The Camel of Destruction (2 page)

‘You poor chap! And can I just mention that I myself was up half the night trying to sort out something that was much bigger.’

‘What was that?’

‘The stupidity of bankers.’

‘Heavens, you’ll never be able to do anything about
that.
My bank manager—never mind my bank manager, what about this chap commiting suicide, what are we going to do about him? And, incidentally—’ a ray of hope gleamed—‘why am
I
doing anything about it at all? It’s nothing to do with me. Suicides, murders—that’s the Parquet’s business, surely?’ In Egypt responsibility for investigating a suspected crime did not lie with the police but with the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as it was known.

‘The Parquet will have to be involved, certainly. It’s a crime, of sorts, and they’ll have to be notified. They’ll check on the circumstances, etc., etc., and make a fine pig’s ear of it, no doubt, but their part of it really is straightforward. No, no, they can be left to get on with that bit. It’s the other bit—’

‘What other bit?’ asked Owen. ‘It sounds as if it’s just a question of managing the Assembly and that’s something you and the Old Man can do, surely? You’re doing it all the time!’

Paul did not reply at once. Owen hoped he was having second thoughts. He wasn’t.

‘I think you’d better stay with it, Gareth,’ he said.

‘Doing what?’

‘Asking yourself why Osman Fingari committed suicide. And why Ali Maher and Co. are so interested.’

There was, then, going to be not one investigation but two. This was, actually, nothing out of the ordinary, for Egypt was a country of parallel processes. There was, for example, not one legal system but four, each with its own courts. Knowledgeable criminals played off one court against another. If they were very knowledgeable, or rich enough to afford a good lawyer, they could often escape conviction altogether.

A similar parallelity could be observed in Government, though here there were only two Governments and not four. One, the formal one, was that of the Khedive; the other, the real one, was that of the British, who had come into Egypt twenty years before to help the Khedive sort out his finances and were still helping. Every Minister, Egyptian, had an Adviser, British, right beside him. The Prime Minister did not; but found it politic to draw abundantly on the wisdom of the Consul-General before adopting a course of action.

The system worked surprisingly well. From the British point of view, of course.

Mohammed Fehmi, the Parquet lawyer appointed to handle the case, was an experienced hand. The following morning he called on Owen in his office.

‘Coffee?’

‘Please.’

‘Mazboot?’

Mohammed Fehmi, like most Egyptians, preferred it sweetened.

‘About this case now—’

‘Sad.’

‘Oh yes. Very sad. But straightforward, I would think, wouldn’t you?’

Mohammed Fehmi’s alert brown eyes watched Owen sharply across the cup.

‘Oh yes. Straightforward, I would say.’

‘I was wondering—’ Mohammed Fehmi sipped his coffee again—‘I was wondering—the nature of the Mamur Zapt’s interest?’

‘General. Oh, very general,’ Owen assured him. ‘I wouldn’t be thinking of taking, um, an active interest—’

‘I would always welcome a colleague—’

‘Oh no. Quite unnecessary, I assure you. Every confidence—’

Mohammed Fehmi looked slightly puzzled.

‘Then, why, may I ask—?’

‘Am I involving myself at all?’ Owen saw no reason why he should not speak the truth. ‘It’s not so much the case itself—that I leave entirely to you—as the possible reaction to it. Politically, I mean.’

‘A
fonctionnaire
? Civil servant?’

Mohammed Fehmi was still puzzled. However, he shrugged his shoulders. This was evidently political in some strange way and politics was not for him. He was not one of the Parquet’s high fliers.

He had picked up, however, that Owen was leaving the conduct of the investigation to him, and visibly relaxed. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘a simple suicide!’

‘Exactly.’

‘The post-mortem—quite definite.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I’ll just have to find out where he got it from. And why he took it, of course.’

‘Up to a point.’

‘Oh yes,’ Mohammed Fehmi assured him swiftly. ‘Only up to a point. Otherwise you find yourself into personal matters, family matters, even social matters, that are best left alone.’

‘Quite so.’

‘No,’ said Mohammed Fehmi, finishing his cup and sucking up the last mixture of coffee grounds and sugar, the sweet and the bitter, the taste of Egypt, ‘no, the only puzzling thing about it is why the doctor signed the certificate in the first place.’

Owen called the doctor in. He was a small, shabby man with worried eyes and a lined, anxious face.

‘How did you come to miss it?’

‘I didn’t miss it.’

‘You wrote the certificate knowingly?’

The doctor shrugged.

‘You know, of course, what this means?’

The doctor shrugged again. ‘You do it all the time,’ he said quietly.

‘Sign certificates you know to be false?’

‘It spares the family.’

‘You know why we have the system of certification?’

‘Of course. To prevent abuses.’

Egypt was a country of many abuses.

‘And you still thought you would sign the certificate?’

‘The parents are old. He was their only son. The shock of that was enough without the other.’

‘The other?’

‘Suicide.’

‘Are you sure it was suicide?’

‘What else could it be?’

‘The Under-Secretary,’ said Nikos. ‘The Ministry of Agriculture.’ Owen picked up the phone.

‘Captain Owen? I understand you’re handling the Fingari case?’

‘Well, of course, the Parquet—’

‘Quite so, quite so. But—I understand you’re taking an interest?’

‘Ye-es, in a general way.’

‘Quite so. I was wondering—the circumstances—a bit unfortunate, you know.’

‘Yes?’

‘The Office. The Ministry.’

‘I don’t quite—’

‘Bad for the Department. A bit of a reflection, you know.’

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘I was wondering—just wondering—if it could be moved. Out of the office, I mean.’

‘Surely it
has
been moved?’ said Owen, startled. ‘It was taken for post-mortem. And before that, the funeral. I saw it myself—’

‘No, no. I don’t mean that. Not the body. The—the incident, rather.’

‘I don’t quite follow—’

‘Moved. Out of the Ministry altogether. Somewhere else. Into the street, perhaps. Or at any rate another Ministry. Public Works, perhaps.’

‘Finance?’

‘Yes. No, on second thoughts. The follow-up could be, well, unfortunate. No, no. Public Works would be better.’

‘Well, yes, but—’

‘You will? Oh, thank you.’

‘An apéritif, perhaps?’

He had met them, as they had suggested, in the bar at the Hotel Continentale. There was an Egyptian, who must be Abdul Khalil, a Greek, Zokosis, presumably, and someone harder to place but definitely a Levantine of sorts, who would be Kifouri.

The waiter brought the drinks: sweet Cyprus wine for Zokosis and Kifouri, a dry sherry for Owen and coffee for Abdul Khalil.

‘As I mentioned over the phone, Captain Owen, we’re businessmen who have quite a lot of dealings with Government Departments. I think you’ll find that Mr. Stephens would be prepared to vouch for us—’ Stephens was the Adviser at the Ministry of Finance—‘and I think it is a mark of our standing that the Minister invited us to join the Board. I mention this so that you will know we are
bona fide
and also that we are not the sort of men who would want to waste the time of a busy man like yourself.’

Owen bowed acknowledgement.

‘In any case, our concern is, what shall I say, marginal, peripheral, which is why we thought it best to meet informally rather than call on you at your office.’

Owen muttered something suitably non-committal.

‘You are, we understand, taking an interest in a recent sad case of suicide. A man in one of the Departments.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, now, we naturally wouldn’t wish to interfere in any way, believe me, in any way, with your conduct of the investigation—that would be quite improper—and our interest is, as I have said, marginal. However, we knew Mr. Fingari and quite recently have been having a number of dealings with him—’

‘Dealings?’

‘A businessman’s way of talking. Conversations, rather. Yes, conversations. Mr. Fingari, you see, represented the Ministry on the Board. And naturally, in view of recent developments—’

‘Yes, recent developments,’ echoed the others.

‘That, actually, is why we wanted to have an informal word with you. You see, negotiations are at a critical stage—’

‘And it’s important to carry the community with us. The business community, that is.’

‘And with confidence so low—’

‘It is really a very inopportune moment for him to die.’

‘Most difficult.’

‘Now if only he could have died a day or two later—’

‘You don’t think that could be arranged by any chance, Captain Owen? After all, it makes no real difference. He’s dead anyway, isn’t he?’

‘The family—’ Owen began.

‘Leave that to us. I’m sure that could be arranged. We’ll talk to them, Captain Owen.’

‘But—’

‘Look at it like this; it’s actually giving the poor chap a few extra days of life. Don’t be hard-hearted, Captain Owen. Don’t deny him that! Think of the poor fellow, think of his family—’

‘You want me to alter the date of his death?’

‘Well, that would be most kind of you, Captain Owen. Most kind.’

‘It’s the family, you see.’

‘Distressed, naturally.’

‘It is a very respectable family,’ said Ali Hazurat earnestly. ‘Otherwise Mr. Hemdi would not wish his daughter to marry into it.’

‘But—’

‘The arrangements were all made. The wedding contract was about to be signed. My nephew was looking forward—’

‘A dowry?’

‘Considerable. It was a great opportunity for my nephew. And now, alas—’

‘But surely the wedding can go ahead? After a suitable period, of course. Your nephew was not
that
closely related to Osman Fingari.’

‘It reflects on the family, you see. It’s making Mr. Hemdi think again.’

‘Well, I’m sorry about that, but—’

‘It’s the shame, you see. Suicide! No one will want to marry into a family with suicides.’

‘I’m afraid I really don’t see what I can do—’

‘Couldn’t you,’ pleaded Ali Hazwat, ‘just call it something else? An accident, perhaps?’

‘He took prussic acid.’

‘By mistake! Couldn’t it be by mistake? He thought it was something else. The wrong bottle—’

‘Well, at least there’s going to be no doubt about the circumstances,’ said Paul.

‘No?’

Alone? Certainly not!’ Mr. Istaq was shocked.

‘I do not wish to trouble Mr. Fingari, you see.’

‘Well, no, there’s been enough trouble as it is.’

‘And he’s very frail, so I thought—’

‘Well, yes, but—alone! What can you be thinking of, effendi? She is a decent Muslim girl.’

‘It was just that in the circumstances—’

‘Why do you want to see her, anyway, effendi? What can a woman know? Why not ask me? I will do what I can to help you.’

‘Well, thank you, it is very kind of you, Mr. Istaq. But then, you see, you would not be able to help me in quite the same way. After all, though a relative, you did not actually live in the house and therefore would not know—’

‘Yes, but alone! With a man! No, really, effendi—’

Mr. Istaq, hot, bothered and worried in equal proportions, took some time to be persuaded. He was, when all was said and done, the relative who had shown Owen the body and felt that he bore some responsibility for the consequences.

But then, he was also the closest and most senior male relative and, given old Mr. Fingari’s frailty, it all devolved on him anyway. He was a simple journeyman tailor and all this was a bit much for him.

He knew, however, what was proper. And it was not proper to let his niece talk to strange men. Aisha was inclined to be headstrong, anyway. His brother had always given her too much scope. That was all very well, things were not, perhaps, what they used to be, but who would want to marry a woman used to having her own way? And it was likely to be him, Istaq, who would be left with the problem of marrying her off.

In the end a compromise was reached. Owen was allowed to interview her but in Mr. Istaq’s presence.

Owen had always known this was the most likely outcome. It was customary in Egypt for female witnesses to be interviewed through their father or husband or a near male relative. He had, however, hoped to avoid it in this case.

The girl appeared, heavily veiled and dressed from head to foot in decent, shapeless black. All that could be seen of her was her eyes, which were suitably cast down.

‘Miss Fingari, I am sorry to trouble you further in such sad circumstances but there are one or two things I would like to ask you.’

The girl moved slightly and Mr. Istaq cleared his throat. ‘You saw your brother every day, of course?’

Mr. Istaq looked at Aisha, hesitated and then reluctantly admitted that this was so.

‘Had you noticed a change of spirits in him lately?’

‘No,’ said Mr. Istaq confidently.

‘Had he seemed at all worried?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps a little depressed occasionally?’

‘No.’

The girl had not yet spoken.

‘I ask,’ said Owen, ‘because I am wondering what could have brought him to this sad state of mind?’

He put it as a question and then waited, looking inquiringly directly at the girl.

She did not reply. Mr. Istaq, not quite sure how to respond, muttered uncertainly: ‘No sad state.’

‘Had he ever talked to you about problems at work?’

‘Certainly not!’ said Mr. Istaq, shocked.

‘Or problems not at work. Not at home, of course, but in his private life?’

‘No,’ said Mr. Istaq firmly.

‘I wonder,’ said Owen, ‘if there had been any changes lately in his way of life?’

‘No,’ said Mr. Istaq.

‘But that is not true, Miss Fingari,’ said Owen, still addressing himself to the girl although she had not yet spoken. ‘Everyone knows that there had been changes in his way of life. He had had a lot done to the house, for a start.’

‘No changes!’ snapped Mr. Istaq, caught off balance.

‘But there had been!’ said Owen, wide-eyed. ‘The mandar’ah—new marble! And I think the better of him for it. So often people rise in the world and forget their family. But was Osman Fingari like that?’

‘No,’ said the girl firmly.

‘No,’ echoed Mr. Istaq.

‘Everyone says he loved his parents.’

‘He did,’ said the girl.

‘He did,’ said Mr. Istaq.

‘But they were old, Miss Fingari, and he would not have wanted to trouble them. So did he discuss his problems with you, I wonder?’

‘No,’ said Mr. Istaq.

The girl said nothing. Her eyes, though, were now raised and she was looking at Owen directly.

‘You see, when men are brought to such a desperate pass, when they are in a state so desperate that they can contemplate a thing like this, it is often because they feel themselves quite alone. Did Osman Fingari feel himself so alone, I ask myself.’ The girl’s eyes filled with tears.

‘Was there no one he could turn to? No one in the whole wide world?’

‘Why do you ask these things,’ the girl suddenly burst out. ‘What business is it of yours? What do you care about my brother?’

‘Aisha!’ cried Mr. Istaq, scandalized. ‘Be quiet, girl! You have said enough, more than enough!’

Things were worse even than he had feared. The girl had no idea how to behave.

‘You do not address your elders like that!’

The girl dissolved in a flood of tears.

Both men were at a loss.

‘Now, now!’ said Mr. Istaq, chiding but at bottom kind-hearted. He had overdone it. The girl wasn’t used to being corrected. ‘It’s all right! I think we had better stop,’ he said to Owen.

‘Of course!’ Owen could have kicked himself. ‘I am sorry, Miss Fingari. I have no wish to distress you. I have to ask these things. You see, sometimes it is something inside a person that makes them do a thing like this and sometimes it is something outside—’

‘I think we had better stop,’ said Mr. Istaq.

Owen, dissatisfied with himself, stopped for a coffee round the corner. He was sitting at a table sipping it when a small boy touched him on the arm. Automatically he felt in his pocket.

‘No, no, effendi!’ protested the small boy. ‘Not that! At least, not just that. Perhaps afterwards—when you have heard my message.’

‘You have a message for me?’

‘Yes, effendi, though I must say, I’m a bit surprised at it, because she’s not been that way before.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Owen. ‘Who sent you?’

‘Aisha.’

‘Miss Fingari?’

‘That’s right. Only we call her Aisha.’

‘What’s the message?’

The little boy reflected. ‘I ought to bargain with you—’

‘Twenty milliemes?’

‘Say, twenty-five.’

‘Twenty-five it is.’

‘Right, then. She wants to see you. Not with her uncle.’

‘Does she say where?’

‘She does. But, effendi, she does not know much about this sort of thing and I do not think that what she proposes is a good idea. She says she will go to the
souk
and you can meet her on the way. But, effendi, that is not the way to do it.’

‘What is the way to do it?’

‘For that, effendi, I would need the full half piastre.’

‘A fee which fits your talents. For a suitable place no doubt I could find such a sum, exorbitant though it be.’

‘In this world one has to strike hard bargains,’ said the small boy sententiously.

‘Yes, indeed. What do you suggest?’

‘There is a ruined house nearby—’

‘Is it decent enough for Miss Fingari?’

Places like that were used as lavatories.

‘No, but there is a doorway where you would not be seen. It is not very comfortable for your purpose—’

‘My purpose is only conversation.’

‘Well, of course, it’s early days yet—’

The boy led him to the spot. It was a place where two or three tenement buildings had crumbled down together. This was not unusual in Cairo. Houses were often made of sun-dried mud brick and in the rains sometimes dissolved.

The boy picked a way through the rubble, squeezed through a gap between two crumbling walls and brought Owen to an archway set deep below ground level in what remained of the side of a building. It had, perhaps, once led into a cellar.

‘Wait there!’ he said.

A few moments later, Aisha’s veiled form appeared in the gap and stood before the archway uncertainly.

‘Miss Fingari—’

‘I shouldn’t have come here like this. Ali is horrible. Go away, Ali! Mind you go right away! It’s not what you think.’ She came forward determinedly and stepped into the archway.

‘I shouldn’t be doing this. But I had to see you.’

‘It is about Osman?’

‘Yes.’

Under the archway it was dark. Instinctively, she retreated deeper into the shadow. He could not see her eyes but he could tell from the position of her body that she was looking up at him.

‘You hurt me,’ she said, a little shakily, ‘when you said he felt alone.’

‘I don’t know that. It was just—’

‘It was true. Oh, it was true. It must have been true. I tried! But—’

‘You must not blame yourself, Miss Fingari. It is not always possible to break through.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I should have tried harder. I became impatient. When he came home—’ She broke off.

‘When he came home—?’

‘Sometimes he had been drinking. Oh, it’s not such a great fault, I see that now; but it was so different, so—so unexpected. He had always been—he had always behaved properly—’

‘He was a strict Moslem?’

‘Not strict, but—but he did what he should. Until—’

‘Recently?’

‘Yes.’

‘You saw a change in him?’

‘Yes.’

‘What sort of change, Miss Fingari?’

‘He became—not disorderly, but not so ordered. He would come home late. He never used to do that. Now he did it often. He wouldn’t say where he had been—’

‘You asked him?’

‘Yes. We were close. We had been close. He would talk to me when he wouldn’t—He didn’t always feel he
could
—talk to my parents.’

‘What did he talk about, Miss Fingari?’

‘Oh, nothing much. This goes back a long time. To when he was at school. If something had gone wrong during the day, if someone had been unkind to him, he would run home and pour it all out to me. I was his big sister and—and I remained so even after he started work.’

‘He still talked to you?’

‘Yes. Perhaps even more so. Our parents were growing older. They did not always understand the sort of things he was doing at work—’

‘But you did?’

‘No!’ She laughed. ‘How could I? A woman? Shut up in the house all day. All I knew was the family and the
souk
. But I had friends, other girls, and they talked about their brothers and I—I learned something, I suppose. Anyway, he felt he could talk to me.’

‘And then he stopped talking to you? When was this?’

‘It was not—not suddenly, not like that. It just—built up over time.’

‘But when did it start? When did you first become aware that you could not talk to him as you used to?’

‘I—I don’t know. Recently. The last few months.’

‘Since he joined the Board?’

‘No. Yes, I suppose,’ she said, surprised. ‘But, effendi, he was not like that. It was not because he became proud. Oh, he was proud of being appointed to the Board, he was very proud of it—and so were we all—but it wasn’t—that wasn’t the reason.’

‘He did change, though?’

‘Not because of that.’

‘Why are you so sure?’

‘Because I know him. And—and because he did talk to me about that, about the people he met—they were very famous people, effendi, even I had heard of them—about the places he used to go to. No, it was not that, it was—afterwards.’

‘Afterwards?’

‘About the time he started coming home later.’

‘That was some time after he had joined the Board?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you any idea, Miss Fingari, why that was? Why did he start coming home late?’

‘He—he was meeting someone. I—I thought it was a woman and teased him. But it wasn’t. He said it wasn’t. And then—’

‘Yes?’

‘That was when he started to come home smelling of drink. I knew then that it was not a woman, that it was someone who was bad for him. I was angry with him, I told him he must not see them, but he said—he said he had to see them—’

‘Had to?’

‘Yes. He said it was business and I said what sort of business was it if it was in the evening and he came home smelling of drink after it and he became angry and said I did not understand. And after that he would not speak with me.’

She began to sob.

‘If I had not been so fierce, perhaps he would have spoken to me. Perhaps I would have been able to help him, save him—’

‘You must not blame yourself, Miss Fingari.’

‘But I do blame myself!’ she said, sobbing. ‘I do blame myself. You were right when you spoke of him being alone. He was alone, and he would not have been if I—’

‘You did what you could, Miss Fingari.’

‘No, not what I could!’

There was a little spasm of sobbing in the shadows. He moved towards her uncertainly, intending to comfort her, but then she stepped forward herself and seized him by the arms.

‘But if I am to blame,’ she hissed, ‘so are they! They brought him to this! You said there was something outside himself. Someone. There was!’

‘Miss Fingari, these may just have been friends—’

‘No. He was different after he had been with them. He began to be different all the time. There was a change, oh yes, there was a change!’

‘You said he was more lax in his behaviour—’

‘No, not lax. Not just lax. Different. They were bad men, Owen effendi. They changed him. He had always been a good man, a good son, a good brother…’

She began to weep steadily.

‘Effendi, you are too rough with her,’ said a voice from outside the archway. ‘Didn’t I tell you she doesn’t know about this sort of thing?’

The sobbing stopped abruptly. There was a sharp intake of breath.

‘Ali, you are disgusting!’ said Aisha, and stalked out into the sunlight.

‘First, it was the
kuttub
. Then it was the hospital. Then it was the Place for Old People. I tell you, they’re determined to get you one way or another. Next thing, it will be the cemetery!’

‘Next thing it will be the mosque. That comes before the cemetery.’

‘It already is the mosque. Have you talked to Sayid ben Ali Abd’al Shaward lately?’

‘Not him too! I tell you, they’re determined to get us one way or another. The little we’ve got, they want to take away! That’s how it always is for the poor man.’