The Sheikh's Guarded Heart

‘Put a stop to them, Zahir. The girl was found by a hunting party, my staff offered humanitarian aid. I was not involved.’

‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘So?’ he persisted. ‘Who is she? Does she work for this company? Or is she just another sand-surfer, tearing up the desert as if it’s her personal playground?’

He hoped so. If he could write her off as some shallow thrill-seeker, he could forget about her.

‘The tourist industry is becoming an important part of our economy, Excellency—’

‘And, if so, why was she travelling alone, in the wrong direction to anywhere?’ Hanif continued, ignoring Zahir’s attempt to divert his attention.

Too inexperienced, too young to hide what he was thinking, his young cousin hesitated a moment too long as he decided just how much to tell him. Just how much he dared leave out.

Hanif moved to the nearest chair, turned, sat down with a flourish that no one could have mistaken for anything but regal and, with a gesture so slight as to be almost imperceptible, so imperious that not even a favoured cousin would dare ignore it, invited the boy to make up his mind.

‘Sir—’ Zahir swallowed, saw there was no help for it and finally admitted the truth. ‘Bouheira Tours say they have no idea who this woman might be. She does not work for them and they were adamant that she could not be a client. They have no women in any of the parties booked this week.’

‘Yet she was driving one of their vehicles.’ He waited. ‘Their logo was emblazoned on its side. Desert safaris, dune-surfing,’ he prompted.

‘I made that point.’

‘Who did you speak to?’

‘The office manager. A woman called Sanderson. The man who actually owns the company, Steve Mason, is in the east of the country, guiding a party of archaeologists who have come to look at the ancient irrigation systems.’

‘She was heading too far north to have been joining them.’

‘She may have been lost.’

‘Surely their vehicles are fitted with satellite navigation equipment?’ Zahir made no comment. ‘So, what explanation did this Sanderson woman have for the fact that a woman she’d didn’t know was driving one of their vehicles?’

‘She didn’t. She said we must be mistaken. That none of their vehicles is missing. She pointed out that there are other companies running desert trips. That, since the vehicle was burned out, we may have been mistaken.’

‘You were there, Zahir. Do you believe we were mistaken?’

Zahir swallowed. ‘No, sir.’

‘No. So, when you assure me that our casualty is to be looked after, what exactly did you mean? That the hospital will contact her embassy where some official will draw up a document requiring her to repay them the cost of medical treatment and repatriation before they’ll do a damn thing to help her?’

‘I assumed you would wish to have her treatment to be charged to your office, sir. Other than that—’

‘Always assuming that she can prove her identity,’ Hanif continued as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Her nationality. It might take some time, since everything she was carrying with her was incinerated. Who will care for her in the meantime?’

‘You saved her life, Han. You have done everything required.’

‘On the contrary, Zahir. Having saved her, I am now responsible for her.’ A situation he would have otherwise, but to wish that he hadn’t become involved would be to wish her dead and that he could not do. ‘Who is she?’ he demanded, as keen as anyone to see an end to this. ‘What’s her name?’

‘She gave her name as Lucy Forrester.’

‘Did she say where she was going?’

‘No. It was because she seemed so confused that they ordered a scan.’

‘And the doctor says she can be discharged?’ Then, on his feet and at the door before Zahir could open his mouth, he said, ‘Never mind. I’ll speak to him myself.’

‘Sir!’

Hanif strode down the corridor, ignoring the boy’s anguished plea.

‘Excellency, it is my duty to insist—’

As he turned on him the boy flinched, stuttered to a halt. But he bravely stood his ground.

‘You’ve done everything that is required,’ he repeated. ‘There can be no doubt that she’s British. Her embassy will take care of the rest.’

‘I will be the judge of when I have done everything required, Zahir.’ Then, irritably, ‘Where is he? The doctor?’

‘He was called to another emergency. I’ll have him paged for you.’

‘No.’ It wasn’t the doctor who held him where he least wanted to be, but his patient. ‘Where is she?’

There was another, almost imperceptible, pause before, apparently accepting the inevitable, Zahir said, ‘She’s in the treatment room. The last door on the left.’

Lucy Forrester was looking worse, rather than better than when he’d carried her into the A and E department.

In his head, he was still seeing her in that moment before she’d fainted, with long hair spread about her shoulders, fair skin, huge grey eyes. Since then the bruising had developed like a picture in a developing tank; her arms were a mess of ugly bruises, grazes, small cuts held together with paper sutures and there was dried blood, like rust, in her hair.

The hospital had treated her injuries—her right leg was encased below the knee in a lightweight plastic support—but the emergency team hadn’t had time to do more than the minimum, cleaning up her wounds, but nothing else. Presumably that was the job of the ward staff.

For now, she was lying propped up, her skin clinging to fine bones, waiting for someone to decide where she was going. She looked, he thought, exhausted.

Her eyes, in that split second before she’d lost consciousness, had been wide with terror. Her first reaction now, starting, as if waking from a bad dream, was still fear and, without thinking, he reached for her hand. Held it.

‘It’s all right, Lucy,’ he said. ‘You’re safe.’

Fear was replaced by uncertainty, then some other, more complex, emotion that seemed to find an echo deep within him.

‘You saved me,’ she mumbled, the words scarcely distinguishable through her bruised, puffy lips.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Lie back. Take your time.’

‘I thought… I thought…’

It was all too clear what Lucy Forrester had thought, but he did not blame her. She’d been hysterical and there had been no time for explanations, only action.

He released her hand, bowed slightly, a courtesy that would not normally be afforded to any woman other than his mother, his grandmother, and said, ‘I am Hanif al-Khatib. You have friends in Ramal Hamrah?’ he asked. Why would a woman travel here alone except to be with someone? ‘Someone I can call?’

‘I—’ She hesitated, as if unsure what to say. She settled on, ‘No. No one.’ Not the truth, he thought. Not the whole truth, anyway. It did not matter.