CHAPTER FIVE

‘Skip!’

No reply.

‘Skip! ‘

Echo sang back the word, adding her own trace element of mockery. Aziz flopped down on a ledge of rock near the mouth of the cave and scratched his head. The boss was nowhere to be found. He had gone, leaving a giant-sized hole in the Story. Although Aziz’s minuscule intelligence couldn’t begin to comprehend the vast implications of this, even he could feel that something was badly up the pictures and in urgent need of rectification.

Nature abhors a vacuum, preferring to clear up its loose ends with an old-fashioned carpet-sweeper. The loose ends thirty-nine of them, with all the cohesiveness and sense of purpose of the proverbial headless chicken - were doing their best, but it plainly wasn’t good enough. That’s what happens when you take both the hero and the villain out of a story. It’s a bit like removing the poles from a tent.

‘He’s not in the treasury,’ grunted Masood. ‘And his bed hasn’t been slept in.’

‘His camel’s still in the stable,’ added Zulfiqar. ‘And there’s no footprints in the sand, either. If he’s gone, he must have flown.’

Masood and Zulfiqar looked at each other. ‘The carpet,’ they said simultaneously.

Sure enough, it wasn’t there. Neither, of course, were the oil lamp, the phoenix’s egg, the magic sword, Solomon’s ring and half a dozen other supernatural labour-saving devices; Ali Baba had taken them with him to Reality. No way, of course, that the thieves could know that.

‘Why’d he want to do a thing like that?’ Aziz demanded.

‘Maybe it was something we said.’

Aziz frowned. Nominally the second-in-command of the band, he was fanatically loyal to Akram in the same way that the roof is loyal to the walls. ‘He wouldn’t just go off in a huff,’ he said. ‘Must be a reason. He’ll be off on a Quest or something, you mark my words. Give it a day or two and he’ll be back, with some priceless treasure snatched at desperate odds from its unsleeping guardian.’

Thoughtful silence.

‘Anybody looked to see if the Thrift Club kitty’s still there?’ asked Hanif. ‘Not,’ he added quickly, as Aziz treated him to a paint-stripping scowl, ‘that I’m casting whatsits, aspersions. Someone might just have a look, though.’

‘It’s still there,’ replied Saheed. ‘And the tea money. Beats me what can have happened to him. Unless,’ he added darkly, ‘he’s been kidnapped.’

‘Get real,’ snapped Mustafa, from behind his sofa-thick eyebrows. ‘Who’d be stupid enough to kidnap the Skip? It’d be like trying to lure a man-eating tiger by tying yourself to a tree. No, he’s gone off on a bender somewhere. Give it a couple of days and they’ll bring him home in a wheelbarrow.’

Another thoughtful pause; nearly a whole year’s ration used up in five minutes. The thieves were, after all, born henchmen.

Henchmen are, quite reasonably, designed for henching; thinking is something they wisely prefer to leave to the professionals.

‘Well,’ said Aziz, trying to appear nonchalant and laid back about the whole thing, and making a spectacularly poor job of it, ‘in the meantime, we’d better just carry on as normal. Agreed?’

Muttering. ‘Suppose so,’ Masood grunted uncertainly. ‘After all, caravans don’t rob themselves. What’s first up for today, anyone?’ ‘

There was an awkward silence, broken by Hanif saying, ‘Well, don’t look at me.’ Not that anybody had been, or was likely to, if they had any sense.

‘This is daft,’ said Zulfiqar. ‘I mean, we’ve been thieving and looting together, oh, I don’t know how long, we should all know the bloody ropes by now. It’s not exactly difficult, is it? We find someone with lots of money, we take it off him, and if he gets awkward we bash him.’

‘Yeah?’ Aziz retorted angrily. ‘All right, then, Clever Effendi, go on. Who’s the mark, where and when do we do the job, who does what, where do we fence the stuff afterwards? You don’t know, do you?’

‘So, maybe I don’t,’ Zulfiqar admitted. ‘All I’m saying is, we do this for a living, we should be able to work these things out from first principles. Like, where’s the best place to look for a lot of rich geezers?’

Mental cogs ground painfully. ‘Well,’ suggested Shamir, ‘what about the Wazir’s palace? Always a lot of wealthy toffs hanging around there.’

There was a chorus of Right-ons and Go-for-its, until someone pointed out that the palace was also the Guard headquarters, and known criminals who set foot within the precincts tended to end up with a marvellous view of the nearby countryside from the top of the City gate. All right, suggested another thief, what about doing over some of the shops in the Goldsmith’s Quarter? That seemed like a brilliant suggestion, until Aziz remembered that three-quarters of the goldsmiths paid Akram anti-theft insurance (‘If your premium is received within seven working days, you’ll be entitled to receive this fantastic combination coffee-maker/muezzin, absolutely free’) and unfortunately, what with the Chief doing all the paperwork and keeping the books, he hadn’t a clue which ones they were.

‘This is pathetic,’ observed Hanif, after an embarrassed hush. ‘Do you mean to say that without the Chief, nobody’s got the faintest idea what to do?’

Aziz nodded. ‘You only really appreciate people when they’re not there any more,’ he added sententiously.

Hanif shot him a glance suggesting that he’d relish the opportunity to appreciate Aziz a whole lot. ‘All right, then,’ he replied, ‘so we need a leader. Let’s choose a new one. Strictly temporary,’ he added quickly, ‘until the Boss comes home. Well, how about it?’

‘Like who?’

Awkward silence. It occurred to thirty-nine thieves simultaneously that (a) Hanifs suggestion was extremely sensible, and (b) whoever it was that got landed with the job of explaining how sensible it was to Akram when he returned, it wasn’t going to be him. When the topic of promotion in a bandit gang is discussed, the expression ‘dead men’s shoes’ tends to get used a lot, usually in the context of their being found in a pit of quicklime.

‘Well,’ said Zulfiqar, licking his dry lips, ‘there’s only one candidate, surely. I mean, who’s been Akram’s trusty right-hand man for as long as any of us can remember?’

Denials froze on thirty-eight lips. Suddenly, everyone was looking at Aziz. ‘Who, me?’ Aziz said, taking two steps backwards. ‘Now hang on a minute …’

‘It’s what he’d have wanted.’

‘Natural choice. No question about it.’

‘Every confidence.’

‘But I’m stupid,’ Aziz protested vehemently. ‘Ask anybody. Thicko Aziz, makes two short planks look like Slimmer of the Year. You need brains to be a leader.’

The general consensus of the meeting seemed to be that the whole point of having brains was managing not to be a leader. That way, assuming you had brains, you might get to keep them. Aziz could feel tendrils of loyalty reaching out towards him like the tentacles of a giant squid.

‘Let’s take a vote on it,’ said a voice at the back.

‘Yeah.’

‘Vox populi, vox Dei.’

A brief flurry of democracy later, Aziz was duly elected as, to quote the job description he drafted for himself, Acting Temporary Substitute Locum Caretaker Second-InCommandIn-Chief of the Thirty-Nine Thieves. There was a brief, improvised inauguration ceremony, in which the successful candidate was chased three times round a rocky outcrop, jumped on by his obedient henchmen and tied to a barrel. His henchmen then asked to know his pleasure.

‘I’m your new leader, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’ve got to do what I say?’

‘Right.’

‘Right. First off, elect a new bloody leader.’

‘Get stuffed.’

Aziz sighed, mentally playing devil’s advocate to the concept of constitutional monarchy. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘what about this? And this,’ he added, ‘is a real order.’

‘Go on.’

Aziz swallowed hard and tried to sound stern. He was about as good at it as a bowl of thoroughly melted ice cream, but it was the best he could manage. ‘My orders are,’ he said, ‘we find Akram. Preferably,’ he added, ‘before he finds us.’

There was a similar feeling of dislocation at the house of Ali Baba, when it was discovered that the Master had apparently gone off in the night with two small saddlebags, a packed lunch and the unspavined camel. The most demonstrative reaction came from Yasmin, the sloe-eyed houri who (although of course she didn’t know it) was to have suggested the business with the palm-oil jars and the boiling water.

‘Bastard!’ she said.

She said a great deal more, too; best years of my life, when I think of all I’ve done for him, the grapes I’ve peeled, all that wobbly dancing with a chunk of glass in my belly-button … Grief-stricken, you might say. Desolate. Inconsolable.

So, while other members of the household busied themselves with various tasks incidental on the Master’s departure, such as the removal of small, portable valuables to places of safety and calling on the estate agent to get the house on the market as quickly as possible, Yasmin stormed off to her room to do some serious sulking, although she did stop off at the Counting-House on the way in case there was any loose cash lying around that might prove a temptation to the servants.

‘Coward,’ she muttered under her breath - Ali Baba hadn’t left any money on the desk, but he’d carelessly left a substantial sum in the safe hidden behind the sliding screen in the secret chamber under the false chimney-breast, where any Tom, Dick or Yusuf might find it - ‘Spineless, gutless, yellow-livered—’

Of all the parts of a story, the Love Interest is probably the most resilient, and the nastiest to get on the wrong side of. A woman scorned is bad enough; a woman scorned when the glass slipper is, so to speak, millimetres from her foot is perhaps the most ferocious thing imaginable this side of a thermonuclear holocaust. As she stormed dramatically up the main staircase, she stopped for a moment to pick up an exquisite painted silk miniature of her beloved and press it fervendy to her heart.

‘You can run,’ she said to it, ‘but you can’t hide.’

‘Wait here,’ Akram hissed.

The phoenix glowered at him and went on nibbling insulation off the telephone cable. It was amazing the effect that twenty thousand volts had on the creature; namely, none at all.

Squatting uncomfortably on the window-ledge, several hundred feet above Bloomsbury, Akram fished in his pocket for his folding jemmy. If his careful reconnaissance was correct, this window would get him in to the staff toilet on the top floor of the British Museum, leaving him the relatively simple task of making his way past an impenetrable jungle of electronic pratfalls, breaking into a reinforced glass case without making a sound, and then retracing his steps back to this window. The tricky part would be persuading the phoenix to let him climb on its back again.

‘And don’t be all night about it’ the phoenix called after him. ‘Some of us do have better things to do than perching up draughty roofs in the freezing cold …’

It was still squawking when Akram, having dropped twelve feet onto a stone floor, landed feather-light and froze motionless. He listened. Apart from the distant sound of the phoenix complaining to the night air about Some People Who Have No Consideration For Others (owing to the nature of his somewhat irregular lifestyle he had never married, but there had been times when, trapped in a wardrobe or linen cupboard of a house he’d burgled, he’d had opportunities to eavesdrop on matrimony, so he knew what it sounded like) there was silence. A cistern dripped. Something electric hummed. Noises like these are the authentic sound of a building snoring. He relaxed and groped for the door.

It took him an hour of painstaking, heart-in-mouth work to reach the gallery where the glass case was. Naturally, he’d memorised the floor-plan and counted the number of paces from the door to the case, so the complete darkness was no handicap to him. He’d had the benefit of a year’s apprenticeship with Foggy Mushtaq, the legendary blind burglar of Joppa, who had taught him that all in all, sight is the most expendable of a thief s five senses, and as he felt with the tip of a goose quill for the wires he had to cut, his eyes were in fact tightly shut. Snip. Job done.

‘Psst.’

Once, for a joke, Daft Harit had woken his chief from a fitful doze by putting a handful of ice cubes, stolen five minutes earlier from the Emir’s own ice-house, down the back of his neck. The fact that for the rest of his short life Daft Harit was known instead as One-Eared Harit is a tribute more to Akram’s lightning reflexes than his ability to take a joke; but there had been a split second, a period of time so brief that there is no recognised unit of measurement small enough to quantify it, when he’d been completely at a loss and hadn’t known whether he was coming or going. Thus, when the voice said ‘Psst’ a millimetre or so from his ear, a small voice in the outback of his brain groaned and muttered, Shit, not again.

Managing in the nick of time to countermand his instinctive reaction, Akram kept perfectly still and said, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello yourself.’

Go on then, be enigmatic, see if I care. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked, as quietly and calmly as he could.

‘Me.’

Maybe, Akram suggested to himself, I’ve actually fallen asleep on the job and this is a nightmare. ‘Who’s me?’ he asked.

‘Don’t you know?’

‘No.’

‘Give you three guesses.’

‘Look

‘Go on. Three guesses.’

‘All right. The Prophet Mohammed?’

‘No.’

‘Stanley Baldwin.’

‘No.’

‘Kenneth Branagh.’

‘No. When I tell you, you’ll kick yourself.’

Any minute now, said Akram to himself, a certain amount of kicking may well take place, but I doubt very much whether I shall be the recipient. ‘Stop pratting about,’ he hissed ferociously. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m the djinn,’ the voice replied. ‘From inside the lamp inside this glass case. My name’s Ibrahim Ali Khan, but my friends call me Curly.’

Akram’s eyes were still shut so he couldn’t close them as a symptom of frustrated disappointment. It was a bit of a blow, nevertheless; to go to all this trouble and then have your supposedly invincible magic djinn turn out to sound just like the ghost of Kenneth Williams. ‘Curly,’ he repeated.

“Cos I wear curly-toed shoes,’ explained the djinn. ‘Who’re you?’

‘My name is Akram the Terrible.’

‘That’s an unusual surname. And what’s the V stand for?’

‘Shut up.’

‘No it doesn’t, otherwise it’d be Akram S. Terrible.’

I could, of course, just leave, quietly and without fuss. There’s nothing in the rules says I’ve got to take this pillock with me. On the other hand… ‘Be quiet,’ Akram whispered. ‘And watch out, I’m going to break the glass.’

‘Need any help?’

‘No, thank you, I’m perfectly capable.’

Crackl

WHAAWHAAWHAAWHAAWHAAWHAA!

Bugger, snarled Akram under his breath, must have missed one. The noise was so loud that the shock of it paralysed him for a moment; it was like being in the same room as a forty-foot-high two-year-old who doesn’t want to go to bed. Just a minute…

‘What do you mean,’ he demanded, shouting as loud as he could, ‘need any help? How can you help me, you were inside the bloody glass case.’

‘No I wasn’t’

Give me strength, Akram prayed, I shall need all the strength I can get if I’m going to kick this bugger’s arse from here to Khorsabad. ‘Then why,’ he replied, ‘didn’t you say so?’

‘You didn’t ask. Would you like me to do something about that horrid noise?’

‘Yes please.’

There was a fizz and a shower of sparks; and then a whole new set of alarms joined in, together with flashing lights, the fire bell and the sprinkler system. ‘Drat,’ said the djinn, ‘wrong lever. Now then, I wonder if this is the one.’

‘Leave it alone!’

While he was still shouting these words, Akram felt his feet move; his instincts had cut in and told him to move a minimum of eighteen inches to one side, or else. Half a second after he’d complied, a steel cage weighing a minimum of twelve tons came crashing down on the spot he’d just been standing on. The bad news was that he’d jumped the wrong way and was now trapped inside it.

‘Well now,’ said the djinn, ‘we now know it’s neither of those two levers. That just leaves these three. Right, then —’

‘Please,’ Akram begged, ‘don’t touch anything. Please stay absolutely still.’

‘Is that a wish?’

‘Huh?’

‘You’ve got three wishes,’ the djinn explained. ‘If you ask me, that’s a very silly thing to waste a whole wish on, but it’s entirely up to you.’

‘It’s a wish.’

‘To hear is to obey, O master,’ the djinn replied huffily. ‘Last thing I want to do is intrude where I’m not wanted.’

Now then, this cage. Can’t lift it, can’t get under it, can’t get over it, can’t squeeze through the bars, can’t cut the bars, can’t bend the bars, can’t seem to see any counterweight mechanism that’ll put the winch into reverse. How helpful it is to get all the dud alternatives out of the way before settling down to choose between what’s left.

‘You’re stuck, aren’t you?’

‘No. I like it in here. You go away and leave me in peace.’

By the intermittent glare of the flashing red alarm lights, Akram studied the machinery above his head. There was a trapdoor in the ceiling, which explained why he hadn’t seen the thing during his recce that afternoon. There was a chain, connected to a pulley and a winch.

‘I’d hurry up, if I were you,’ said the djinn. ‘With all this racket going on, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if someone didn’t come and see what’s up.’

‘Gosh. I never thought of that.’

‘Sarky.’

Akram forced himself to concentrate. ‘Now then,’ he said aloud, ‘there’s got to be some way of throwing that winch into reverse. Now it could be one of those other three levers - don’t touch anything! — or it could be something else, like a remote control or a voice signal or something.’ A silly joke flitted across his mind, the way they do at moments like this.

‘Maybe,’ he said bitterly, ‘all I’ve got to do is say Open sesame…’

A moment later, he said ‘Oh shit!’

Because the winch was purring, the cage was lifting. As soon as there was a ten-inch gap, Akram was through. Almost as an afterthought he grabbed for the lamp and stuffed it in his pocket.

‘Wait for me!’

‘It’s all right,’ Akram panted, taking the stairs three at a time, ‘you’re free. I give you your freedom. And that’s a wish. Now bugger off.’

‘Oh no you don’t. You’ve no idea how hurtful that is. I think you’re horrible.’

The window was still open. He could hear the hum of rotor blades, but he had a shrewd idea that the phoenix could outrun any helicopter yet made, and if it couldn’t, that was going to be bad news for the helicopter. ‘Phoenix,’ he yelled, ‘get ready, I’m coming through.’

‘Oh there you are at last, what time do you call this, have you any idea how boring it is just hanging aimlessly about…’

Akram scrambled onto the windowsill, just as the door flew open and someone shouted ‘Freeze!’ His last thought, as he flung himself over the edge and hoped the phoenix was under him, was a fervent wish that his pursuer would open fire and inadvertently shoot the djinn.

‘I heard that, you pig!’

Falling. Cue past life? Apparently not. Flump!

‘Yow!’ shrieked the phoenix. ‘That hurt!’

‘Good,’ Akram replied. ‘Now get me out of here.’

As the huge wings slashed at the air, and the slipstream tried to rip his head off, Akram couldn’t help thinking about his recent experiences, with particular reference to the iron cage and the voice-operated winch. Specifically; either it was a remarkable coincidence that the password should be what it was, or else there was a sick mind at work here. No prizes for guessing which explanation Akram favoured.

‘Djinn.’

‘Like I told you,’ the djinn replied, ‘my friends call me Curly.’

‘Djinn,’ Akram repeated, ‘does the name Ali Baba mean anything to you?’

‘No,’ replied the djinn. ‘Should it?’

‘How about that cage thing? Presumably you were about the place when it was installed. Can you remember who the contractor was?’

‘Ah,’ replied the djinn, ‘now then. I’m positive I can remember. Oooh, it’s on the tip of my tongue, really it is. Something beginning with L, I think, yes, I’m sure it was. Oh dear, it’s nearly … that’s it! Got it. Ltd.’

‘What?’

‘The contractor’s name,’ said the djinn proudly, ‘was Ltd. They had it written on the backs of their jackets and their toolboxes and things. Can’t remember the first name, I’m afraid, but the surname was definitely—’

‘Djinn.’

‘Yes?’

‘Piss off.’

‘Well, of all the—’

‘Djinn.’

‘I’m not talking to you.’

‘Ah,’ Akram sighed, putting his arms behind his head and lying back on his feather bed. ‘That’s more like it.’