The Heat of Betrayal by Douglas Kennedy Read Free Book Online

doing down this black passageway in the middle of the night?
    To jump back around fifteen hours . . .
    The bus deposited us at its terminus – the depot at Essaouira – in the early afternoon. As we staggered off that motorised steam bath, the headphones dude – still singing that ludicrous tune (was that the only song on his iPod?) – gave us an amused wave goodbye. The bus driver, smoking what was evidently a much-needed cigarette, also nodded farewell as we grabbed our luggage and fended off several touts who were trying to convince us to take up their offer of cheap accommodation.
    â€˜You want room . . . very clean . . . good price.’
    â€˜
Nous avons déjà une chambre
,’ Paul replied, steering me towards a line of beat-up taxis nearby.
    â€˜But I have better room . . . you come with me, I show you everything in Essaouira . . .’
    Paul waved him away. Just as I had to sidestep several women holding up woven shirts, multi-coloured shawls and cheap beaded necklaces. The afternoon sun was still punishing. This concrete plaza was thick with gas fumes and dust. I grabbed my scrunched-up field hat out of my shoulder bag, then pulled it down so squarely over my head that it shielded my eyes. The crowd of hawkers followed us as we moved towards the taxis. They were relentless in their need to hound us. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.
    â€˜Just keep walking,’ Paul told me. ‘They’re a nuisance, but harmless.’
    The first cab we approached – a cream-coloured Peugeot which appeared to have been in a demolition derby – was driven by a man who looked like he’d last slept in 2010. He had a cellphone to his ear, into which he was shouting. Paul approached him and gave him the name of our hotel.
    â€˜Two hundred dirhams,’ he said in English, even though Paul addressed him in French.
    â€˜But the hotel is maybe ten minutes’ walk from here.’
    The cabbie put down the phone for a moment, taking in all our luggage.
    â€˜That’s the price. You don’t like it, walk.’
    â€˜
Charmant
.’
    The cabbie just shrugged. Paul, shaking his head, led us to the car behind this unpleasant fellow. When the first cabbie saw us approaching the next driver he was immediately out of his taxi, shouting. The new cabbie – a rather stubby man with a look of fatigued resignation on his face – ignored the protestations of Mr Charm.
    â€˜
Vous allez où?
’ he asked Paul.
    â€˜
Vous connaissez l’hôtel Les Deux Chameaux
?’
    â€˜
Bien sûr. Ça vous coûtera environ trente dirhams
.’
    Thirty dirhams. An honest man.
    â€˜
D’accord
,’ Paul agreed and we loaded our bags into his trunk. As we drove off we ran into a small flotilla of geese and chickens, herded by a man in a white djellaba and skullcap alongside the city walls. The driver honked his horn in a short nonchalant manner, indicating that the shepherd should get his livestock out of the way. A shepherd guiding barnyard animals by city walls. Nearby was a man wheeling a barrel filled with unrefined cotton. And – now this was hallucinatory – a fellow sitting in front of a basket, intoning a tune on a reedy instrument as a python ascended upwards from the straw hoop.
    Paul could see me taking this all in. The taxi followed a route along the walls of Essaouira; walls that looked like fortifications from some medieval bulwark.
    â€˜It gets even stranger,’ he said, clearly at home amidst all this vivid chaos.
    We hugged the road adjacent to the wall for another minute, then turned in through a narrow archway and down a back alley with blue walls and tiny lanes branching off it. At the end of the alley was a latticed doorway, also painted a deep blue. This was the entrance to our hotel.
Les Deux Chameaux
. The Two Camels. Inside, the lobby was dark, shadowy, austere. An elderly man was asleep behind the reception desk. He was