Herring on the Nile (5 page)

‘Have you met many of the other passengers yet?’ I asked.

‘We’ve only spoken to you so far,’ said Tom. ‘We’re very particular who we speak to.’

‘No, we ran into that lady with the hat in Cairo, didn’t we?’ said John. ‘We spoke to her there.’

‘Oh yes, in the museum. She was with that guy with a moustache. He didn’t like us much. Small world, eh?’

‘She didn’t seem too pleased to see us on the boat.’

‘Only because you kept on and on about Kansas last time. She thinks you’re mad.’

We turned and watched the bank flow past us for a bit, secure in our floating air-conditioned world. The land stretched away, flat as only a flood plain can be, under a vast, hot sky. The fuzzy
horizon was in a constant state of gentle agitation. On the near bank, travelling north in a cloud of dust, was a pick-up truck with a camel sitting sedately in the back, slowly chewing the cud, a
ragged scarf tied over its ears. Tom winked at John.

‘Toto, I have the feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.’

‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

‘Meeting and chatting with people,’ I said.

‘Me too.’

‘I’m beginning to think there’s something odd going on here,’ I said. ‘You’ll never guess who I ran into – Herbie Proctor, of all people. He claims to
have a client on board the boat who is about to be murdered or something. But, and this won’t come as a surprise, I’m not sure he knows which passenger has employed him. It’s the
most ridiculous story I ever heard. I’m not planning to alert the police that we have a killer on board.’

‘You won’t need to alert them,’ said Elsie. ‘The police are already onto it.’

Five

In one of my previous lives I was almost certainly the Queen of Sheba. Unless of course there was somebody else who used to recline on cushions in an even classier manner,
while really fit slave boys fed her peeled grapes. I’d be a natural at that sort of stuff, though getting really fit slave boys in Hampstead these days is almost as difficult as getting a
plumber. Still, if I was ever going to get properly pampered while I waited for my fresh orange juice to be squeezed, the
Khedive
looked as likely a place as any. I was pleased that I had
let Ethelred persuade me to come.

I went to his cabin to share this thought with him and to check if he knew the Arabic for ‘Peel me a grape’, but he’d gone walkabout. So I took a stroll up to the covered deck
and had a look at Egypt. It was a bit flat and the trees looked all the same. There weren’t any pyramids.

‘Your first trip on the Nile?’

I turned. The speaker had one of those leathery faces that you acquire by spending a great deal of your time in places like the one we were in. The way the leather was ingrained – and the
permanent bags under his eyes – suggested much of that time might have been spent partying. There was a small scar on his cheek. If it wasn’t the face he deserved, then he’d been
dead unlucky. Overall, I’d have said he was a bit old for me and probably divorced once too often for comfort. Still, there was no sign yet of any tendency to middle-aged flab and only a few
grey hairs. I wasn’t necessarily going to chuck him off the boat.

‘I’ve always loved paddle steamers,’ I said, thinking mainly, I have to admit, of the old
Medway Queen
, plying its trade between Southend and Margate.

‘This one is a bit special, though,’ he said. There was a huskiness to his voice that indicated nobody had told him yet that it was dangerous to smoke more than forty a day. Beneath
that huskiness, though, lay a sort of relaxed confidence. ‘It was built for the King of Egypt. British shipyard, of course – one of the many shipyards that have vanished over the years.
It’s probably been converted into a yachting marina or a lesbian sushi bar or something. The
Khedive
would have been the last word in luxury, though it wouldn’t have had
air-conditioning in those days.’

‘You’ve done this trip before?’ I asked.

‘No, not really.’

‘But you live out here?’ I asked.

‘Sort of. What is it that you do?’

‘I’m an agent,’ I said.

He looked puzzled.

‘A literary agent,’ I said. ‘Ethelred is one of my authors – you might know him as Peter Fielding.’

Purbright frowned for a moment, as if in recognition of the name, then said: ‘You’re not a secret agent then.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It wouldn’t really work being a secret literary agent. And I’m not with MI5. And you?’

‘Not MI5 either,’ he said. ‘I wonder how long we’ll be going at this speed.’

‘What’s wrong with our speed?’

‘It’s only half what it should be. I’ve just had a word with the captain. They’re going to need to do some work on the engines at Aswan. Until then, this is as fast as we
can go. We’ll be travelling through the night.’

‘Suits me,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t intending to go anywhere else.’

‘Yes. As long as there are no other problems.’

‘Are there likely to be?’

‘Looking at the programme they left in my cabin, all they envisage is cocktails and dinner. I may as well get changed,’ he said.

I’m not sure when, during that conversation, the two Arab-looking passengers had shown up. I noticed them only after the suntanned guy had gone. They were looking at me from the other side
of the boat. I saw one of them nod at the other and both moved casually but purposefully in my direction. They introduced themselves as Mahmoud and Majid.

‘Who was that bloke?’ asked Majid, in the sort of Estuary English I’d learned at my mother’s knee.

‘I don’t think he said.’ I’m reasonably good with names, unlike Ethelred, who is quite capable of forgetting his own if he’s not carrying his laminated Crime
Writers’ Association membership card. No, I was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned a name.

‘He didn’t say he was called Purbright?’ asked Majid.

I shook my head.

‘You are travelling with your husband?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘You mean Ethelred? Are you kidding? He’s a crime writer. Nobody in their right mind marries a crime writer. I’m his agent.’

‘So, Ethelred is a famous crime writer?’

I took a deep breath. No opportunity for PR should ever be overlooked. ‘Yes, he’s highly respected,’ I said, wondering if my nose was growing visibly as I said it. ‘A
best-selling author, in fact. You’ll see his books everywhere. Great reviews for all of them. He writes crime novels as Peter Fielding and J. R. Elliot.’ Well, the last sentence was
true anyway.

‘A most valuable client for you to have.’

Hmm, if they really thought that, I wondered what else I could get them to believe. I’d probably already pushed Ethelred’s luck as far as it would go, though truth is quite stretchy
and you never can tell what you can do with it until you try.

‘He’s pretty big in Latvia,’ I added.

Mahmoud nodded. He raised one eyebrow at Majid, but I didn’t see Majid’s response.

‘Can we speak to you in confidence?’ asked Mahmoud after a pause.

I looked round the deck. It was empty. I told them therefore that they probably could. I always encourage confidences. In my experience, stuff people tell you in confidence is usually more
interesting than the other stuff.

‘OK. Let me say at once that there’s no need to be alarmed,’ said Mahmoud.

‘About what?’ I asked.

‘We’re policemen,’ said Majid, producing an identity card from his pocket. ‘Inspector Hafiz Majid and Inspector Hamid Mahmoud. Cairo police.’

‘Your English is pretty good,’ I said.

‘We both studied in the UK. We’re working in cooperation with the British police, tracking a couple of criminals who we think are on this boat.’

‘I thought you said you weren’t going to alarm me?’ I said. ‘Change of plan?’

‘There
is
no need to be alarmed. But we may need your help.’

‘Does it involve any danger to me?’

‘No,’ said Majid.

‘To other people?’

‘Possibly.’

‘But not to me?’

‘No.’

‘That sounds OK. What had you in mind?’

‘We can’t say as yet. At a certain point we may need to make an arrest. We have to ensure that the passengers that we know we can trust are aware who we are – we don’t
want any confusion at a crucial point.’

‘You mean I try to trip you up, thinking you are a terrorist or something?’

‘That is the sort of misunderstanding we would prefer to avoid, if at all possible.’

I thought of Ethelred and made a note to give him a heads-up on that one. Tripping up a policeman in pursuit of a criminal was one of the few things I was sure he’d be good at.

‘So, which of the passengers are the villains?’ I asked.

‘That’s the one thing we can’t tell you,’ said Inspector Mahmoud. ‘I can only say that our information is that there are two of them.’

‘Are they posing as passengers or crew?’

‘Again, that’s not something we can tell you.’

‘I can’t say any of the passengers looks particularly likely.’

‘Don’t be fooled. Criminals look very much like anyone else. It could be any of them. Mr Purbright, for example.’

‘Purbright? You mentioned him before. Is that who you are after?’

‘I merely gave him as an example. Still, his behaviour is very odd, don’t you think?’

‘Were you listening to what we were saying to each other just then?’

‘Yes. That’s our job.’

‘Cool. Now you mention it, I suppose he was a bit vague about where he was from and what he did,’ I conceded. ‘And he looks as though he has been partying non-stop since the
early seventies. So, is he your man – or one of them anyway?’

‘He is certainly somebody that we are watching closely.’

‘And I should therefore stay away from him?’

They looked at each other.

‘No,’ said Mahmoud. ‘In fact, it might be better if you could gain his confidence and report back to us anything that he says.’

‘OK,’ I said. It sounded like harmless fun – better than visiting temples anyway.

‘And don’t let him or anyone else know we are policemen. Don’t mention this conversation to anyone.’

‘These lips are so sealed,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ I said, spitting a few bits of grape accidentally onto the cabin floor. ‘But it’s a
secret
. Could you peel those a bit faster, please?’

‘Can’t you peel your own?’

‘Ethelred, if you have to peel them yourself, it completely misses the point. The whole
raison d’être
of the peeled grape is that somebody else does it for you.
Don’t you understand decadence?’

‘Yes, I do. What I don’t understand is why Mahmoud and Majid would tell you all this,’ said Ethelred, handing me the meagre results of some three minutes of wrestling with some
rather straightforward grape skin.

‘Are you saying I can’t be trusted with a confidence?’ I deeply resented this slur.

‘I mean,’ said Ethelred, ‘they can hardly be expecting you to help if it comes to a tussle with armed villains. They can’t possibly have suggested that.’

‘The point is,’ I said, ‘that Purbright isn’t Raffles, as Proctor suggested to you. According to my policemen, he’s actually the guy
who is going to kill
Raffles.
’

‘You don’t know that,’ said Ethelred cautiously.

‘I might.’

‘But, actually, you don’t.’

‘Have I ever told you how boring you are?’

‘I’m merely pointing out that you can get into a lot of trouble by jumping to conclusions too quickly.’

‘Yeah, right,’ I said. As if I’d do that. ‘Still, it’s exciting, isn’t it? I get to follow Purbright round the boat, then cleverly trick him into giving
himself away.’

Ethelred looked doubtful.

‘Everything they said sounds pretty odd to me,’ he said, with his usual capacity for getting things totally arse about face. ‘They must have been pulling your leg.’

‘They had Egyptian warrant cards,’ I said.

‘And you know what an Egyptian warrant card is supposed to look like, do you?’

‘Yes,’ I said. There are times when it is pointless
not
to lie. ‘Anyway, you have to admit that it’s odd that both Proctor and my nice policemen think that a
murder is about to be committed. And it’s also odd that they are both talking about two murderers.’

‘Did your policemen mention the word murder?’

‘More or less.’ I wasn’t having a perfectly good theory wrecked by minor points of detail.

Ethelred sniffed. ‘Well, I suppose that is a bit more convincing if they really did say that. But if Purbright is the hired assassin, or whatever, then who is Raffles? It can’t be
Professor Campion, surely. There’s simply nobody left on the boat fitting Proctor’s description of his client. In which case, as far as Proctor is concerned, the most likely thing in my
view remains that he has simply boarded the wrong boat, and his client is being quietly done away with on another part of the river entirely.’

‘Ethelred,’ I sighed. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, you have a very vivid imagination.’

Six

The sun was setting to starboard. The dancing horizon that had threatened all afternoon to dissolve into a mirage was taking a break, and the broad western sky glowed red and
orange. The Nile’s green fringe was turning black, a strange twilight world in which things moved obscurely here and there amongst the palms. I leaned against the varnished rail and watched
it all go by. It was an ancient landscape, through which we moved noisily, the engines throbbing and the giant paddles swishing at the stern.

The sound of footsteps behind me made me turn. It was one of the passengers I had not yet met. Even without Elsie’s somewhat sketchy description of him, it seemed almost certain that this
had to be Purbright. At first sight he did not appear to be either a gorilla or a gangster. ‘Dissolute’ was the closest I could get to a single-word description.

‘Mr Purbright, I presume?’