Baz stared at the two men across the kitchen table. Ginger’s complexion was pallid – the situation with Bakker and Mac was taking a heavy toll on him. Logan looked healthier – possibly just because he tanned more easily. Baz could hear the chair legs rattling as one of his knees jigged up and down. His nerves were showing too. As for herself, she hardly dared face the mirror. There had been dark rings under her eyes last time she looked, and nothing had happened to make them any less pronounced.
They were supposed to be talking about what to do next, but the discussion had fallen silent. No one had any great ideas to share. Or even half-baked ones. Lunch plates in front of them on the table were hardly touched – no one had an appetite.
‘I need a smoke,’ said Logan, standing up and going outside onto the compound’s parched brown lawn. The smell of hashish drifted in through the open door.
‘How did your outing with Nagpal go?’ said Ginger.
Baz shook her head. ‘It’s depressing, really,’ she said. ‘The way people will treat others, just because they subscribe to a different religion or come from a different tribe.’
‘Of course,’ said Ginger. ‘But it’s not about that. It’s about scarce resources, and no one wants to share.’
‘Maybe.’ Baz didn’t think it was that simple, but he had a point. ‘We saw the guy that knocked Nagpal off his scooter. He was following us when we went to the cremation ground.’
‘Seriously? Hope you went after the fucker.’
‘We tailed him. Tirich wanted to knock him off his bike.’
This raised the glimmer of a smile from Ginger. ‘But you told him no.’
‘Of course,’ said Baz. ‘But, thing is, he went into a compound that apparently belongs to Akhtar Jamali. Nagpal said that the man had applied for a job here and got knocked back, and that Jamali wanted to get someone into Well Diggers to buy influence.’
Ginger looked surprised, then frowned. ‘Rumour has it that Jamali has a finger in nearly every pie, at least south of Garmser, in the places where Khaliq’s influence has never reached.’
‘What are you saying?’
Ginger shrugged. ‘Speculating… Perhaps Jamali has something to do with Bakker’s disappearance.’
‘But could Bakker have run off after arguing with Vinke? He might be out of the country by now.’
‘Not without his passport, and that was still in his bedroom.’
‘Only there hasn’t been a ransom demand for Bakker, and there’s been one for Mac. What if he’s hiding out somewhere? Maybe staying with a friend – in Kabul perhaps?’
‘Then we’d be wasting our energy trying to find him, and it would be a matter for the police.’
‘I could give Jananga a call and ask him to put out feelers.’ Major Jananga was the Kabul policeman she, Mac and Ginger had worked with after the murder of a British Army officer in Kabul’s infamous tank graveyard the previous winter.
Ginger shrugged. ‘Might be worth a try, but isn’t he away on some course at the moment?’ he said without conviction. ‘Anyway, it still doesn’t stack up. If Bakker was fleeing after committing a crime, he would have taken his passport. And he left medication in his bedside table, and money, other personal belongings. And the sneaker – don’t forget about that.’
Baz sighed. ‘Nothing seems to add up or make sense.’
She dialled Jananga’s number in Kabul, but his deputy answered and told her the major was away in the Panjshir Valley, visiting his sick mother. She put down her phone and rubbed her face with both hands, feeling freshly despondent. They seemed to be getting nowhere, chasing one dead end after another. Bakker had vanished in a puff of smoke, and Mac… Her heart clenched. She’d watched the ransom video a hundred times, as had Ginger and Logan. Surely the grainy image of Mac couldn’t be her last sighting of him.
‘There must be something we can do, Ginger,’ she said. ‘We can’t just sit around here and let Mac die.’ She stood up and slammed her fists on the table, kicking her chair over behind her. She was too angry to cry but she needed some way of venting her emotions.
Logan appeared in the doorway from the garden.
‘Sure,’ he said, his voice thick with chars, ‘there is something we can do. Get Tirich and Nagpal over here. We’ll go Jamali-baiting.’