Maloney's Law Read Online Free PDF Page B

another, stickier layer of skin. By the time the customs men are waving me through, hardly glancing at my passport, my shirt is welded to my back and I’d pay a month’s salary for water. Not having any change makes that impossible. The smallest of my Egyptian pound notes not only seems to have been processed through the digestive system of a camel but will probably be the equivalent of two months’ wages for the average water seller. The best thing to do is get a taxi to the hotel where I can have all the water I want, together with some decent beer. Plus points all round.
    I’m about to head to the taxi rank when a tall man, dressed in a uniform I don’t recognise, steps in front of me. He’s holding a silver rectangle with my name emblazoned on it, and it’s all I can do to avoid the pull of instinct that makes me want to push him down and run. Not the best idea in an airport full of armed officials.
    ‘Pole Melanie?’ the man says, grinning and nodding, and it’s another moment before I recognise he’s saying my name.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Good, good. I know you from photo, sir. You have car, yes?’
    ‘Not yet, no, I’m just on my way—’
    ‘No, no! You not understand. There is a car booked for you. By Mr. Allen. He has booked a car for you, yes? To Mena House, yes? Please, sir, follow me.’
    He leads me to a dark-blue Mercedes gleaming in the sun. Next to the battered old Peugeots and Renaults I’ve glimpsed steaming for business at the taxi rank, it’s a racehorse amongst donkeys. There’s just one question.
    ‘Who’s paying?’ I ask my driver.
    ‘No problem, sir. Mr. Allen, he pays for everything. Even baksheesh, yes?’ He gives me a knowing look, eases the hold-all from my fingers, and deposits it in the copious boot. The next thing I know I’m sitting on grey leather in the back of pure air-conditioned class and facing a drinks cabinet filled with water bottles and whisky. I take the former and wish for the latter, but I’m not at home, and the heat will kill the happiness of it.
    The drive to the hotel takes an hour and a half. As I gaze out of the window, it’s as if I’ve not only been transported thousands of miles away from London, but also two thousand years into the past, except for the traffic. The men and women I see wear long flowing robes, blue, red, orange. Some of the women wear black scarves to hide their hair or carry impossibly tall packages on their heads. Jade would have loved it. For her, it would be like living in Bible times, taking her back to her Baptist roots.
    Along the roadside are half-finished houses, children all but naked, donkeys — with visible ribs — grazing on scraps of brown grassland, and broken-down abandoned machinery. Through it all, expensive cars and Western tourists flow into the heart of the city. Rich people. People like me.
    I tap on the glass. The driver leans forward, presses an unseen button and the barrier slides across.
    ‘Yes, sir?’ he gazes back at me and ignores the stream of battered cars all hooting for supremacy outside us, each one appearing to follow its own set of rules.
    ‘Hey! Watch out.’
    He swerves ’round a straight-backed woman, dressed in blue, pacing calmly down the middle of the road, and almost collides with a lorry coming the other way. Somehow we survive both encounters, and I look out the rear window to see the woman continuing on her path as if nothing has happened.
    ‘God, and I thought London was bad. Is Cairo always like this?’
    Waving one hand in the air, my chauffeur laughs. ‘No, sir, no, no, no! This is good. Sometimes it is far worse, in the rush hours, yes?’

    Arriving at the Mena House Oberoi is like being given the gift of life when you’re expecting nothing but the bullet. A lot of this is to do with the Pyramids. My ex-lover is right; they’re overwhelming, and Mena House is all but next door to them. Until today a part of me hasn’t believed they really exist, except in films, and certainly