The Fig Tree Murder (7 page)

‘Heliopolis is a bit different from the usual district. I quite like it, though. The Syndicate’s good to work with. They get on and do things, and that’s what this country needs.’

He looked sideways at Owen.

‘I’m quite a Nationalist, you know. Not a Party member, of course. I wouldn’t go as far as that. That was what you wanted to talk to me about, wasn’t it?’

Owen nodded.

‘The Syndicate said that it had evidence that some of the workforce were professional agitators. I just wondered how reliable that evidence was.’

‘Pretty reliable. It asked me to do a bit of digging, in my spare time. That was before I took up the post here. I checked on the backgrounds of some of the men they mentioned.’

‘The man I am interested in is named Wahid. He works in the track-laying gang.’

‘I know the man. Yes, he was one of them. I can tell you quite a lot about him. He was one of those who failed the secondary certificate so he couldn’t go on to one of the higher colleges. I think he always felt bitter about that, I think that may explain—Anyway, he’d failed and that was that. He had to go into an office as a junior effendi. He went into Public Works.’

‘Not Railways?’

‘No, no. This was some time ago, five or six years ago. And he went in as an effendi, not as a labourer. He stayed there for about three years and became increasingly dissatisfied. He wasn’t getting anywhere, or, at least, not as far as he thought he ought to be getting and he put it down to bias. Anyway, one day, after an argument, he walked out. There’s a gap in the record after this. He appears to have done a number of odd jobs, some of them possibly in the docks, for the next time we heard of him, which is when he applied for a job with the electric railway, he produced a reference from a warehouse at Bulak.’

Salah looked at Owen.

‘The reference was false. When I checked at the warehouse they’d never heard of him.’

‘The company didn’t check at the time?’

‘They didn’t bother. He seemed the sort of man they wanted—experience of hard labour, shifting sacks of grain, that sort of thing.’

‘Why did you check the references?’

Salah stared at him.

‘Why did I check the references?’

‘Him particularly.’

‘He was one of several. The company asked me—’

‘They picked him out? Why was that, I wonder?’

‘Because he was difficult, I suppose.’

‘I can understand that. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a Nationalist. I’m still looking for evidence of a Nationalist connection.’

‘There’s plenty of that. He’s been seen at Nationalist meetings.’

‘So have half the workforce, I imagine.’

‘Playing an active part.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Distributing leaflets.’

‘That’s more like it. But it hardly makes him a professional agitator.’

‘Have you heard him talking to his gang? He’s always stirring up trouble!’

‘I’ve no doubt about that. But
professional
!? Paid?’

‘There’s no direct evidence. But—’

Owen was silent. He thought it very likely that Wahid was a Nationalist. He was pretty sure, from what the men had said, that he tried to raise them to action in pursuit of their grievances. But that didn’t make him a planted agitator.

‘I’d need more evidence of a direct Party connection,’ he said, ‘before I could be sure that the Nationalists were behind this.’

‘There
is
evidence,’ Salah insisted.

‘Can you produce it?’

‘You will have it,’ promised Salah.

Sand had drifted against the fences of the pens, in several places bending them over. Men were working on them to repair them. The ostriches were huddled on the far side of the pens.

The old Arab, Zaghlul, whom Owen had seen on the day of the ostrich hunt, was overseeing the work.

‘Yes,’ he said impatiently, ‘the fences were damaged. What do you expect? Think the sand’s going to miss me out?’

‘The fences need to be kept in good order,’ said Salah sternly. ‘Things are not like they used to be!’

‘What do you think I’m doing to the fences? And I know things are not the way they used to be; they’re a great deal worse!’

‘We can’t have these birds getting out.’

‘Do you think I want them to get out? Each one costs me a packet, I can tell you. That’s money walking away, that is. And if they don’t get away altogether, some fool tries to shoot them!’

‘You go easy on the “fools”. We’re talking Pashas here!’

‘What do I care about Pashas? Or the Khedive either. Put a bullet in my birds and I’ll put a bullet in them!’

‘These birds of yours are nothing but a nuisance. They frighten the horses. Do you know what a racehorse costs?’

‘I know what an ostrich costs. And the birds were here before the racehorses.’

‘Yes, well, you keep them on this side of the railway line! Otherwise there’ll be trouble.’

‘There’s been no trouble up till now. It’s building this new city that’s causing the trouble. City!’ said the old man contemptuously. ‘What do they want to build a city for out in the desert? The desert’s the desert. Keep it like that!’

‘Things don’t stand still. They’re going to build the city and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re going to have to live with it. And that means seeing that your birds don’t get out.’

‘They’d be all right if they were left alone.’

‘If they stay in the pens they will be left alone.’

‘No, no, it’s in the air. They can smell it. It frightens them. That’s what makes them panic.’

‘What’s in the air?’

‘People. Houses. That new railway line. The old one’s all right. They’ve got used to that. But now they’re building a new one. What do they want another one for? They’re building them all over the place. How many more are there going to be?’

‘There aren’t going to be any more. Just this one. And they’re having it because it’ll go straight to Heliopolis. It won’t come near your pens.’

‘There’s something wrong with it, isn’t there?’

‘What do you mean, something wrong with it?’

‘It’s electric, isn’t it?’

‘Well?’

‘There you are, then. It’ll be getting out and affecting my birds.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Well, I can tell you, if it starts affecting my birds, I’ll be over there with my gun! I’ll soon put a stop to it!’

‘It won’t affect your birds at all.’

‘It had better not. And you’d do better to be worrying about all that stuff getting out than about my birds getting out. I’ll look after my birds. And I’ll look after that new electric railway, too, if you don’t watch out!’

Since he was out at Matariya, Owen thought he might as well go over to the village. With any luck he would meet Mahmoud and find out if he had made any further progress.

The village was only a mile from the ostrich farm but by the time he reached it, even in what he had thought the fresher atmosphere of out of town, the sweat was running down his face and his shirt was sticking to his back. When he got to the village he went to the well and scooped water over his face and drank a little from the bucket he had pulled up. It tasted of sand.

There were some women at the well, filling their pitchers. They saw the face he had made and one of them said:

‘Here, have some of mine. We got it up before the water was disturbed.’

‘It was Miriam who disturbed it,’ said one of the other women. ‘She let the bucket go in too far.’

‘I had to, didn’t I?’ retorted Miriam angrily. ‘I was the last one and you’d got the good water out.’

‘Ali should have put the cover over the well,’ said the first woman accusingly.

An old man sitting in the shade straightened up.

‘I did!’ he protested. ‘It got underneath. It gets everywhere.’

‘Well, it does that,’ the woman conceded.

‘It got into my stew,’ said another of the women, ‘even though I had the lid on.’

Owen accepted the drink gratefully. The women, as was often the case in the villages, were very chatty. None of them wore veils and no one was particularly abashed at speaking to a man, even a white man. It was the men, thought Owen, who insisted on the forms, so jealous of their wives’ honour were they.

Or perhaps it wasn’t their wives’ honour but their own. That, he thought, was certainly so in the case of those brothers they’d locked up.

Actually, he was uneasy about that. He would have to release them soon. He couldn’t hold them forever. That was one of the things he wanted to talk to Mahmoud about. He rather hoped that by now Mahmoud was getting somewhere with his investigations. If he was closing in on someone, especially if, as Owen suspected, the person was one of the brothers, it would make it easier to hold them and to prevent the family of the murdered man from taking the law into their own hands.

Mahmoud emerged from one of the pilgrim’s houses, saw Owen and came across to greet him. The women, suddenly self-conscious, picked up their pitchers and went off.

Mahmoud sat down on the parapet of the wall and helped himself to some water.

‘Getting anywhere?’ asked Owen.

‘No. I’ve just about been through all the houses now and no one’s seen or heard anything. No one was out on the night Ibrahim was killed, nor knows anyone else who was out. Well, I can believe that. Once it gets dark, everyone in the village stays at home. But these days, when the nights are hot, they sit outside; and don’t tell me that no one, no one in the entire village, saw or heard anything!’

‘What might they have heard or seen?’

‘Someone going out to the Tree. People at the Tree, talking. They
were
talking, we know that from the goatherd.’

‘It’s some way from the village, though. And it was dark.’

‘I need to know who it was that met Ibrahim that night,’ said Mahmoud, frustrated.

‘Have you gone through the other village yet, Tel-el-Hasan? Someone might have seen people leaving that.’

‘The brothers, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got Asif helping me. He’s been through the village.’

‘Without any luck?’

‘The same thing as here. Villagers,’ said Mahmoud, ‘will tell you nothing. Not if you’re from outside.’

He put the bucket back into the recess.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m increasingly coming to think that the answer doesn’t lie here anyway.’

Not here?’ said Owen, taken aback.

‘Oh, here—the village—is something to do with it. It’s where it happened. But it’s not here that the meaning lies.’

‘The meaning?’

‘I see a lot of killings,’ said Mahmoud. ‘This one has a meaning. The body was put on the line to make a point.’

‘What kind of point?’

‘I don’t know. But I’m beginning to wonder whether it might not be more to do with the railway than it is with the village.’

‘You’re abandoning the idea of it being a revenge killing?’

‘Revenge might be part of it.’

‘I don’t see how revenge could be part of something else. Isn’t it complete in itself?’

Mahmoud was silent. Overhead, in the palms, the doves gurgled contentedly.

‘As I see it,’ he said at last, ‘Ibrahim crops up in two contexts. One of them is the village and there are things here that might have led to his death. But I cannot see why they should have led to his body being placed on the line. That part of it must be explained by something else. And it seems to me that we might find the explanation in the other context in which he crops up: the railway.’

‘His body was found there, certainly. Does that count as cropping up?’

‘He worked there.’

‘But that is incidental, surely?’

‘Is it? I have asked myself if it might not be—if I could find any connection between Ibrahim’s workplace and his death.’ Owen fanned himself. He was used to Mahmoud’s deductive approach. The Parquet lawyers had all been trained in the French tradition of law—the Egyptian legal system was based on that of France—and the French influence extended even to habits of thought.

‘And what answers did you get?’

He hoped that Mahmoud wasn’t going to allow himself to get distracted. He himself was convinced that the answer lay in the village and he wanted to find it pretty quickly before village law took over.

‘It was something the railwaymen said yesterday. About Ibrahim. They said there had been some incident or other when Ibrahim had acted as their spokesman.’

‘Well?’

‘I’d like to find out more about the incident.’

‘It sounded as if it was a dispute about work practices.’

‘Precisely.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re getting at?’

‘I was just wondering if the two could be connected.’

‘The dispute and—?’

‘The fact that Ibrahim played a leading part in the dispute, and his death.’

Owen was shocked.

‘You’re surely not suggesting—?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just saying that the time might have come to take a look at the Syndicate’s involvement in all this.’

‘But it’s not involved! It’s just that the body was found on the line that it’s building!’

‘And that the body was that of a man who’d been prominent in a dispute with it.’

‘But the dispute was trivial!’

‘We don’t know that. It might not have seemed trivial to them. Anything that threatened to slow down progress on the line would have struck them as important, I’d have thought.’

‘But you’re surely not suggesting that they would go to the lengths of—?’

‘I don’t know what lengths they might go to. That would be one of the things I would want to find out.’

‘But what for? What would be the point?’

As a warning, perhaps?’

‘You think the whole thing was meant as a warning?’

‘I think the possibility is worth investigating.’

Owen felt quite shocked. How could Mahmoud even entertain the possibility? The Syndicate bore down hard on its workers, perhaps, but to suppose that a respectable international company would go to those lengths was bizarre!

‘Companies don’t behave like that,’ he said.

‘Don’t they?’

‘No. Not even in Egypt.’

It was the wrong thing to say. Mahmoud’s face darkened. ‘Perhaps they might,’ he said, ‘in Egypt. Where they thought it didn’t matter.’

Owen backtracked swiftly. Talking to Mahmoud was sometimes like walking through a minefield.

‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was that I don’t believe a respectable company would do a thing like that anywhere.’

Mahmoud bowed his head in acknowledgement of the apology; stiffly, however.

‘Respectable companies don’t always behave respectably when they go to other countries,’ he said. ‘Especially if they’re poorer countries.’

Owen felt a tide of exasperation welling up.

‘What you’re suggesting is quite ridiculous,’ he said coldly.

‘You may think so.’

‘You think so only because it is a foreign company.’

‘What are you saying? What are you saying?’ cried Mahmoud furiously.

‘That you’re letting your Nationalist prejudices run away with you!’ said Owen, equally angry.

It had all boiled up, as so often in Egypt, out of nothing. One moment you had been talking reasonably; the next, there had been an explosion.

All right, this time it was he himself who had sparked it off. But really! How could Mahmoud think a thing like that? How could someone as intelligent, as reasonable as Mahmoud even consider such a possibility? Owen had no great affection for the Syndicate. He thought it was hard and grasping. He thought it very likely that it would if not bend the law, at least push up as hard against it as it could.

But that was not quite the same thing as breaking the law. And it was not the same thing as killing a man, or having him killed, just because he had crossed them.

Or as a warning. Warning? Who to? To the labour force to work harder? Ridiculous! How could Mahmoud even suppose such a thing! It was quite unlike him. He was normally the most reasonable of men: a little prickly on occasion, emotional, perhaps, like most Arabs. But this was plain crazy! Companies were not like that. Not even—
pace
, Mahmoud—in Egypt. Not even—despite the fulminations of the most lunatic Nationalists—foreign companies in Egypt. How could Mahmoud even entertain the idea?

The telephone rang. It was Mr Rabbiki, the veteran politician.

‘Ah, Captain Owen! So glad you are there. I wanted to let you know before actually putting down the question.’

‘Question?’

‘Yes. In the Assembly. It’s on the agenda for Tuesday. I wanted to give you prior warning. After all, we’re old friends, aren’t we? And I understand the difficult position you’re in. But really, we can’t allow this to go on. The poor fellow’s family—’

‘Poor fellow?’

‘The one who was killed. I understand you are not going to press charges?’

‘It’s not my job to press charges. That’s up to the Parquet.’

‘Ah, yes, but sometimes they need help.’

‘I give them all the help I can.’

‘We-ell…it’s not always possible, is it?’

‘Why not?’

‘Political considerations? Do not sometimes political considerations intervene?’

‘They haven’t intervened in this case.’

‘No? That’s not the impression I have gained.’

‘I don’t follow you, Mr Rabbiki.’

‘The Syndicate, Captain Owen…is it not obstructing inquiries?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

‘I understand Mr El Zaki wishes to put some questions?’

‘He wanted to talk to the workforce. He asked me to approach the Syndicate on his behalf, which I was glad to do. Permission was given, and he spoke to the men. I was there.’

‘Yes, but since then…’

‘I don’t think the issue has arisen since then.’

There was a little silence.

‘Then I am under a false impression, Captain Owen. I had gathered he wished to put some questions about an incident that had happened on the railway some weeks ago.’

‘I know the incident to which you refer. I wasn’t aware that he wanted to approach the Syndicate over the matter.’

‘You weren’t? Well, perhaps there are problems of communication on your side. Or perhaps he didn’t feel it necessary for an officer of the Ministry of Justice to have to direct his inquiries through an intermediary. Be that as it may, his request was refused.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘It is unacceptable, Captain Owen. It raises important questions of principle.’

‘It is regrettable, certainly. And the issue might not have arisen had the request been directed through me.’

‘But that, too, raises questions of principle, Captain Owen. So you will quite see why we are putting down a question.’

Owen could quite see why the Nationalist Party was putting down a question. It wished to embarrass the Administration and a foreign company was a good stick to beat the government with.

He was a little disappointed, though, by Mahmoud. After that last exchange at the well, Mahmoud had stalked off in high dudgeon. This was not uncommon with Mahmoud, and usually after a decent interval had elapsed he stalked back again. This time, however, he had made no effort to contact Owen. Instead, he had approached the Syndicate head-on and received the rebuff he must have expected.

Why had he done that? Owen could see why this time he had not wished to enlist his own aid. Apart from understandable pique, he, too, had principles. But why had he gone at it like that? He was no fool, he was wise in the games that Cairo played, he must have known he would get nowhere.

Unless, of course, that was where he had wanted to get. Unless that had been his deliberate intention. Unless he had been party to the Nationalists’ decision to exploit the issue for political ends and had seen this, with them, as a heaven-sent opportunity to set the Syndicate up.

Mahmoud was, like all the other Parquet lawyers, himself a Nationalist. Unlike most of them, however, he was also his own man. He made it a matter of principle not to get into politicians’ pockets. The law for him was clean and pure and should be above politics. Those who professed it should serve it with independence and austerity. Friends said of him—increasingly—that he was a born judge but too honest to be an advocate. Especially in Cairo.

Owen was surprised, then, to find that in this instance he seemed to have shifted; surprised, and disappointed. He and Mahmoud had always seen eye to eye, in so far as it was possible for a foreigner to see eye to eye with an Egyptian. But it was precisely that which was raising the difficulty in the present case. For it was surely only the fact that it was foreign that had led Mahmoud to make his extraordinary accusations against the Syndicate.

It was most unlike him. Certainly, like most Nationalists and, indeed, most Egyptians, he chafed at his country’s subservience to foreign interests and objected, in particular, to British rule; but up till now he had always been temperate and pragmatic about this, believing that Reason—Mahmoud was a great man for Reason—and the ordinary political processes would in the end deliver Egypt from its foreign yoke. The sanguinary rhetoric of the extremists was not for him.

And yet here he was supposing things about the Belgians which would not have been out of place sixty years before at the court of Muhammed Ali! Muhammed’s daughter, taking after her father, had been in the habit of having slave girls who had fallen asleep on duty disembowelled in her bedroom.

It was most unlike him. So unlike him that Owen began to wonder.

Salah-el-Din took Owen to a little square not far from the Pont de Limoun. There was a fountain in the square and a small crowd had gathered in front of it. Among them, Owen could see the railway workers. They stood in a group, huddled together sheepishly, occasionally casting a longing look over their shoulders at a small café on the other side of the square, as if they would rather have been there than here and as if they might have been tempted to make a bolt for it had they not been hemmed in.

It was a hot evening and most of the little houses in the square had their front doors open. From the yards at the back came drifting the smell of charcoal and burning cooking fat, and then a very pungent smell of fried onions.

One or two of the households had already finished their evening meal and had come out to sit on their doorsteps, trying to catch a breath of cooler air. They called across to the men sitting on the big stone bench, the
mastaba
, that ran along the front of the café. Other men were sitting on the ground in front of them. Mixed with the smell of charcoal and fat came now a strong smell of coffee.

Darkness fell quickly at this time of year. Already people in the crowd were lighting torches. On the side of the square opposite the café the dome of a mosque was beginning to show against the sky.

There was the sound of singing in one of the side streets and then a small procession came into the square carrying cresset torches, long staves with bits of burning wood attached to them, and chanting slogans.

They marched up to the fountain and pushed through the crowd. The men with torches gathered around the base of the fountain. Owen could see now that the water had been turned off. A man began to climb up on to the base.

It was dark now in the square. Only the café was lit up. The dome of the mosque was very clear against a deep-blue velvety sky. There was a little group of men standing in front of its doors, the local imam, probably, with some of his helpers.

The men at the fountain held their cressets up to illuminate the speaker on the plinth. He wore a dark suit and a tarboosh. Apart from one or two of the men who had come with him, no one else in the crowd wore a tarboosh. They were all in galabeahs, the long, dress-like costume of the ordinary Cairo working man, and skull caps.

That was how it was, thought Owen. The Nationalist Party drew almost all its strength from office workers and from the professional classes. They hardly touched ordinary working people. There was as big a gulf between them and the ordinary people of Egypt as there was between the ruling Pashas and most educated Egyptians. Egypt was a country divided among itself.

The man on the plinth began to speak. It was the usual Nationalist line. The rich were assailed, foreigners were attacked. But it was a man in a suit who was speaking and the crowd listened for the most part in silence.

Here, though, suddenly, was something different. The speaker began to talk about the railway. Railways were good, he said. It was through railways that a modern Egypt would be built. But why did they have to be built by foreigners? Were there no Egyptians who could build them?