Alone? Yes, said the boy, alone. Not with the others? No, not with the others. They had watched from afar.
Owen was inclined to believe him. His account was more circumstantial than the old man’s. He reported conversation, too, which suggested that he or his informants had gone closer to the men. It might all be invention, the sort of stuff that he thought the Mamur Zapt would like to hear, but on the whole the account rang true.
What happened then? While the man was delivering the bundle a door had scraped along the stone making a loud, grating sound. The man had come rushing down the steps in a fright and all the men had run off into the darkness. They had scattered and some of them had lost their way and had not been able to get out of the necropolis till morning. The boy reported this with a trace of contempt in his voice, as of a professional speaking about amateurs.
Owen asked the boy if he had seen the nature of the bundle. The boy said no, but left little doubt that then or later he had learned what it contained. Had he seen the men? Again the boy said no. He hesitated slightly, however, and Owen got the impression he was holding something back. He pressed him but got no response.
The boy tugged at Georgiades’s arm.
‘Can I have my money?’ he said.
Georgiades fumbled in his pocket and produced the third piastre.
‘What you have told us is certainly worth three piastres,’ he said. ‘The question is, is it worth four?’
He looked at Owen.
‘In itself it isn’t,’ said Owen, ‘but if we give it him perhaps he will remember us and come to us again.’
Georgiades found a fourth piastre and gave it to the boy.
‘This is how I became poor,’ he said.
The boy, released, moved a little further off, out of reach, but did not go away. He was looking at Owen.
‘I have heard of you,’ he said.
‘What have you heard?’
The boy did not reply directly.
‘My mother’s brother works for you,’ he said suddenly.
‘His name?’
‘Yussuf.’
Yussuf was one of the office bearers.
‘I know him well,’ said Owen.
‘Too well,’ added Georgiades.
‘How is your mother?’ asked Owen politely.
‘She is angry with Yussuf.’
‘Why?’
‘He has put away his wife. Now he has no woman and he expects her to clean for him.’
‘I will speak to Yussuf.’
‘For God sake don’t add to his problems,’ Georgiades counselled, ‘or the coffee will get even worse.’
‘Do not tell him I spoke with you,’ said the boy.
Owen promised he wouldn’t.
‘It shall be a secret between us,’ he said, ‘as with all else you have told me. And anything further you tell me,’ he added, watching the boy.
‘I am afraid,’ the boy said.
‘The holy one?’
The boy did not reply.
‘Are you afraid he might punish you if he hears you have spoken with me?’
The boy glanced over his shoulder at the other boys behind him in the stones.
‘They need not hear. They need not know.’
‘They will tell him that I have spoken with you.’
‘He will ask, and you will tell him all that you have told us.’
‘That is right,’ said the boy.
‘And he will not mind because so far you have not told us anything that touches him.’
The boy was silent.
‘He need not know,’ said Owen, ‘if you tell us a little more.’
The boy was torn.
‘I would tell you—’
‘Tell us,’ said Owen. ‘It is a dangerous thing to have powerful friends. But sometimes it is a good thing.’
‘They were his men.’
‘The holy one’s? The men who came to the Place of the Dead?’
The boy nodded.
‘Who is this holy one?’ asked Georgiades.
The boy did not reply at once. He seemed to be studying the marks his toe traced in the sand. Owen thought at first that they might be intended as a message, but of course the boy could not write.
Then he lifted his head and looked Owen straight in the eye.
‘The Sheikh Osman Rahman.’
‘Did he send them?’
The boy pulled away.
‘I can say no more. I must go. They will suspect.’
‘Very well. You have helped me,’ said Owen, ‘and I shall not forget.’
The boy stepped back towards them.
‘Offer me money,’ he said to Georgiades.
Georgiades took out another piastre.
‘That is not enough. Two.’
Georgiades obliged.
‘Not like that,’ said the boy impatiently. ‘As you did.’
Georgiades cottoned on. He took the large double piastre coin between forefinger and thumb and showed it to the boy in exaggerated fashion. The boy looked at it as if mesmerized and allowed himself to be drawn slowly forward. Then, as Georgiades reached out a hand for him, he kicked Georgiades smartly on the shin, knocked the coin out of his hand, scooped it up in a flash out of the sand and sprang away laughing.
For a moment he stood there trilling triumphantly. Then he disappeared into the stones with his fellows.
Georgiades rubbed his shin and cursed. Even though the kick had been delivered with the bare foot it had still hurt.
‘Little sod,’ he said. ‘Smart little sod,’ he added admiringly.
‘Who is this woman, anyway?’ demanded Zeinab.
‘I told you. She’s the niece of this MP who’s visiting us.’
‘What is she doing here?’
‘Keeping him company, I suppose. Having a holiday.’
‘She’s come here to get a husband. Like all the others.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. She’s not like them.’
This was a mistake.
‘How is she not like them?’ Zeinab asked.
Owen floundered.
‘Well, she’s quieter. More retiring.’
‘She doesn’t seem to have retired so far,’ said Zeinab.
‘What’s she like? Is she beautiful?’
‘No. She’s not beautiful. I don’t know what she’s like, really. Mostly she’s been under that hat.’
‘Cunning.’
Owen looked at the memo incredulously. It came from Accounts, and it said:
To the Mamur Zapt:
CAMEL WATERING
We notice there have been two recent transfers of sums from the Camel Watering Account to the Curbash Compensation Fund. We assume these transfers to have been made in error. We remind the Mamur Zapt that he has no capacity to vire.
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means that you can’t switch money from other accounts into the Curbash Compensation Fund,’ said Nikos.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you have no capacity to vire.’
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘It means to take money which is under one heading and put it under another. It’s an accounting term.’
‘I can’t switch money from one account to another because I can’t switch money from one account to another. Is that it?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But I’ve always done it.’
‘And now they’ve found out.’
‘But I need to. The accounts are all wrong otherwise.’
‘If I were you,’ said Nikos, ‘I wouldn’t tell them that.’
‘Who the hell do they think they are? I can vire if I want to.’
‘No,’ said Nikos, ‘you can’t. The restriction on viring was one of Cromer’s first measures. It’s a basic accounting principle. Ask Postlethwaite.’
‘Well, I don’t know that I’ll take it up with him—’
‘If I were you I wouldn’t take it up. It’s one of the things they’re very hot
on.’
‘Yes, but we need the money.’
‘You’d better talk to Garvin. Though I don’t know that that will do much good.’
‘About that hedgehog of yours,’ said Cairns-Grant, the forensic pathologist.
‘What?’ said Owen, startled.
Cairns-Grant chuckled, pleased at the success of his little joke.
‘That Zikr. The one with all the spikes in him.’
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and signalled to Owen to take the seat opposite him. He was still at the soup stage and was, indeed, having full Sudani, which was the main reason why Owen went to the Sporting Club for lunch.
‘You’ve done the autopsy?’
‘Yes. Very straightforward.’
There was a touch of regret, even reproach, in Cairns-Grant’s voice.
‘Sorry.’
‘Never mind,’ said Cairns-Grant comfortingly. ‘You’re doing very well. It’s not every day you get a Zikr with knives all over. It’s out of the common run. I’ve great hopes of you.’
The waiter, who knew Owen’s preferences, brought him the full Sudani.
‘What did you find?’
‘First, that it wasn’t one of the blades still sticking in him that killed him. None of them went near a vital place. The Zikr may get carried away,’ said Cairns-Grant, ‘but they’re not daft.’
‘They know where to put the blade in?’
‘Ay.’
‘Even so—’
‘I know what you’re thinking. Loss of blood. Well, there’s less of that than you might think. I remember when I first came out here being able to check some Zikr over after they had finished their dance. The Government wanted evidence that it was excessive and dangerous. Well, I knew some of the sheikhs so I got them to let me give their men a checkover. There was very little bleeding and when the blades were retracted the wounds healed very quickly. It took a week or two, of course, but even immediately after the dancing most of them were able to walk around quite normally. I dare say you noticed that yourself?’
‘Yes,’ said Owen, remembering.
‘They’re strong,’ Cairns-Grant acknowledged, finishing his soup and putting down his spoon. ‘They’re big strong laddies and very fit. But there must be another factor. And I don’t know what it is.’
He looked thoughtfully into space. The waiters, on whom he had the same effect as he did on Owen, thought the gaze was meant for them and rushed to bring him his chops.
‘Ay, well,’ he said, recovering and glancing down at his chops, ‘that’s another story.’
‘How was he killed, then?’
‘We found another stab wound. It penetrated the heart.’
‘Not one of the blades still sticking in?’ said Owen.
‘No.’
‘Fallen out?’
Cairns-Grant shook his head.
‘Unlikely. Very deep. Inserted with considerable force. It would have taken force to pull it out.’
‘Removed, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Someone else, then. Not self-inflicted.’
‘No doubt about it,’ said Cairns-Grant. ‘Inserted from behind.’
Owen nodded.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
‘An upward thrust,’ said Cairns-Grant, ‘delivered by somebody small. About five feet six or five feet eight. I’ve tried it out.’
‘He would have died at once, presumably?’
‘Yes.’
‘It must have been someone in the dance, then.’
‘Another Zikr?’
‘Someone who joined the dance,’ said Owen.
‘Got someone who fits?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ said Cairns-Grant. ‘Good.’ He examined his chops with a view to dissection. ‘Well, young man,’ he said, reaching out for his knife and fork, ‘you would seem to have a murder on your hands. Yes, definitely.’
CHAPTER 5
They met at the Bab es Zuweyla, one of the old gates of Cairo, now the centre of the native city. As they approached the gate the street narrowed and became more medieval. The houses with their heavy wooden windows leaned over the street until they almost touched in the middle, making it always cool and dark. At ground level the street was lined with traditional little native shops, most of them carpenters, it seemed; and as they came through the Tentmakers’ Bazaar, with its gay awnings and saddle-cloth and leather work, they saw ahead of them in the archway of the gate the gleam of the blue tiles of the tiny Dervish mosque.
Most of the bazaars were on the other side of the gate. There were nine main ones; the Silk Bazaar, the Cotton Bazaar, the Tunisian and Algerian Bazaar, the Silversmiths’ and Goldsmiths’ Bazaar, the Sudanese Bazaar, the Brass Bazaar, the Shoemakers’ Bazaar, the Turkish Bazaar, and the Scentmakers’ Bazaar.
The Scentmakers’ Bazaar, which was where Mahmoud was taking them, was one of the oldest and most traditional of the bazaars. The shops were mere cupboards, little dark recesses, six feet high, six deep and four wide, lined with shelves, in front of which was a long, low counter on which the owner sat, like some carved idol in a niche.
Beside him on the counter were large dirty bottles of gilt glass from which he would take out the stoppers and daub them on the sleeves of passers-by. On his other side was an array of cheap, gaudy small bottles for the scent he sold; and on the floor in front of him were ivory balls with cavities for scent.
Behind him, on the shelves of his dark recess, were large brown bottles criss-crossed with gold and rows of foolish otto-of-roses bottles, cut and gilt, but with hardly more inside than a thermometer. Sometimes, too, there was an assistant, a boy for fetching the bottles, a woman for modelling the perfume, but always, in this most traditional of bazaars, totally concealed in shapeless black.
Mahmoud, hesitantly, had asked Owen if Zeinab could possibly come too. Owen had put it to her and, slightly to his surprise, she had agreed. The Scentmakers’ Bazaar was not normally a place she would have allowed herself to have been seen dead in. Like many well-to-do Cairenes, she took her perfumes, with her fashions, direct from Paris. However, on this occasion she was intrigued and agreed readily enough.
As soon as they began to walk along the shops Owen was very glad that she had come. She addressed herself to the task with her usual imperiousness and dragged Owen and Mahmoud along in her wake. She entered into technical discussions with the shopkeepers in a way totally beyond the capacity of Owen and Mahmoud, explaining that while she normally wore only French perfume, she was considering experimenting with a combination of French and Arab scents: ‘une vraie Caireenne, n’est ce pas?’ She treated coldly all attempts to dab the scent on her own sleeve, rejected any suggestion that it could suitably be tried out on Owen and Mahmoud, and insisted that it be tested on a woman, an assistant, perhaps, or, preferably, the shopkeeper’s wife, a suggestion which, with its hint of superiority, would have had shopkeepers in the more Westernized parts of the city grovelling but was treated simply commercially in the bazaar.
There were three Coptic scentmakers in the bazaar. One was an elderly, rather exhausted man who was unable to produce either assistant or wife and had to borrow a lady from his neighbour for the purpose. One was a middle-aged man, rather corpulent, who sent a message into the depths behind his recess which finally produced an abashed female servant: and one was a spare man in young middle age who had his wife helping him in the shop. She was used to helping with such requests and come forward at once when asked.
Zeinab spent a lot of time with this shopkeeper. Several of his perfumes seemed promising and in the end she took away samples in three small bottles and promised that she would return when she had tried them out. She asked the shopkeeper’s name so that she would know to whom to send her servant. It was Zoser.
Zoser served her politely but with an air of detachment, as if his mind was on higher things. There was an ascetic quality about him. He gave the impression that he had come straight from fasting; and there w
as a mild hint of irritation at his fast being interrupted.
At the last moment Zeinab dithered. She wanted to try just once again a perfume she had already rejected. When Zoser dabbed a little on his wife’s sleeve she took the sleeve and held it up to her nose. The wife obligingly lifted her arm and for the first time there was a flash of something pale, as if to show that there really was flesh and blood beneath the shapeless black garment.
‘No,’ said Zeinab, ‘no, I think I was right after all. I’ll just take these.’
They continued on along the line of booths, each with its owner sitting on the counter among his stained, dirty jars like some vast black spider, past the long, carpet-covered benches in front of them with the rows of men drinking coffee and smoking and talking, past the assorted smells of rose and jasmin, amber and banana, past the odd little restaurants with their grand brass jugs of hot water, their servants hurrying with coffee in glasses to some merchant about to strike a deal, past all this and then suddenly through the arch of the Bab es Zuweyla with its two soaring and fantastic minarets and out once more into the Tentmakers’ Bazaar with its donkey-saddles of red brocade and its camel-trappings adorned with cowries and little bits of looking-glass, its gaily-striped awnings and brilliant tent linings.
With its crowds, too. Owen loved the bustle of the bazaars, of the whole native city, in fact; but after you had spent some time in them, especially when it was as hot as this, you felt an overwhelming need for space and air, and after forcing their way through the blocked thoroughfares of the Tentmakers’ Bazaar they were glad to emerge into the more open streets. Mahmoud summoned an arabeah, one of the two-horse kind, and they sank into it gratefully.
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