The Donkey-Vous

by Michael Pearce

  Owen shifted his position and something flashed in his eyes, dazzling him. Involuntarily he jerked his head back and was dazzled again. For a moment he could not work out what was happening. Then he realized. There was some glass opposite him which was catching the light from the oil lamp. Several bits of glass, because as he moved there were different flashes.

  He looked more closely. At first he could not make out what it was. Then he saw and could not believe his eyes. The space in front of him was piled deep with lanterns. That was what the “wall” consisted of: lanterns, hundreds of them. They stood in heaps and piles all around this part of the liwan, bright, colored lanterns with gaudy paper and flashy dangling beads.

  Then he remembered. The mosque was used to store the lanterns used on feast days to decorate the city’s streets and squares.

  The two Arabs went on talking quietly. From time to time the watchman looked at the case. The other man did not stir.

  At one point the watchman got to his feet and shuffled off into the night. Owen tensed expectantly but the suffragi did not move nor did anyone come. Eventually the watchman shuffled back, this time with a dirty black can. He produced two small enamel cups from the folds of his galabeah, set them on the ground and filled them from the can. The suffragi drank with appropriately polite smacking of lips.

  They resumed their conversation. Owen could follow it only in parts. It was purely trivial in nature. They were just passing the time. Owen felt sure the suffragi was waiting for somebody.

  Georgiades had slipped away. Owen knew what he was doing. He was making his way ’round to the other side to cut off possible escape routes.

  If the man was coming, though, it would have to be soon. The sky was beginning to lighten.

  The watchman produced some bread and an onion and offered to share it with the suffragi. The suffragi refused politely.

  Owen was beginning to get bothered now. It was getting light so quickly that a man coming through the liwan would be able to see the watchers. He signalled to Abou, who was standing beside him and they moved in front of two pillars to be less visible from behind.

  Still no one came.

  In the strange gray light that came before the dawn in Egypt things stood out as clearly as if it were day but with a gentle softness which lacked the harsh clarity of the sun. Owen always woke early. He would be awaking now if this were an ordinary day.

  Any moment now the sun would come over the horizon. The watchman leaned forward and extinguished the lamp.

  The suffragi rose from his squat and picked up the case. He bade the watchman the usual extended, ceremonious, Arab farewell and then walked off down the colonnaded arcade.

  Abou looked at Owen questioningly.

  Owen nodded and the tracker slipped off through the pillars. Owen followed a long way behind. Tracking by daylight, when it was so much easier to be seen, was far harder than tracking by night. It was best left to those who knew how to do it.

  He could not see Sadiq. Georgiades, he knew, would be doing the same as he was.

  They followed the line of the old city wall. The houses in this poor quarter were made of mud. Every year when the heavy rain came it washed away some of the mud and left the houses slightly shapeless, their corners blurred. Then the sun came and dried the mud until it cracked. Little by little it would crumble and then be washed away when the rain came again. Many of the houses were little better than ruins.

  The suffragi went into one of the most ruined of these. There was not even a proper door, just a gap in the wall.

  The trackers waited at a discreet distance. Georgiades and Owen came up with them. Georgiades looked at Owen and made a face.

  “Nothing else for it!” Owen said resignedly. He waved the trackers in.

  They were holding the suffragi when Owen stepped into the room. The suffragi was putting up no resistance; indeed, there was a smile on his face.

  Owen went across to the case and snapped it open.

  It was empty.

  ***

  “It was a decoy,” said Owen bitterly, “just a decoy.”

  “And you fell for it,” said Garvin, with a certain grim satisfaction.

  “You’ve got the man, though,” said McPhee, loyal to the last.

  “Yes, but I can’t hold him. What’s he done?”

  “He has deceived us,” said McPhee stiffly.

  “The way you’re conducting this investigation, that’ll be true of half the population by the time you’ve finished,” said Garvin.

  “Anyway, that doesn’t constitute a crime.”

  “Stolen a case.”

  “He’s not stolen a case,” said Owen. “It’s his case.”

  “Not Berthelot’s?”

  “No. Like Berthelot’s. Exactly like.”

  “What absolute nonsense! What is a suffragi doing with a case like that?”

  “He says he uses it to take his supper to the club. Anton won’t give him any food, so he has to take his own. He used to take it wrapped in a newspaper but Anton didn’t like that. He said it lowered the tone. So now he takes it in a posh case.”

  “Just like Berthelot’s?”

  “Just like Berthelot’s. Pure coincidence.”

  “Coincidence!” McPhee fumed.

  “And meanwhile the real case went somewhere else, I suppose,” said Garvin.

  “No. It’s still in the cloakroom, where Berthelot left it. The attendant says he can’t give it to us unless we produce a receipt.”

  “Oh really!”

  Garvin laughed. “I take it the money is no longer in it?” he said.

  “There never was any money in it. According to Berthelot.”

  “Just a case, which he properly left in the cloakroom?”

  “And the cloakroom has properly looked after it.”

  “Well,” said Garvin, “they’re certainly running rings around you.”

  “They’re just laughing at us,” said Owen. “Everyone’s laughing at us. The donkey-boys are laughing, the bazaar’s laughing, even you’re laughing.”

  “I’m not laughing,” said Garvin, “not any more. The French—”

  “Ah yes,” said Owen uncomfortably.

  “—are not laughing either. They’re hopping mad. They say it’s all our fault. If we’d not messed things up the exchange would have gone ahead as planned and Moulin would now be a free man.”

  “It’s hardly fair—”

  “Isn’t it?” Garvin cut in. “You were at Anton’s, weren’t you? Well…”

  He tossed a piece of paper on the table in front of them. Owen read:

  Because you’ve broken your side of the agreement and told the Mamur Zapt, we are breaking our side of the agreement.”

  “When they got to the address Berthelot was given,” said Garvin, “they found the house empty. There was just this note left on a table.”

  “No Moulin?”

  “No Moulin,” said Garvin.

  ***

  Owen poured out his troubles to Mahmoud, who listened sympathetically and then took him out for a coffee to restore him. They chose a café in one of the small streets opposite Shepheard’s: the Wagh el Birket, in fact. It was just after midday, however, and the ladies of the night were still sleeping off the effects of their labors. The shuttered doors on the balconies were closed, the cheap bands in the arcade opposite stilled. Only a few of the cafés were open and these were the traditional Arab ones which catered for the humble local clientele. They picked a table outside one of these and sat down in the shade.

  Mahmoud had problems too. He had only just finished questioning all potential witnesses. The list had been a long one, including as it did the staff of the hotel, guests who had been on the terrace, and an assortment of donkey-boys, arabeah-drivers, street-vendors, and general bystanders, of whom, as was usual in
Cairo, there were a lot. These latter were especially eager to contribute their impressions and it was only after much patient sifting that Mahmoud was able to establish whether they had actually been present on the day or not.

  An additional difficulty was the fact that the incident had been the main topic of conversation in the neighborhood ever since Monsieur Moulin had been reported missing. Whatever may have been the original perceptions, by the time they were reported they had long been confused by a mass of eager embroidering, ill-informed conjecture and plain fantasy. By the end Mahmoud was in despair.

  “I’ve got to find a way of going back to the beginning,” he said. “This is hopeless.”

  Owen commiserated.

  “How about a reconstruction?” he suggested.

  Mahmoud at once brightened. The Parquet, French-trained and French in style, adhered to French methods of investigation, of which the “reconstruction” of the crime was usually part.

  “That’s a good idea!” he said enthusiastically. “I might try that.”

  Owen, whose own training was limited to a brief exposure to English police methods while serving under Garvin at Alexandria, was less convinced in general of the value of “reconstructing.” How could one re-enact an event as fluid as Moulin’s disappearance, with so many holes and loopholes? He could, however, see a case for it on this occasion. Seeing even a crude dramatization of the incident might jog the memories of people as inclined to the dramatic as most Egyptians were.

  Mahmoud, happy now, could turn back to Owen’s problems. He sipped the iced water which came with the coffee and thought hard.

  “Anton’s,” he said after a while. “Why did it happen there?”

  “No special reason. That’s just where it happened to happen.”

  “It’s a surprising place for it to happen to happen.”

  “Why?”

  “If they’ve Senussi connections, as Nikos thought. That sort of Islamic fundamentalist wouldn’t go near a gambling salon. He wouldn’t even have heard of Anton’s.”

  “There’s no real evidence that they have Senussi connections. It was just the name that suggested it to Nikos—‘Zawia.’”

  “‘Zawia’ can mean a lot of things.”

  “I thought it might be Nationalist. You know, ‘turning-point,’ that sort of thing.”

  Mahmoud, who was himself a member of the Nationalist Party, laughed.

  “You see Nationalist influence in all sorts of funny places,” he said drily.

  “I know. There’s nothing much to suggest it in this case. Except that it was aimed at foreigners.”

  “They kidnapped a foreigner,” said Mahmoud, “on this particular occasion. That doesn’t mean their target is foreigners in general. Next time it could be an Egyptian.”

  “Even if it was an Egyptian, there could still be a Nationalist group behind it. Most of the kidnapping in Cairo is done to raise money for political purposes.”

  “So they say.”

  Owen sensed he had better move off the topic. Mahmoud and he got on very well together but there were some issues it was best to steer clear of. The Egyptian Nationalist movement was one.

  “I agree with you,” he said. “If they’re Senussi, Anton’s is a funny place to use.”

  “If they’re fundamentalist at all it’s a funny place to use. It’s not just they’d avoid it, it’s that they wouldn’t know enough about it to be able to use it.”

  “Maybe it’s not a fundamentalist group.”

  “There’s another thing. You said that in their note they didn’t tell Berthelot how to get to Anton’s. They knew he already knew. How did they know that?”

  “Seen him go there.”

  “What strikes me,” said Mahmoud, “is how remarkably well informed they are on the habits of guests at Shepheard’s.”

  “It must be an inside job, you mean?”

  “Or else they’ve got a very good contact there. Now if you put the two together, Shepheard’s and Anton’s, you get a picture of a group with a background of knowledge very different from that of the usual group. It could hardly be a fundamentalist group. It’s most unlikely, I would have thought, to be one of the student groups at El Azhar. They wouldn’t have the money for a start and it’s all a bit sophisticated for them. Too Western. It’s even a bit Western for the Nationalists.”

  “I’ve seen Nationalists at Shepheard’s,” Owen could not forbear saying.

  “And I’ve seen Nationalists at places like Anton’s. But on the whole they’re not the sort of places where you would expect to find them. The Nationalists you do find there are—”

  Mahmoud stopped.

  “Successful politicians?” suggested Owen.

  Mahmoud was reluctant to say anything which might yield a later opportunity for criticism of the Nationalist Party.

  “They are not always very good Nationalists,” he said unwillingly. “They are a bit too fond of Western ways.”

  He closed his lips firmly. You knew he would rather bite off his tongue than say any more.

  “Not the sort of people to go in for kidnapping,” said Owen helpfully.

  “Not the sort of people at all.”

  ***

  Mahmoud arranged his reconstruction for the following afternoon. When Owen got there he was having trouble: the usual trouble. It was not that, Europeans apart, people were unwilling to cooperate. On the contrary: they were only too willing; indeed, could not be dissuaded from cooperating. Every waiter in the hotel, whether he had been there on the day or not, stood beaming on the terrace. The waiter who had actually served Monsieur Moulin, distinguishable from the others by the fact that a certain apprehensiveness was mixed with his bursting pride, had only to take a step with a tray for a dozen other waiters to rush forward to help him. Much the same thing went for all the other participants.

  On the terrace, apart from the waiters, things were not too bad. Generally speaking, when guests came out of the doors of the hotel and saw what was going on, they recoiled in horror and went to the other end of the terrace. A number of those who had been near the table on the day in question were prevailed upon to stay and sit, stiff and awkward, at neighboring tables. Their general sentiments were expressed most clearly by Mr. Colthorpe Hartley, held back lurking in the hotel on instructions from Mahmoud. “God, how embarrassing!” he kept saying. His wife, doing her duty, was out on the terrace, accompanied by Lucy, the only one who actually appeared to be enjoying herself. She caught sight of Owen in the throng below and gave him a delighted wave. A difficult cast to direct, reflected Owen, but on the whole they were playing their parts.

  The real trouble was down below. At the bottom of the steps things were threatening to get out of hand. The vendors who normally lined the front of the terrace had gathered that something special was going on, a wedding, perhaps, or the arrival of a new boatload of tourists, and flocked to that end of the terrace. The space in front of the hotel steps, normally under pressure anyway from encroaching beggars, performers, artists and street sellers, and kept free only by the extreme vigilance of two policemen posted there for that purpose, was now completely taken over by the crowd. So great was the pressure that more sellers were forced up the steps, a situation they immediately turned to commercial advantage, and soon no one could move at all, either up or down.

  Assisted by McPhee, who rather enjoyed this sort of thing—it was, after all, very like a football scrum—Mahmoud formed his constables into a wedge and drove straight down the steps, pushing everyone off them and forcing the crowd to give ground. In an instant the constables opened out into a ring, creating a small space at the foot of the steps in which the play was to be played.

  The snake charmer, unhappy, and the snake, disdainful, took up their positions. Mahmoud mounted the steps to get a better look, nodded with satisfaction and gave the signal to begin. A small figure,
hobbling with gusto, came out of the hotel entrance and began to make his way painfully across the terrace. A posse of waiters descended upon him at once, one taking one arm, another the other, despite the small figure’s vigorous attempts to shake them off. Two waiters ran in front of him, pulling back chairs to clear a passage. Another was so carried away that he crouched down in front of the pretend Monsieur Moulin and tried to flick specks of dust from his shoes as he stumbled forward.

  “For goodness’ sake!” said McPhee.

  Mahmoud shrugged and carried on.

  “Monsieur Moulin” was escorted to his table and allowed, eventually, to sit down. The waiters gave vigorous final polishings to the table, chair, and anything else that came within reach and then stood proudly by. Mahmoud waved them away. At first they affected not to notice; then, hurt, they reluctantly withdrew. Mahmoud’s sigh of relief was audible even where Owen was standing.

  Lucy Colthorpe Hartley jumped up.

  “This isn’t right!” she said.

  “Why not?” asked Mahmoud.

  “He was already out here when we came out. Come on, Mummy!”

  Mrs. Colthorpe Hartley rose reluctantly from her chair and went back with Lucy to the hotel entrance.

  “God, how embarrassing!” said Mr. Colthorpe Hartley.

  Lucy and her mother came briskly back across the terrace, hesitated for a moment, and then sat down at the table they had previously occupied.

  Lucy leaned across to the pretend Monsieur Moulin, a Greek clerk borrowed for the occasion by Mahmoud from the Parquet offices.

  “Go on!” she said. “Look around! As if you were expecting someone.”

  Entering into his part with spirit, Monsieur Moulin did so, craning backwards over his chair the better to see the length of the terrace.

  “Waiter!” shouted Mahmoud.

  Five sprang forward.

  “One of you!” shouted Mahmoud. “Abdul!”

  Four fell back wounded. Abdul advanced on the table with flourishes.

  “Voulez-vous prendre du thé, Monsieur?”

  Like most of the terrace waiters, Abdul spoke some French. The clerk didn’t and looked puzzled; then guessed and nodded his head. Abdul gave a deep bow and walked slowly off the terrace; very slowly, dragging out his part, greatly to the envy of all the other waiters.