The Donkey-Vous mz-3

by Michael Pearce

  Owen had already questioned the hotel staff. The staff on Reception thought they had seen Colthorpe Hartley pass them on his way out to the terrace at about his usual time. He had collected a drink at the bar, the other end of the bar from where Owen had been talking with the Charge, and then taken it outside. The bartender remembered this. The waiters had a half-impression of his being at a table but since he had made no demand on them had not really bothered to register his presence. There had been only a few guests out on the terrace and they had seen or remembered nothing. When Owen questioned them, though, their response was different from what it had been when Moulin had disappeared. This time there was a distinct uneasiness and a kind of sudden shrinking. Owen knew what it was: fear.

  Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley and Lucy had gone inside and Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley was lying down. Lucy came down to see them and tell him as much as she could, but then she went back to be with her mother.

  Word spread quickly. As guests came out of the diningroom and sat down in the lounge areas to take their coffee those already in the know brought them up to date. Guests returning late from the bazaars were drawn aside into the little groups that stood talking in the foyer or in the bar. On the previous occasion the management of the hotel had played everything down. There was no point in doing that now. The managers themselves were searching with their staff.

  Owen checked the dragomans. They had all been out that morning with various parties. As each party had returned, in time for lunch, the dragoman had shepherded its members up the steps and across the terrace and into the hotel, where he had parted with them after effusive farewells and pocketing his piastres. Then he had gone down the corridor behind Reception and out into the yard by the kitchens.

  Owen went to the yard to check. It was a small area hemmed in by the backs of buildings and reeked of kitchen refuse. Nevertheless, it was highly regarded by the hotel staff. This was because with high buildings all around it there was permanent shade. At any time of the day people could be found lying there. In the afternoon, after lunch had been cleared away and the world was at siesta, it was hard to find a space. By lunch time the sleepers were gathering and the yard would normally have been well occupied. All the local staff had been summoned, however, to help search the hotel. The dragomans, not strictly speaking staff members, would nevertheless have helped but Owen pulled them aside for the moment. They crowded around him, anxious and concerned.

  “Another one? That will be bad for the hotel.”

  “It will be bad for us,” said Osman. He had obviously been recumbent when the summons had come, for he had taken off his fez and skullcap. His hair was clipped and gray and stubbly, which gave him an oddly undressed look. Owen felt almost embarrassed and looked away. Osman felt the embarrassment too and covertly put on the small embroidered skullcap. “It will be bad for us, by God.”

  Abdul Hafiz, beside him, winced ever so slightly at his taking the name in vain.

  “It is a bad thing to do,” he said, “and bad men must have done it.”

  “I know the English ladies,” one of the dragomans volunteered. “They were in my party. I like them. Especially the young one. She talks to me as if I were a person.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Ismail.”

  “And were they in your party this morning, Ismail?”

  “As always. I am their dragoman.”

  “They came back with you, then?”

  “Yes. The young one ran on up the steps to speak with her father. She respects her father, even though he is strange.”

  “I like to see that,” said Osman, who, Owen realized, now that he had seen his hair, was older than he looked.

  “It is a good thing in children,” asserted Abdul Hafiz. “Who does not respect his father respects no one.”

  “This English lady respects her father,” said Ismail, “and so I am sad to see him taken.”

  “The English lady ran on ahead?”

  “Yes. She usually does.”

  “How far ahead?”

  “Not far. I saw her going into the hotel as I came to the foot of the steps.”

  “You followed her in with the rest of the party?”

  “Yes. And then she came running down the stairs and spoke to her mother and her mother went pale and I thought: This is a bad business, surely. I thought perhaps the father had been taken ill and when the mother did not at once fly up the stairs to their room to tend him, I wondered. But then one said to me what the matter was and I understood.”

  “So what did you do then?”

  “I thought the mother was going to be overcome so I helped her to a chair. I stood by for a little-I had not been paid-and then I thought: In distress one wants those near to one and not a stranger. So I left the ladies and came to the yard and told the others.”

  “Were you all here?” Owen asked the dragomans.

  “I wasn’t,” said one of them. “We were late today. They wanted to spend more time in the House of Tsakatellis.”

  “You came after?” said Owen, noting the man.

  “Yes. When I came Zaki Effendi was standing on the steps looking stern. I said to myself, there is trouble. But I thought perhaps they had found the body.”

  “The body?”

  “Of the Frenchman. The one who was taken previously.”

  “The Frenchman is dead, then?” said Osman, aghast.

  “I expect so.

  “But you have not heard so?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The rest of you,” said Owen, trying to recover the thread, “were all here, then?”

  “That is right.”

  “How long had you been here? Who was the last of you to arrive?”

  “I was,” said Ismail.

  “No, not you. Before you.”

  “I was, I think,” said Abdul Hafiz, doubtfully.

  “No, I was,” another dragoman corrected him. “Your party was still in the hall when I arrived, so I kept mine back.”

  “They came very nearly together.”

  “And when was this? How long before Ismail?”

  The dragomans consulted.

  “It was before Mohammed arrived, because we were all given bread.”

  “Except me,” said Ismail.

  “Well, yes,” said Abdul Hafiz. “I was keeping your bread for you.”

  “We were early this morning,” said Osman. “We usually have to keep the bread for two or three.”

  “We were early,” the others agreed.

  Owen would check the time of Mohammed’s arrival independently. He would have been bringing them bread from the kitchens. The dragomans received no wages from the hotel, relying on what they made from their clients for income. The hotel, however, extended hospitality to them in the form of bread (and usually quite a lot of other things) in recognition of their being, as it were, part of its family and not part of another.

  “And did none of you leave?”

  They knew what he meant.

  “None of us left,” said Osman soberly. The others confirmed that with nods. If there had been doubt it would have been indicated.

  “None of us had a hand in this,” said Osman.

  McPhee’s meticulous searching failed to uncover any more sign of Colthorpe Hartley than it had of Moulin. Nor did Garvin’s and Mahmoud’s questioning produce anything.

  “I find it incredible,” said Garvin, “that a man could be kidnapped from the terrace of Shepheard’s in full view of about a hundred people not twenty yards away without someone seeing something.”

  But no one apparently had. Colthorpe Hartley had disappeared from the face of the earth as completely as Moulin had.

  More completely, for whereas on the first occasion Colthorpe Hartley himself had been able to report something, the presence of the unaccounted-for dragoman, on the occasion of his own disappearance no one had seen anything.

  “And maybe there’s a connection,” said Garvin, frowning. “Maybe Colthorpe Hartley was taken just be
cause he saw something. You said he was on the point of telling you, didn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that,” said Owen. “He might have been on the point of remembering something. Something about the dragoman.”

  “How can you be on the point of remembering?” asked Garvin crossly. “You either remember or you don’t.”

  “Not in Colthorpe Hartley’s case. He’s had an illness or something. It’s left him a bit impaired. It’s as if there are things at the back of his mind which don’t quite reach the front.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I can understand that,” said McPhee seriously. “I’m like it sometimes. There’s something at the back of my mind, I can’t just put my finger on it, it’s almost on the tip of my tongue but it just won’t come. And then next day, perhaps, out it pops.”

  “You’re bloody impaired too,” said Garvin disgustedly.

  “That’s how it was with Colthorpe Hartley. He thought there was a chance of it popping out the next day.”

  “Did anyone else apart from you hear him say that?”

  Owen thought.

  “It was out on the terrace,” he said.

  “That’s where you conduct your inquiries, is it? Out on the terrace where every bugger can hear?”

  “He asked me to join him. I didn’t know what he was going to say.”

  “But others could hear?”

  “Yes,” said Owen, remembering. “We were close to the railings. The vendors could have heard.”

  “Could have seen, too. Should have seen. Probably did see. We’re back to them again.”

  “And to the dragoman, too, if that’s what he was taken for.” But here Owen’s inquiries, too, had shown a blank. He had checked Mohammed’s delivery of the bread and had been able to establish the time precisely since the maitre d’hotel had intercepted him on his way. Mohammed had confirmed that all the dragomans, bar Ismail, had been in the yard. There was multiple independent confirmation of this, too.

  “One of them could have slipped out,” said Garvin.

  Owen had done his best to check this too. Those in the yard were adamant that this hadn’t happened. They had been having a particularly lively conversation and others besides the dragomans had been involved. If it was so lively, was the possibility not even greater that someone could have slipped out unnoticed? No, because they were all sitting up in a ring of about a dozen people and if anyone had got up the others would have seen. Besides, no one did get up because they were all too engrossed in what was being said. Owen could believe this at any rate since several of the participants, dragomans and non-dragomans alike, had repeated large parts of the conversation word for word for his benefit.

  In the end one couldn’t be absolutely sure that no one had slid away unobserved, but Owen felt inclined to believe them. The dragomans, behind the parade they put on for the benefit of tourists, were serious, intelligent men. They understood exactly what effect this second kidnapping might have on the hotel’s trade and indirectly on them. Besides, several of them were plainly shocked. They were involved with their clients and were upset that such a thing should happen to them. Their cooperation, he felt, was considered and genuine.

  “If anyone had slipped away,” said Osman quietly, “we would have seen them and we would tell.”

  Which was all very well, but where did it leave the inquiry?

  “Right back at the beginning,” said Garvin.

  Right back at the beginning, very much as it had been on the day that Moulin disappeared. They had found out some things, but they were not things that appeared to lead anywhere. Berthelot was clearly up to something, but whatever he was up to was hardly likely to involve Colthorpe Hartley.

  The second kidnapping took them back to first facts, which were that Moulin had been kidnapped by a terrorist group called Zawia about which nothing was known beyond their name, and that they had declared themselves.

  Not surprisingly, other people noticed the lack of progress; and fingers began to be pointed. They were pointed, obviously, at Owen.

  “New in the country,” he overhead someone say. “Still wet behind the ears. A good job they’ve brought Garvin in now.”

  Too trusting, was the charge. Even more deadly: “Too friendly with the Gyppies.”

  Increasingly, though, the fingers began to be pointed at Mahmoud. He was, after all, formally in charge of the investigation. “Not really his show,” Owen’s defenders maintained on behalf of Owen. But it was inescapably Mahmoud’s show. He had been conducting the investigation since the hour of Moulin’s disappearance and what results had he to offer? You need time for an investigation like this, the Parquet’s defenders-and there were few of them in the British community-argued. “Gyppies always need time,” was the reply. “The forever bokra boys.”

  Bokra. Tomorrow. Manana. It was unfair on Mahmoud, who of all people was the most businesslike and undilatory. But then, people weren’t thinking in personal terms. It wasn’t Moulin and Colthorpe Hartley who had been attacked but foreigners in general, not Colthorpe Hartley as an individual but the British community in Egypt as a whole. Mahmoud was an Egyptian and that was enough.

  Meanwhile, they had to get on with their work. Mahmoud went through his questioning as meticulously as before but with the same result. No one had seen anything or heard anything: not even, this time, the old snake charmer, who merely stood shaking his head as if totally confused.

  Like Moulin, Colthorpe Hartley had disappeared “into thin air,” as McPhee infuriatingly kept putting it.

  The ransom note came and Lucy Colthorpe Hartley brought it out to them. It was in much the same terms as before and for the same amount. As before, it was signed “Zawia.”

  “A hundred thousand piastres,” said Owen. “It’s a lot of money, Miss Colthorpe Hartley. Can you pay it?”

  Lucy hesitated.

  “I suppose we can,” she said, “if we sell a few things. A lot of things. Daddy isn’t as well off as you might think. But ought we to pay it?”

  Owen took his time about replying.

  “No,” said Mahmoud. “No, Miss Colthorpe Hartley, you should not pay it.”

  Lucy looked at him.

  “I know you’re right in principle, Mr. El Zaki. Still, when it’s your own father… ” She turned away and went back into the hotel.

  “I wouldn’t press her,” said Owen.

  “You see where you get if you give in,” said Mahmoud savagely. “After Moulin, Colthorpe Hartley. Give in over him and there will be another. And another, and another, until people refuse to pay.”

  “Or until we catch them.”

  “We haven’t made much progress so far.” Mahmoud looked weary.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Owen.

  They walked across the street and into the Wagh el Birket, where they found a table outside a restaurant.

  “I don’t understand it,” said Mahmoud, pulling a chair into the shade and sinking down tiredly. “You usually come across a loose end, something you can pull and go on pulling.”

  “The loose end was the dragoman, wasn’t it?”

  “In the case of Moulin, yes. But even then, pulling it doesn’t seem to have got us very far.”

  “It doesn’t seem even a loose end so far as Colthorpe Hartley goes.”

  “Except in so far as he might have been about to identify the dragoman who spoke to Moulin.”

  “True.”

  The boy brought coffee and two large tumblers of iced water.

  “There could be a dragoman in it,” said Mahmoud, sipping the water first. “There’s obviously someone involved who knows the hotel well. That’s true for the latest one, too. Whoever took Colthorpe Hartley knew his habits well enough to be sure that he would be on the terrace at that particular time. So they’d have to be connected in some way with the hotel-”

  “With the front of the hotel,” said Owen. “That’s all the knowledge they’d need. It could be someone on the street.”
r />   “A vendor? Yes. Though don’t forget they also knew about Berthelot’s visits to Anton’s, which argues some inside knowledge. That’s more likely to be a dragoman than a vendor.”

  “If it was a dragoman, though, would he be in Zawia?”

  “Why shouldn’t he be in Zawia?”

  “If it’s fundamentalist. Or nationalist.”

  “Look,” said Mahmoud, “the only thing that makes you think it could be fundamentalist or nationalist is the name.”

  “Yes, but the names usually mean something.”

  “ ‘The Bloody Hand?’ ‘The Evil Eye?’ That means something?”

  “ ‘Revenge of Islam.’ ‘Free Egypt.’ ‘Sword for the Oppressors.’ They mean something.”

  Mahmoud could not restrain his exasperation.

  “The only thing that makes you think it’s that sort of group is the name. And that could mean a variety of things. It doesn’t just mean a convent or religious center. It means-”

  “Turning point. I know.”

  “Corner.”

  “You turn the corner and you get to something different. A different way of life. Revolution.”

  “You still think it’s nationalist, don’t you?”

  “I think it could be. Why else should it be aimed at foreigners?”

  “It’s not aimed at foreigners. Moulin and Colthorpe Hartley have been taken not because they’re foreigners but because they’re rich.”

  “They’re rich and foreign. A good target.”

  “Tsakatellis-if he’s anything to do with it and not someone dragged in by some crazy association of Nikos’s-”

  “Nikos is perceptive on these matters,” said Owen coldly. Too coldly. He hadn’t meant it to come out like that. “Anyway, doesn’t Tsakatellis support my argument? He’s foreign.”

  “He’s not foreign!” Mahmoud made an angry gesture with his hand. Dismissive. Contemptuous.

  “To an Islamic fundamentalist he’s foreign.”

  “To a nationalist, too, I suppose?” Mahmoud suddenly boiled over. “Why are you so suspicious?” he shouted. “Why are you always so suspicious?”

  “I’m not-”

  “You don’t trust us! You are like all the British. You don’t trust Egyptians. You hate us!”