The Fig Tree Murder mz-10
Page 18
‘And other sorts of things?’
‘Probably. He works with a man named Zenakis.’
‘And your father?’
‘They make use of him, too,’ said Amina bitterly. ‘He knows he’s being used, of course, but he goes along with it because he thinks that’s the way to get on. He wants to get on,’ she said.
‘I’ve noticed that. To the extent of marrying you off to Malik.’
‘That’s the bit,’ said Amina, ‘that I can’t forgive.’
‘I think,’ said Owen, ‘that I might be able to do something about that.’
‘But, Ali,’ said Owen, ‘I am surprised: that a man like you, who used to go to hear the great Mustapha Kamil speak, should take the side of the Pashas.’
‘He’s my boss,’ said Ali doggedly. ‘There’s got to be loyalty somewhere.’
‘But to one such as Malik?’
‘There’s money in it, too.’
‘You’d have done better to have stayed with old man Zaghlul and raised ostriches. I’ll bet he wouldn’t have taken the side of the Pashas.’
‘He wouldn’t that,’ said Ali, chuckling.
‘So why do you? Against your own people?’
‘It’s not my own people. We’re just ripping off the rich.’
‘Ah, but that’s at Heliopolis. What about at Matariya?’
‘We haven’t done anything at Matariya.’
‘No? What about killing Ibrahim?’
‘That was a private matter.’
‘What, then, had Malik to do with it?’
‘His was a private matter, too.’
‘If it was, why did he have to come to you? Could he not have settled it for himself?’
‘It is not seemly for a Pasha’s son to go around-’
Ali stopped.
‘Killing people?’ Owen finished for him. ‘Is it more seemly, then, to do his dirty work for him? One villager to kill another? At the Pasha’s behest?’
‘I was going to kill him anyway.’
‘Could he not wait? Was it that he had to make sure?’
‘I don’t know anything about all this,’ said Ali. ‘All I know is that he came to me and asked me when I was killing Ibrahim to put in a blow for him.’
‘Would you have done it if he had not spoken?’
‘Sure.’
‘Even though Ibrahim was your friend?’
‘He shamed us!’
‘I’ll bet,’ said Owen, choosing his words carefully, ‘that when Mustapha Kamil looked down and saw you standing in front of him, he would never have thought: there is a man who would kill his friend just because a Pasha says so!’
Ali jumped to his feet in fury.
Nationalism had its uses, thought Owen.
‘You’re not going to take a fellah’s word against mine!’ said Malik, shocked.
‘Why not? Especially when there is corroborative evidence?’
‘But he is just a rogue, a villain, a petty criminal!’ Malik spluttered.
‘That is so. And we shall show that you had criminal dealings with him.’
‘Criminal dealings?’
‘At the racetrack.’
‘But that-But that-’
‘Was just business?’
Malik went silent. After a moment he said:
‘Ali would have killed him anyway.’
‘True; and for that he will pay the price.’
‘Quite rightly,’ said Malik, recovering. ‘A dangerous fellow.’
‘But you had a hand in it. And for that you, too, must pay a price.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Malik confidently. ‘For the death of a mere villager?’
‘Perhaps not directly. Let us say, for your other dealings.’
‘What price had you in mind?’ asked Malik, amused.
‘I think you should catch the next boat and stay out of Egypt for five years.’
‘I’m afraid there’s no chance of that. I have commitments here, you see.’
‘I think the Racing Club might be prepared to release you.’
‘I doubt that, actually. I’m much too valuable to them.’
‘You could be in for a surprise.’
‘And behind them there are even more powerful people.’
‘The Khedive?’
Malik did not quite dare say that.
‘Well, behind me,’ said Owen, ‘there is the Consul-General. So we’ll just have to see.’
Who governed Egypt: the British Consul-General or the Khedive?
In fact, it was doubtful whether anyone governed Egypt; but in so far as the gambling laws were concerned, there was behind them a force greater than both the Consul-General and the Khedive: religious nonconformist opinion in England, which had recently returned a Liberal government for the first time in many years.
The Consul-General had already decided to tighten the gaming laws and refuse all new applications for licences, so when Owen went along and suggested that all was not as it might be in the New City of Pleasure it was very soon resolved that in future Heliopolis should seek its pleasure in other ways. The Consul-General’s stance received strong support from the religious authorities in Egypt, both national and local, who pointed out the jarring proximity to the pilgrims’ gathering place for the Mecca caravan; and also from the Nationalists, who felt that if the Khedive was for anything then there must be compelling reasons against it. Faced with such a coalition, the Pashas had little option other than to withdraw.
Withdrawal, of course, meant sacrifice, and one of the first sacrifices was Malik, who caught not the next boat but one very soon after it.
Another of the sacrifices was Salah-el-Din, who lost his post as mamur the day that Garvin heard about his links with the racetrack gang. Being an enterprising chap, he soon popped up again, but this time in Alexandria and in the private sector, where his foreign expertise and government contacts proved attractive to companies wishing to break into the Egyptian market. His contacts were not, perhaps, quite as good as they thought.
Owen was, on the whole, relieved, in view of what he had said to Amina, that Salah-el-Din did not decide to pursue his fortune abroad where he might have run into Malik and tried yet again to marry her off to him.
Amina did in the end make a good marriage; in fact, several of them.
When, during one of these, she was based for a time in Cairo, Owen caught sight of her occasionally. For the sake of peace and quiet he tried to keep this secret from Zeinab, usually without success, as her intelligence system was infinitely superior to his. She had, actually, nothing to fear, as he frequently pointed out to her. Zeinab, however, remained unconvinced. It was true that she still retained a decided advantage in height. Amina, though, was catching up rapidly in terms of maturity and experience; and then there was the troubling discrepancy in age. Zeinab watched Owen like a hawk.
Leila made the journey in each month from Tel-el-Hasan to draw her money from Owen’s office. She was needed less at her brother’s house now that her sister had been released, and one day she shyly mentioned the growing warmth of her relationship with one of Ibrahim’s friends.
Owen took the hint and the next time he dropped in on the barber’s circle at Matariya took the opportunity to praise her virtues; not least among which was her possession of a nest-egg securely lodged with the Mamur Zapt.
The barber’s friends rejoiced at his good fortune.
‘The love of a good woman is beyond the price of rubies,’ he said. ‘However, if she has some rubies as well, it is even better.’
It would go some way towards compensating for the collapse of his other prospects. The Racing Club, it seemed, was no longer interested in purchasing land for gallops. Despite this, he remained committed to Progress.
‘One day,’ he prophesied, ‘there will be houses from here to Cairo! And the pilgrims will go to Mecca not by camel, no, nor even by train; but by flying carpets which will take them up and carry them to Mecca in the blink of an eye!’
; The whole circle-and Owen-united in declaring this to be a load of utter bollocks. However, a future historian might interpose that some eighty or ninety years later this was, in a way, precisely what did happen.
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