The Girl in the Nile

by Michael Pearce

  “Then?” Owen prompted softly.

  “The mistress became—as she is now. Leila nursed her tenderly. But as the months went by she became restless. She was a young woman now and needed more. She needed a man. She started to go out.”

  “She had friends?”

  “Yes. Some she had met—when she was with him. I do not know what sort of friends they were that they would let a young woman come to them on her own! But soon she was always with them.”

  “Nights?”

  “No,” said the woman. “Well, once or twice, perhaps. She said she had been to the theater and that afterwards they had talked late. I did not press. I did not want to know. The theater!” She shuddered. “What sort of place is that for a woman to go to? If that was the sort of friends they were—!”

  “Did she tell you any of their names?”

  “No.”

  Owen thought.

  “I would like to see her room. Perhaps she kept names, addresses.”

  The woman hesitated uncertainly.

  “Are you married?” she asked suddenly.

  “Me? No.”

  “It would not be proper.”

  “How about him?” said Owen, indicating the Greek. “He is married.”

  The woman surveyed the Greek closely.

  “Yes,” she said, “I can see that. How many wives have you got?” she asked with interest.

  “One,” said the Greek. “That is more than enough.”

  The woman cackled.

  “She keeps you on a tight rein, does she? That is proper,” she said approvingly. “Very well,” she said, “I will show you her room.”

  Owen, alone in the room, poured himself some more coffee. There was an old shiraz carpet on the wall, very faded, an old, full-length incredibly elaborate mirror, some old pots, Persian boxes. No money in the house now, he thought, but money in the past. He wondered about Leila’s family.

  Georgiades came back shaking his head. Owen stood up.

  “Thank you,” he said to the old servant woman. “You have been very helpful. There is just one thing more: I feel I should tell Leila’s parents. Can you give me their names and tell me where I might find them?”

  The woman stood very still.

  “She is dead to them already,” she said bitterly. “Why do you bring a dead body back from the grave?”

  ***

  Since he was in the area, Owen decided he would go down to the river and take another look at the shoal on which Leila’s body had come to rest. His way took him past the local police station. Sitting on the ground in front of it were the two constables who had delayed him at the dovecot during the arms search. They greeted him cheerfully.

  “Hello,” they said. “Any nearer finding that body?”

  “Yes,” said Owen. “I’m nearer.”

  “Good. Tell us when you find it.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Owen. “I will.”

  He would too, he promised himself. He was sure they knew something, some trick that that idle, rascally District Chief had been up to. There had been something they’d said. What was it?

  And then he stopped in his tracks, turned and made his way in a quite different direction.

  He found the watchman asleep under a tree, his legs curled up under him as they had been when he had pantomimed the way he had found the body, his turban neatly parked beside him. Owen stirred him gently with his foot.

  The man’s eyes opened.

  “Effendi!” he said in alarm, scrambling to his feet.

  “I am sorry to disturb you, Abu,” said Owen, “but there are things I would know.”

  “I will help you if I can,” the man said doubtfully, “but I have told you all I know.”

  “Not quite all. Let us go back to the moment you found the body, the moment you realized that it was a body. What did you do?”

  “I went to the Chief to report it.”

  “This was at the police station, was it?”

  “Yes, effendi.”

  “Was he alone?”

  “No, effendi. Fazal was with him. Fazal had just come in and they were talking. They were talking”—Abu lowered his eyes bashfully—“about you, effendi.”

  “About me?”

  “Yes, effendi. Fazal said that you had met up with the men and had started work. And the Chief said: ‘Already? Before God, they must have little work to do.’ That is what he said, effendi.”

  “Did he?” said Owen grimly.

  “It is all the same with these great people—this is what he said, effendi. They have nothing better to do than go down and make a nuisance of themselves to people who are peacefully going about their own affairs. That is what he said.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. And then he turned on me and shouted: ‘And here is another! What have you brought me to spoil my day, Abu?’ And I told him, and he said: ‘What do I care about bodies? Let it lie there.’ And Fazal said: ‘You had better not do that if the Mamur Zapt is about.’ And the Chief said, ‘That is true, Fazal.’ And he thought, and then he said: ‘I know what we will do, Fazal. You go and tell the Mamur Zapt that there is urgent business at the river. Let him see to it.’ And then he laughed and said: ‘This is the way to do it, Fazal. Let us get the great working for us for a change.’”

  “Thank you,” said Owen. “Very interesting.”

  “That was good, wasn’t it, effendi?” said Abu happily. “To have you working for him and not the other way round.”

  “Oh, very good. So Fazal went off to fetch me. And then what?”

  “Then the Chief picked up the phone and said to me: ‘And while we are at it, let us get those other idle bastards off their backsides.’ Pardon, effendi, that is what he said.”

  “Go on. Who did he phone?”

  “The Parquet, I think. And one other. And then he said to me: ‘Push off, Abu! Get back to the river lest the Mamur Zapt come and find no one there.’ So I went.”

  “What about Ibrahim? Was he sent with you?”

  “Yes, effendi. The Chief put his head out of the office and called for him and said: ‘Go with Abu. There is a body. You know what to do.’ ‘Yes,’ said Ibrahim, ‘I know what to do.’ And so we went together.”

  “That,” said Owen, “is most interesting.”

  “Is it, effendi?” said Abu, greatly gratified.

  “Yes. But still puzzling. Tell me, Abu: you went to the river together?”

  “Yes, effendi.”

  “That is what I find puzzling. Are you sure?”

  “Yes, effendi.”

  “All the way? Together?”

  “Yes, effendi. Well, Ibrahim asked me to call in at Mohammed Fingari’s to get a package for him. And that was strange because Mohammed said, ‘What package is this?’ And I said—”

  “OK, OK,” said Owen. “I get the idea. You went in to get the package while Ibrahim went on to the river—was that it?”

  “Yes, effendi.”

  “So you joined him there?”

  “Yes, effendi. And he chided me, saying: ‘Where have you been, Abu? What if the Mamur Zapt had come in your absence?’ And I said: ‘It is not my fault, Ibrahim. You—’”

  “Thank you. Thank you. I understand. So in fact Ibrahim arrived at the river first?”

  “Yes, effendi.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, effendi. Until I got there. Which wasn’t long, effendi, really. I swear it. It was just that—”

  “Thank you. You have told me what I wished to know.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes. And now we will go to the Chief.”

  Abu fell in beside him. He was clearly, however, turning things over in his mind.

  “Effendi,” he said diffidently.

  “Yes?”

 
“If I have said anything untoward, the Chief will bear me.”

  “If what you have told me is true, it will be the Chief who is beaten.”

  ***

  “So tell me, Ibrahim, what happened when you and Abu went down to the river?”

  The constable scratched his head.

  “What happened? Nothing happened. When we got there, the body wasn’t there. If it ever had been there.”

  “You went to the river together?”

  “Indeed.”

  “All the way—together?”

  “Yes. More or less.”

  “You did not go on ahead?”

  “No, effendi. Well, if I did, that was because Abu took so long. Yes, I remember, effendi.” He turned to Owen, “I waited, but that foolish fellow took so long—having a cup of tea, no doubt—that I was worried lest you come and find the corpse unattended, so I hurried on.”

  “Alone?”

  “Well, yes, alone.”

  “And what did you do when you came to the river?”

  “To the river? Nothing. I waited for Abu. It was but a minute, effendi. And then you came.”

  “You weren’t there long?”

  “No, effendi.”

  “But long enough to fetch the pole?”

  Ibrahim’s jaw dropped.

  “Pole?” he said.

  “That’s what you use, isn’t it? To push the bodies off? So that they float down to the next district and you don’t have to report them?”

  The Chief had gone pale.

  “That is correct, isn’t it?” Owen addressed him. “That is the usual practice, is it not?”

  The Chief found it hard to speak.

  “Sometimes,” he said at last.

  “Only this time it was a mistake. For you had already summoned me. And notified the Parquet. You did not mean it to happen this time. Only Ibrahim misunderstood you. ‘You know what to do,’ you said to him. And he thought he knew what that meant.”

  The corporal shot the Chief an agonized glance.

  “So he got rid of Abu and hurried on ahead. And when he got to the river he took the pole—and he pushed the body off!”

  “Effendi—”

  “That is what happened, didn’t it?”

  “Effendi—”

  “This time,” said Owen, “you had better speak the truth.”

  “Effendi,” said Ibrahim desperately, “that is what would have happened if—”

  “Yes?”

  “If the body had been there!”

  Chapter Five

  “What?”

  Mahmoud sprang out of his chair.

  “Sit down, sit down,” said Owen hurriedly, looking around him at the crowded café. The clientele, however, used to the drama of Arab conversation, went on placidly reading their newspapers.

  “What did you say?”

  “They pushed them off. So that they floated down to the next district and they wouldn’t have to bother.”

  “Pushed them off?”

  Mahmoud could hardly believe his ears, refused to believe his ears.

  “Yes. There was a special pole they used. That was what gave me the clue. The constables mentioned a pole.”

  “But this, this is—”

  Mahmoud, incoherent with fury, could not for the moment say what it was.

  “Outrageous!” he shouted.

  “Yes, yes. Come on, sit down,” said Owen, plucking at his arm. Mahmoud shook him off.

  “Disgraceful!”

  “Yes, yes. I know. Come on—”

  “I’ll have their blood!” stormed Mahmoud. “I’ll have their blood for this!”

  He smashed his fist down on the table.

  This did attract the attention of some of the newspaper readers. It even attracted the attention of the waiter, which was much more difficult. He came across and dabbed up the spilled coffee with a dirty dishcloth and a flourish.

  “By all means,” said Owen soothingly. “Have their blood. But have some coffee first.”

  He coaxed Mahmoud back into his chair.

  “It is tampering with the evidence!” shouted Mahmoud.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Evidence is what the whole system is based on. If we cannot trust that, where are we?”

  “Fortunately we found out.”

  “Yes.”

  Mahmoud quieted down and raised a fresh cup of coffee to his lips. Suddenly he crashed it down again.

  “In this one case!” he shouted. He sprang to his feet. “What about the others? The ones we have not found out? You said there were others. The pole! There was a special pole they used for the purpose. That was what you said. There must be others!”

  “The bodies will have turned up lower down. Come on, sit down. They’ll have been reported, they’ll be in the system. All we have to do is to check back. Sit down!”

  Mahmoud reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled down.

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” he said to Owen. “It’s the principle.”

  For Mahmoud it was. He had a vision of the legal system as the expression of a clear, abstract principle of justice and believed that practice should correspond. Unfortunately, this being Egypt, the relation of the operating parts of the system to the ideal vision was somewhat cloudy. This was a perpetual source of vexation to Mahmoud and his efforts to do something about it drove him towards reform at the political level— he was a member of the Nationalist party—and perfectionism in his daily work.

  He identified so strongly with the system at its most ideal that when practice fell short, as it invariably did, he took it personally. When the servants of justice revealed shortcomings, as in this case of the local Chief and his constable, he felt it almost as personal betrayal.

  “This kind of thing makes a mockery of the whole system,” he said bitterly.

  “It’s just a pair of lazy sods,” said Owen.

  “To you, perhaps. To me, they are part of the system. And when part of the system fails, the system as a whole fails.”

  He brooded over his coffee.

  “It doesn’t matter to you much, does it?” he suddenly shot at Owen.

  “Not much,” Owen admitted.

  “Why is that? Is it because you don’t expect any better of Egyptians anyway?”

  “No.”

  The conversation had suddenly moved, as conversation between British and Egyptians often did, into a minefield.

  “No,” Owen said carefully, very carefully. “It’s just that I don’t think in terms of system as much as you do.”

  Mahmoud looked at him intently and then suddenly relaxed.

  “I know what it is,” he said, smiling. “It is that you are British. No,”—he quickly laid his hand on Owen’s arm in the Arab way—“I did not mean it like that. I meant that you British are always pragmatic. Whereas I”—he sighed theatrically and smote himself on the chest—“am Arab.”

  “French.”

  Mahmoud looked startled. “French?” he said.

  “In this case. The emphasis on system is French, not Arab. You are a true Parquet lawyer, my friend.”

  “Not Arab? Ah well, it is very confusing being an Egyptian.”

  They both laughed and then sat sipping their coffee equably. Owen had, however, the sense of relief that follows a near miss.

  It was often like that in conversation with educated Egyptians. Partly it was normal Arab volatility, their ability to move from elation to depression, rage to calm, in the space of a few bewildering seconds. Partly, though, it was the explosive potential inherent in any true conversation between a representative of a dominating power and one of the dominated.

  “Being in Egypt,” he said, “not just being an Egyptian.”

  Mahmoud, however, had already for
gotten what had passed and was thinking about something else.

  “Ibrahim went there expecting to find the body, didn’t he? That was where bodies came ashore. They even kept a pole there ready. He didn’t expect it to be washed off again, either. That’s not what happened. Once a body had grounded, you had to push it off. If there was any chance of it floating away again of its own accord, he wouldn’t have bothered.”

  “So?”

  “So it wasn’t washed away. And he didn’t push it off. So—”

  “Yes?”

  “Either somebody else did, which isn’t likely, because what would be their motive? Ibrahim and the Chief had a motive all right; they wanted to get out of work. But anyone else?”

  “Or?”

  “Or somebody found it and took it away.”

  “Who would want to do a thing like that?”

  “I think I know,” said Mahmoud.

  ***

  Mahmoud took Owen to a part of the city he had never been to before. It was tucked into a corner of Bulak and must have been near the river, for once Owen caught a glimpse of ship masts at the end of a street. But then streets disappeared altogether and there was just a mass of houses running into one another with the occasional alleyway between them.

  The alleyways were scored with deep trenches down which the water ran when it rained; or would have run had its passage not been blocked by heaps of refuse, dung and animal guts, behind which the water collected in stagnant pools, above which mosquitoes hung in a cloud.

  Mahmoud came to one of these alleyways and hesitated. Looking down it, Owen saw kite hawks picking at the carcass of a dog. Kites were Cairo’s scavengers and kept the city clean. Owen normally took them for granted. Today, however, they seemed disturbing.

  Mahmoud saw something further on and touched Owen’s arm. In the shadow between the houses Owen could not see what it was but when they came up to it he saw that it was a man.

  He was sitting against a wall with his legs tucked up under him. There was something odd about them. Perhaps he had no legs.

  He seemed asleep. Mahmoud put his hand down and shook him. The man came awake with a start and put his hand up to his face. Owen had taken him for a Sudani because his face was black. As he raised his hand it seemed as if the whole front of his face came off. The blackness was a solid layer of flies. Beneath, the face was one raw wound.