Free The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal

called you?’
    ‘He said I was to help you in any way possible.’ She clasped her hands together and clucked disapprovingly. ‘But don’t expect I’m going to let you out of my sight.’
    Makana would have preferred to have arrived unannounced. As he wandered through the rooms with her trailing a few paces behind, putting everything he touched back in place as if she expected him to slip a few items into his pocket, he realised that the flat had been thoroughly cleaned in preparation for his inspection, which was what she obviously took this to be.
    ‘Have you been working for Adil for long?’
    ‘Almost three months. Mr Adil has never had any cause to complain. He trusts me with anything. I have always been a hard worker. You can ask anybody.’
    Quite who he was meant to ask, Makana did not know. Adil Romario wasn’t his real name, of course, his real name was Adil Mohammed Adly, but throw a stone on any street in Cairo and you were bound to hit someone called Mohammed. There was a certain tradition in Egypt of players adopting the names of famous international footballers. They began as nicknames, among their friends, based perhaps on a favourite player. Then journalists would pick up on them and it added a touch of familiarity, not to mention glamour, to the Egyptian players and their game. There was a Maradona, a Pele, a Zidane, and so forth. There was even a goalkeeper called Beckenbauer for some reason nobody had ever managed to explain fully to Makana.
    The large black-and-white framed fashion photographs that hung on the wall suggested Adil Romario was a rather vain young man, with a lot of very white teeth, who stared at the camera with a mixture of arrogance and resentment. Why would anyone want to be surrounded by pictures of themselves? Makana, who couldn’t remember the last time he had visited a dentist, wondered if people’s teeth really glowed like that, or whether there was some photographic trick involved.
    Adil was central to the Hanafi fable. A young boy kicking a ball around a dusty street one day catches the eye of a wealthy philanthropist. It was every boy’s dream. Hanafi set up a school to rear local talent. It gave disadvantaged kids a home. He brought in expert trainers to coach them. The television channels loved that kind of thing. If the boys were lucky and worked hard they were given a place in the DreemTeem. But Adil Romario was the only one anyone really remembered.
    In the hallway a more recent picture showed Adil at some kind of gala evening, in formal evening dress and bow tie. Perhaps it was the clothes, or the quality of the picture, but his face looked puffy and his eyes dilated, as if he had been drinking. Hanafi stood next to him, one arm around Adil’s shoulders, smiling like a fat cat who had secured himself a fish.
    The apartment itself said little about Adil as a person. He seemed to have few interests outside football and movies. There were several shelves of DVDs, the films mostly featuring tall dark leading men in action-packed roles, waving guns and looking menacing. Was Adil studying for another career in films as Lulu Hamra had said? In the bathroom, Makana discovered a vast array of colognes and after-shave lotions. He sprayed a couple of these in the air for good measure, inviting a dark look from the housekeeper who appeared as if summoned from one of the bottles.
    ‘You reported him missing on Thursday. When was the last time you saw him?’
    ‘Oh, about a week before that. Maybe longer.’
    ‘A week? I understood you come here every day.’
    ‘Oh, yes. Every day. Mr Adil insists, even though most of the time there is nothing for me to do. I take care of everything. When it needs cleaning I do that. I take care of the laundry. Sometimes I cook for him, but he usually eats out.’ She sounded more like a disappointed wife than a housekeeper.
    ‘Why did it take you so long to realise he was missing?’
    She straightened her back haughtily. ‘I am not