A Dead Man in Tangier

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Juliette, calm yourself –’

  ‘No, Constant. I will not. That woman is always causing trouble. She and her father. Yes, her father, too! As you know better than anyone.'

  ‘Juliette, really –’

  ‘He quarrelled with everyone! Even with poor Bossu!’

  ‘Juliette –’

  ‘When he was only trying to help him.'

  ‘Help him?’ asked Seymour.

  She turned on him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You don’t know this, do you? You only hear one side. It is always: de Lissac good, so good, Bossu bad. But it was not like that. Yes, they were against each other in Casablanca, and bitter things were said. But afterwards – when they were so poor. Destitute. When no one would help them. Bossu did what he could for them. He found de Lissac work. Yes! When no one else would. He got him a job. Driving a truck. “I know it’s not much,” he said, “but it’s something. It will put you back on your feet. After that it’s up to you. I know you don’t like me. I don’t like you. I’m doing it not for your sake but for hers.” That’s what he said. I heard him. When he came round to our house that morning. “It’s a chance,” Bossu said. “Take it or leave it. But it’s meant well.”’

  ‘Juliette,’ said Renaud, ‘we don’t need to go into this –’

  ‘I know what they say about Bossu. That he had it in for him. But he didn’t. It’s not true. He helped him when no one else would. And as for the daughter! Stirring up trouble with the students. That’s her, all right. Showing herself in her true colours. A troublemaker! Just like her father!'

  Renaud finished his tea quickly and then said he must return to the students. Seymour, to Juliette’s chagrin, said that he would go with him. He could still hear the shouting in the distance and as they drew nearer, it grew louder.

  ‘The idiots!’ said Renaud. ‘The last thing that Tangier needs just at the moment is this sort of thing.'

  ‘It is to be expected, I suppose,’ said Seymour. ‘With the French moving in. You’re lucky you’ve not had it before.'

  ‘It will do no good,’ said Renaud.

  ‘Of course not! But sometimes it is desirable to let feelings be expressed.'

  Renaud was silent. Then he said:

  ‘As long as it doesn’t get out of hand.'

  ‘A few students?'

  ‘It could spread. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. A few people. You think it is nothing. But then suddenly other people are drawn in, and the next moment it is spreading like wildfire. And the moment after that the whole town is ablaze. I’ve seen it, Monsieur Seymour, I’ve seen it. You don’t know these people. Volatile. Excitable. You’ve got to stop it before it catches fire.'

  ‘Let them shout their heads off for a bit,’ advised Seymour. ‘And then have a word with them. Tell them to go home.'

  ‘But while they’re shouting, others will be hearing.'

  ‘Make sure they stay in the building. And then it doesn’t matter if anyone does hear them.'

  ‘But suppose they run out? I only have a few policemen –’

  ‘Go in and talk to them, then. Tell them they’ve made their point. You’ve let them do that. Now it’s time to go home.'

  ‘But will they listen to me? Suppose they don’t?'

  ‘They’ll listen to you if you talk to them in the right way.'

  ‘They’d listen a lot more if I had a few soldiers here!' said Renaud, glancing around nervously.

  The students had occupied a large block of the college and festooned it with banners. Students were leaning out of windows and shouting slogans. As Seymour listened, a chant began. Soon they were all joining in. Seymour didn’t need to understand the words. Something like ‘French out!’ presumably.

  Renaud left him and went to talk to some of his policemen.

  Awad appeared at a door.

  ‘This is a free zone,’ he declared. ‘A free Moroccan zone!'

  ‘Now, lads –’ began Renaud.

  He was greeted with a chorus of jeers.

  ‘Come on, lads, this won’t do! You’ve got to stop it. You’ve got to go home.'

  More jeers.

  ‘Never!’ said Awad. ‘We shall not go home until Morocco is free!’

  Now there were cheers as well as jeers.

  ‘You see?’ said Renaud, retreating.

  Seymour saw Chantale standing at a door down the side of the building. She was surrounded by students and was writing furiously.

  He walked round to her.

  ‘How’s the occupation going?’

  ‘It’s making its point, don’t you think?’ asked Chantale.

  ‘That rather depends on what’s said in the newspapers.’

  ‘Alas,’ said Chantale, ‘I’m the only newspaper.’

  ‘I thought there were dozens of you? Spanish, French, English –’

  ‘That’s what I told them,’ said Chantale. ‘It looked as if they were going to try beating up the students otherwise.’

  ‘Are they going to go home when it gets dark?’

  ‘This is the last day of Ramadan. Tonight everyone will break their fast. Usually they have a splendid feast. I don’t think the students will want to miss that.’

  Some more students came up and buttonholed her.

  Sadiq came out of the door, saw Seymour and went up to him.

  ‘Brilliant, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fantastic! I congratulate you.’

  Sadiq looked around.

  ‘I rather expected Benchennouf to be here,’ he said. ‘We told him what we were going to do and he was very pleased. “The revolution starts here!” he said. So we rather expected him to come. But I don’t see him, do you?’

  Awad joined them.

  ‘I expected more people to be here!’ he said, vexed. ‘I expected ordinary people to rise up and join us!’

  A small group of Moroccan officials had appeared at the end of the street.

  ‘Ah! There’s my father!’ said Awad, and ran back inside. A moment later he thrust his head through an open upper window and began shouting. Others joined him.

  Renaud was talking to Suleiman Fazi.

  ‘It’s getting out of hand,’ he said. ‘We ought to act now.'

  ‘Well, go on: act!’ said Suleiman Fazi.

  Renaud looked around.

  ‘I’ve not got enough men,’ he said. ‘I need some soldiers.'

  ‘Not soldiers!’ said Suleiman Fazi.

  ‘Soldiers,’ muttered Renaud, preoccupied, and hurried away.

  ‘Don’t let him!’ said Seymour.

  Suleiman Fazi shrugged.

  ‘I can’t stop him,’ he said. ‘Can’t do anything. I’m just the Minister.'

  Chantale had been listening.

  ‘Tell him to stop!’ she said urgently. ‘They’re not really doing anything. Just shouting.'

  ‘He won’t listen to me. Nor will the French.'

  ‘They’ll listen to me!’ said Chantale and hurried away.

  Seymour walked over to the students.

  ‘Can I talk to Awad?’ he said.

  ‘Why are you carrying that lance?'

  ‘It’s a souvenir. To remind me of Morocco.'

  Someone went to fetch Awad.

  ‘Congratulations!’ said Seymour. ‘You’ve done very well. Brilliantly. As good an occupation as I’ve seen! And, believe me, I’ve seen some.'

  ‘In England?’ said Awad, pleased.

  ‘And in Istanbul,’ said Seymour, stretching a point.

  ‘Well!’ said Awad, beaming. ‘Well!'

  ‘You won’t mind if I suggest something? The trouble is with demonstrations that they usually fizzle out and the whole point is lost. People drift away. Don’t let them. End by triumphantly marching off. You’ve made your point. You’ve made it brilliantly. Now disappear and leave them gaping!'

  Awad looked thoughtful.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘the mosque is saying something rather like that, too. They say this is Ramadan and we ought to beha
ve ourselves. This is a holy festival and we ought not to have arranged our demonstration for during it.'

  ‘Well, look,’ said Seymour, ‘you can put that right, can’t you? Take yourselves off and say that you are doing it to ensure that Ramadan ends in the right way.'

  ‘I went in to see him,’ complained Renaud indignantly, ‘and he turned me away! “Do your own dirty work!” he said. Well! It wasn’t like this in the old days, I can tell you! “Do your own dirty work.” I’m doing his dirty work. What can I do with a handful of policemen in a city of this size? When there is an emergency on this scale.'

  ‘Nothing, cher coll`egue! Nothing.’

  ‘I’ve a good mind to wash my hands of the whole affair.'

  ‘Why not?'

  ‘Well, one feels . . . one feels . . .'

  ‘Responsible?’ suggested Seymour.

  ‘Exactly. Responsible. Somehow.'

  ‘Coll`egue, they are talking of withdrawing by this evening.’

  ‘They are?'

  ‘It appears so.'

  ‘Well . . . Well, that puts a different complexion on things.'

  ‘If I were you,’ said Seymour, ‘I’d pull back your men to the end of the street. Or even into the next street. Where they’d be ready if needed but not too conspicuous. So as not to be too provocative. It would be foolish at this stage to provoke an incident, wouldn’t it?'

  ‘It certainly would!’ said Renaud, much relieved. He went off to give the necessary orders.

  ‘What can I do?’ asked Suleiman Fazi.

  ‘Congratulate Awad on the sense of responsibility he’s shown and on his zeal to stand up for freedom. And then ask him if he’s coming home to share the Ramadan meal with you.'

  ‘I will,’ said the Vizier. ‘I will!’ and he walked forward to speak to the insurgents.

  ‘All right?’ Seymour asked Chantale, as she appeared round the corner.

  ‘All right,’ said Chantale. ‘Lambert said the army was not to be used for every little incident. Besides, he doesn’t like Renaud.'

  ‘Why did he let them get away with the raid on the hotel?’ asked Seymour.

  Chantale looked at him, surprised.

  ‘He was new in the job,’ she said, ‘and hadn’t yet picked up the pieces.'

  ‘Did he know the hotel belonged to you?'

  ‘Of course. He’d been in the army here. They had gone to him when they found out . . . when they found out about us. It was Armand de Grassac’s doing. He’d been away and then he came back and found that – well, we weren’t doing too well. So he and the other officers talked to Lambert and money was found, somehow, I don’t know how, but the money actually came from the army coffers, to help us buy the hotel. The Lamberts had always been kind to us. They made it possible for me to go to a French school. But he had only just been made Resident-General Designate and hadn’t yet got everything in his hands.'

  Seymour took Renaud by the arm and said: ‘Coll`egue, may I take a little walk with you?’

  Renaud was still grumbling about Lambert.

  ‘If I were you, cher coll`egue,’ said Seymour, ‘I would give the army a wide berth for a while.’

  ‘Why so?'

  ‘Because they provided the money for Chantale and her mother to buy the hotel. And I think they may be about to find out who tipped Ali Khadr off that the time had come to wreck it.'

  Renaud went still.

  ‘Perhaps even set the attack up. Who knows? But I think that if pressed Ali Khadr will tell them. There’s quite a strong network in the quarter, which embraces the mosque and other influential people, and word gets around, you know, and I think that if it were put to Ali Khadr himself, well, you know, I think he would come clean. And if he did, cher coll`egue, I don’t see how you could go on being Chief of Police in Tangier.’

  Renaud remained mute.

  ‘Even with powerful friends,’ said Seymour.

  ‘They will look after me,’ muttered Renaud.

  ‘You reckon? You know, colleague, I think they’re the sort of people who would drop you in a flash if they thought it necessary. Despite everything you’ve done for them.'

  ‘I have done nothing –’

  ‘Oh? Well, let’s start with Bossu. He was the man behind the raid on the hotel, wasn’t he? And you were helping him, as you had always helped him. I suppose you were the first to find out that Chantale and her mother had bought the hotel and told him. And then he asked you to arrange a welcome party. Or perhaps he arranged it and merely asked you to tip off Ali Khadr when the time was ripe.'

  ‘You cannot prove this –’

  ‘No? Let us go on. With your knowledge of Bossu, Monsieur Renaud, perhaps you can tell me why his animosity towards the de Lissac family was such that he pursued Chantale and her mother, even after Captain de Lissac was dead? No? Well, let me tell you.

  ‘I take it that you know about the passion that Bossu had originally felt for Marie de Lissac. And about how he had asked her to marry him. And been turned down. And then turned down again when he had pursued her to Algiers. I don’t think he ever forgave that turning down. He was a man who always liked to win. And didn’t like losing. Certainly not to de Lissac.

  ‘It must have been a huge shock to him when de Lissac turned up in Casablanca. Especially when he began making himself a nuisance. But you were there, Monsieur Renaud, and would know. Would know, too, about how he then began to work systematically for de Lissac’s destruction. A popular pursuit in Casablanca at the time, and he soon had plenty of people egging him on. Was that when you first made their acquaintance, cher coll`egue, and began to have an eye for their interests? Such an eye that it led to you becoming Chief of Police in Tangier?

  ‘Well, there are other questions. Was it their interests that Bossu was following when he began taking money down to Moulay Hafiz and his supporters in the interior of Morocco? Opening up the interior. Building the railway line which would make possible the development of all that part of the country. Perhaps you don’t know much about all that. That was Bossu’s job, not yours.

  ‘But there is one thing that you do know about and perhaps you can help me on. You see, I know that you know about it. Because Juliette Bossu obligingly blurted it out. It is to do with the death of Chantale’s father, that long-standing enemy, as he saw it, of Bossu. Bossu persuaded him to drive a truck down to the south. A truck loaded with explosives to Moulay Hafiz. And on the way the truck exploded and Captain de Lissac was killed.’

  ‘An accident,’ muttered Monsieur Renaud.

  ‘Ah, no.'

  ‘It was investigated.'

  ‘By you?'

  ‘No, by – by the authorities.'

  ‘The authorities? Down there?'

  He waited.

  ‘Does that mean Moulay Hafiz? Come on, Renaud, this is something I want to know.'

  ‘It – it may have been. But – but there were others . . . Captain de Grassac . . . An independent . . .'

  ‘Not a policeman, though, Renaud. Not a detective. Like you and me. I have investigated it, too. And I have found out things that Captain de Grassac didn’t. Including that it was not an accident.'

  ‘I – I don’t know anything about it. Bossu handled it. Entirely, I mean. He didn’t tell me anything. It is not the sort of thing that I would –’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t, Renaud. You’d leave that to others.'

  When Seymour went into the hotel Chantale raised her head from her writing and said:

  ‘Are you doing anything this evening? My mother wonders if you would care to join us for the evening meal. It is, of course, a special one, for it marks the end of Ramadan.'

  Seymour said he would be delighted, and at about nine went down to reception, where he found the desk occupied by a polite young man whom he had not seen before. He rose from the desk, tapped softly on the door which led to the family’s private quarters, and showed Seymour through.

  Chantale came forward to greet him and led him out on to a small verandah where there
was a low table spread for dinner with a white tablecloth. Around it were several large leather cushions. Chantale sat on one and invited him to sit next to her. Her mother appeared shortly after with a tray on which there were several small bowls, which she put on the table. They contained olives of various kinds, nuts and the usual salted cakes. She sat down opposite them.

  Seymour had, of course, met her before but then it had been in the business part of the hotel, at reception. Now, in the soft darkness, she seemed completely different, her face more Arab, her eyes larger and darker, more Moroccan. She had partly uncovered her hair. In the hotel it had always been bound up in a kerchief. Now she had let it fall. It was dark and abundant and hung over her shoulders. Seymour sensed that this was significant. He knew that in Morocco a woman’s hair was normally something to be strictly concealed. Was this a gesture of independence, an assertion of difference, a suggestion of other affiliations beside the Moroccan one? Looking at her now he could see how attractive she must have been once, how she could have drawn such men as de Lissac and Bossu. And also how strikingly her daughter resembled her.

  There was a difference in the way they sat. The mother sat straight-backed, graceful but firm and unyielding. Chantale reclined rather than sat. It was again very graceful, very easy, very natural: but it was not the way any Englishwoman would have sat. Seymour knew he shouldn’t be looking at her too much: but he was just about knocked out.

  Initially Chantale’s mother did not speak much, leaving the conversation to her daughter and Seymour, but gradually she let herself be drawn in.

  He asked her how she liked running a hotel. She said that at first she had found it difficult because when her husband had died she had withdrawn into herself and then when they had moved into the hotel she had had to force herself out again. The public-ness of hotel life had shocked her and the constant need to assert herself. However, now she rather enjoyed it. It gave her a chance to meet people, different people from those she would usually have met, men especially, hommes civilisées, civilized men – a chance, she said, with a flash of her daughter’s rebelliousness, that Moroccan women did not usually get!

  Seymour said that he imagined that was particularly important for Chantale. Madame de Lissac agreed that it was and said that she was very grateful to those who had made it possible. And yet . . .