the poorly lit street. Youngsters pooled around the opening. Inside the big hall the air was damp with perspiration and excitement. The walls might once have been a pistachio-green colour. In time they had faded to a grubby ochre, speckled with crushed flies and smeared mosquito blood, along with all manner of encrusted bodily fluids deposited over the course of the years. The floor was littered with trampled paper flyers and roasted melon seeds glistening with spit. Boys and men, no women in sight. The noisy chatter of teenagers working one another up into a frenzy. The sound of a bell ringing brought attention back to the ring in the centre. Makana recognised the skinny, odd boy called Antun. The heavy brass bell looked big enough to rip his frail arm off as he walked the ring swinging it. The crowd moved closer as the fighters and their respective trainers climbed under the ropes.
‘Please give a warm welcome to our next contestants!’ Father Macarius bellowed with no need of a megaphone as he stood in the middle of the ring. The contestants were two boys, as dark and lean as racing dogs, their singlets hanging loosely from bony shoulders. They touched gloves and backed away. The crowd began cheering them on.
‘So now you’re interested in boxing, I see.’
Makana turned to see Ishaq, the young man who had tried to prevent him seeing Ridwan Hilal. He wasn’t alone. Behind him stood three of his friends, and further back he spotted a couple more of the same type, all wearing the club T-shirt.
‘Actually, I was looking for you.’
‘For me?’ Ishaq sounded surprised, but not displeased.
‘I have been asked to look into the circumstances of Meera’s death.’
A cheer went up as the two fighters in the ring started circling one another. The dull thud of them trading blows punctuated the roars of the boys and men around them. Ishaq spoke without taking his eyes off the match.
‘What has that got to do with me?’
‘I understand you were her student.’
‘So what?’ snapped Ishaq. ‘Are you police?’
‘No, this is a private matter.’
‘Hilal asked you?’ Ishaq spared Makana a fleeting glance. ‘Why do you come to me?’
‘Maybe it would help if you answered my questions first.’
‘I studied literature at the university. She taught some of the classes.’
‘Was she a good teacher?’
The question seemed to catch Ishaq off balance. ‘Good? Yes, of course . . . she was the best.’
Ishaq’s eyes were fixed on the ring. It was hard to make out the fighters in the weak light. The long hall floated in a submarine glow seeping from neon strips that appeared to be fixed to the roofing girders by a network of cobwebs and dust. Half of them were out. One blinked as if it couldn’t make up its mind.
‘Why do you ask about that?’
‘Because I’m looking for people who might have had a motive to kill her,’ said Makana.
‘What has that got to do with being her student?’
‘It could have a lot to do with it.’
‘How?’ Ishaq had given up pretending to be interested in the boxing.
‘Well, say a student falls in love with his teacher. And say he asked her to leave her husband for him, and she refused. Don’t you think that might make someone kill?’
Ishaq laughed. ‘Are you serious?’
‘You were a little bit in love with her, though, weren’t you?’
Ishaq laughed mirthlessly again, then prodded Makana hard in the chest. ‘You should watch out who you are accusing,’ he snarled as he pushed by.
Mentally, Makana crossed the idea off as a dead end. You can’t be right about everything, he told himself as he watched the boy walk away. The match was turning out to be somewhat one-sided. The larger of the two boys was pummelling the smaller, who could do nothing but hold his gloves up in front of his face in defence as he was pressed back against the ropes. Father Macarius stroked his beard as though considering how long to wait before intervening. Makana made his way through the crowd. Ishaq had disappeared but some of the others were standing together over on the far side by the wall of photographs. Hanging lopsided in a flimsy wooden frame, a clipping from a newspaper showed a row of coffins embedded in a crowd of onlookers. Makana felt the unhurried breathing on his neck.
‘Those are the Kosheh Martyrs. Murdered just over a year ago.’
Makana turned to see the bullish boy with a stout neck who had blocked his way outside Ridwan