Read Online The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy - Free Book Online

wall. It was now four-twenty-eight.
    â€˜
Maintenant?
’ he asked. ‘
On est au beau milieu de la nuit
.’
    Before I could tell him the laundry could wait he disappeared through a back doorway, returning a few minutes later with a shy young girl – I guessed she was around fourteen – in a simple gingham dress, her hair covered by a headscarf. She looked half-awake.
    â€˜There was no need to have gotten her now,’ I said.
    He just shrugged, then spoke in rapid-fire Arabic to the young girl while pointing to the basket. She answered back, her voice hesitant, demure. The man asked me:
    â€˜
Laver et repasser
?’
    â€˜Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘And I need them this morning.’
    More Arabic to the little girl. Again she looked shy about speaking in front of these two adults – especially one who was so far outside her language. Nonetheless she answered him back. The man turned to me and said:
    â€˜You will have to wait for the sun to dry your clothes.’
    â€˜I can’t argue with that,’ I said, smiling at the young girl. She smiled back.
    â€˜
Shukran
,’ I said, Arabic for ‘
thank you
’ and just one of a small handful of words I knew in that language. I pressed a 50-dirham note in her hand; an apology for her being woken so early.
    â€˜
Afwan,
’ she replied, all smiles.
You’re welcome.
    And she disappeared with the laundry basket.
    â€˜I have one last favour to ask,’ I said to the man. ‘Since all my husband’s clothes are being washed, do you have a robe or something he could wear?’
    â€˜
Une djellaba pour votre mari?
’
    â€˜Oui, oui.’
    â€˜
Attendez là.
’ Then he disappeared through the door behind him.
    At that precise moment, that voice began to incant again over the loudspeaker.
Allahhhhhhhhhhhhh
. The ‘h’ was held so long and in such a haunting, mellifluous way that I felt compelled to step outside and see if I could find where it was coming from.
    Leaving the blue carved archway of the hotel I looked down the back alleyway, which was unpaved, narrow enough for one vehicle but little else. The amplified voice started chanting again. I moved away from the doorway. Just ten or so paces from the hotel and I was enshrouded in darkness: hostile doorways, shuttered shops, tiny laneways filtering off this constricted street. I knew I shouldn’t be here. It was like falling into a blackened maze. But the voice kept beckoning me forward, inviting me deeper into the shadows, making me fearless.
    Then I saw the cat. Hanging off a wall directly in front of me as if she had been glued onto its crumbling stone surface. So emaciated, so grubby, so spooked. Had something truly terrifying thrown her against that wall? She was clinging to it, perpendicularly paralysed. Catching sight of her threw me. The impossibility of her position – as if all four paws had been hammered into the wall – was so unnerving that I felt as if an ice-cold hand had been placed on one of my bare shoulders.
    Then an ice-cold hand was placed on one of my shoulders.
    I found myself surrounded by three men. They had come out of nowhere. A guy in his fifties with a grizzled half-shaven face, three teeth, wild eyes. A plump kid – he couldn’t have been more than eighteen – wearing a T-shirt that failed to cover his hairy stomach, his face oleaginous, his eyes darting up and down my body, a goofy smile on his lips. The hand belonged to a hunched young man, sallow skinned, his countenance glassy, disturbed. The touch of his fingers made me jump. I shrugged him off, spun around, saw him gazing at me with loon-like eyes. The plump kid whispered: ‘
Bonjour, madame
,’ the grizzled old guy puffed on a stub of a cigarette, a half-smile on his face. Immediately the hand reattached itself to my shoulder. Immediately I shrugged it off again.
    â€˜Leave me alone,’ I hissed.
    â€˜No problem, no