Herring on the Nile (11 page)

‘Well, the visit to the temple was more exciting than I expected,’ I said.

‘I hope Ethelred is all right,’ she replied. She seemed genuinely concerned. ‘That bit of roof didn’t miss him by much, did it?’

I nodded. ‘Ethelred’s fine – well, much the same as usual anyway. Were you in the hall?’

‘No, I was outside in the . . . I’m not sure what its name is. I still haven’t worked out what the different bits of the temple are called. Anyway, I just heard a bit of a
crash, turned and saw a cloud of dust rising. You’d think they’d make sure these places were safe to visit, wouldn’t you?’

‘You didn’t go up on the roof yourself?’

‘With my head for heights? No thanks. Just the look of the stairs up there made me feel faint. Anyway, wasn’t there a sign saying “No Entry” or something?’

‘Yes, but only to stop you seeing the good stuff. How do you find travelling on your own?’

‘It’s fine. You get to meet people. Everyone seems very friendly.’

‘And Professor Campion?’

‘How do you mean?’ She looked at me with an innocence that was almost as tacky as her necklace.

‘What did you think of his talk this morning?’ I asked.

‘He’s very good,’ she said, but slightly cautiously.

‘Where exactly is he a professor?’

‘London,’ she said. ‘I think that’s what he told me, anyway.’

‘Do you know him well?’

‘As well as you can know somebody after twenty-four hours.’

‘You didn’t know him before this trip then?’

‘No, why do you think that?’

She was convincing – I had to hand it to her. If I had not overheard her and the professor, I might have almost believed what she was saying.

‘You were sitting together on the aeroplane,’ I pointed out.

‘Yes, that was quite a coincidence – being given seats next to each other, then finding out that we were on the same boat, I mean. We had a good old chinwag on the way
out.’

‘Do you also work at a university?’

‘No, I’m a librarian,’ she said. ‘And you?’

‘I’m a literary agent.’

‘What fun!’

‘You reckon? Did Professor Campion say why he was on this trip? As an Egyptologist he should have seen most of these temples before. It must all be a bit basic for him.’

‘I suppose if you’re really interested in that sort of thing, you can’t get enough of them. You must find the same thing with books.’

‘Not really,’ I said.

‘Or writers.’

‘You’d be surprised.’

She picked up
Snow on the Desert’s Face
again.

‘You like Salome Otterbourne’s books?’ I asked.

‘This one’s better than
Under the Fig Tree
,’ she said. ‘But I really prefer detective stories.’

‘That’s interesting. Ever contemplated murder yourself?’

I’m not sure what I’d hoped she’d do. Breaking down and confessing that she was conspiring with Professor Campion to murder one of the passengers was perhaps a bit much to hope
for.

‘No,’ was actually what she chose to say. But there was quite a lot of contempt packed into that one short word. She opened her book and resumed reading at the place she had
marked.

I had to concede that I had not been riveting company – leading questions fired at her in a staccato fashion, enlivened only by tacit accusations of mendacity. After a while she said she
would go and get herself a coffee. She did not offer to get me one. She did not come back.

We were likely to be playing this sort of game of musical chairs all the way to Luxor, but I’d hoped it would be a while before cruel fate landed me next to Herbie Proctor. Cruel fate had
clearly decided that I’d avoided Herbie long enough.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Actually I do mind, Mr Proctor. There are plenty of other tables. Go and sit at one of those.’

I’m normally quite good at making my views clear to authors, publishers, trick-or-treaters and the like; but I was obviously a bit out of practice with private detectives, because Proctor
simply dumped himself in the chair, grinning crookedly, and stretched out his pale skinny legs. I noticed that they were covered with soft, almost white, hairs. They were the sort of legs that went
well with long trousers. I wondered if the pink shorts were the only ones that he had. He would not have wasted money on a second pair without good reason.

‘Close shave this morning in that temple,’ he said. ‘If I’d been stood a couple of feet to the left, I wouldn’t be here now talking to you. You could say I bear a
charmed life, Elsie.’

He was right. I could. But I decided, under the circumstances, not to bother.

‘They can’t kill me that easy,’ he added, in case I didn’t know what a charmed life was.

‘Or Ethelred,’ I pointed out.

‘Him too, though obviously he wasn’t the target.’

‘You think the rock was aimed at you? You think it was the same people that you claim are after your client?’

‘That sounds the most likely explanation, doesn’t it? You see, anybody who wanted to kill a client of mine would have to get me out of the way first. That stands to reason. I thought
nobody on board this boat except Ethelred – and you apparently – knew I was here to protect Raffles. The two things that I am really good at, Elsie, are client confidentiality and
maintaining my cover. But when you’ve got something of a reputation as a private detective – well, people put two and two together. I obviously considered the possibility that the
business this morning was due to a badly maintained roof – that’sthe problem with the ancient Egyptians, they just didn’t know anything about building – but on reflection I
think I can safely say that somebody was trying to get at my client by putting me out of the picture.’

So, Proctor not only thought that the rock was aimed at him, but seemed prepared to accept it as a well-judged compliment. Perhaps he felt that it was a good cause.

‘Why
would
anyone want to kill your client, Mr Proctor?’ I asked.

‘Like I said, powerful people make enemies, Elsie.’

‘Businessmen don’t habitually get rocks lobbed at them – in person or by proxy.’

‘You never can tell who might decide to bump you off. Could be a total stranger. Could be some left-wing nutter. Could be a member of your own family.’

‘Your own family? Hang on . . . Raffles . . . Didn’t somebody of that name murder his wife a while back? No, he must still be in prison.’

‘The jury found him not guilty, Elsie. He left the court without a stain on his character.’

‘In the strict technical sense I’m sure that’s true but, if that’s the man, he sounded a complete shit. Didn’t he have links with organized crime?’

‘The judge instructed the jury that any alleged links were irrelevant to the murder charge. And he still deserves the protection of the law . . . or me in this case.’

‘I’m sure you are exactly what he deserves,’ I said.

Proctor smiled, as though I could not have paid him a greater compliment.

Ten

I was not sure what Annabelle was doing in Egypt, but the text message she had sent gave a hint as to how she currently felt about me. I had a hunch that it would be best to
stay out of her way for a bit.

I did however want to talk to Elsie’s two ‘policemen’ and see why they had chosen to pull her leg so cruelly. From what I had seen of them so far, there seemed little to
justify either Elsie’s expectations or Purbright’s concerns.

They proved to be in the saloon, drinking Egyptian coffee and watching the river from their comfortable, well-upholstered seats. I had not really talked to them properly up to that point, so we
introduced ourselves. Elsie had referred to them almost interchangeably as Mahmoud and Majid as if, for all practical purposes, they were slightly differently branded versions of the same product.
This was not entirely unfair. They were both, as far as I could judge, in their mid-thirties, both dressed in long-sleeved shirts with open collars, both clean-shaven. Quite ordinary-looking.
Mahmoud was the taller, darker and perhaps somewhat the older of the two – when speaking English he had no perceptible accent of either class or region; only an occasional oddity of stress or
vocabulary suggested something more exotic than the Home Counties. Majid was more slightly built and showed the first signs of losing his hair – his voice was that of somebody who had spent
their entire life in London or its easterly semi-rural extensions.

That at least was how I saw them then. It was only later, as I got a chance to study them (and they me), that I realized that the similarities between them were fewer and the differences
greater.

‘We seem to be making better time now,’ I observed. There had apparently been some temporary repairs done to the engines while we were at Edfu and we had speeded up a little.

‘Yes, by the look of it,’ said Mahmoud. ‘We are nevertheless rather behind our original schedule.’

‘You are in Egypt on holiday?’ I asked.

‘Yes. This is the country of my birth, but my family moved to Romford when I was two. When I speak Arabic, nobody here can work out my funny accent,’ said Mahmoud. He laughed.

Majid’s family had come to Britain from Morocco before he was born. They both worked in a bank in London and had decided to take a break in Egypt to get some sun. There was nothing about
them to suggest they were policemen of any sort. Still, I thought that I should ensure there was no doubt.

‘Have you always worked for a bank?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Majid. ‘It pays the bills. Know what I mean? And you? Somebody said you are a writer?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I write crime novels. I doubt you would have heard of me unless you read a lot of crime. Maybe not even then.’

‘On the contrary – we were told you are most well known,’ said Mahmoud.

‘I’m not Paul Fielder,’ I said quickly. I still needed to clear that up with Purbright and had no wish to repeat the error with Mahmoud. On the other hand I liked to think
that, as Peter Fielding, I had some small claim to fame. And I was aware that I had done little, if anything, since boarding the boat, that Elsie would classify as selling myself. I tried to think
how I might ‘big myself up’, as I believe the phrase is. ‘Of course, I do get invited onto panels at most of the crime conventions,’ I added cautiously. On reflection, it
didn’t seem much of a selling point.

‘So, folk back in the UK would have heard of you?’ The question was posed in such a way as to suggest that, for Majid, I was at least as obscure as I had initially claimed.

‘I’d like to think so,’ I said. ‘Well, crime fiction fans anyway . . .’

Mahmoud looked at Majid and nodded as if something was decided.

‘We are indeed honoured to have a famous author on board with us,’ said Mahmoud.

I looked at them to see if this too was just a leg-pull, but they seemed serious. I tried to look eminent but modest while I waited for them to ask me more about my writing.

‘You weren’t at the temple this morning?’ I said after quite a long silence.

‘Overslept, didn’t we?’ said Majid. ‘They start these tours well early. We went for a walk round the market instead. There was something we needed to pick up. We’ll
be raring to go bright and early tomorrow for Kom Ombo.’

‘Not the sort of thing that happens every day,’ said John. ‘You must have upset somebody very much indeed. Did the police catch that woman?’

‘Woman?’ I asked.

Tom shrugged apologetically in response. ‘John saw a woman climbing up the stairs to the roof a bit before the rock came down. He told the police, but since he couldn’t give them
much of a description, I don’t think they took it too seriously.’

‘You mean somebody from the boat?’ I asked.

‘Could be,’ said John. ‘I just saw a glimpse of somebody in a floppy hat nipping under the rope and haring off up the stairs.’

‘You will see why the police took this piece of evidence so seriously,’ said Tom. ‘Three-quarters of the women there, and half the men, were sporting hats that would get you
arrested by the fashion police if you tried wearing them on Seventh Avenue.’

‘They’d be fine in Kansas, though,’ said John.

‘True,’ said Tom.

We seemed to be drifting away from the idea of identifying the person who, arguably, might have tried to kill me – unless it actually was the Wicked Witch of the West. I vaguely remembered
that she too had a floppy hat.

‘But you saw somebody?’ I persisted.

‘Yes . . .’ he said slowly. ‘But there were people going all over the temple the whole time. Even if somebody up on the roof did knock that stone down, it may have been
accidental. Or are there any women in floppy hats you know for certain you’ve upset lately?’

It was a good question. How many women currently wanted to kill me? I could only think of one – one who was, admittedly, now on the boat with me. But, if Annabelle was going to kill me,
why would she have forewarned me of the fact?

‘I don’t think the stone was aimed at me,’ I said eventually.

‘Pretty fine shot if it was, though,’ said Tom. ‘For a girl leastways.’

Eleven

All day we had splashed happily along, while more untidy villages, date groves and rocky outcrops faded into the distance behind us. Sometimes the houses were the same shade of
drab brown as the desert beyond; sometimes, for presumably good but ultimately unknowable reasons, their walls shone with yellow, green and blue paint. Sometimes the road and houses clung to the
bank of the river, and trucks and motorbikes rattled past us, throwing up clouds of dust; in other places all signs of dwellings and transportation were discreetly concealed somewhere beyond the
fields, where water pumps chugged and men in blue or grey
jellabiyas
hacked fitfully at the soil. Here and there solitary donkeys stood, like small allegories of sorrow, stiller than the
quietly moving fronds above them; everything about their demeanour told you that they did not expect things to get better any time soon. Sometimes, for several miles, we would see nothing except
the reedy bank and the date palms and the beige hills beyond. The one constant was the vast cloudless blue sky.