She ordered a bottle of mineral water and drank half of it, checking the entrance as often as she checked her watch. At ten past seven she got up and asked the man behind the bar for the toilet. Past the cramped, steaming kitchen she came to a foul-smelling cubicle, which she ignored, pressing on down the dim corridor to the door at the end, which was shut. She tried the handle and it opened, as promised. She found herself in a narrow alley, rubble underfoot. At the end of the alley she saw the lane that she’d identified on the town map. She unbuttoned her shirt, took it off, turned it inside out and put it back on, trading powder blue for plum.
At twenty-five past seven she emerged from a small street on the opposite side of Djemaa el-Fna to the café. This time she melted into the crowd at the centre of the square, trawling the busy stalls, until she found one with no customers. She sat on a wooden bench beneath three naked bulbs hung from a cord sagging between two poles. The man on the other side of the counter was tending strips of lamb on an iron rack, fat spitting on the coals, smoke spiralling upwards, adding to the heat of the night. Petra passed fifteen dirhams across the counter for a small bowl of harira, a spicy lentil soup.
The woman appeared within five minutes, a child in tow. Short, dark and squat, she wore a dark brown ankle-length dress and a flimsy cotton shawl around her shoulders. The child had black curls, caramel skin, pale hazel eyes. She was eating dried fruit. They sat on the bench to Petra’s right. The woman ordered two slices of melon, which the man retrieved from a crate behind him.
In French, she said, ‘Someone was in your hotel room today. A man.’
Petra nodded. ‘What was he doing?’
‘Looking.’
‘Did he find anything?’
‘It’s not possible to say. He spent most of his time with your laptop. I think he might have downloaded something. It wasn’t easy to see. The angle was awkward.’
‘From across the courtyard?’
The woman shook her head. ‘That view was too restricted. I had to try something else. A camera concealed in the smoke detector.’
‘I hadn’t noticed there was a smoke detector.’
‘Above the door to your bathroom. It’s cosmetic. A plastic case to satisfy a safety regulation. Actually, I’m surprised. A bribe is easier and cheaper.’
‘Where was the base unit?’
‘Across the courtyard. In the office.’ The woman finished a mouthful of melon. ‘He went through your clothes, your personal belongings. He took care to replace everything as he found it. He searched under the bed, behind the drawers, on top of the cupboard. All the usual hiding places. You have a gun?’
‘Not there. Anything else?’
‘A Lear jet arrived at Menara Airport early this morning. A flight plan has been filed for tomorrow afternoon. Stern wants you to know that Mostovoi has a meeting in Zurich tomorrow evening.’
I lie on my bed, naked and sweating. When I came to Marrakech with Massimo, the lawyer from Milan, we stayed at the Amanjena, a cocoon of luxury on the outskirts of the city. There we indulged ourselves fully. On our last evening we ate at Yacout, a palace restaurant concealed within a warren of tiny streets. We drank wine on the roof terrace while musicians played in the corner. A hot breeze blew through us. Mostly, I remember the view of the city by night, lights sparkling like gemstones against the darkness. Later we ate downstairs in a small courtyard with rose petals on the floor. That was where Massimo took my hand and said, ‘Juliette, I think I’m falling in love with you.’
I gazed into his eyes and said, ‘I feel it, too.’
I think he was telling the truth. At the time, that never occurred to me because everything I said to him was a lie and I assumed we were both playing the same game. When he said we should meet again in Geneva I said that would be lovely, that I couldn’t wait. Which was as close to the truth as I ever got with Massimo; I needed unforced access to his company apartment. Later, when he told me he thought I looked beautiful, I just smiled, as I wondered whether I would be the one to kill him. As it turned out, it was somebody else: Dragica Mark.
When Claesen mentioned her name, the memory of the last time we were together was resurrected: about two years ago, at the derelict Somerset Hotel on West 54th Street in Manhattan. We were in a narrow service corridor down one side of the hotel. It was dark and damp, the sound of the city barely audible over the rain. She was armed with a Glock. She told me to kneel. There was nothing I could do but obey. Then she asked me questions, which I answered honestly. Certain that I was about to die, there had seemed little point in lying. Finally she fired the Glock. Above my head. By the time I realized I was still alive, she was gone.
Place des Ferblantiers, ten in the morning. Petra’s guide wore the traditional white djellaba with a pointed hood. Inside the Mellah, the Jewish Quarter, they entered a covered market. In the still heat, smells competed for supremacy: fish, body odour, chickens, rubbish and, in particular, a meat counter with oesophagi hanging from hooks. The hum of flies was close. Beyond the market the guide led her through a maze of crooked streets, some so narrow she could press her palms against both walls. There were no signs and no straight lines. They passed doors set into walls, snatching occasional glimpses: a staircase rising into darkness, a moving foot, a sleeping dog. Lanes were pockmarked with tiny retail outlets: a man selling watch straps from a booth the size of a cupboard, a shop trading in solitary bicycle wheels, Sprite and Coke sold from a coolbox in the shallow shade of a doorway.
They came to an arch. Beneath it a merchant was arranging sacks of spices. Behind the sacks, on a wooden table, were baskets of lemons and limes. Garlands of garlic hung from a wooden beam. They passed through the arch into a courtyard. Beneath a reed canopy two women were weaving baskets.
They headed for a door on the far side of the courtyard, took the stairs to the upper floor, turned left and arrived at a large, rectangular room. It was carpeted, quite literally: carpets covering the floor and three walls. Other carpets were piled waist high, some exquisitely intricate, with silk thread shimmering beneath the harsh overhead lighting, others a cruder style of kilim, in vivid turquoise, egg-yolk yellow and blood red. The fourth wall contained the only window, which looked out onto the courtyard.
Maxim Mostovoi was at the far end of the room, sprawled across a tan leather sofa as plushly padded as he was. He wore Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses and a full moustache. His gut stretched a pale green polo-shirt that bore dark sweat stains in the pinch of both armpits. Fat thighs made his chinos fit as snugly as a second skin.
Jarni, the whippet-faced man from the villa at Palmeraie, stood to Petra’s right. Beside him was a taller man, a body-builder perhaps, massive shoulders tapering to a trim waist, black hair oiled to the scalp, his skin the colour and texture of chocolate mousse. He had a gold ring through his right eyebrow.
‘I feel I know you,’ Mostovoi murmured.
‘A common mistake.’
‘I’m sure.’ He nodded at the body-builder. ‘Alexei …’
Petra said, ‘I’m not armed.’
‘Then you won’t mind.’
Petra had been frisked many times. There were two elements to the process that almost never varied, in her experience: the procedure was carried out by men, and they took pleasure in their work. More than once she’d had eager fingers inside her clothes, even inside her underwear and, on one occasion, inside her. The man who’d done that had gorged himself on her discomfort. Later, when she crushed both his hands in a car door, she took some reciprocal pleasure from the act.
‘You should be more careful where you put your fingers,’ she’d told him, as he surveyed what remained of them.
Petra had dressed deliberately. Black cotton trousers, a black T-shirt beneath a turquoise shirt tied at the waist and a pair of lightweight walking boots. Suspended from the leather cord