"Here," Maria shouted to no one in particular. "Over here."

A motorbike beam lit the night and bounced wildly off the alley walls. The owner left its engine running to keep the beam bright. "Where?"

"Over there," shouted Maria, and pointed towards a shadow which hugged a far wall, moving at a jagged run. "He's one."

As the stolen 500cc Norton lurched forward, a second hunter sprinted from a side passage and swung himself onto the bike behind its rider. He carried a curved sword in one hand.

"After him."

The order was unnecessary. The single-cylinder machine was already skidding down the alley, its headlight picking out Driss Mahmud. A blip of the throttle, a single slash and the antique blade had opened up the running man's shoulder.

"Go round again," shouted the man with the sword and the bike slid to a halt.

It might not be the worst cut their victim had taken, but there would be others and the wounded man understood this. The most intelligent thing he could do was anger his attackers so badly they killed him outright.

"Fatah!"

He was many things, Driss Mahmud. A coward was not one of them. Holding his knife in his one good hand, he watched the 500cc Norton turn in the alley and blinked as its headlight caught him in its beam.

Shouting his insult again, Driss flipped the knife so that he held it by the blade. The man would have seen that, which was the point.

"Come and get me..."

Driss felt no pain and barely any shock, only a determination to take both riders with him if he could. Somewhere inside he must have been afraid, though. He had to be; why else would his lips be reciting prayers?

It was late, the evening call from the mosque of Bab Doukkala was long gone. Fires burned across the city. At least they burnt in the only bit of Marrakech to really matter. Who knew or much cared what happened beyond the walls in Hivernage or Gueliz?

Driss could smell wood smoke and grilling goat in the alley, and something uglier like burning rubber.

That was his last conscious thought. Tyres burning, foreigners beyond the wall, a final declaration of faith... And then the bike was on him in a blaze of light that dragged a blade behind it.

Driss threw, hard as he could, and ducked like his old caid had taught him, rolling out of the motorbike's way and into a sudden kick to his spine. Vertebrae cracked and Driss crawled away from the pain straight into the path of another boot. There were legs all around him now.

It had been a mistake to let go of his knife.

"Wait!" Climbing from his bike, the off-duty policeman pushed his way through the mob. The figure at their feet was still recognizably human, though the noise issuing from his bloodied mouth was strictly animal.

"Not here," the man said. "Take him to the rubbish dump."

Someone tried to make Driss Mahmud walk but broken ankles and cracked vertebrae made this impossible. So instead the mob poured gasoline over him, tied a rope around his ankles and dragged him to the dump beyond the Doukkala Gate, gathering onlookers with every arch and alley corner they navigated.

"It's not much of a fairy tale." Petra Mayer looked up from her notes. In front of her was a deposition from Lady Celia Duncalf, née Vere. Now resident in Holland Park, with a flat in St. Germain des Prés and a beach house in the Hamptons, Lady Celia's main concern seemed to be that her newly married daughter might discover details of the summer her mother spent "working" in Marrakech.

There was an accompanying letter, written in strong script and addressed to Professor Mayer by name. This touched briefly on Lady Celia's belief that Marzaq al-Turq had died in a fire in Amsterdam and enclosed a photocopy of a note to that effect signed "Jake." The lettering of the signature was as spindly as Celia's writing was firm and determined.

"You wrote this," said Professor Mayer, as she pushed the note across to Prisoner Zero. "How did it feel announcing your own death?"

Only Prisoner Zero ignored her because he was too busy remembering when the tale had been told to him. "A fairy tale" was what Malika called it, in a voice which showed she didn't quite understand why someone else, someone grown-up, had called it that.

Malika's father had not yet become enemies with Moz's mother, so the two of them were still allowed to be friends. Except this was a fairy story about how Malika's father was really someone else.

"They killed your father?"

"No, stupid." Malika shook her head in exasperation. "If he was my father I'd be much older."

"How much?"

The nine-year-old girl thought about it.

"Not sure," she said. "Almost grown-up probably."

"That would be weird."

Malika looked at him.

"If I was me and you were grown-up..." Moz shrugged at the thought and shook out his left arm, feeling blood return to his fingers. The twine that usually bound this arm behind his back was curled on the tiles where Malika had thrown it.

Moz was happy. He was on the roof of the baker's with Malika, his arm untied and his jellaba discarded in an untidy heap beside the twine snake. All he wore were the shorts his mother insisted he wear beneath his jellaba and Malika's hat.

Malika sat against a wall opposite. And from where they both sat they could see across the city's white roofs to La Mosquée, the heart of Marrakech. Everyone in the city steered themselves through the jumble of the Medina by glimpses of La Koutoubia's seventy-metre-high minaret. It became instinct. A way of triangulating position by how much could be seen of this or that monument, but always with La Koutoubia as the main point.

They were hiding on the roof of the baker's because Malika was in trouble with ould Kasim again. Quite what for, Moz was unsure; not that it made much difference. She'd still have to go down to face him sometime. That was how their conversation began.

"He's not my real father, you know," Malika said suddenly.

"What?"

"That man." She meant Corporal ould Kasim.

"Then who is?"

"A hippie."

"They didn't exist when you were a baby."

"Yes, they did," said Malika. "There just weren't very many of them. He was English."

The boy raised his eyebrows.

"Rich," Malika said. "Very rich. He paid gold for the house in Derb Yassin and painted all the rooms black. He was a poet."

Moz thought of the narrow house his mother now shared in the Mellah with Malika's father. Two rooms each, split upstairs and down. No running water. No electricity. It wasn't that he thought Malika was lying, he just didn't quite understand.

"My real father died," Malika said. "Of a fever. He got thinner and thinner until he couldn't even stand up. My mother tried spells and doctors but nothing worked. He didn't want to live, she said." Malika's voice was bleak. "And after she buried him she discovered he'd spent all the money."

Moz could imagine the rest without being told. Corporal ould Kasim, the man he'd always thought was her father, owned a small café. Only a tiny place between machine shops but it was on Djemaa el Fna, good for tourists, and a woman might work there. Of course, she would need to be married...

"Everything I do is wrong," said Malika. "The meat's not good. The bread's stale. I pay too much for grain. The chickens don't lay enough for what I feed them." She did a good imitation of ould Kasim's dead-eyed stare and the sourness of his words. "I'm going down," Malika said, resignation in her voice. "Do you want me to tie your arm first?"

It took only a minute for her to loop twine round Moz's wrist and secure the hand behind his back. Malika knew which knot to use. She'd been untying and retying the restraint for almost two years.

"What happened to the man?"

Malika turned, shading her eyes against the sun. "Which man?"