Ahmed's Revenge by Richard Wiley Read Free Book Online

wanted to wail now, I wanted to fall onto the floor and moan, but I just sat there like an expert witness, calmly giving the details.
    The nurse spoke next, saying once again that Jules was alive only a minute or two before Dr Zir and I arrived. She swore that she had not left his side until she saw us get out of my father’s Land Rover down in the car park. She was still crying. Someone might have thought it was her husband who’d died, the way she carried on.
    â€œThe window was open,” I said. “Julius threw a pillow out and it landed on the ledge.” I still somehow had the pillow in my hands, so I lifted it up for Detective Mubia to see.
    â€œHow do you know he threw this pillow?” the detective asked, turning away from the nurse and back to me. “If you had just come into the room, how do you know what propelled this pillow outside?”
    I shrugged. “He was alone,” I said. “How else could it have got there?”
    Detective Mubia took the pillow out of my hands. Turning with it he lightly pulled the sheet away from Jules’s face again. He let the pillow rest on the edge of the bed and bent to look into Jules’s mouth and nose. Finally I had had enough.
    â€œHold on!” I protested. “Leave him alone.”
    What a profound infringement this seemed to be! I wanted to hurt the man, to push my fingernails into the flesh at his throat, but when I got out of the chair he stood up straight immediately.
    â€œI know it is difficult,” he said, “but who would want to see your husband dead?”
    Dr Zir stepped forward then, finally seeing the outrage in everything that was going on, but even to the doctor Detective Mubia held up his hand. He reached into the left pocket of his jacket and removed a key ring with no keys on it but a pair of tweezers and a pen-knife attached. He pulled the sleeves of his jacket up and very suddenly bent back over Jules, extended those tweezers into his open mouth, and, like a stage magician, quickly popped back up again.
    â€œI have found a feather,” Detective Mubia said. “It was stuck against the back of your husband’s throat and it came from this pillow, the one you found resting on the ledge outside.”
    He gave the tweezers with that single feather in their grasp to Dr Zir and then he picked up the pillow again, smoothing the pillow case down and running his hands across it. “Here,” he said. His hand had apparently run up against the pinprick of another feather, for he pulled one right through the pillowcase, holding it up for me to see.
    â€œSomeone else came into this room. And that someone else left through the window, dropping the pillow on his way out.”
    The nurse put her hands to her mouth, playing her part all the way, and Dr Zir started stammering, but I pushed them both aside and followed the detective back over to the window.
    â€œOur someone else may have been waiting in a nearby room or he may have seen you arrive, just as the duty nurse did. He may have come into the room after she went out the door.”
    â€œThat is not possible,” said the nurse. “I was not out of the room long enough for someone else to come inside. And when we came back, the room did not look changed at all.”
    That seemed beside the point and the detective said so. “When you came back inside you were not searching for changes in the room but for changes in the man in the bed. You saw only his death. At a time like that small changes in the room would have been invisible to anyone.”
    We all somehow looked at Jules again then, at his dead face covered and uncovered so many times. At the doctor’s bidding one of the attendants covered his face up once more, and then two of them lifted Jules off the bed, settled him on the stretcher, and rolled him quickly away. It was all too much, everything that had gone on, but though I wanted the private clarity of watching my