The Snake Catcher’s Daughter mz-8

by Michael Pearce

  The house was part of a derelict block which backed on to waste ground.

  “We’ll have to cover the rear,” said Owen.

  “You do that,” said Georgiades. “I’ll go in through the front.”

  As they approached, a man detached himself from the shadow and came up to them.

  “They’re still there,” he said.

  “Good,” said Georgiades. “OK, we’re putting somebody at the back, too. Take Owen effendi round and show him which house. I’ll give you ten minutes,” he said to Owen.

  There was a door at the back of the house and an outside staircase leading up on to the roof.

  “Check if there’s anyone up there,” whispered Owen. The man slipped silently away and returned in a moment shaking his head.

  Owen put Selim one side of the door and Abdul the other. Then he withdrew a little way with the third man so that they could deploy themselves as reserve.

  It was the middle of the afternoon and there was no one about. Everyone was inside sleeping. The heat was intense. It felt as if a clothes iron was pressing between his shoulders. Sweat, merely from the walk, though in Selim’s case probably also from the beer, was running down their faces.

  Selim, listening at the door, suddenly held his hand up. Abdul twitched and raised his truncheon.

  Then the door burst open and a man came running out.

  Or would have come running out if Selim’s great arms had not suddenly enfolded him.

  “Not so fast, my lovely!” said Selim, and nodded his head to Abdul. Abdul struck once. Selim lowered his burden to the ground and sat on him.

  As Owen came up, he caught the whiff of snake oil.

  “Ah!” he said.

  He stepped past and went on into the house. Somewhere a woman was screaming. He saw Georgiades in a doorway.

  Georgiades nodded and stepped back. Owen followed him into the room. The only light came from one small window which had been part-blocked against the sun. There was a man lying on the floor. A constable knelt beside him forcing his arms up his back. As Owen came in, he turned his face towards him.

  “Hassan?” said Owen.

  Chapter 13

  The house was a fine old Mameluke house. To the street it presented a high wall, with a large wooden door, strong enough for a castle, in a richly decorated archway. There were no windows on the ground floor but above the archway a row of corbels allowed the first floor to project a couple of feet and above that were three rows of oriel windows closely screened with rich meshrebiya woodwork. The door opened into a courtyard along one side of which was the mandar’ah, or reception room, and it was there that Demerdash Pasha received him.

  The mandar’ah had the usual sunken floor of black and white marble and in its centre one of the little fountains called faskiya played into a shallow pool lined with coloured marble. At one end of the room was a large dais with cushions, where the master of the house would welcome and entertain his guests if he felt so minded. Demerdash did not feel so minded and received Owen standing by the faskiyar.

  “I did not appreciate when we met, Pasha,” said Owen, after the formal greetings were over, “that you were such a benefactor of the press.”

  “Benefactor?”

  “I gather that you are paying their fines. Or rather, Al-Lewa’s fines. Or so I understand.”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “Oh, absolutely none. Except that I am the man who is imposing the fines. And I thought I would tell you the size of the sum you will be obliged to meet.”

  He named the sum.

  “But that is colossal!” cried Demerdash.

  “Substantial, certainly. But then, so is the scale of the libel.”

  “Outrageous!”

  “You can test it in the Courts if you wish.”

  “I certainly shall.”

  “I am not sure that I would if I were you. You see, it would certainly emerge that the libels, in my case at least, were based on planted evidence.”

  “You would have to prove that.”

  “Oh, I could. I could even show where the stones had been purchased. And who had purchased them. And all that would come out at the subsequent trial.”

  “Subsequent trial?”

  “Well, naturally. These are serious charges that you would be faced with.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I thought you might prefer to restore your fortunes somewhere else. Damascus, let us say. You know Damascus, I think? It was there, wasn’t it, that you met Mustapha Mir and enlisted his aid?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “One of his friends, you see, has been telling me about the conversations you had with him. How you wished to do something that could restore the Khedive to his former powers. How he might be freed from the yoke of the British; and ‘the old virtues’-I quote-be restored.”

  “Fantasy!”

  “It was Mustapha Mir, I expect, who suggested how this might be done. Adroit as ever, he put forward a plan that coincided with his own interest. The three Englishmen who were primarily responsible for law and order would be discredited and obliged to leave. Men sympathetic to you, and the Khedive, would be put in their place. They might even include-or so, I think, Mustapha Mir hoped-a man who had held one of the posts before.”

  “I know nothing of any such plan.”

  “Not all the details, perhaps. They were left to Mustapha Mir. Mustapha Mir and some of his former employees. But you knew enough, in the article you planted in Al-Lewa, to refer to all three parts of the scheme: the drugging and exposure of McPhee, the accusations against Garvin and the charges against me.”

  “What I have done,” said Demerdash, “I have done for the sake of the Khedive.”

  “No doubt. And now you are going to do him an even greater service. You are going to depart these shores forever. The arabeah is waiting at the door.”

  “There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell,” he explained to Paul, “of the Khedive agreeing to anything serious happening to him. Besides, if we brought him to trial it would be an embarrassment to the Administration. All that stuff about McPhee-”

  “All that stuff about you,” said Paul.

  “Quite. And, of course, we didn’t want him around making an even bigger nuisance of himself. So, all in all, it seemed best just to kick him out.”

  Philipides, after a good scare, was left to moulder in peace. Hassan? Well, Mahmoud had got his teeth into him and didn’t let go until he was well and truly sent down. He also made, in the interests of future efficiency, some Official Recommendations about recruitment and promotion in the Police Force. Rather to everyone’s surprise, Garvin accepted them without hesitation. Indeed, it was rumoured that he and Mahmoud had had a joint hand in writing them.

  The inquiry into Garvin’s behaviour at the time of the Philipides business was quietly dropped.

  “After all,” Paul pointed out, “they’d done what they wanted: caused us political embarrassment.”

  Wainwright did come out-he had left home, unfortunately, the very morning before the telegram arrived cancelling the request for him to give evidence-and was able to present prizes at the Flower Show. It was lucky that the hot spell had come to an end the week before in violent thunderstorms and heavy rain, thus obviating any need to change the Show’s venue.

  Owen, purely in the interests of cleaning everything up, or so he claimed, tried to lay his hands on-no, the wrong expression; better, apprehend-Mustapha Mir’s woman but she had unfortunately just slipped out of the country. Owen did not mention all this to Zeinab.

  Selim was seconded to the Mamur Zapt’s staff, for special duties, which he found much more congenial than directing the traffic outside the Bab-el-Khalk. It carried with it an increase in rank to corporal, which put ideas into his head. His wife, Aisha, came to see Owen about some of them. Owen remonstrated with Selim.

  “She’s been a good wife to you,” he said. “More to the po
int, she’s brought you in some extra money. Would a new, more beautiful wife do that?”

  “No, but she might do other things,” said Selim, ever hopeful. The financial arguments proved in the end persuasive, especially as Owen hinted at the possibility of further employment for Aisha.

  “After all,” said Selim, “I can always get rid of one of the others.”

  Commotion again in the Bab-el-Khalk. Sounds of doors banging, feet running. A mob of orderlies at Owen’s door. “Effendi, oh, effendi-” almost weeping. “Come quick!” Down into the courtyard.

  “What is it?”

  Pointing. The orderlies’ lavatory again. And then, there, curled up in the very doorway, he could see it.

  “Fetch the snake catcher!”

  “Effendi, effendi!” Hands plucked at his arm. “Not just there!” But almost everywhere. In the patch of rough ground where every day McPhee tied up his donkey; in the bike shed where modernist Nassir effendi parked his new bicycle; in the brickwork behind the tap in the yard-a crucial place, this, because it was where the orderlies went for drinking water; among the brooms and pails which the cleaners used every morning to scour out the Bab-el-Khalk; and out, lazily sunning themselves, on the very front steps of the police headquarters itself.

  “Most interesting,” said McPhee, down there too. “The plague of Egypt! Now what number was it?”

  “What the hell have you done this time?” said Garvin, descending from his office.

  “Effendi,” said Owen’s own orderly, Yussuf, “you really are in trouble. It’s the Rifa’i. And Suleiman wants to use the-”

  “Get Jalila.”

  “Effendi, is this wise? You’re in enough trouble as it is. That’s what caused it in the first place.”

  “Fetch her.”

  “Effendi-” Then, seeing Owen was adamant, “With her father?”

  “Without her father.”

  “Effendi-!”

  But Jalila came. Even she blanched.

  “You can do it, can’t you?”

  “Yes, but-effendi, you have been good to me, but in your own interest-the Rifa’i are strong. You will have to work with them.”

  “I appoint you official snake catcher to the Bab-el-Khalk.”

  “Yes, effendi, thank you, effendi. But-”

  “What is it?”

  “Effendi, it will be the same with all the buildings. I cannot do them all.”

  The phone rang and Owen was summoned. It was Paul. “Gareth, there’s a slight spot of bother here at the Consulate-General-”

  Owen returned to the courtyard.

  “Could you do it if you had enough assistants?”

  “Effendi, it is not wise. And I would not wish to. It would be to change too much.”

  “She’s right, Owen,” said McPhee.

  “It was going to happen sometime,” said Jalila sadly. “My father was wrong. I could never be a boy. I could never be one of the Rifa’i. Even you,” she said to Owen, “cannot make me that. It is best to accept it. I will rid you of these snakes. But after that you must bring back the Rifa’i.”

  Jalila set to work, watched by an enthralled crowd. At the end of the morning she placed two full, wriggling bags on the ground before Owen.

  “I will pay you enough,” said Owen, “for you to have a handsome dowry, so that you can marry the man of your choice. However, I would like to put another proposal to you, too. That is, that you should be on my payroll and work for me. I need more women among my agents.”

  “Women on the payroll?” said Nikos faintly when he heard. “This is worse than Cromer!”

  Owen summoned the leaders of the Rifa’i.

  “First, one of your members attacks the Bimbashi. Then there are snakes in the courtyard. It seems to me that there are but two ways for you to go. One is to the caracol, where you would stay for a long time; the other is that we should go back to the way things were.”

  “Without the women?” asked one of the Rifa’i leaders.

  “Without the woman. Without an increase in pay, too.”

  “It’s a deal,” said the Rifa’i.

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