I phoned Kevin and asked him if he’d done anything on his action list. “Your member of Parliament for example?”
I was deliberately pushing him but I’d detected a tendency with Kevin to put things off until tomorrow or the next day and to accept the poor excuses of others. “Not yet,” he said. “His office said he’s booked solid.”
I then asked him to describe the woman he’d met at Dr Mohamed El Badry’s apartment in Chelsea. “Big woman,” he said. “Arab. Not my sort.”
“Anything besides her being big?”
“Gold rings.”
“Hanging from her ears, Kevin? Stuck up her nose? Pinned to her navel?”
“On her fingers - big ones, blue stones.”
That was good enough. “We’ve found her,” I said. “But unless you stop accepting excuses, it might be too late to do anything.”
Maria arrived and my first question was whether she had ever forcibly broken into a place at night. She shook her head, as if she now saw a shortcoming in her upbringing and education. I told her that the time had come to learn the rougher side of the business.
“Sometimes it’s essential,” I said. “I call it breaking and entering with legitimate intentions. The intention is to find something useful to our case inside Dr Fatima’s clinic. Are you willing?”
“I cannot do it alone, Mr Dobson.”
“Neither can I,” I admitted. “I’ll do the breaking in part. You’ll be there to translate if we find anything useful inside the filing cabinets you saw.”
What I was planning was an extreme measure but I felt that time was running out. Looking back, how right I was.
***
That evening at ten thirty and on schedule, the old Mercedes of Mahmoud drew up outside the hotel. He knew the destination - the Egyptian Pancake House in the Khan el Khalili night market. It was a busy night-time venue for hundreds of locals and tourists. It was also within easy walking distance to the Shah Medical Centre.He dropped Maria and I on Sharia Al Azhar with instructions to return to the same place when I phoned. We then walked over the
pedestrian bridge above the traffic to the edge of the market close to the square. But, instead of heading for the pancake house, Maria, who knew the area better, led the way, first down one side street and then onto another. It was a street in an area that had probably, once, been an expensive and affluent place to live. The block that we stopped at was, in some ways, ornate. It was three floors high and built of large stone blocks with big windows and wrought iron balconies overhanging the street. At ground level, it was mostly shops - a tea shop, a florist, all now closed. Between each of the shops was a doorway leading to dark stone steps to upper floors. To the side of one doorway was a bronze plaque in Arabic.
Maria translated: Shah Medical Centre, First Floor, Dr Ramses El Khoury, General Physician and Family Planning, 6:00 p.m. to 9:00
p.m.
Looking up, lights were on in some of the adjacent windows to left and right, but directly above us, it was dark and lacked the balcony.
“Any idea what lies above the clinic, Maria?”
“Nothing. The stairs go on up, but there is a locked iron grill. Behind the grill are piles of rubbish.”
I told her to wait on the sidewalk. I was going up. She seemed unwilling. “I cannot stand here, Mr Dobson. This area has a reputation.”
I capitulated and we headed up the dark stairs to the first landing where the steps then turned and went to another level. It was pitch black, so I switched on the torch to find two iron grills. Both were padlocked shut, but only one had accumulated debris behind it. Past the other grill was a well-swept short corridor leading to a wooden door. On the door was another sign in Arabic. The clinic The grill was padlocked to a U-shaped iron plate fixed to the floor so I took my padlock-opening device from my pocket, pushed it into the lock, and twisted it. Well-used locks always open easily. This one snapped open with barely a sound, so I took it off, shone the torch on it, and showed Maria.
“What is it?”
“Made from an empty Red Bull can,” I whispered and pushed on the grill. It creaked and swung open.
“Another padlock,” said Maria. “Can I try?”
I gave her a quick demonstration, and while I shone the torch on the lock, she picked it. It clicked, she smiled at me and turned the door handle. The door opened inwards into the waiting room. It was hot and smelled of dust and sweat. The torch picked out a row of hard chairs against the walls, a scattering of magazines, and a box of plastic toys.
Maria pointed to the door to the clinic itself and the red light above. I shone the torch at the door handle and turned it, but it was also locked, not with a padlock but a normal key. I pulled up the leg of my trousers and withdrew three small screwdrivers from my sock. A minute later, we were inside the office that smelled of more sweat and dust.
“The filing cabinet,” Maria whispered.
Minutes later, with files spread on the floor and with me sitting in Dr Fatima El Badry’s swivel chair holding the torch, Maria went through the files. It didn’t take long for her to hold something up.
“It says Al Zafar,” she said. “Shall I open it?”
Minutes later, with Maria translating, I had what I’d hoped for -
shipping documents for a consignment of stainless-steel containers and plastic piping and an invoice from a French company for media for tissue culture. Next was an invoice in English for two hundred thousand pressurised metered-dose inhalers.
If there was a need for more evidence of a link between Al Zafar, Shah, and Livingstone, this was it. The invoice was from Livingstone Pharmaceuticals, New York. But there was still more. As I tried reading the papers in the torchlight, Maria was holding up another file. “Majid, Mr Dobson. What is Majid?”
Still engrossed in the shipping documents and invoices, I shrugged.
“Read on, Maria.”
“It’s an invoice from a transport company for goods going to Beni Suef.”
“Where is Beni Suef?”
“South,” said Maria. “On the Nile.”
“Any address?”
“Majid, Nahda, Beni Suef.”
It was enough for now. I pocketed the papers. We tidied up, relocked everything, and left.
Back at the hotel, I called Anna’s number, but yet again, it was switched of.