#26. VILLA AL SEKEM, AJLOUN, JORDAN
Wednesday July 15, 08:43
THE YELLOW Slazenger tennis ball whipped briskly past Ali's head and crashed into the black wire netting behind him.
''Thirty-love.'' Al-Sekem strode two paces down the baseline and bounced the ball for his next serve. It thundered into the clay a metre away from stranded Ali and soared over his head.
''Forty-love,'' called Al-Sekem. ''Come on, Hisham, get your racket on the ball.''
Crouching on his line, balancing his racket, Ali squinted into the early morning sunshine.
Al-Sekem bounced the ball twice then tossed it into the air, swung his racket through its arc and sent it spinning viciously on to the court and away to the side.
Ali's feet felt nailed to the ground.
''Game!'' crowed Al-Sekem. ''Five-two. Do you want a rest before I take the set?''
He was the perfect picture of smug fitness, his tanned, muscled legs working strongly as he moved, his ground-strokes fluent, his movements calm, unhurried, controlled, his dark glasses sweeping the court like searchlights.
Ali slumped into his plastic chair, dragging a sweaty hand through his thick hair and wiping sweat from his beetroot face with a rough flannel towel. It was not even nine and already baking hot, the sun reflecting harshly off the pale terracotta tiles, penetrating his Monster Dogs and boring through his eyes to the headache thumping beyond.
This was a nightmare. He had held just two service games, and one of those after a drawn-out deuce. He was losing, and he was better than Al-Sekem, far better. The man was slow, leaden-footed around the court, but Ali could not get his passing shots together or return the man's predictably topspin-heavy serves with any penetration or pace. Frustrated and irritable, he slugged water from a two-litre plastic Baraka bottle then examined the racket. Perhaps there was a problem with the strings and immediately banished the unworthy thought. The racket was a black, white and yellow Babolat Aeropro Drive GT with carbon fibre and tungsten strings, a graphite frame and the Cortex Dampening System to reduce vibrations, as endorsed by Rafael Nadal. When he had played tennis on the pot-holed school court a lifetime ago, he had dreamed of owning a racket like this. Now he did, and he was disgracing both it and his favourite player. The problem was that the image of the driver's head was so firmly imprinted on his brain and eyelids that nothing could erase it.
His mind kept revisiting the horrors of the night. He had rinsed his vomit down the sink, wiped up with a dishcloth, sprayed some air-freshener around the kitchen then staggered back through the living room, back past the dozing piranha, back through the corridor, half-running, half-skipping, not caring whether someone heard him or not, to the safety of his bedroom where he had shut the door with his back, breathing heavily, almost panting, through his open mouth, clenching and releasing his fists as he had wondered what to do, starkly aware that there were no locks, he was in a house peopled by maniacs, that if they came for him… he had thrown cold water over himself then paced the carpet frantically, weighing his options.
He had said goodnight to Kinky on the steps by the picture-window where they had paused to admire the night-view and listen to the soothing chorus of chattering insects. The encounter in the pump-room had been tensely, excruciatingly embarrassing. Ali, his face flaming, his heart thumping sickeningly, his fingers trembling and fumbling, his eyes darting left and right, anywhere but meeting hers, had mumbled his wishes fiercely into Kinky's black hair. She had laughed a silvery laugh and said she could certainly oblige, and she had. Twice. Ali's cheeks had burned more fiercely than before.
He had felt suddenly peckish. The place was deserted. Al-Sekem had gone. Uthman had gone but Ali's glass was still on the table, still half-full of cloudy liquor. Holding his breath, he had tipped the contents down his throat. It felt as though someone were stripping it out with a blowtorch. Then he had pushed through the swing door into the kitchen thinking he would find himself an apple.
There were half a dozen stainless steel units, a deep sink, several large knives in solid granite chopping blocks, a huge fridge, a wine-rack, cooking utensils, pots, pans, steamers, blenders, bowls and bags of fruit and vegetables, everything except apples.
Clicking his tongue irritably, he also wanted a glass of milk to dampen the arak burning in his stomach. He yanked open the fridge door then, the carton of milk falling in slow-motion to burst on the tiles, had recoiled in horror, hand pressed to his mouth to choke off a desperate cry of disgust, and puked violently into the sink, for there, on the bottom shelf of the fridge, had rested the severed head of the driver Youssef Abdullah.
There was a human head in the fridge.
A human head.
What were they planning to do? Who had put it there? Who had severed it?
Uthman probably.
The body had almost certainly gone to the piranhas. They provided instant corpse-disposal. These people were psychos. He had slammed his fist into the pillow. So much for being on the wrong track. He was very much on the right track. He just did not have enough information yet. He would have to keep pushing Al-Sekem, and Katya Kinkhladze, but without spooking them, otherwise he might end up in the piranha-pool too, his head sharing shelf-space with the driver, their cold, dead eyes exchanging glances of surprised resignation for all eternity, or at least until Uthman cooked their brains for his lunch.
Oh fuck!
Ali had clapped his hand against his mouth again. What if the brain he had eaten for lunch… he had rushed into the bathroom and vomited again and again until he was empty, wrung out like a cloth.
Afterwards he stared at himself in the mirror. His tawny eyes were red and tearful, his face a pale washed-out grey, like week-old cigar-ash, his cheeks furrowed like corrugated card. He seemed to have aged about fifty years. The afternoon's excitement had long since expired.
When Uthman had appeared in his room at ten to eight, he was already dressed in the Adidas whites he had found in the drawer. Giving up on sleep altogether when the light had started bleeding through the curtains at around six, he had showered, brushed his teeth for the twentieth time then sat on his bed watching a rat making soup on the DVD player.
''Another set before we have breakfast?'' Al-Sekem was insufferably smug for a forty-eight year old man with twelve hours' sleep behind him who had just beaten a fifteen year old boy who had had none.
Ali blinked in the bright sunlight. Most of his serves had gone into the net. He shook himself. Get a grip, he ordered. Focus on the game. Concentrate.
Hunkering down, holding the Babolat firmly but loosely, trying to remember what his coach had taught him, a thought flashed through his mind, a warning that he might not want to win this game. His opponent, after all, kept heads in his fridge. And now, as Al-Sekem served and Ali reacted quickly to whip the ball over the net with a stinging backhand; he understood why he was losing. His mind was blocking his actions. His subconscious was willing him not to provoke the businessman. It was causing him to play below his best.
The ball dropped just inside the line and span away from the plodding server. Ali had taken a point.
Steady, his subconscious told him. The man keeps heads in his fridge.
But, said his rational mind, he needs me to sing at the Festival.
He did want to win. He wanted to win very badly. He was sick of Al-Sekem's patronising comments. He was sick of the insanity. He was determined to show the man he was not afraid of him. Call it a warning shot of his own.
Although the second serve kicked up, Ali managed to get above it and power a forehand drive at his opponent's feet. The businessman leapt away, getting his racket under the ball, returning it to Ali's backhand and running into the net. Ali's lob, beautifully executed with a full follow-through, looped the ball back over Al-Sekem to drop just inside the baseline behind him.
''Love-thirty,'' called Ali.
The next serve cannoned at his head. He ducked and cried ''Out!''Al-Sekem was rattled.
The
second serve sat up and begged to be hit. The ball zinged off the sweet-spot of the Babolat's strings right down the tramline.
''Love-forty,'' called Ali.
Cursing furiously, Al-Sekem, puce-hued, bounced the ball for several long seconds, wound himself up and let the serve go. It was long. He spat on the court. The second serve bounced low and slow. Racing towards the net, Ali cut, backhanded, under the ball and sent it skidding off the net-cord to plop dead on the clay.
''Game!'' he shouted triumphantly.
Al-Sekem's face darkened. As they passed each other on the change-over, Ali heard him curse again. Katya Kinkhladze had appeared on the sun-bed in her purple bikini. Ali waved.
''Keep your mind on this job,'' Al-Sekem snarled, ''Not your blow-job.''
Ali laughed. He felt more comfortable, in control, whilst Al-Sekem, fuelled by anger and frustration, began to fall apart. Shots went into the net or out or popped up to be smashed.
Ali held his serve, broke again, held again and found himself four-love up. Kinky had started applauding his shots which made Al-Sekem even angrier. His cheeks were now a worrying shade of heart-attack red.
''Would you like a rest?'' Ali asked cheekily, ''Before I take the set?'' and danced aside as two balls, smashed across the court, whisked, bullet-like, past his legs.
''Just get on with it, you little prick,'' shouted Al-Sekem, flailing unsuccessfully at the next hard, deep serve and seeing his next, weak return blasted into the net. ''I think you have put the gypsy's eye on me, you filthy Damascene mouth-whore.''
Grinning, Ali tossed the ball up again. Now he knew he would win. Al-Sekem had lost his focus whilst he had got into a smooth rhythm and was swinging the Babolat comfortably. His footwork was improving and he no longer needed to run, just choose his positions and grind the other down.
Ali followed the swerving serve into the net. Predictably, Al-Sekem tried to lob him. Predictably, it was not high enough and Ali, pumped, adrenaline and endorphins flooding his system, smashed it into the far corner. Kinky clapped enthusiastically.
At five-love, with Al-Sekem serving to save the set, Uthman appeared, just in time to see his boss lose the set when Ali crashed a double-handed backhand winner across the court. Ali whooped and punched the air. He felt fantastic. Rafa would have been proud.
Silently, sullenly Al-Sekem tossed his racket to Uthman and stalked off the court.
Ali leaned on the net, grinning. ''Want a decider?'' he called.
Gripping the racket in both hands, Uthman broke it in half like a dry twig and dropped the pieces on the grass. Then he lurched after Al-Sekem.
''No need to snap,'' Ali called flippantly, skipping to the small poolside table where breakfast had been laid out. Kinky appraised him through her ruby-shaded sunglasses. This morning she was wearing the bikini bra. Ali felt a pang of disappointment.
''You're pretty good for a street-urchin,'' she remarked as he helped himself to a glass of fresh lemonade, some still-warm flat-bread, a ladleful of fuul and some figs and perched on the adjacent lounger.
He wanted to warn her, tell her what he had learned last night, but he did not know how to raise the matter diplomatically. He could hardly open a conversation by declaring 'There's a head in the fridge.'
''I played at school,'' he said truthfully.
''You look tired,'' she said, putting a hand of concern on his cheek.
''I didn't sleep too well,'' he told her.
She laughed. ''Naughty boy.'' She danced her fingernail deliciously down his cheek. ''Perhaps we can continue where we broke off yesterday. We can go more slowly if you like.''
Something in his face communicated danger and her effervescent good humour deflated like bubbles on champagne left out overnight.