Borrowed Time

‘Come on, come on!’

There was an irregularity about the neck. A scar! There was a vertical scar, running down the midline of the larynx. It was an operation scar, perhaps an old tracheotomy, the thickened tissue raised and almost white against the surrounding brown skin.

The effort of finding a telltale sign had been so extreme that Sabrina heard herself pant. She kept her eyes shut and pictured the face again, imprinting it, making it a clear feature of fresh memory: small chin, wide upper lip, prominent cheekbones, rounded and deep-set dark amber eyes, hair combed back behind the ears.

Sabrina opened her eyes. She felt as if she had done a day’s work. She looked at the empty seat again. The thought of her bag being somewhere else right now, in other hands that might do unthinkable mischief, was like a goad behind her, prodding, shoving.

She jumped in behind the wheel, banged the door shut and threw the engine into gear. As she tore away along the road she had no idea where she was going, beyond knowing she had to start her search in the town.

People were staring. Women had their hands over their mouths, others drew their veils protectively across their eyes. The whole market had stopped to watch the commotion at the vegetable stall.

‘I do not speak English!’ the stallholder howled. He was an old man, and Sabrina had him by the front of his shirt. She held on with both hands and looked determined enough to pick him up and throw him across the market. ‘No English! I speak no English!’

‘You just spoke it!’ Sabrina rasped; falling into the character imposed by her unflattering clothes. ‘Now you’re going to rack your brains and answer my question or I’m going to drag your spindly old carcass down to the local clink!’

She had started out her enquiry much more gently, stopping by the old man’s stall, asking him if he knew of a young woman with a scar at her throat, a good-looking young woman that Sabrina was anxious to find. Then she noticed that the old trader had his hand in her jacket pocket. She caught him by the wrist, twisted his arm up his back and pushed his face into a pile of green chillies. She let him stay that way, howling, his mouth half stoppered with his produce, while she did a good enough impression of a crazy woman to keep the other traders at a respectful distance. When she finally released the man and grabbed him by the collar, she guessed he was scared enough to rat on his mother.

‘Are you going to tell me?’ she demanded. ‘Huh? Or do I beat you up and haul you off to the police?’

‘Please, no, do not hurt me, I beg you …’

‘Talk, then.’

‘You are looking for a woman called Phoolan Sena …’

‘Where do I find her?’

‘She lives with her son over there.’ He pointed to a clutch of small houses beyond the perimeter of the market. ‘Her house has a blue door.’

‘And you’ll have a black eye if I go over there and find out you’re lying to me.’

Sabrina let the man go and marched away. She pushed her way through the narrow lanes between the rickety barrows, past staring stallholders and their cringing customers.

Out on the bare ground at the rear of the market she paused and looked back, just able to see her car at the top of the narrow street where she had parked it. If the locks were as good as she had been told, it should be all right, although the way today had gone, she could not invest much faith in anything.

She found the house with the blue door and rapped on it, seeing paint fly off in little flakes under the impact of her knuckles. Feet shuffled beyond the door, then it swung open. For a split second the woman with the scar on her neck just stared. Then her memory kicked in and she jumped back, half turning as she leapt, getting ready to run for the back door.

‘Hold it!’

Sabrina caught her by the hair and tugged. The woman yelled. Pulled hair, like a kicked shin, can immobilize a person long enough for an attacker to get the upper hand. Sabrina swept her leg behind the woman’s knees and put her flat on her back.

‘You’re Phoolan, right?’ Sabrina knelt beside her. ‘Where is my bag, Phoolan?’

The woman looked hurt and frightened and surprised all at once.

‘I have a memory for faces,’ Sabrina told her, ‘even ones I haven’t really seen. So don’t give me any stories about you being the wrong woman. You do speak English, by the way?’

The woman’s stare was too mystified, too blank. She didn’t know what Sabrina was saying. She knew who she was, though. Sabrina stood up and pointed a warning finger. ‘Stay.’

The room was sparsely furnished; Sabrina could see at a glance that her bag wasn’t there. She went into the other room, much smaller, and found a little boy sitting on the side of a truckle bed. He was five or six years old and incredibly thin, with eyes that looked too big for his head. Sabrina’s bag lay behind him on the bed.

‘Hi, there,’ Sabrina said, making her voice soft. ‘How you doing?’

The boy looked wary but he stayed where he was. Sabrina ruffled his hair. She reached past him and picked up the bag. She pulled open the drawstring at the top and checked the wallet first. The cards were there, her WHO ID and papers of accreditation were there, but the money, five hundred dollars, was gone.

She looked at the thin little kid again and decided she wouldn’t make a noise about the cash. She pulled back the tab on the false bottom and there was the pistol. All in all, she could say she was in luck.

‘I hope your mom uses the cash to do you both some good.’

Sabrina turned away, running her fingers through the stuff in the bag, aware that something else was missing.

Then a terrible pain hit her. She dropped to her knees and rolled on her side, gasping. The boy was standing, one empty hand outstretched, staring down at her. As he turned and ran, Sabrina reached behind her, clenched her teeth and pulled the Swiss Army knife from the back of her thigh.

‘Aah! God! Aaow!’

She pushed herself up and turned at a commotion in the other room. She saw the feet scamper out the front door, the boy and his mother. They were off like the wind, with enough money to stay away for a while, or to just go and live somewhere else for good.

Sabrina stood up, grunting, feeling the stiffness in her leg. She got a field dressing and an ampoule of wound wash from the zippered pocket in the bag.

‘I used to call it my lucky Swiss Army knife,’ she grunted.

The kid had used the longest, sharpest blade. Judging by the margin of blood on the polished steel, it had gone in three full centimetres. It felt like he had used a bayonet, but on the plus side there wasn’t much bleeding. Sabrina pulled up her skirt and squirted the antibacterial on to the wound.

‘Oh hell, hell, hell!’ A fresh agony hit her. ‘Son of a bitch!’

It burned like a blowtorch. She distracted herself by tearing open the dressing wrapper with her teeth, and as the pain diffused away and left behind only the nagging throb of punctured muscle, she tried once again to tell herself that, on balance, she had been pretty lucky.

Philpott picked up the red phone on the second ring and waited for the scrambler noise to subside.

‘Sabrina? Where in God’s name have you been?’

‘There was a hitch, sir. I’m truly sorry, I would have been in touch sooner if it had been possible.’

‘Something wrong with the phone, is there? We can always get a replacement to you if you think you need one.’

‘The phone’s fine, sir. I just encountered a little setback, and what with one thing and another, my call-in got delayed. I’ve already smacked my wrist on your behalf.’

‘Quite right. Are your problems sorted out now? Can I rely on you sticking to our agreed schedule from here on?’

‘Yes, sir, you can.’

‘Fine. Be careful.’

He put down the phone and immediately the black one beside it warbled. He picked it up, glancing at the clock. He had planned to leave half an hour ago.

‘Philpott.’

‘Thomas Lubbock.’