Free The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal Page B

looked surprisingly good, though he wouldn’t have been surprised if she had poured in a dose of rat poison as well. He took a sip and then lit a cigarette.
    ‘You can’t smoke in here.’
    ‘Open a window, or call Mr Gaber, I’m sure he’d like to know why it took you so long to report Adil missing.’
    She turned and left the room without another word. Adil didn’t trust her and neither did Makana.
    He turned his attention to the telephone on the desk. It had a built-in answerphone system which was activated. The counter showed it had registered twenty-one messages. He rewound the tape and went through all of them. Six were from someone at the club, a man Makana guessed was the assistant coach. Five were from Gaber and another four from someone called Soraya, Hanafi’s youngest daughter. She sounded worried. ‘Adil, where are you? Please, it’s never been this long.’ None were from Hanafi himself. Several callers mentioned that they had tried his mobile telephone and got no answer. Three were from a woman who identified herself as Mimi. Her tone was frantic. She wanted to see him. In the final one she didn’t give her name, but Makana recognised her voice. ‘Please, tell me why you are doing this to me?’ she begged. ‘What have I done?’ Then there was a long pause and a sob, before finally the line clicked and went dead with a resigned tone.
    The remaining message was not a real one at all. There was no sense of urgency to it. Instead, in response to the beep, there was a long silence. It was so long that Makana thought for a moment there was no one there. Then he heard the breathing, slow and even. Finally, a voice enquired, ‘Adil?’ once and then fell silent. No name, no identification, no message. Still, the caller waited, as if he thought Adil might be avoiding him, refusing to pick up because he knew who was calling.
    Makana picked up the address book again and went through it. The name Mimi was circled and underscored. A series of numbers was scribbled alongside it. He tried them one after the other but they were all disconnected. No address was given.
    He spent some time going through all the names in the address book, ticking each of them off after he had made the call. Nobody had seen or heard from Adil in weeks; in some cases it was months. Despite his success, it seemed that Adil Romario had few regular or close friends. The ones Makana spoke to tended to be on the frivolous side in general. Happy-go-lucky, playboy types, media darlings, movie celebrities and television journalists with shrill voices, male or female. They told him nothing. With friends like these your absence would be noticed for about as long as it took for someone else to call.
    Makana slipped out of the flat without seeing the housekeeper again. In the front lobby he cornered the doorman, a sophisticated version of the usual bawab, wearing a uniform the colour of boiled spinach. He was reluctant to talk until Makana produced the envelope of expenses. ‘He keeps himself to himself, always polite, but you know how it is with people like that. They live in another world from the rest of us.’ The delivery boys in a takeaway place next door wore red uniforms with a logo of a monkey on roller skates holding a pizza box. A bland electronic storm of syrupy music gushed from the overhead speakers, loud enough to make conversation all but impossible.
    ‘We know who he is, sure.’
    ‘He’s a regular customer.’
    ‘Is this for a magazine? I have a friend who works in television. Maybe you know him?’
    ‘It’s fine being a big star and everything but you’d think a guy like that could manage to smile once in a while,’ offered one of them as Makana made to leave.

Chapter Six
    The DreemTeem Football Club looked like a bomb had hit it. Over the old stadium an enormous new edifice was being constructed. Cranes swung through the air and jackhammers pounded. Scaffolding clattered and heavy lorries rumbled in and out of a deep