Eighty-five

Once again, standard-issue boots marching over flagstones woke Hicham Omary from his sleep. Kept in perpetual darkness, he had no idea whether it was day or night.

For a full week he had not left the cell. In that time he had revisited a thousand memories, and pondered all kinds of philosophical questions, the kind for which there’s never quite time in the haste of normal life.

He found that by breaking the years down into an intricate flowchart of events, he could keep himself amused for hours at a stretch. The exercise drove away boredom – the curse of solitary confinement.

The boots moved in a rhythm, steel tips striking down hard on the stone. The sound grew louder as it approached Cell No. 3. Then silence. And a set of keys clattered in a primitive music of their own. Omary listened, waiting for the inspection hatch to open, and for the blinding shaft of low-watt light.

But, this time, another key was selected.

It sounded quite different as it slipped into the lock. It was larger and was serrated on both sides. Hicham Omary hadn’t been in the prison system long, but long enough to learn the ritual of keys.

For it was they alone that could deliver freedom.

The cell’s tempered steel door was pulled open fast. Jerking both hands over his eyes, Omary blocked the light, as his lungs expanded with what smelled like fresh mountain air.

The guard ordered the prisoner to stand.

Omary did so, adrenalin coursing through his bloodstream, as he struggled to make sense of what was going on. A grating sound followed, metal rasping on metal. His hands were cuffed behind his back, then attached by chains to the fetters around his ankles.

After that came the blindfold.

Not a puny half-hearted blindfold from a children’s birthday party, but a military-issue one of triple-thick hessian, with four straps.

Disorientated, the fetters cutting into his ankles and the handcuffs into his wrists, Omary was led inch by inch down the corridor.

At the end, he was turned around six times to the right, and six to the left. And, swaggering like a drunkard after a night on the town, he was taken calmly into the interrogation cell and forced down onto a stool.

There was warmth, glorious warmth from the interrogation lamps – lamps he could only feel but not see.

Omary listened.

He made out the call of the muezzin far away, although uncertain which prayer it could be calling. And, much closer, he heard the sound of a lighter clicking, being tossed onto a desk, and the stink of a cheap cigarette.

The interrogator drew a chestful of smoke into his lungs, exhaled, and signalled to the guard to lock the door. He had worked in the prison service for thirty years, and prided himself on being able to get the results desired by the authorities in Rabat.

Resting the cigarette on the edge of the desk, a desk speckled with little burns from a hundred other nights, he leafed through the dossier.

‘It says that you have a liking for heroin,’ the interrogator said in a chill well-practised voice.

‘Does it?’

‘Yes, it does. And it says that you have made a fortune in working for the criminal underworld.’

Omary flexed his back to relieve the pressure on his wrists.

‘Are you expecting me to confess to invented charges?’

‘No. But I am expecting you to answer my questions.’

The interrogator stood up.

He walked around the table, and untied the blindfold. Omary’s eyes were flooded with a tidal wave of high-watt light. Eager to avoid it, he glanced sideways and found himself focusing on the walls.

They were festooned with all kinds of equipment.

There were wooden batons and straps, a harness for suspending a prisoner upside-down, electric cables and tourniquets, syringes and a box of broken glass, a variety of blades and pliers. And, in an arrangement high on the back wall, were a selection of what looked liked meat hooks. And, on another hook, an apron was hung. It had been drenched in blood – some of it old, some of it new.

Unlike the movies, where interrogation rooms are usually pristine, the one in which Hicham Omary found himself was filthy from use. Like the apron, the tools and equipment were spattered in dirt and dried blood.

His gaze jolting from one detail to the next, Omary’s eyes came to rest on a drain just near the door. It was clogged with what looked like a lump of human skin and matted hair.