Herring on the Nile (16 page)

‘That’s right,’ said Majid.

‘Cool,’ said Tom.

He stretched and yawned as though bored with the topic but, when Majid was not looking, he flashed me a glance that suggested he did not think I was a total moron after all. Viewed one way this
was good, but viewed in another way, it was very bad indeed. If Tom knew the Met well, and SCD 5 was something like HR or catering, that would explain his current expression. But that in turn
confirmed my hunch that we were all about to find out how being blown up felt.

We heard an outboard engine being cut as the motorboat glided alongside.

‘If you could all just stay seated for the moment,’ said Majid, a little nervously.

Majid’s full attention was now on Tom. I reckoned we had about thirty seconds to get the gun back before the others boarded and we were hopelessly outnumbered.

I stood up very slowly. I hadn’t tried a rugby tackle since I was at school, but Majid was close enough that I’d be able to check very soon whether I still knew how it was done. I
was pretty sure that Tom at least would join in on my side. I was about to spring when a hand grabbed my arm. It was Proctor. Majid heard the noise and turned back to me. Tom now got to his feet
and seemed to be about to tackle Majid himself, when we heard steps outside. Mahmoud had returned. With him were two men carrying machine guns. They did not look much like police – local or
otherwise.

‘I think you should all resume your seats,’ said Mahmoud, ‘while we sort things out.’

‘I don’t know where you’re from,’ said Tom, ‘but you’ve never had any dealings with the Met. A lot of my legal practice concerns children and I happen to know
that SCD 5 is a child protection unit. You certainly haven’t talked to them about counter-terrorism. So, who are you?’

‘How many times do I have to say it? We are policemen. As far as this SCD thing is concerned, my colleague must simply have misheard you,’ said Mahmoud.

‘I don’t think so.’

The other passengers were looking from Tom to Mahmoud and then at me. Doubts were beginning to form in their minds but, sadly, about five minutes too late.

‘We shall need to question you all one by one, beginning I think with you, Ethelred. Perhaps you would like to accompany us downstairs? A little privacy would be helpful.’

‘I’m happy to be questioned here,’ I said.

‘You may be, but we are not,’ said Mahmoud. One of his ‘local colleagues’ pointed his machine gun in my direction. ‘Would you be so kind as to follow me?’

With Mahmoud ahead of me and the other three behind, we descended the stairs to the lower deck, where the motorboat was tied up.

‘Now, Ethelred, we are going to take a little ride.’

‘Where to?’ I asked.

‘It will be more convenient to question you ashore. In the meantime, a boat has been sent for to pull the
Khedive
off the sandbank. Your friends will be quite safe.’

‘So, it is only me that you wish to question?’ I asked.

But Mahmoud merely smiled and ushered me towards the boat.

‘You’re not from the police, are you?’ I said, blinking and trying to make out any landmarks on either bank.

‘What do we have to do to convince you, Ethelred?’

‘A straight answer – yes or no.’

‘We’ve told him enough,’ said one of the Egyptians.

‘You’ve told me nothing,’ I said. ‘So, it would be a reasonable assumption you
are
terrorists.’

‘You are jumping to conclusions,’ said Mahmoud.

‘I’ve been in touch with the British security services – they said there were terrorists on board the boat.’

‘Anything else?’

‘That you were planning to plant a bomb.’

‘Us? How interesting.’

‘Have you planted a bomb on the boat?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You shot Purbright. Why should I trust you or believe you?’

‘That wasn’t us either,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Somebody else shot Purbright.’

‘Who?’

‘Somebody on the boat. If not you . . . then somebody else who must still be on board. Perhaps the same person who tried to kill you and Mr Proctor at Edfu.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘You should be grateful, Ethelred,’ said Mahmoud with a smile. ‘Here you are enjoying a nice boat ride with us instead of being back on the
Khedive
with a murderer who,
if what you are saying is true, may be about to strike again.’

The man at the tiller, perhaps impatient with my questions, gave the throttle a savage wrench. The bows rose suddenly in the water, throwing me back hard against the seat. I held on for dear
life as the boat raced northwards, into the night.

Seventeen

‘Well, at least we’re safe now,’ said Campion, though any threat that Ethelred had posed had always been mainly to Ethelred.

We listened thoughtfully to the sound of the outboard engine dying away. For a while nobody spoke.

‘Have they all gone then?’ asked Proctor eventually. ‘I thought they were going to question Ethelred here on the
Khedive
.’

‘They have obviously taken him to the nearest police station,’ said Campion. ‘That seems to me an entirely proper procedure.’

‘But they’ve just cleared off and left us here on the sandbank?’ said Proctor, who was perhaps less concerned about procedure.

‘They’re not policemen,’ said Tom again. ‘They won’t be going nearer any police station than they can help. Hell – if I’d just asked them that question
a minute earlier . . .’

‘Inspector Mahmoud said that Inspector Majid had misheard,’ said Campion, carefully stressing the rank of both gentlemen. ‘In any case, you can hardly expect the Cairo police
to be au fait with every single Scotland Yard unit. Let’s look at this sensibly. Ethelred comes in here brandishing a gun like a maniac, and accuses the two policemen of murdering Purbright.
The policemen act sensibly – to ensure none of us gets hurt, they lie down on the floor and try to reason with him. They even offer to let him search them. That’s scarcely how a
terrorist would behave, is it? Ethelred’s been acting oddly the whole trip in my humble opinion. Who do you want to believe?’

‘All the same . . .’ said Tom.

‘The policemen can’t be the ones who killed Purbright,’ said Campion. ‘It’s ridiculous. I’m sure it was an accident, but Ethelred must have fired the
gun.’

‘That’s true about the policemen, that is for sure,’ said Captain Bashir, unexpectedly. He didn’t seem happier than any other captain to have his boat on a sandbank with
no working engines. He could therefore have been excused the tiniest grudge against Mahmoud and Majid. If he was now about to defend them, at least nobody could accuse him of being unduly
prejudiced in their favour. So we listened to what he had to say. A pin dropping could have been heard from one side of the boat to the other. (Having no working engines helped.) ‘If the
shots are fired at the same time that the engines fail, then it is impossible that either of the two gentlemen is the killer. They both come to the bridge and tell me they are policemen. We have to
get to Kom Ombo as fast as possible and make contact with the authorities. I protest – we are going as fast as we can – but they give me no choice. When the engines blow, we are still
on the bridge, still arguing. So, neither of them leaves until well after the shot was fired.’

Campion looked unconvinced, but Proctor was eyeing us all suspiciously, trying to work out who had done him out of his fee plus reasonable receipted expenses.

‘When do you think somebody will come and pull us off the sandbank?’ asked Sky Benson, raising a practical issue that had been on my mind as well.

‘We have only Mahmoud’s assurance that anyone has been sent for. If those guys are
not
police, then we may have a long wait,’ said Tom.

‘We can phone the nearest police station ourselves,’ said Campion.

‘Good idea. Anyone manage to hang onto their mobile?’ asked Tom.

Nobody had.

‘Any other way of communicating?’ Tom asked the captain.

‘They took the phones and the ship’s radio,’ he said. ‘They are thorough.’

‘Then, Captain Bashir,’ said Campion, ‘you must launch the ship’s tender and get help. I am sure that the policemen will already have radioed ahead, but it may reassure
those like Tom who doubt it. For my part, I shall go and see if I can retrieve the gun that Ethelred claims was in the cabin by the dining room. After that, Captain, I should be grateful if you
would question the crew. I shall question the passengers to set people’s minds at rest that it was
not
one of us. If the opportunity arises, we shall hail a passing boat and ask it for
assistance.’ It was the sort of speech that Purbright might have made and just got away with. Delivered in Campion’s petulant whine, it did not carry a great deal of authority. The
captain in particular looked pissed off at being ordered around on his own boat. Proctor sniggered. Sky Benson made a point of looking out of the window, though there was nothing to see except the
black river and a few bright stars. Still, objectively, it was not such a bad plan for a group of people stranded in the middle of the Nile with a killer amongst them and no means of communicating
with the outside world.

‘You mean, launch the tender onto the sandbank that we are currently stuck on?’ asked Captain Bashir with an air of disdain.

‘Certainly. And then push it into the Nile,’ said Campion, as if they did little else at the UCL archaeology department.

‘Using the one undamaged winch to get it clear of the tree that it is in?’ asked the captain.

‘I am sure that it could be manhandled by four or five of the crew . . .’ Campion began; but nothing in the captain’s expression suggested to him that it would be worth
completing the sentence.

‘Who says you get the gun anyway?’ asked Proctor, deciding that he might as well nit-pick as not. ‘You could be the killer as easily as . . .’ He looked round the room
trying to spot a more likely killer, but neither Ethelred nor the two policemen were there. I too wouldn’t have trusted Campion with a gun, though. I hadn’t forgotten his late-night
conversation with Sky.

‘I think the gun should be handed over to Captain Bashir,’ I said. Other than Tom and John, he was the only one left I trusted entirely.

‘It would be quite safe with me,’ said Campion. He clearly saw himself in the role of a natural leader and was disappointed that we couldn’t see it too. ‘In any case, we
have all agreed that the most likely killer is Ethelred. He burst in here threatening everyone. He did have a gun, even if he doesn’t know how the safety catch works. I repeat: I’m not
saying it was deliberate. The way he was waving that thing around, it is much more likely to have been a tragic accident. But the police quite clearly suspect him and I say they are right to do
so.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Tom. ‘In fact, the second gun more or less clears him.’

‘Does it?’ asked Proctor.

‘I’d say it does. Ethelred would scarcely require two guns so, if there really is a second gun in that cabin, somebody else on board the boat has been using one this
evening.’

‘But even if it belongs to one of us, why would anyone leave a murder weapon lying around?’ I said. ‘The obvious thing is to throw it into the Nile. Nobody would have heard the
splash with all that noise. So, why leave it somewhere that even Ethelred could find it?’

To that question, as to so many others, there was no obvious answer. John was in any case wrestling with another problem. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘are you sure about this child
protection thing? Couldn’t you be misremembering? Hell, all these initials . . .’

‘Or maybe Inspector Majid misheard you?’ said Proctor. ‘There was quite a lot going on at the time.’

‘Why don’t I just go and get the gun?’ said Campion, returning to his role as natural leader.

‘No,’ said Proctor. ‘I think we should stay put and each state clearly where we were when the shot was fired. Then we’ll decide who gets the gun.’

Proctor and Campion tried staring each other out, but it was pretty shoddy work. Neither was what you would describe as an impressive starer.

‘Tell you what,’ said Tom, pointedly ignoring them both. ‘I’ll start. John and I had both turned in for the night. We were sitting in our respective beds, reading, when
the engines began to get noisy. So we decided to take a look.’

‘There were crew running everywhere,’ continued John, ‘mainly heading for the bridge or the engine room. Everyone could tell the engines weren’t going to stand the
strain. A couple of waiters came out on deck to find out what was going on, then went back in again. Ethelred was standing up near the stern, looking out for somebody or something. I didn’t
see any gun. Anyway, we went back towards the bridge. Inspector Mahmoud was there with the captain, then after a while Majid came and joined him. Most of the crew seemed to end up there too, trying
to find out what was going on. Everyone was fairly cross with everyone else, and they were all shouting a lot, so we just snuck off back to the saloon. The deck was fairly deserted by then –
I don’t remember seeing Ethelred at all. Eventually the noise got really bad, the engines blew and we came to find the rest of you. And here we still are.’

‘So Mahmoud and Majid were not together on the bridge the whole time?’ asked Proctor.

‘They are both on the bridge when the engines blow up,’ said Captain Bashir. ‘That is when you hear the shot, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Proctor. ‘And when I heard it, I was here with Elsie and Jane Watson. So the shot was definitely not fired by me or Elsie or Jane.’ He was keen we were clear
on that point, as indeed I was quite keen myself. Jane Watson just shrugged. It took more than a murder to make her worry what people thought about her. ‘What about you, Professor
Campion?’ Proctor continued. ‘Where were you when the shot was fired?’