snake in the grass || al-azma

[Charlene Kingston]

thursday, march 22, 1973
3:08 p.m.
following this

She could picture Valentine walking through the front door of their home, their three children in tow, Ezra and Kai dutifully helping carry the groceries while Maxine wept for her father to hold her. She could imagine the mess they would make of the kitchen preparing dinner, her husband trying to juggle three children while remain efficient and on time before she got home. She could see him scramble to throw away the scraps of wrapping paper he’d cut, put away the crafting supplies the kids used and clean up their living space.

She was meant to leave early to join her family for her birthday dinner. Instead, a file landed on her desk keeping her longer in the office than she had planned.

Carefully flipping one page after the other, brown eyes swept over words and grotesque images that barely made her react anymore, a consequence of years on the job. Three deaths in Bromley, victims all Syrian. Which could only mean—

"Who took the Bromley case? I want to see the file!"

There he was: Nabih Al-Azma, Syrian liaison officer. Through the course of her career, she’d worked, and still did, with men who thought themselves larger than life. Men who looked down at her (or some having to look up with her height hitting six feet, reducing their already feeble threats into nothingness), who judged her for the poor purity of her blood, the color of her skin, her sex. Men who also couldn’t care less about all those traits but still thought themselves better.

Nabih Al-Azma, from what she’d heard and the very few interactions she’d had with the man, fell in that last category. But Charlene knew her worth, had a reputation as a fierce and strong Auror and could not be shaken by men like him.

With a roll of her eyes, she closed the file and stood up. She stood at the threshold of her office, arms folded over her chest, looking at Nabih intimidating the poor clerk.

“I did.”

Her gaze bore into his, almost a silent challenge there, daring him to speak to her in the same tone he’d just used.

“It seems we’ll be working together.”

What a lovely birthday gift.

[Nabih Al-Azma]

Nabih did not care for women. He had grown up in a man’s world. Women were wives and mothers, healers and skilled in divination. Ever since he had come to Europe, Nabih had dealt with a lot of women who had grown up different. They worked, they had opinions and they didn't give a damn about respecting men.

It had taken some getting used to, but because Nabih had spent his later teenage years in Switzerland at school, it was not all that difficult. Nabih had no trouble dealing with them anymore, or with ignoring them when he could. He was respectful most of the time and he got what he wanted from them in return.

Today was different though. His mood was sour, his annoyance after that elevator ride with Persephone through the roof. It just wasn't a good day. The clerk blinked at him, opened and closed his mouth without a word coming out and Nabih had no patience left for such incompetence.

“I did.”

The voice came from an office nearby and Nabih turned to the woman it belonged to. Kingston. Of course. Leave it to her to take a case he was not prepared for. Aurors were nasty creatures, always on the hunt and once they had a suspicion, they were like a dog with a bone. Relentless.

Kingston was no exception. She had a reputation and it was unfortunate that she had taken this case. Greigor would have been much easier to deal with. "Kingston. How lovely." Nabih approached the woman, holding her gaze with ease, none of his annoyance showing on the surface. He knew how to hold himself, especially around aurors.

Nabih stopped in front of her, his dark eyes expressionless and focused. "Are we doing this out here?" She didn’t look like she was all that pleased with having to work with him, but Nabih didn't care about this. His eyes fell away from the auror and on her desk. "The file?" It's what he had come for, and she knew he had every right to look into it.

[Charlene Kingston]

”How lovely”.

Good, so they both shared the same sentiment. He could stand with his back straight, empty stare and expressionless face, but she didn’t need physical evidence to come to the conclusion that he was not eager facing her, or in general, of being on the second floor of the Ministry.

She could stand still, barring him away from the precious file he so desperately ached to see—perhaps a bit too much actually, but she refrained from pushing that thought further for now—but she could not bear with pleasantries. The only trait they shared was their respect for their work (though this, too, she was keen to evaluate under her watchful gaze).

Without another word, she turned around, walking back to her desk and finding back her seat. “What have you heard about it?” she asked as prelude, wondering which information had reached his ears or if the existence of the murders was all he knew of. Turning the file to face his direction, she pushed it towards the end of her desk, a silent invitation for him to sit down.

“Do you recognize any of these men?”

Much like him, her face remained passive, devoid of any emotion. But her eyes remained on his, willing to catch any tick and mark down unique mannerisms. She wasn’t a fool to suspect that a man like Al-Azma would let himself be read this easily, but years on the job refined her skills enough to be a valuable coworker—or opponent.

[Nabih Al-Azma]

Good, she decided that doing this talk out here in the hallway was not all that smart. It was also disrespectful, which was not something he took lightly. Nabih followed her into her office, and closed the door behind him. Only then he approached her desk slowly, eyes locked on Kingston. He knew this dance. She would ask questions. They always did.

“What have you heard about it?”

And there was the first question. Nabih briefly thought back to when he had been involved in a case that Kingston had also been on. It had been quite some time ago, when he had still worked in Egypt. He doubted, she remembered him being in the background of it all, but he did remember her. Nabih did not forget names, or faces for that matter.

She slid the file over, and he finally took a seat, and shrugged. "Three dead, Syrian refugees, all previously tied to organized crime internationally. Clean slate since coming to England." His voice was neutral, as if he didn't care that three people had died. It was true, too. Nabih actually did not care that they had died. All he cared about was who had ended their sorry lives. His fingers retrieved the file from the desk and he flipped it open.

“Do you recognize any of these men?”

His face still unmoving, he flicked through the few pages, taking in the pictures. It was not something he had not seen before, or had not done himself. He did not need to know how gruesome the deaths had been. No, he looked at the pictures for hints, clues, and it did not take him longer than a few seconds to spot Bilal's handiwork on all three victims.

Bloody bastard.

Nabih closed the file again, after reading over some of the notes. Nothing of importance. Placing it back on the desk, his gaze met Charlene's again, empty and yet he knew she was hoping, no waiting for some sort of reaction from him. She was just out of luck today. He was not going to give her anything. "No, I do not," he said curtly. Indeed, he did not know the men. But then Nabih did not know many of the footmen that did a job or another for his brother or father. These three must have pissed Bilal off, if he had come for them personally. Nabih was still waiting on more information from back home.

"Any leads?"

[Charlene Kingston]

He looked over the file far too quickly to her liking.

She didn’t expect him to cringe or waver at the sight of those horrible pictures. He might not be an Auror, but something told her that not only was this man unshakable to most things, Death seemed like a familiarity to him. After all, one didn’t go teaching Magical Defense if they hadn’t encountered the taste of mortality at least once in their life. Still, she felt the prickle of something, a silent telltale from years of working on the job. She tucked it away for now, shifting her focus on the facts.

The truth was this file was still too fresh to contain much concrete information—or so it may seem. Before Nabih stormed into the Auror offices, she’d had time to pay a trip to the archives. It didn’t take long to find the three victims’ files and acknowledge previous crimes and their links to one another. And Nabih confirmed what she knew: clean slate since their arrival in England. Which meant either that was false and they had slipped under the Ministry’s radar or someone from their past life had unfinished business with them. With the evidence laid out before her, the latter seemed the most appropriate.

Which she should reveal to Nabih. But anyone who walked into her office might feel the frigid chill in the air from the silent confrontation in their gazes. Something told her Nabih didn’t intend on revealing more—if he knew more which she had no proof of, but her gut feeling was rarely wrong—and she would only be allowed surface level information.

But she’d been in this dance before and if Nabih was looking for a partner, he found one.

“I intend to revisit these men’s pasts. They indeed all have dabbled into organized crime but that doesn’t mean they were fully free of it even here in England.”

She laid her hand on the file, sliding it back towards her. “As the Syrian liaison officer, you must be aware of organized crime in the country. Maybe some big names who could be of importance for this case and who could be tied to these men?”

[Nabih Al-Azma]

The problems that came with an unplanned hit like this were enormous. The biggest being that nothing had been planted to steer a possible investigation in the direction were it needed to go - away from the people who'd actually done it or were behind it. That ship had sailed and now he was stuck cleaning up the mess. It wasn't the first time, but this hit was done so careless, it was going to be difficult to redirect Kingston to anywhere he wanted her to go.

Sure enough, she had done her homework, which meant one thing. She wasn't going to look for the killer locally. It was simply unbelievable that these men had been at the wrong place and the wrong time and with her being on the job for a while, she'd known where to look right away.

"A clean slate usually indicates some sort of deal." Nabih did not explain further, nor did he think he needed to. She was smart enough, and he expected her to know how these things worked. If they had shared information in exchange for refuge and a clean start, it was not surprising someone had come for them.

Freaking idiots.

His dark eyes rested on her, and a calm settled over him. His annoyance and stress died down as he considered her question. It was a nice attempt, poorly executed, but then perhaps she'd already had a long day. Or perhaps she simply thought it was going to be this easy dealing with him.

"Are you asking me to do your job, Mrs. Kingston?" His lips twitched a little, but no real smile appeared. If she didn't know that his family basically owned his country, ran it the way they saw fit, then he certainly wouldn't dip her face into it. "Crime there is like crime here. Murky, sometimes messy, but for the most part invisible." He doubted she would find any direct ties to the Azma family with these men. They had looked to be too far down the chain to matter much. Which still left him wondering why Bilal had done this himself. How had he even entered the country undetected? So many questions. Unanswered questions.