He accelerated away. “I’ve booked us into the Basra International. About the best you can find around here.”

The hotel was in the Al-Ashar district in the north of the city, near to the Arvand River. They parked the Freelander in the car park and went inside. It was an old Sheraton and in reasonable condition, twin Iraqi flags flying from the flagpoles outside. Beatrix waited in reception as Faulkner took care of the papers. They had rooms on the fourth floor. Faulkner suggested that they take an hour to settle in and then meet in the restaurant for dinner.

The room was basic: a fake marble bathroom with a bath that obviously leaked badly in several spots, a claret-red carpet decorated with a gaudy golden design, thick drapes, faux-mahogany furniture, cheap prints on the wall. She dropped her bag on the bed and went over to the window. The view was to the southwest, towards Rumaila. She could see flame-topped derricks were visible, the nodding donkeys of the pumpjacks and the ubiquitous smoggy haze in the air.

It was close. A short drive away.

Duffy was there somewhere. It was very likely that he was expecting her.

That was fine.

It didn’t matter.

She was coming anyway.

Chapter Fourteen

Faik had spent the day twitching with nerves. There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ahmed’s meeting with the governor had been scheduled for the morning. The guards came for him after breakfast, opening the door and escorting him away to the administration block. He clasped Faik’s hand before he left.

“Don’t worry, Faik. I can be a persuasive advocate. I can make a nuisance of myself. There is a saying: the squeaky hinge gets the oil. If I squeak enough, they will have to listen to me.”

It would have been an exaggeration to say that Faik was reassured, but he did feel a little more at ease knowing that something, at least, was being done. He had slept badly that night, and he was still dead tired. There was a little more space in the cell now that Ahmed was out of the way, so Faik stretched out as much as he could, rested his head on his folded arms and tried to relax. He thought of his mother and his little sister, and eventually it was her beautiful face that he remembered as he drifted off into an uneasy slumber.

Faik awoke in the afternoon feeling a little more refreshed. He pushed himself up so that he was sitting against the wall and looked around him at the cell. The striplight overhead had finally died, and now the gloom was lit only by a shaft of light from the corridor adjacent to it. The other prisoners were either asleep or staring dumbly at the walls and the bars of their cage. Faik scrubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes in an attempt to wake up.