by Len Deighton
‘Ummm. But not like that. In any case he wasn’t killed here.’
‘How do you know?’
‘There’s no blood. A wound like that spurts blood. I’d gamble that when this fellow was knifed, his blood hit the ceiling.’ Ross looked at the body again as he thought about it. ‘No, he was killed somewhere else by killers who dumped his body here.’
‘Why do that? What advantage would that give them?’
Ross bit his lip and thought about it. ‘They simply wanted to get rid of him. Probably they wanted to clean up the scene of crime. Perhaps he was killed in one of these other brothels. Didn’t you tell me that a fancy whorehouse – Lady Fitz – is somewhere near here?’
‘Yes. Just along the alley.’
‘Yes. Tell me, how many British soldiers use these native brothels?’
The sergeant looked at him before deciding how to answer. He was a bit in awe of him. Exaggerated stories about Albert Cutler’s skills had preceded Ross’s arrival in Cairo. And in the few days he’d been there, Ross, with his corporal’s uniform and his limited regard for the army and its ways, had already been labelled a dangerous eccentric by the more conventional lower ranks at Bab-el-Hadid police barracks. The sergeant chose his words carefully ‘I see what you are getting at, sir … but some squaddies, really short of money, will go anywhere. And of course some people have strange tastes in women and brothels.’
‘You’re right, sergeant. But not this fellow.’ Having prepared himself for a coup de théâtre, Ross bent down, grabbed the tunic and trousers, and heaved the body back onto the cot. Then he carefully turned it over. The young sergeant staggered back at the smell. Ross smiled at him, as though he had smelled bodies far worse than this. He searched the dead man’s trouser pockets and took out a bunch of keys from him. Some of them were recognisably keys from army locks.
‘Get the man who runs this place.’
The sergeant went out onto the landing and called to his colleague to bring the man downstairs.
‘He’s not really the man who runs the place. He’s his brother-in-law.’
‘Is that so?’ said Ross and laughed scornfully, the way Bogart laughed.
The man they ushered inside was a young Arab, about twenty years old, wearing western clothes: tattered old trousers and a red shirt that had faded to light pink.
Ross looked at him for a moment. ‘Who brought the body here?’
‘Effendi…’
Ross grabbed his shirtfront and shook him before throwing him back against the wall. Having hit the wall with a crash, the man was wide-eyed in terror. With an open hand Ross slapped his face hard enough to make him cry out with pain. ‘Who,’ said Ross, ‘brought,’ – he punched him again but without putting too much force into it – ‘the body here?’
‘I do not speak…’
Ross hit him in the stomach, hard. The red cap was alarmed and tried to intervene. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said.
‘Stay out of this!’ said Ross, so fiercely that the youngster was frightened of him.
He grabbed the Arab’s shirt front again and pulled him violently so that the fabric, old and frayed, ripped open from neck to waist.
‘Okay! Okay!’ said the Arab. ‘Men brought him.’
‘Who?’
He hesitated, but as Ross brought his fist up to strike him again, he said, ‘Two men. They work for Mahmoud, the banker.’
‘That’s better,’ said Ross. To the sergeant he said, ‘Send someone to take this fool back to the barracks and lock him up. Lock him up in solitary. Then arrange for someone to collect the body.’
‘You were right about this one,’ said the red cap with profound respect. ‘I was sure he couldn’t speak English; we all were. How did you know?’
‘It’s the sort of thing a Glasgow detective soon learns,’ said Ross.
10
‘Did you hear that it rained in the desert?’ said Prince Piotr Nikoleiovich Tikhmeibrazoff to a group of guests. It was another of his weekly gatherings and he was dressed to the nines: a burgundy-coloured velvet smoking jacket and cream-coloured silk shirt with matching bow tie. His guests were dressed up too. All the usual crowd were there, plus a couple of outsiders: Alice’s young man and Toby Wallingford, DSO, RNVR, who, for the occasion, had put on his dark-blue uniform with its gold braid.
Alice’s American guest had proved something of a surprise. He was an assertive man named Harry Wechsler, evidence of the wide-ranging influence that Alice’s mother wielded. Wechsler’s dispatches were featured prominently by the Hearst newspaper chain and used by many other newspapers throughout America. He’d just come back from a brief foray into the desert: ‘the blue’, as he was determined to call it. His hands were red and raw looking, with sand encrusted in the skin. His tanned face had the pale marks around the eyes left by sand goggles. He was in his middle thirties, young in manner and face but almost bald. He affected the informal dress that the British army had adopted. His bush jacket, although stained and battered, was newly laundered and pressed. With it he wore corduroy slacks with suede boots. He sported a red silk neckerchief, and from the top pocket of his jacket protruded pens, pencils and the stem of a pipe.
‘Damned bad form,’ Darymple had pronounced upon Wechsler’s arrival at the party in this attire. ‘It’s a wonder he didn’t bring his tommy gun.’
‘He fights with his mouth, old boy,’ Wallingford had replied. ‘Never runs out of ammunition.’
Peggy Wood found Harry Wechsler amusing. He proclaimed himself a ‘compulsive writer’. In Cairo for medical treatment, he’d refused to stop working. Over the previous weeks he’d accompanied the US military attaché on many visits to British army installations out in the desert. The way Wechsler told it, the attaché and he were close buddies. Wechsler had opinions about everything. ‘Sure, college writing courses stifle writers. But they don’t stifle enough of them.’ He had a loud laugh and a tough charm that came from being self-sufficient. To this was added the confidence that came from knowing that he was syndicated to several million readers.
Peggy had circulated to speak with as many people as she could. This afternoon she’d gone to a hairdresser for the first time in months. She’d chosen her dress and her makeup with special care. She looked enchanting. She’d remained faithful to Karl, but the angry words of Nurse Borrows had shaken her: Men don’t interest you, we all know that. Is that what the other nurses really thought? And if that’s what they thought, were they right? There were so many interesting men in Cairo. Here tonight there was the suave and gentlemanly Darymple, so precise and proper, his uniform made by a London tailor and his handkerchief tucked into his sleeve. His friend Wallingford was lounging on the sofa, languid and self-assured, like the World War One poets she’d seen in old photos. There was Alice’s corporal, a wary fellow, tough, bony-faced and athletic. And Sayed was like the handsome Valentino, who’d made the ladies swoon in old silent films. Even Prince Piotr had reacted to the current climate by smartening himself up with clothes from his extensive prewar wardrobe.
It was Alice Stanhope who replied to Piotr’s question. ‘Rain in the desert. Yes, Mummy had heard that too, but where?’ Alice was wearing an expensive high-fronted dress of the sort that overprotective mothers choose for pretty young daughters. Despite its austere design she was looking radiantly attractive, as she always did when Jimmy Ross was with her. Peggy had said as much, and tonight Alice was determined not to let her feelings for him show so much.
‘An absolute deluge. Men were drowned.’ His manservant held still while Piotr helped himself to a glass of wine from a brass tray.
‘But where? No one seems to know where,’ Alice asked the world in general.
Harry Wechsler smiled. He knew. ‘It rained all along the Via Balbia, from Tobruk to Halfaya Pass. Mid-November, before I arrived here. A little village named Gambut got it worst. I flew over the spot. It washed trucks and men right over the edge of the plateau. The rain came after dark and put paid to a German offensive.
I did a story about it.’
‘The first rain there for sixty years, I heard,’ said Toby Wallingford from the sofa.
‘An act of God,’ said Piotr solemnly, and drank some wine. The presence of Toby Wallingford disconcerted him. He’d never met him before, but that beautiful face and long wavy blond hair reminded him of a boy he’d fallen for at college long ago. Piotr’s desires were never extinguished, just simmering. ‘Yes,’ he said reflectively while stealing a look at Wallingford, ‘that rain put paid to the German plans.’
‘Someone told me that the king of Italy tells the British about the Axis battle plans,’ said Alice diffidently. She offered this story for Piotr to comment upon. He liked to give the impression that his birth into the aristocracy gave him some mysterious entrée into the affairs of all royalty everywhere.
But it was Wechsler who replied. ‘I was in Rome. I got myself out of there just three weeks before Pearl. You can take it from me, the Italian king hates Mussolini and would do anything to see the British win.’
‘Exactly,’ said Piotr with great satisfaction. He cherished this rumour because on the previous day, his mention of it had made Lucia Magnifico almost speechless with rage. Lucia despised the Italian monarchy. With Rommel in the ascendant, she had expressed her hope that Mussolini would soon enter Cairo at the head of a conquering army.
‘And here we are in Cairo,’ said Robin Darymple mischievously, ‘with an Egyptian king who’d like to see the Axis win. What an upside-down world, eh?’
Sayed would not let such a remark go unchallenged. ‘You must not say such things, Captain Darymple.’
‘No offence, old boy, but I thought everyone knew that Fatty Farouk and all his Eye-tie cronies in the Abdin Palace are sending radio messages to our enemies in Rome every night.’ Darymple looked around, waiting for a reaction.
‘I don’t believe that,’ said Sayed.
Harry Wechsler was watching the exchange. He said, ‘Well if King Farouk does hate the British, it wouldn’t come as a shock, would it? I mean it would hardly be a scoop. You British treat him with studied contempt, even in public matters.’
‘Steady on,’ said Darymple mildly. ‘The Egyptians have never had so much money in all their lives, and everyone here is on the fiddle. Don’t tell me the king and all his royal bastards are not thieving away as hard as they can.’
‘That is a detestable way to speak of our king,’ said Sayed.
Darymple gave a brief laugh. ‘Keep your hair on, Sayed. Everyone’s got his hand in the pocket of the British army. That’s what keeps Cairo going, isn’t it?’
Sayed, who had got to his feet in outrage, decided not to storm out of the room. ‘You say these things just to make me angry,’ he said. He rearranged the cushions as if that had been the reason for him to stand up. Then he sat down again.
Darymple gave Wechsler a brief smile. ‘I say these things because they are true, Sayed, old sport. Calm down and have another drink.’ He lifted his glass to Piotr. ‘It’s the real thing tonight, Piotr. Quite a change from the usual battery acid.’
‘I’m glad you are enjoying it, Captain Darymple. I am reluctant to serve you my best scotch whisky lest you think it stolen from your military supplies.’
‘Touché,’ said Darymple, while watching Sayed, who was still visibly agitated. He was pulling at the tassels on one of the cushions. His sister saw what he was doing and tried to catch his eye and stop him, but he was not looking her way.
To calm him, Darymple said, ‘It’s not the British army who hate your king; it’s all those half-witted pen-pushers in the British embassy. The army wants a quiet life. I can tell you that without fear of contradiction. No one, from the commander in chief down to the lowest squaddie, wants any trouble back here in the streets of Cairo. It’s obvious, I would have thought. We’re not trying to stir up trouble, we’ve got enough trouble with Rommel and his pals just down the road in the desert.’
‘You sure have,’ said Wechsler.
Sayed looked at Darymple. For a moment he seemed about to reply; then he just nodded and let it go.
Darymple said, ‘Same goes for the Cairo police, let me tell you. We are all sick and tired of those embassy wallahs kicking the king’s arse. Why can’t those Foreign Office buggers let things be, so we can all get on with the war.’
Toby Wallingford said, ‘It’s simply a matter of politics. The embassy people are frightened of what will happen if they let these anti-British Gyppos continue running the show. We should have taken the wog government over, when war started, and run Egypt our way.’
‘Perhaps. But there’s no need to rub poor old Fatty’s face in it, is there?’ said Darymple turning to where his friend was occupying the whole sofa, head propped on hand and one stockinged foot disappearing in the cushions. ‘I mean, Lampson or one of his little men, could just have a private word in the king’s earhole, right?’
Wallingford said mockingly, ‘Is that the official verdict at GHQ, Robbie, or your own brilliant analysis?’
Darymple flushed bright red. He knew Wally was trying to make a fool of him in front of everyone.
‘So you’ve been in the blue, Mr Wechsler?’ Wallingford said in his most supercilious manner. ‘Did it get a bit noisy for you out there?’ It was a clear implication that Wechsler had run away from Rommel’s offensive.
‘No point in staying there writing stories that your British censors cut to ribbons, commander.’
‘What did you write that upset them?’ said Darymple.
‘I wrote the truth instead of a lot of dumb Keep-the-home-fires-burning-rah-rah-rah! That’s what upsets them.’
‘What is the truth?’ said Darymple mildly. ‘I’d love to hear a little of that after a day at GHQ.’
‘The truth is, captain, that Rommel is running rings round a lot of incompetent British generals who don’t know their ass from their elbow. The truth is that things will stay that way while your commanders sit in their dugouts fifty miles behind the lines, singing “Rule Britannia”, saying everything will come out all right in the end, and sending their laundry back to Cairo. And the truth is that the British combat rank and file are sick of it and getting damned cynical.’
‘Perhaps that’s because you keep telling them about it,’ said Darymple.
‘Maybe it is. I come from a place where citizens are entitled to read the truth, even if they are wearing khaki without gold braid on it.’
‘I thought we were allies,’ said Darymple.
‘Look buddy, Uncle Sam isn’t fighting this war in order to save the British Empire for you to suck dry. In the Pacific, we Yanks are paying the price for your colonial tyranny. It’s time you Brits started fighting your own war. Even right here in the desert, the Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans are suffering the most casualties while the British doze in the back areas and sit in GHQ worrying about their next promotion. That’s the truth; and there is no getting away from it, censor or no censor.’
Darymple saw the mention of GHQ as a direct attack on him. Even the languid Wallingford was moved to react to Wechsler’s spirited assault. ‘It’s not the whole truth,’ he said. ‘The Empire has always recruited fighting regiments. The British furnish the ordnance depots and supply lines and services. It’s unavoidable that the Aussies and Dominion regiments suffer a higher proportion of battle casualties.’
‘So stir some of those Brits out of those goddamned “ordnance depots and supply lines and services”, old buddy,’ said Wechsler, with heavy sarcasm. ‘Scour these Cairo offices for khaki-clad bums. Give those goldbricks guns and get them up to the sharp end. Then maybe you’ll halt Rommel – you could even start winning the war.’
Darymple was flustered by Wechsler’s harsh words. He got to his feet. Darymple realised he’d started it all with his indiscretions. It was always bad form to get into this sort of political argument. Also it would be a stupid misjudgment to have a row with the American, and perhaps upset old Piotr, who served such good booze. More import
antly, he didn’t want to appear ruffled in the presence of young Wallingford, who was going to get him into his Desert Teams set up.
Piotr poured oil upon the troubled waters. He offered up a box of cigars he’d been hoarding and said, ‘So what story are you working on now?’
‘I picked up some kind of bug. I had to be checked out regularly at the hospital, so I decided to do a story about the US Embassy here in Cairo. With my pills and medicines in my pocket, I’ve been sticking close to our military attaché. You Brits sure give Yanks the red-carpet treatment: I saw more in three days with him, than in the previous month. We flew everywhere; that’s war à la mode. Even the British brass hats move their asses when he comes into view. I guess someone on high has told them that Uncle Sam calls the shots.’
‘Calls the shots?’
‘Haven’t you guys heard of the Lend-Lease Act? You folks ran out of money last year. Every gun, tank and bomb, every last round you fire, is a gift from Uncle Sam.’
He looked round to see the reaction, but Darymple and Wallingford were talking together. Only the corporal was listening attentively. Calmly Piotr drank wine and said, ‘So what’s the next story?’
‘I finished all the pills. Looks like I’ve got to go into the blue and find Rommel for you.’
‘No more Cairo stories?’
‘I don’t sit in bed taking aspirins. I get around. I’ve just filed a great story, but the censors are giving me trouble with it.’
‘You can tell us,’ said Piotr.
‘Why not?’ said Wechsler, who liked an audience. ‘Listen guys,’ he said, tapping Darymple’s arm and getting Wallingford’s attention too. ‘This is a story that will be in the history books when names like Rommel and Auchinleck are long forgotten.’
‘Do tell,’ said Piotr on cue.
‘The creation of the state of Israel,’ said Wechsler. Several heads turned and conversations stopped suddenly. ‘The Jews in Palestine are training and arming and otherwise equipping an army to take its rightful place in the world. Many of those guys have escaped from the Nazis in Europe. They will fight for what is theirs. That’s the story.’
