The Old Trade of Killing

by John Harris

  Selinski nodded and seemed to shudder, and as he moved off with Crabourne, Phil Garvey came up alongside me.

  ‘It’s starting,’ she said coolly. ‘Whatever it is that we both know about, whatever it is we’ve been expecting.’

  She was smiling, but even through the warmth I could see the nervousness in her eyes.

  I looked across the camp, dun-brown in its flat monotones of colour that hardly differed from the background of the Depression. The Arabs were standing in groups, talking in undertones, their eyes moving shiftily, as though they had somehow expected Selinski’s appearance. The wind muttered a little and I saw a wisp of sand suddenly get up like a top, spin for a while, moving along the track, then collapse again.

  As the dust settled, the Arab voices seemed to die and the Depression became twice as silent.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s starting.’

  Morena and I sat outside the tent until late, talking about Selinski’s arrival, smoking and trying to make a couple of cans of warm beer last forever. Morena was in a thoughtful mood, not nervous, because Morena was never nervous, but alert and cautious.

  ‘Crabourne’s got trouble,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘He has.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust that damn Ghad Ahmed as far as I could throw him.’

  I looked round at him, wondering if he’d seen something I’d missed.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno. Just something about him. I got like that in the army. Sergeants were closer to the blokes than you lot’ – he smiled, faintly apologetic – ‘and you got so you could size ’em up. I wasn’t often wrong. I just don’t trust Ghad Ahmed.’

  I spent some time that night writing up my diary. I’d been taking great care with it, because I’d decided if I were to get a book – or simply a story – out of the trip, then it would be as well to have as many facts down as I could, and the others were asleep long before I’d finished. I was tired when I turned out the lamp, but I lay sleeplessly in my blanket for some time, my mind groping towards half a dozen unformed little questions that seemed to need an answer and yet wouldn’t frame themselves properly. My eyelids began to droop at last and I was just on the point of dropping off when I became aware of noises somewhere outside that resolved themselves into confused shouting. I sat up abruptly and against the pale canvas of the tent I saw Morena and Nimmo sit up, too.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’

  I was just getting out of my blanket when we saw that the light outside had turned to yellow, a ruddy yellow that told us immediately what had happened. I’d seen that colour too often through the canvas of a bivouac tent not to know what it meant. Something was on fire and there were only a few things in the stony bowl of the Depression that would burn – the Arabs’ tents, our own tents, the crude huts that had been erected for Crabourne, and the vehicles. And judging by the noise it was more than a tent.

  We were out of the door in a flash, trampling on the sleeping figures of Houston and Leach.

  It was one of the lorries that had gone up and the first selfish thought that crossed my mind was ‘Thank God it belongs to Crabourne’.

  It was the big five-tonner and it was blazing like a torch, with a column of black smoke rising straight into the air. Fortunately, there was no wind, but people seemed to be running from every point of the camp in all sorts of undress, and I saw Selinski jump into one of Carbourne’s jeeps and drive it away to safety.

  I’d thought I was first out of the tent, but I saw the Land Rover move away with Nimmo at the wheel as I dragged open the driver’s door of our lorry, then, with my eyes full of smoke and my skin shrinking from the fierce lash of the heat, I got the engine going and roared after him, the wheels spinning in the soft sand. Morena got Crabourne’s laboratory van away, and I saw Phil driving the other jeep.

  We stopped the vehicles in a ragged line and headed back towards the blazing five-tonner. There was nothing we could do, however, except stand around in a circle and stare, because we had no water to spare and the fire extinguishers would have been useless.

  Ghad Ahmed was with a group of workmen, smarter and cleaner than the others, his face expressionless, his hands hanging down by his sides. A few of the women were chattering, but I noticed – though I don’t think anyone else did – that the men showed no signs of surprise or excitement. Even carrying coal on to a ship in Alex or Suez was always enough to get a crowd of Arabs worked up into a frenzy, but these men were standing like Ghad Ahmed himself, with their hands at their sides, their faces expressionless.

  The fire died down at last, leaving the lorry a smouldering wreck on lopsided wheels with melted tyres. The air was full of fluttering black fragments of charred paper which had been snatched away by the up-draught of the flames and were now coming slowly back to the ground, and overhead the stars shone, mysterious and cold and indifferent. The walls of the Depression seemed to swallow all sound, and everyone was quiet now, subdued and depressed, because there was nothing we could do until morning.

  We parked the vehicles again, carefully, nervously rechecking that they were in no danger. Crabourne seemed to be almost in tears.

  ‘How did it happen?’ he was demanding in a wail, standing in his pyjamas. ‘That goddam lorry hadn’t been used all day.’

  ‘Don’t take it too hard, Sloan,’ Phil Garvey was saying. ‘After all, it didn’t have the work on it.’

  He stared at her, unconvinced. ‘It’s sabotage,’ he snapped, coming to life with a jerk as his anger swept over him. ‘It’s plain goddam deliberate sabotage. I’m going to contact the police at Qalam. After all, that’s why we brought the transmitter along, isn’t it?’

  He walked away through the darkness towards the huts, his figure tense and urgent, and we stood in a group, waiting for him to return none of us speaking, all of us busy with uneasy thoughts.

  Within a few seconds, it seemed, he came running back, his eyes wild, his mouth working, and stopped in front of us, gasping, his hands flapping in desperate gestures of rage as he struggled to speak.

  ‘The transmitter’s been smashed,’ he panted at last. ‘Some-one’s smashed the front in!’

  Beyond the Depression the flinty aridness of the plain was an intense blackness like thick felt, a world that was flat and empty and forbiddingly full of secret shapes, and I felt another momentary pause of unreasoning, illogical fear as the phantoms moved closer, then Morena’s brisk, matter-of-fact voice brought me back to my senses.

  ‘What the hell did they do that for?’ he asked.

  As he spoke, I saw his expression change and he spun round on his heel and dived for our lorry, swinging back the canvas cover and switching on the torch he carried, as we all crowded round the tailboard after him.

  ‘Christ!’ I heard him say.

  I didn’t have to climb into the lorry to see what was wrong. The front of our transmitter was smashed in, too. There was even an iron bar still lying across it.

  The equipment was tumbled everywhere and papers and maps were scattered among the tin trunks and cans of food. For a moment it didn’t dawn on me what it was all about and I couldn’t quite see the reason for it, then it all clicked into place and I knew at once what they’d been searching for and the reason for the blaze. Nothing had been thrown out of the lorry in the search, or, if it had, it had been thrown back in again so that we shouldn’t notice it as we salvaged it.

  ‘What were the bastards after?’ Houston asked, but I was already swinging round and looking for Nimmo.

  ‘The tent,’ I said. ‘Get back to the tent – quick!’

  The same thought seemed to have occurred to him, too, and he’d set off running before I’d even finished.

  Houston and Morena watched him go. I hadn’t seen Leach on the scene near the blaze and I hoped like hell that he’d stayed in bed.

  By the time we reached the tent, Nimmo was standing in the doorway, his face dark.

  ‘Some bastard’s been i
n here,’ he said. ‘The place’s upside-down.’

  We lit the lamp and saw the uproar inside. Blankets had been flung everywhere and every kit bag and suitcase and pack had been tipped out on top of the ruin.

  Leach appeared at that moment, stepping out of the shadows as though materialising from nowhere.

  ‘What’s ’appened?’ he demanded, his big body bulky against the glow of the dying flames.

  ‘Where were you?’ Nimmo demanded angrily.

  ‘With you. Up by the lorry.’

  ‘More’s the bloody pity!’

  ‘Why? What the ’ell are you talking about?’

  Nimmo glared round at us, his face taut, that strange vicious glow in his eyes that I’d seen before. He seemed to have trouble in getting his words out.

  ‘The bastards have got the map,’ he said.

  Two

  Crabourne had no sympathy for us next day. In fact, he clearly considered us indirectly responsible for the loss of his lorry and the ruin of his transmitter.

  They were having a conference when I joined them. The morning was bright and luminous, sharp with an inhuman gleaming, as though every scrap of grit and every stone in the Depression had been polished and reflected the sun’s rays. They’d got the basket-boys working and you could hear the shovels scraping and the shuffling feet and the low muttering further down the Depression where I could see the white-clad figure of Ghad Ahmed directing operations.

  The burnt-out lorry stood on its own, a blackened shell surrounded by scraps of charred paper, and a circle of scuffed sand where we’d all waited and watched.

  Crabourne looked tired and worried, but Phil still managed to look efficient and smart. Selinski looked thinner than ever and his cockatoo’s crest of hair seemed to wilt in the heat.

  ‘It’s obviously connected with this goddam map of yours,’ Crabourne said, his face taut and angry. ‘Somebody set fire to my lorry to get us all into the vehicle park, so they could steal it.’

  There was no answer to him and he went on accusingly:

  ‘We’re in a fine mess now, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘With no transmitter and one lorry short.’

  Phil interrupted his self-sympathy. ‘We don’t need a transmitter, Sloan,’ she said. ‘Nothing’s happened that need stop us working.’

  He gestured impatiently. ‘We can’t be without contact with the rest of the world,’ he pointed out irritably. ‘We’ve got to pack up.’

  ‘That’s what they want us to do,’ she said quietly. ‘Go away from here.’

  He swung round at once. ‘Who does? What do you know?’

  She shrugged wearily. ‘I don’t know anything,’ she said. ‘But somebody does. Somebody’s obviously trying to drive us away.’

  He stared at her, Only half comprehending her fears. ‘What the devil for?’ he demanded.

  ‘Because,’ I said, ‘they obviously consider what we’re looking for of far more value than what you’re looking for.’

  He stared. ‘What in hell are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m suggesting that this treasure you say doesn’t exist very definitely does exist.’

  ‘It can’t exist,’ he exploded. ‘There’s no reason for it – no explanation!’

  ‘Good God,’ I said, trying to hang on to my patience, ‘something exists and whoever burned your lorry knows about it and wants it. And it’s big enough to make them willing to do this to you.’

  Crabourne stared at me unbelievingly, almost as though he couldn’t comprehend that anyone could set a greater value on anything than they could on his paintings.

  ‘They’ve probably been looking for it on and off for years,’ I went on. ‘When you came it was obvious they’d have another go. You were paying ’em to do it. It must have been a godsend to them when we turned up with a map.’

  His stubbornness irritated me and I insisted on a search being made of the Arab compound, but in spite of his anger Crabourne only gave way unwillingly, afraid still for his paintings.

  ‘It’ll cause trouble,’ he said. ‘Ghad Ahmed’s not going to like it.’

  ‘Sloan,’ Phil said sharply, the anger clear in her voice. ‘Ghad Ahmed’s not running this damned camp! We are!’

  We all trooped outside, Crabourne still nervous at the thought that the dispute might halt his work, and set off towards the Arab compound past the burnt-out lorry. It was only then that we noticed that the chatter of the basket-boys had stopped and that there was no one at work near the spoil-mound.

  ‘They’ve stopped,’ Crabourne said at once, turning to me, his voice full of resentment. ‘I said they would.’

  There was no sign of any work going on, and we walked through a camp that was ominously silent. As we reached the Arab tents and picked up the first acid whiff of camels and the reek of dung-smoke we saw a procession similar to our own heading towards us.

  ‘Trouble,’ Crabourne said, eyeing me with smouldering dislike.

  He stopped dead, licking his lips, and waited for the other group to approach. Ghad Ahmed was in the lead, his cruel young face set and tense. Behind him came the workmen and there was an atmosphere of hostility about them. The thought that crossed my mind was of two truce parties meeting to come to terms.

  The two groups stopped about ten yards apart and for a moment nobody said anything. Then Crabourne spoke.

  ‘Ahmed,’ he said, ‘during the blaze last night there was a thief in the camp. We think he deliberately set fire to the lorry to help him.’

  Ghad Ahmed said nothing, his face masked and enigmatic, and Crabourne went on nervously, obviously hating the job.

  ‘The transmitters were smashed and a map was stolen belonging to Captain Doyle’s party.’

  I saw Ghad Ahmed’s expression flicker at last and he glanced at the man on his right, a small man in black rags with flinty eyes like a snake.

  ‘We have no map,’ he said, and there was something about the way he said it that somehow made me think he was telling the truth.

  ‘The map’s gone, all the same,’ Phil said angrily. ‘And none of us have it!’

  Ghad Ahmed’s eyes shifted again. ‘Very well,’ he said calmly. ‘I will permit you to make a search. On one condition. If you are to question us, then we reserve the right to question you.’

  Crabourne stared. ‘God damn it, Ahmed, you’re not suggesting one of our party has stolen the map, are you?’

  Ahmed shook his head. ‘I am not referring to the map,’ he said.

  ‘Then what in hell are you referring to?’

  Ahmed signed to the men behind him and the group opened and it was then for the first time that we saw there was a body lying on the ground between them. I saw a bundle of rags, covered with a fragment of dirty blanket, and two limp brown feet sticking out from the bottom. The men on either side of it stared silently at us, their eyes like stones.

  Ghad Ahmed jerked a hand, his gaze all the time on Crabourne’s face.

  ‘I am talking about murder,’ he said.

  Three

  We tried to go about our work as though nothing had happened.

  We buried the dead man that afternoon. There was no knife wound on him and nothing to indicate who’d killed him. He’d simply failed to return to his tent after the blaze and his woman had finally reported his absence to Ghad Ahmed. The search party had found the body near the scattered rocks along the fringe of the camp near our tents, lying in a hollow, its neck broken.

  His death took all the wind out of our sails. Nothing more was said about searching the Arab compound and Ghad Ahmed dropped his request that our own half of the camp should be searched. It was an uneasy truce, however, because it was obvious now that each side distrusted the other.

  There was nothing else to be done, though. There were no police and there was no coroner to hold an inquest. Crabourne held a nervous enquiry into both incidents, but nothing came of it and there was nothing he could do after that except record them as fully as possible in the expedition log and let the matter dr
op. With tuberculosis and bilharziasis and the other odds and ends that the nomad Arabs suffered from, death was normal enough in the desert.

  The sense of events building up around us grew stronger. The workmen went about their duties, but the excited chattering that had gone on when we’d first arrived had become subdued and the atmosphere was different, resentment and disappointment going hand-in-hand with the feeling that Ghad Ahmed was still waiting for something.

  We watched them bury the shapeless bundle in a grave alongside the cliff wall, and the puffs of dust as the sapless earth was shovelled over it. We could hear a little muttering and the wailing of women, then the Arabs returned to their work without saying anything.

  It was from that point that I noticed there was always a man squatting on top of the spoil-mound with his eyes on our tent, a figure that never moved and never turned its gaze from our direction.

  I didn’t say anything to anyone until Morena was standing alone, then I pointed it out to him.

  He nodded. ‘I’d spotted him, too,’ he said.

  ‘What do you think he’s up to?’

  He looked uneasy. ‘There’s something I didn’t tell you,’ he said.

  ‘Go on. Let’s have the lot.’

  ‘That bloke. The one who was murdered. I had a look at him. Someone had hit him hard at the back of the neck. Bang. Just like that.’ He paused uncertainly. ‘It wasn’t an Arab,’ he ended.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Did you ever see an Arab fight with his bare hands? Always a knife or a baulk of timber. This wasn’t a baulk of timber.’

  ‘Go on.’

  He gestured. ‘You know as well as I do who could kill a man with a single blow across the neck.’

  ‘Someone who’d been trained in unarmed combat.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I dare bet,’ he said, ‘that none of the Arabs have. Or Crabourne or Selinski or the girl.’

  The inference was obvious.