘dead’ man to his new identity without a word.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘And?’

  It’s not just Harry. I have a couple of other people to protect here, none of whom have done anything wrong, but who could get in trouble, and who did it for me.

  ‘He, um, he was there to meet us when we collected the money, and then later I saw him at a show, in a hotel. Bellydancing.’

  ‘We?’ said Preston Oliver.

  ‘What?’

  Oh bugger.

  ‘You said “we”.’

  ‘Oh … yes, a friend came with me.’ Please don’t drag him in. Please don’t drag him in. I could see him as he was that day: so cool, so beautiful, so protective, so funny. That fantastical scene in the foyer of the Nile Hilton, carrying £100,000 in a case, and Eddie eyeing him up with a view
to group sex …

  Preston Oliver was looking knowing. ‘And do you know two brothers called …’ Oh god ‘… Sa’id and Hakim el Araby?’ he was asking.

  Just hearing his name said out loud in a stranger’s voice gave me a frisson. He exists! He’s real!

  Yes, but his name is in the wrong mouth, the wrong context.

  And anyway, you left him. So sharpen up.

  Pointless not to.

  Ha ha. Pointless.

  Preston Oliver was looking at me.

  I tried to think how to put it.

  ‘We know …’ he said, but I interrupted him.

  ‘They’re old friends of mine,’ I said. ‘I knew their father when I lived in Egypt before. They are from a good family.’ I realized I was justifying them as I might to an Egyptian policeman, rather than an English one. ‘Their mother is an English academic. They were staying with me in London before I went out to Cairo; Sa’id came with me to the bank that day …’

  ‘And where is the money now?’

  I didn’t want to tell him. ‘Why, are you going to do me for tax evasion?’ It was a joke, but of course he could. Except that I don’t have the money. I hate the fucking money. To me that money means only manipulation and blackmail and Eddie Bates tweaking my chain. And god only knows how he made it in the first place. From mugged old ladies via ten-year-old junkies, probably.

  ‘Why, do you have it?’ he was asking.

  I don’t have it. I left it with Sa’id.

  ‘I gave it to charity,’ I said. Which was more or less true. I gave it to Sa’id to give to a children’s charity in Cairo, because that was the only way I could think of to make dirty money clean again.

  He looked disbelieving. As indeed you might. I’d be disbelieving myself – £100,000 given to charity by a semi-employed single mother from Shepherd’s Bush? But that’s what I did.

  ‘Why are you asking about them?’ I said.

  He sniffed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Cold.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘du Berry has gone awol.’

  ‘Awol?’ I said.

  ‘Absent without leave,’ he said.

  ‘I know what it means,’ I snapped. ‘I just … I don’t think I’m very interested.’

  And I wasn’t. I had put Eddie away from me. He has been what he has been but he is no longer. He is nothing to do with me now. Yeah, and hasn’t been for seven whole weeks, said an inner voice. You think you’re getting off that lightly? He’s history, I told it. History. Don’t drag me into this.

  ‘He’s disappeared,’ said Preston Oliver. ‘The Egyptians don’t seem to give a damn, but they have been polite enough to mention the el Araby brothers.’

  Of course history does have a way of affecting the present.

  How very sinister they sound, described that way. Sweet young hothead Hakim, and beautiful Sa’id, alabaster merchant, economist, Sorbonne graduate, singer of love songs, speaker of five languages, Nile boatman, holder of my heart. Sa’id who I left.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Something about a fight in a hotel in Cairo,’ he said. ‘I believe you were there.’

  Oh.

  ‘Well, they’re not criminals,’ I said. ‘It’s ridiculous. If Eddie’s decided to abscond, that’s his business … probably he just threw out some accusations to muddy the water.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. I was pleased. ‘Now tell me about the fight.’

  I love the way people throw out questions as if they were nothing. ‘How are you?’ is a good one. This was another. Six words. It sounds so easy. I was silent a moment, thinking, collating. Oh yes, the fight, that old thing. How will I choose to tell him about that? Given that I am telling him. And I was silent a moment longer, wondering if I could resist some more.

  I could. But I wouldn’t, and I knew if I tried to I would be pretending.

  He was watching, eyebrows tragically calm. He looked as if he had heard a thousand and one stories.

  ‘Eddie and I had a disagreement in a hotel corridor,’ I said. ‘Hakim had followed us because he feared for my safety, and when Eddie … attacked me, Hakim pulled him off.’

  The ‘more’ gesture again, the eyebrows in repose at once calm, tragic and receptive.

  ‘That’s it, really.’ I don’t need to mention the knife, or say that Hakim had been working for Eddie, naif little fool that he is, nor that Eddie had been attacking me with a sexual purpose. I don’t think he needs to know that. And I felt the shameful ripples of Eddie and sex run over my shoulders and down my back.

  ‘What was the disagreement about?’

  I didn’t answer. He didn’t push it, but he didn’t retreat either. All I wanted was to know that Sa’id and Hakkim were all right. But Sa’id and Hakim are not my business any more.

  ‘Are you in touch with the el Arabys?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hakim el Araby has been questioned. He’s not a problem. But Sa’id has not made himself available. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘No.’

  I was thinking about Sa’id’s family: Abu Sa’id, Mariam, Madame Amina. Oh god, all these decent people. Caught up. I told him I shouldn’t have gone to stay at his aunt’s while I was dealing with Eddie.

  ‘He took a flight to Athens ten days ago. Have you heard from him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Despite their being such good friends of yours? Staying with you and all that?’

  My heart was falling, slowly, gently. I am just at the beginning of my days of healing and rebuilding. What’s it to me if Sa’id goes to Athens? If Eddie moves on? Leave me alone. My old enemy and my old lover. They’re not mine.

  ‘We were hoping you could help. If either of them gets in touch with you,’ he went on, ‘you must let us know.’

  I gave him a long low look. Does he have the slightest idea what he is asking of me here? What he is doing to me? What either of these men has been to me? How Eddie, despite the quick, spontaneous, devilish pact we made that night when I prevented Hakim from knifing him, has never been anything but my enemy, my complex enemy, on many many levels? The serious enemy – the one who brings out from your own depths your own worst faults, your weaknesses? It was to Eddie that I did the worst thing I have ever done, and I hate him for it.

  It’s part of the story. There’s no avoiding it. A year and half ago, when he kidnapped me in London … I’ll put it simply – he was trying to fuck me, I resisting. I hit him with a poker, knocked him out. Then as he lay unconcious and, due to the workings of the autonomic nervous system (I looked it up later), still hard, I fucked him back. Did to him the bad thing he had been trying to do to me. Out of anger and revenge, I gave him what he wanted in a way he could never enjoy. And my worst self enjoyed it very much. So I hate him.

  There. Very simple.

  And Sa’id? Sa’id taught me to leave the dead alone, showed me how forgiveness works, made me capable, in myself, of seeing off Eddie and his frightful attachment. And, if I am honest, mine. My frightful … not attachment. My … interest. Something.

  ‘I don’t imagine,’ I said, staring at him, ‘that either of them will.’ Don’t you stir this up, you. I’m trying to win the peace here. I have a child to look after. Leave me alone.

  ‘If they do,’ said Preston Oliver.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. Easily, because they wouldn’t, and if they did – well, I lied.

  *

  Then it was time for me to fetch Lily. She and I ambled home in the dark, unable to hear each other speak for the traffic heading west on the Uxbridge Road. We cut into the small streets as soon as we could, and admired other people’s lives glowing through their bay windows: their televisions and their teas. Lily wondered why we don’t live in a house.

  ‘Because we live in a flat,’ I said, interestingly. I was tired.

  She said she’d like to live in a house. I concurred in a non-committal grunting fashion.

  Then felt bad about
my lack of interest. ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘So that when you die I can bury you in the garden and you’ll still be near me.’

  ‘Oh sweetheart,’ I said. ‘Oh.’

  ‘I know it won’t really be you,’ she said. ‘I know it’ll just be your body, and worms will eat it, even your eyes, and your lovely little nose.’

  I looked down at her, and she reached up, and touched the tip of my nose tenderly.

  Oh sweetheart,’ I said.

  ‘But what I really want is a leopard that can read my mind, and knows where to go.’

  Oh my god, I thought. And said: ‘So do I.’

  THREE

  I’m not Canute

  It was seven by the time we got home – time Lily should be getting ready for bed. Harry was sitting on the doorstep, up at the end of the long red-brick balcony that leads to my flat, reading the Independent and ignoring the cold. He looked to Lily first. She seemed to have forgotten all about him – and then remembered.

  ‘Dada!’ she trilled, blinking at him. He stood – unfolding himself as he does, like a camel or a telescope – and picked her up, and her legs hung down as if she were a puppet on his hand. Long dangly big-girl legs. She’s five now. A creature of playgrounds and reading books and the girls’ gang, no more the plump little dimpled thing I used to know. My girl.

  He smiled at me over her shoulder. As you see dads do. Dads in coats carrying big girls in coats. In the park, at the playground. Girls climb up on their dads. My girl, her dad.

  I opened the door and they followed me in. The hallway seemed smaller than usual. So did the kitchen. What with this new identity spreading out all over the place. Of course Harry’s been there many a time before, but Lily’s father hasn’t. And he seems to take up space.

  I’m not complaining.

  I started to make an omelette, automatically. It wouldn’t be a very nice one because I was rather too weary to whisk it up properly the way she likes. I tried to do a little yoga breathing as I whisked. Just because a policeman asks you some questions it doesn’t mean your life has to be upended again. It came out as a sigh.