The Mingrelian Conspiracy mz-9

by Michael Pearce

  But not so quiet! Voices, feet running. Someone running along the corridor. The pad of bare feet, the slap of slippers.

  Yusef burst into the room.

  ‘Effendi! Effendi! A man-’

  A man with his galabeeyah hoisted up round his knees, the better to run, his feet bare, his turban dishevelled, exposing his skull cap, his face running with sweat-’

  ‘Effendi! Mustapha is being attacked again!’

  ‘Mustapha?’

  ‘The cafe! Oh, Effendi, come quickly! It is terrible!’

  Owen jumped to his feet, grabbed his topee-better than a tarboosh if there was a prospect of being hit on the head-and ran out of the room. He found the man running beside him.

  ‘Quick, Effendi! Oh, quick!’

  Well, yes, but how? Arabeah? There was a line of the horse-drawn carriages in front of the Bab-el-Khalk but no one would describe them as speedy. Donkey? There would be donkeys tied up in the courtyard, but somehow-Got it! The Aalim-Zapt’s bicycle! He ran down into the courtyard. There it was, green, gleaming, modern!

  ‘Tell the Aalim-Zapt!’ he shouted, as he sped through the gate.

  He hurtled across the Place Bab-el-Khalk. That was easy. It was when he came to the more crowded streets of the native city that he ran into trouble. A massive stone cart was almost entirely blocking the thoroughfare, useless to shout, a little gap at one side-Christ, another one just behind! Another gap, at the expense of a chicken, Jesus, stalls all over the road, onions, tomatoes a few more onions and tomatoes when he’d finished, and now a bloody Passover sheep! Fat, obtuse and in the way! A flock of turkeys, a man carrying a bed, a line of forage camels, three great loads of berseem flopping up and down on either side-steer clear of them-and now a donkey with a rolled-up carpet stretched across its back, the two ends sticking out right across the street, a man sitting on top-! Or was he on top, still? Owen did not dare to look.

  He became aware of someone running beside him.

  ‘Nearly there, Effendi!’ said the messenger indomitably.

  One last street, a crowd outside, well, you’d expect that. He jumped off the bicycle.

  ‘Out of the way! Out of the way!’ he shouted.

  ‘Make way! Make way for the Mamur Zapt!’ shouted the storyteller.

  He pushed his way through. Hands helped as well as hindered.

  Suddenly he was through, popped out the front, like a cork out of a bottle.

  The cafe was a scene of destruction. Chairs, tables, hookahs lay all over the floor. In the middle of the room, prone on his face, lay Selim.

  Mustapha’s wife was on her knees beside him. There was blood all over her burka.

  ‘A lion!’ she kept saying tearfully. ‘A lion!’

  Owen bent down. There was a huge gash on the back of Selim’s head. Owen bent closer.

  ‘He breathes,’ he said.

  ‘A lion!’ said the woman, in tears. ‘A wounded lion!’

  The wounded lion groaned.

  ‘Water!’ said the woman. ‘Bring water!’

  Mekhmet, terrified, plucked at her sleeve.

  ‘Lady,’ he said. ‘Lady!’

  ‘Fetch water.’

  ‘But, Lady-’

  ‘Go on, you stupid bastard!’ said a voice from across the room. It was the owner of the cafe, Mustapha, pale and limp, sitting exhaustedly on the bottom of the stairs. ‘Fetch water, can’t you?’

  Mekhmet looked around in despair, saw Owen and clutched his arm.

  ‘Effendi! Oh, Effendi!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Owen. ‘It’s over now.’

  ‘But, Effendi-’

  ‘Get some water, can’t you? And after that, some coffee. For me and the Effendi. I bloody need it!’

  ‘Effendi!’ pleaded Mekhmet.

  ‘Move your ass!’

  Mekhmet fled into the kitchen. Mustapha prised himself up and limped across to Owen.

  ‘A fine bloody job he’s done!’ he said bitterly, looking down at Selim. ‘My cafe’s wrecked! And what did he do about it?’

  ‘He fought like a lion!’ said the woman indignantly.

  ‘Maybe, but he fell down like a sheep when they knocked him on the head.’

  ‘And where were you? Under the bed!’

  ‘I’ve got a broken leg, haven’t I? Isn’t that enough for you? Or do you want me to get a broken skull as well?’

  ‘It is not for you to chide the one who fought!’ said the woman angrily.

  ‘Well, that’s his job, isn’t it? Fighting? I just wish he’d made a better job of it, that’s all.’

  ‘Shame on you!’ said the woman. ‘While he lies there bleeding!’

  ‘Well, it didn’t work, did it? He was supposed to stop this from happening. That was the idea of it, wasn’t it? Well, look around you,’ he said to Owen. ‘A fat lot of use he’s been! Protection? Protection, my ass! The only thing he’s good for is drinking coffee. You know what? She was more use than he was. Threw boiling water over them!’

  ‘God forgive me!’ said the woman.

  ‘God is all-merciful,’ replied Mustapha automatically, and then started. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I hope He doesn’t carry it to extremes. We don’t want Him forgiving the bastards who wrecked my cafe!’

  Mekhmet appeared from the kitchen with a bowl of water. He put it down and then plucked Owen by the sleeve.

  ‘Effendi,’ he said anxiously.

  ‘What about that coffee?’ said Mustapha. He picked up a chair and sat down on it heavily. ‘There’s another for you!’ he said to Owen. ‘That Mekhmet! Idle as the other one and even more useless! Go and get some coffee, can’t you?’

  ‘But, Effendi-’ said Mekhmet desperately.

  ‘Coffee!’ said Mustapha peremptorily.

  Mekhmet looked this way and that and then fled to the kitchen.

  Owen turned Selim on to his back. The woman took his head gently on to her knees and began sponging it.

  ‘That’s more like it!’ murmured Selim.

  Suddenly his eyes opened.

  ‘Those bastards!’ he said, trying to get up.

  The woman pulled him back.

  ‘Well-’ said Selim, yielding.

  His eyes opened again.

  ‘At least I got one of them!’ he said.

  Owen glanced around.

  ‘He’s not here. They must have taken him away,’ he said.

  Mekhmet shot gibbering out of the kitchen.

  ‘Effendi-!’

  ‘I threw him in there,’ said Selim faintly. ‘After I had broken his neck.’

  Owen went across to have a look.

  ‘Effendi, he stirs!’ said Mekhmet.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Selim.

  ‘I tried to tell you, but-’

  A man was lying among the great jars used for storing water. As Owen looked, a foot twitched.

  ‘Effendi, he lives!’

  ‘Does he?’ said Selim, trying to get up. ‘I’ll soon see about that!’

  Chapter 6

  The extreme heat continued. In the Bab-el-Khalk next day nothing moved. The orderlies sat stupefied, in the orderly room when they were on duty, outside in the courtyard when they were off. From time to time, Yusef, Owen’s own orderly, would pad along the corridor with a fresh pitcher of water, oppressed at the capacity of ice to diminish even in the few yards between the orderly room and Owen’s office. Owen, dripping at his desk, was considering whether to change his shirt.

  Selim, bandaged, poked his head round the door.

  ‘They’re coming now, Effendi.’

  Owen could hear the feet at the other end of the corridor, heard, too, a few moments later, Selim’s muttered aside.

  ‘Right, you bastard, now you’re for it!’

  Two slightly apprehensive police constables appeared in the doorway with, between them, rather more apprehensive, the man who had been taken the day before at the cafe.

  Owen looked him over. Nothing very special, just an ordinary fellah in a blue galabeeyah. But
that, actually, was significant. It made it less likely that they were dealing with a political club. The Arabs tended to recruit from students and young effendi, or office workers. This man had never seen the inside of a classroom or an office. His hands were big and awkward. Scarred, too. Owen leaned forward and pushed back the man’s sleeves. The forearms were scarred also, just where you would expect, and the face, yes, not tribal marks, knife wounds. A tough from the back streets. Owen was almost sure already that this was a criminal gang, not a political one.

  The nervousness, too. Members of political clubs might well be nervous when they were brought before the Mamur Zapt but theirs was a different kind of nervousness from that of the ordinary fellah. They were used to the big imposing rooms and the long corridors, which were not so very different from the ones they knew at college or work. If they were nervous it was because of the anticipated consequences, not about the circumstances in which they found themselves.

  For the ordinary street criminal it was exactly the reverse. The consequences when they came would be accepted with the immemorial resigned shrug of the fellahin. It was the shock of an environment completely new to their experience that was so disorienting.

  Even the toughest of street toughs was put out by the Bab-el-Khalk. There was very little space where they came from. Everything was close, local, intimate. Here in the great open spaces of the Bab-el-Khalk they lost their bearings. Everything was alien to them: the men in their uniforms, the formality, the emotional coldness. Probably most alien of all was the white man they had been brought before.

  It was this second kind of nervousness that the man was showing. His eyes flickered compulsively from side to side. It was all new to him. He couldn’t make sense of anything.

  ‘What is your name?’

  The man looked at him as if he had not understood. As, indeed, probably he had not. Owen doubted if he was taking anything in just at the moment.

  Selim leaned over and tapped the man on the shoulder.

  ‘Come on, bright eyes, what’s your name?’

  What exactly Selim was doing there Owen was not sure. He had appeared shakily that morning and taken up a position in the corridor outside Owen’s office, announcing that he wanted to ‘see it through’. What ‘it’ was Owen didn’t know. He had an uneasy feeling that Selim was expecting summary execution.

  The man, however, seemed to find Selim’s intervention reassuring. Perhaps he was used to big constables tapping him on the shoulder.

  ‘Ali,’ he said.

  ‘What’s the rest of it?’

  ‘There isn’t any more.’

  ‘Come on, light of my eyes, don’t you have a family?’ enquired Selim.

  The man seemed bewildered.

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ he said.

  ‘You must have!’ said Selim. ‘You don’t suddenly get dropped in the streets.’

  ‘I did,’ said the man.

  ‘Don’t know your mother?’

  ‘Nor my father, either,’ said the man.

  Selim turned to Owen.

  ‘Real bastard, isn’t he?’

  ‘Just keep quiet, will you?’ He was beginning to regret Selim’s presence. ‘All right, then, Ali, if you don’t have a name, do you have a place? Where do you live?’

  Again the bewilderment.

  ‘I don’t live anywhere,’ said the man. Then, as Selim stirred, he added hurriedly: ‘I just move around.’

  ‘One woman after another? That it?’ said Selim.

  ‘Yes,’ said the man. ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘It’s all right for some!’ said Selim.

  ‘Shut up! Where did you sleep the night before last?’ asked Owen.

  ‘At Leila’s.’

  ‘And where will I find Leila?’

  ‘Now we’re talking!’ said Selim.

  Owen wondered whether to throw him out. On the other hand, he did seem to get the man talking.

  ‘I don’t know the name of the street,’ Ali said.

  ‘Give me the quarter.’

  ‘The Fustat.’

  ‘The Fustat is a big place,’ observed Owen.

  The man shrugged.

  ‘If I wanted to find you, Ali, where would I ask for you?’

  ‘At Leila’s,’ said the man promptly, risking a joke and looking to Selim for approval.

  Selim, however, did not approve.

  ‘ I’m the one that makes the jokes,’ he said.

  The man tried another shrug, which, however, quickly lost confidence.

  ‘Where would I find you?’ asked Owen.

  ‘Near the ferry,’ said the man reluctantly.

  ‘If I asked for Ali with the scarred face, someone would know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I expect they’d all know,’ observed Owen. ‘A man like you!’ Ali responded to the invitation, lifting his shoulders proudly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m pretty well known down there.’

  ‘And what about your mates? Are they pretty well known down there, too?’

  The man froze.

  Owen tried a new tack.

  ‘It’s a long way to Babylon,’ he said conversationally. Babylon, where the Coptic Ders were, was at the far end of the Fustat. ‘What are you doing up here?’

  ‘This is where the money is.’

  ‘Is there not money in the Fustat?’

  ‘Not this kind of money.’

  ‘Still, it’s quite a way from the Fustat. Do you often come up here?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Ali. ‘We usually keep south of the Citadel.’

  ‘But not this time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not this time?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose we were offered a job.’

  ‘Ah, you were offered a job?’

  Ali closed his lips firmly.

  ‘You wouldn’t like to tell me who offered it you, would you?’

  ‘No. I would not.’

  ‘I would be very grateful.’

  ‘My mates mightn’t be grateful,’ said Ali.

  ‘Ah, yes, but if you helped me you would be out a long time before they were.’

  ‘They would still come out.’

  ‘It would be a long time, though. Of course, you’re going to be in for a long time. If you don’t help me.’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘Well, you think about it. You’ll have a bit of time before we get to the trial.’

  ‘I don’t even need to think about it,’ said Ali.

  Owen was virtually certain now that he was dealing with a criminal gang and not a political one. What Ali had said had clinched it. The criminal gangs, as opposed to the political ones, tended to identify with a particular territory and seldom moved off it. And the political clubs, whose aims were more focused, rarely accepted commissions.

  He should really now be handing this over to the Parquet. They handled all investigations that were purely criminal. They would have little trouble, he thought, with this one. If Ali was well known down by the docks, the chances were that the other members of the gang would be too. Criminal gangs were local not just in their operations but in their recruitment. Their members would all come from the same neighbourhood, probably from within a few streets of each other. They would make little secret of their membership; in fact, rather the reverse. Membership of a notorious gang was a matter of local pride-again, unlike the political clubs. ‘They’ll miss you, Ali,’ he said, ‘down in the Fustat.’

  Ali flinched, as if he had received a blow. It was probably the first time that it had come home to him.

  ‘You should think over what I said, Ali. You’re going to be away for quite some time. So long that when you come out and go back to the Fustat it will be no good going down to the ferry and asking who knows Ali with the scarred face. Because no one will. As for the Black Scorpion-’

  ‘Black Scorpion?’ said Ali. ‘What have they got to do with it?’

  ‘That’s your lot, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is this some kind
of trick?’ said Ali. ‘Look, you can’t get me for what someone else has done! That’s not fair! That’s not justice! Look, I’ve got my rights!’

  ‘If you’re not Black Scorpion,’ said Owen, ‘then who are you?’

  ‘You know who we are.’

  ‘Just say!’

  ‘The Edge of the Knife. Now are you satisfied?’

  ‘Black Scorpion is what she said,’ insisted Selim afterwards, irate. ‘Look, Effendi, who do you believe? An idle bastard who goes around hitting people on the head; or a woman so virtuous she goes to the mosque every day and won’t let a man put his hands on her?’

  ‘Are you sure that’s what she said?’

  ‘Effendi, would I make a mistake on a thing like this? When you had asked me especially?’

  ‘Well, maybe she made the mistake, then.’

  ‘Effendi, why waste time? Let me go in and have a talk with that stupid bastard. We’ll soon find out who’s made a mistake. And it’s my guess it’s him. As he’ll bloody soon discover!’

  ‘Enough! We will go and speak with Mustapha. He’s the one who will know. Maybe his wife got it wrong.’

  ‘Effendi-’

  Selim fumed all the way to the cafe.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said the proprietor unwelcomingly. ‘I didn’t think we’d be seeing you again. I thought they’d about finished you off.’

  ‘Next time,’ promised Selim, with a flash of white teeth, ‘they’re the ones who are going to be finished off.’

  ‘You’ll have to make a better job of it then than you did this time.’

  ‘It was four to one!’ protested Selim indignantly.

  ‘It was my mistake,’ said Owen. ‘I should have left you more men.’

  ‘What, drinking my coffee?’ said Mustapha. ‘No thanks!’

  ‘Shame on you!’ said his wife. ‘When the man was ready to lay down his life for you!’

  She went across to Selim and gently touched his bandaged head.

  ‘How are you?’ she said, concerned. ‘It was a grievous wound.’

  ‘Pretty grievous,’ Selim acknowledged.

  ‘And you have walked all this way in the heat?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Selim had to admit.

  ‘Oh, Effendi! The man is still weak from his wounds!’

  ‘I do feel a bit weak,’ Selim conceded, putting a hand to his head.