The Girl in the Nile (13 page)

“New?” said Owen. The Parquet had existed, he thought, since at least 1883 when a reforming Minister of Justice had unearthed in his office some Arabic translations of parts of the French Code Napoléon and promulgated them as the new Egyptian legal system.

“New to them,” said Mahmoud, urging Owen toward an arabeah drawn up beside the pavement. “Whereas the Mamur Zapt,” he said, as they settled back into the shabby, hot leather, “is old. They are used to him. And they know,” said Mahmoud, smiling, “that he is even more merciless than— well, wait and see.”

“Look,” said Owen, “I’m not—”

“All you have to do is just sit there,” Mahmoud reassured him. “The name will be enough.”

“Who are these people?”

They were, Mahmoud explained, the beggars who normally worked the part of the river where Leila’s body had come ashore.

“They all have their territory,” said Mahmoud. “It was just a case of finding who they were.”

That had not been difficult since they were, in fact, known to all the neighborhood. The boatmen knew them, the watchman knew them—he greeted them every day—and the police certainly knew them.

Mahmoud had had, however, some good fortune. He had remembered having seen, that first day, some goats grazing further on down the riverbank, had made some inquiries and discovered that they were taken down on to the riverbed every morning by a boy who acted as herd.

He had found the boy and questioned him. Yes, he had taken the goats down that particular morning. No, he had not seen a body, still less a woman’s body. If he had, he might have gone out and had a look.

But he did remember seeing the two beggars. Their names were Farag and Libab and he saw them every day. They worked the bank where his goats grazed and they would always stop and have a chat.

He remembered that day because Farag had asked him if he had a sister. He did have a sister but he thought that, poor though his family was, it would not be very keen on her marrying a beggar. Where was the profit in that?

He had pointed that out to Farag but Farag had not been put off. He had said that things might be going to change. The boy had scoffed at this but Farag had told him to wait and see. He was still waiting.

It would have been, he said, late in the morning when the men were coming back. They worked outward from the city to a point not far south of the Souk al-Gadira and then returned, thus making two sweeps of the riverbank. They made caches on their way out which they picked up as they returned.

“What do they make caches of?” asked Owen.

“Wood, mostly.”

Wood was in short supply in the city. It was the main fuel used for large-scale cooking and faggots were brought into the city every day. It had to come from some distance away since over the centuries the trees and bushes on both sides of the river had been lopped down. Driftwood, then, fetched a not inconsiderable price.

So there was evidence that the beggars had been on the bank that morning. And there was the additional point that on their return they had appeared cheerful, as if from a windfall.

They were being held at the local police station. The Chief had resigned himself to Mahmoud but had not been expecting Owen. When he saw him he flinched slightly. His doom still hung over him like a sword.

The two beggars were crouched in the courtyard. One affected to be lame and had probably become so by constant practice. The other affected blindness and certainly had something wrong with his eyes, though half the population of Egypt suffered from ophthalmia and the eyes couldn’t have been too bad since he relied on them every day.

Mahmoud, sitting behind the Chief’s desk to better express the awful power of the state, had them brought in.

Owen sat behind the two men, back in a corner. They did not see him as they came in.

“You are Farag,” said Mahmoud, “and you are Libab?”

“Yes, effendi.”

“And you patrol the bank every day and what you find you take back to the Man?”

The beggars hesitated.

“We patrol the bank, yes.”

It was best not to use the name of the Man.

Mahmoud had established, though, that he knew him. “Think back,” said Mahmoud, “think back to the morning when you asked the boy Farakat about his sister. What had happened that morning to make you think, Farag, that you were rich enough to afford a wife?”

“It was idle talk,” said Farag. “I do not remember.”

“I think you do remember,” said Mahmoud, “but you do not want to tell me. And that is foolish. Foolish because I may know the answer already and just be testing you. Foolish because if you do not tell me, I have the power to take you away from the riverbank, away from the sun and light, and shut you in the caracol forever.”

“At least it would be cool there,” said Farag sturdily.

“And they would give us food,” said Libab.

“Every day,” said Farag. “I have heard.”

The whole population had heard. An unexpected side effect of Cromer’s reform of the prison system was to make conditions inside prison better for the poor than they often were outside.

“Forever,” repeated Mahmoud, significantly but untruthfully. That was another change. In the old days a man could be left to languish in prison uncharged and forgotten. Nowadays his case had to be heard within a given time.

The beggars were not impressed. They felt they might be onto a good thing. Indeed, the more they reflected on it, the better it appeared, and they quickly passed from affecting forgetfulness to unaffected obduracy. There had been nothing out of the ordinary about that morning, they said, nothing.

“You did not find something on the riverbank that you thought had made your fortune?”

“That would have just been a dream,” said Libab.

“Yet you, Farag, believed the dream was real enough for you to fancy you were rich,” Mahmoud pointed out.

“That was mere fancy,” said Farag.

Mahmoud could not break through. He sat silent for a moment, thinking.

The beggars, emboldened, became cheeky.

“You can’t do anything to us,” said Libab. “Let us go!”

“What if we did find something on the bank?” asked Farag. “What is that to you?”

“Little to me,” Mahmoud admitted. He had made up his mind how to play the next bit now. “But a lot to the Mamur Zapt.”

“The Mamur Zapt? What’s he got to do with it?”

“You’re just dragging him in,” said Farag. “The Mamur Zapt is not interested in the likes of us.”

“On the contrary,” said Owen from behind them. “I find you very interesting.”

The men froze.

Mahmoud came round the desk and sat on the front of it. “There you are,” he said amiably. “What did I tell you?” Farag tried to look over his shoulder. Mahmoud reached forward, took him by the head and turned his face back towards him.

“You are talking to me. Would you like me to take them through it?” he asked Owen over their shoulders.

“Please do.”

“Well, then. Let us begin with what you found on the riverbank.”

“We found nothing on the riverbank,” said Farag, still sturdily but less confidently.

“The girl’s body. As you came along the bank, where was it lying?”

“We saw no girl’s body.”

“On the shoal. A little out from the bank. As I said, perhaps I know the answers already. Tell me what you did when you saw the body.”

“We saw no—” began Farag, and stopped.

“The Mamur Zapt is beginning to get impatient,” said Mahmoud. “And I don’t think I will help you anymore.”

“We saw the body,” whispered Libab. “And I said to Farag, ‘There it is.’ ”

“So!” Mahmoud nodded approvingly. He turned to Farag. “And what did you say?”

“I said,” replied Farag reluctantly, “I said: ‘Perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is another. Let us go and see.’ ”

“So you walked out to the shoal and—?”

“We saw that it was the body.”

“How did you know that it was the right body?”

“By the dress,” whispered Libab.

“The shintiyan?”

He caught their look of surprise.

“As I told you. I know everything. They were pink, I think?”

“Yes, effendi.”

Libab, at any rate, was docile now.

“It wasn’t just the shintiyan,” said Farag, caving into line.

“Oh? What was it?”

“It wasn’t a peasant woman, you see. Most of the ones that come down are.”

“You knew she wouldn’t be?”

“That’s right.”

“You had been told?”

“Yes.”

“Who by?”

Farag hesitated. “You know,” he muttered.

“The Man?”

Libab looked involuntarily over his shoulder, half saw Owen and was transfixed.

“Yes,” said Mahmoud chattily. “It is difficult, isn’t it? The Mamur Zapt stands on one side of you, the Man on the other. I would watch my step if I were you. So you had found what you had been told to find. What then?”

“Well,” said Farag, “we saw the ghaffir coming. So we ran away and hid.”

“We thought he might not see the body,” said Libab. “But he did. He went down on to the bank and looked at it. And then he looked around to find someone he could send to the omda. But there was no one.”

“We stayed hid.”

“He had to go himself.”

“Then Farag said to me: ‘Let us take the body now, before he comes back.’ So we ran into the water and took the body.”

“What did you do with the body?”

“Carried it behind the wall.”

“It was as far as we could get,” explained Farag, “because then the ghaffir came back.”

“But first the policeman came with his pole. That was good, wasn’t it?”

“He didn’t know what to make of it.”

“We laughed. Farag laughed so loudly I thought they would hear us.”

“Because then the ghaffir came back and he was even more amazed.”

“And then the Englishman came down—”

“And that was a good laugh too, I expect,” said Owen.

“Yes, it was,” said Libab enthusiastically. “There they were, all three of them, scratching their heads and wondering where the body was—”

“And all the time it was behind the wall. Right nearby!”

“Very funny,” said Mahmoud. “And how long did it stay behind the wall?”

“Until they were all gone. A lot of people came down. You were there yourself, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” said Mahmoud. “I was.”

The merriment died away.

“Well, yes,” said Farag.

“Yes,” echoed Libab faintly.

“Yes. So what did you do then? With the body?”

“We hid it.”

“Where?”

“Under a boat. There’s a boatman along the bank. He does things for the Man sometimes. We went to him and said: ‘We have hidden something for the Man under one of your boats.’ And the boatman said: ‘Tell me which boat it is so that I will know which boat not to look under.’ And we told him. And he said: ‘I will see that it stays there until the Man sends someone for it.’ ”

“Show me the boat,” said Mahmoud.

They showed him the boat. But when he lifted the upturned boat and peered into the hollow beneath it he found nothing there.

So the Man has it,” said Owen.

They were walking home along the riverbank. The sudden, brief Egyptian twilight had come upon them while they were looking at the boat. One moment the sun had been hanging above the desert, the next it had plunged out of sight, leaving only the copper and rose and saffron of the water to testify that it had been there.

As the shadows closed over the land the heat went out of the day. A delicate river breeze sprang up. Mahmoud and Owen looked at each other, then with one accord started walking.

The beggars had been sent to the caracol. All the information they possessed had probably been got out of them, but if they were released they would simply disappear. They might even, as Mahmoud pointed out, disappear for good.

“More than that,” said Mahmoud. “He not only has it but he sent them to fetch it.”

“So he knew it would be there.”

“And that,” said Mahmoud, “takes us back to what happened on the dahabeeyah that night.”

“And rules out one thing: that she fell overboard by accident.”

“Or jumped of her own accord.”

“He knew the body would be there. He knew it beforehand. Which makes it—”

“Yes,” said Mahmoud, “I would think so.”

As darkness fell, the birds began their evensong. There were not many trees in the poorer part of the city but the few trees there were, preserved to give shade in the little squares, were full of birds. From the topmost branches where the pigeons sat came a continuous cooing.

“He must have had somebody on the boat,” said Owen. “It looks like it.”

“Who killed her and threw the body overboard.”

“Don’t we have difficulties there?” asked Mahmoud. “Surely if it was thrown overboard there was no guarantee that it would finish up on shore where the Man could send someone to fetch it. It could just as easily have gone on to Bulak bridge. Or beyond, for that matter.”

“How far offshore was the dahabeeyah?”

“Not far. It was moored for the night.”

“Could the body have been dumped straight onto the shoal?”

“They would have had to have taken it ashore.”

“A rowing boat, perhaps?”

“Surely someone on board would have seen it?”

“Perhaps they were looking the other way.”

“Deliberately, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“They might have been told to.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Owen thoughtfully, “it would figure. The body was high up on the shoal, wasn’t it? We wondered how it had got there. We thought it might be a bow wave from a steamer.”

“So we did. Yes,” said Mahmoud, “that would figure.”

“So we’re going to have to deal,” concluded Owen.

Garvin looked dubious.

“It’s pretty definite that he’s got the body. And if we want it, that’s what we’ve got to pay.”

“
Do
we want the body?” asked Garvin. “That much?”

“How else are we going to find out how she was killed?”

“It’s a lot of money.”

“It would need a supplementary allocation. I’m over the top on that budget as it is.”

Garvin pursed his lips.

“I put in for a supplementary allocation only last week,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘What, another?”’

“Well, I can’t see any other way of doing it.”

“I can just see them,” said Garvin, “when I go along. ‘Please can I have a supplementary allocation.’ ‘What, another?’ ‘Yes, it’s to buy a body, you see.’ It would look bad on paper, Owen. These accounts go back to London. There are MPs who crawl over everything we do. They’d spot it and say, ‘What the hell is this?’ They’d think it was the Mahdi’s skull all over again.”

The Mahdi’s skull had been a
cause célèbre
. At the conclusion of the Sudan wars, shortly before, the victorious British general, Kitchener, had smashed the tomb of the defeated enemy and claimed his skull as a souvenir. It had been alleged in London, possibly truthfully, that he had intended to make a drinking tankard of it.

“Well, how else am I going to find the money? Narouz has said he’ll help but in the circumstances—”

Garvin looked at him quickly.

“Yes,” he said. “In the circumstances. You really think—?”

“Well,” said Owen, “it looks like it.”

“I don’t like it,” said Garvin. “This is going to look bad. It could be very awkward. We don’t want it turning up just when—”

“We’re not there yet,” said Owen defensively.

“Suppose it comes up just when we’re about to sign the Agreement? It could blow the whole thing. You’re supposed to be keeping it under control, Owen. What the hell are you doing?”

“Look, I’m not—” Owen began but decided it was a waste of time. “What about this money?” he asked.

“Don’t like it,” said Garvin. “It would look bad in the Accounts. ‘Item: one body. Purchased for the Mamur Zapt. Private use of.’ No,” said Garvin, shaking his head, “it wouldn’t look good at all. I really don’t think I could support a bid for a supplementary allocation. Not in the circumstances.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Prince Narouz, shaking his head regretfully. “Not in the circumstances.”

“But only two days ago—”

“Circumstances have changed.”

“In two days?”

“Things are very fluid just at the moment.”

They were sitting again on the terrace at the Continental. The sun was still bright and the Prince was wearing huge, dark green sunglasses. The tables were filling up for afternoon tea. A party of French tourists arrived from the bazaars and made their way up the steps. One of them was a strikingly beautiful woman in her mid-thirties. The dark green glasses followed her progress indoors.

“Why have they changed?”

“Oh, well,” said the Prince vaguely. “You know.”

“The Agreement?”

“That, too.”

“It’s near signing?”

“
They
think so,” said the Prince caustically. “Personally, I don’t believe my uncle will be able to bring himself to do it when the moment actually comes. The prospect of having the British here for another twenty years! Frightful!”

The Prince looked at Owen, laughed archly and placed a placating hand on Owen’s.

“Or so my uncle will think. Of course, I myself see it differently. I would be only too delighted if the British were to remain.”

And had, no doubt, been communicating that fact very successfully, thought Owen bitterly.

“A breath of Western air, my dear fellow,” said the Prince. “That’s what Egypt needs. Cars, bridges, roads, factories: we need to step through into the modern age.”

With plenty of contracts for British firms. The Prince, thought Owen, knew how to play his hand.

“So you have changed your mind,” he said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that!” the Prince protested. “No, no, my dear fellow, I am still eager to help. You can count on me, believe me. But things are—delicate, just at the moment. Let’s not rush. More haste, less speed. Although”—the Prince turned reflective—“speaking as a driver, that is a phrase I have always found puzzling.”

“The offer might not remain open.”

“You think so?” The Prince looked at him thoughtfully. “You think so?”

“There might be others.”

The Prince turned it over. Turned it over thoughtfully.

“I can see there is a risk. However”—he smiled charmingly— “it is a risk I am prepared to run.”

“So you won’t help after all?”

“I’m afraid not. Not just now. Not in the circumstances.”

Owen could see it all. The Prince, once again, had scented the possibility of wriggling off the hook. The British had refused to buy the body. Why should he stick his own neck into the noose? If he didn’t find the money, perhaps no one would find the money. The body would remain where it was. What did it matter if there was a leak in the Press? They wouldn’t be able to prove anything. Why not just leave things alone?

And meanwhile cast a little bread upon the waters. A hint here, a hint there. A suggestion that the Khedive was not perhaps entirely dependable. A reminder of his own Western sympathies. An intimation of trade concessions, contracts for British firms.

No wonder, thought Owen bitterly, that Garvin had backed off.

There would be no deal with the Man; that was plain.

Unless—

Owen stopped in his tracks.

Unless Narouz made one of his own.

Owen sat cursing himself. What folly! What utter folly! To go to the one man in the world most interested in seeing that the evidence never came out and then to put into his hands the means of ensuring that it never could come out! How had he come to do a thing like that?

He knew what had put the idea in his head. It had been that first visit to the police station, when the Prince had dangled money in front of the local chief. He had been prepared to put his money down then. Why not, Owen had thought, get him to put his money down later, when it could really do some good?

When he had gone to him, the Prince had in fact at first turned the suggestion down. It hadn’t really bothered Owen; it had just been something to try.

But then when Narouz had himself raised it and indicated that he had changed his mind, it had suddenly come to seem a good idea.

Perhaps Narouz had even then been playing a game with him. Perhaps even then he had no real intention of finding the money for the body, or at least not of presenting Owen with it.

But, looking back on the conversation, Owen did not think so. The offer had seemed genuine. Something had been troubling Narouz. It might simply have been the fear of publicity. Owen had a feeling, though, that it was something else. Narouz had spoken of family worries.

Whatever it was, Narouz had switched again. But this time there was a difference. He now knew almost for certain that the British were not prepared to find the money. That meant the way was now open for him to strike a private deal.

And he, Owen, had given him the information! What a fool! What an idiot!

What could he do now? Nothing, as far as he could see. Narouz had the information. All he had to do was strike a bargain. And once he’d got the body, that was that. He would dispose of it and a key item of evidence would be gone for good.

It was all very well Mahmoud saying they didn’t need the body. In theory that might be true. If the other evidence was good enough they could secure a conviction on that alone.

But could they ever secure a conviction on that basis against an heir to the throne? He would be defended not just by the best lawyers in Egypt but probably by the best lawyers in France. The case would have to be watertight. And without incontrovertible evidence that Leila was dead, would it ever be watertight enough?

It wouldn’t even get to prosecution. The whole weight of the State would be ganged up against it. The Khedive, the Minister of Justice, the Parquet, the British—the British would be against it, too, particularly if this damned Agreement was still on the cards. It wouldn’t have a chance, in the circumstances, of even reaching the courts.

In the circumstances. That was what they had both said. Both Garvin and Narouz. Now he was saying the same thing. It was what anyone would say, anyone used to politics or business or the world of affairs generally. When you had been in that world for a while you knew the way things would go. So?

What was he saying? Was he saying that when you knew the way things would go, you went along with them? Wasn’t that being defeatist?

Well, no, not really. It was being sensible; it was being realistic. If you were involved in things at a senior level, whether it were as an administrator, a Minister or even as a senior policeman, you had hundreds of things on the go at any one time. And if you knew that pushing one particular thing was going to get you nowhere you didn’t waste time going on pushing it; you left off and started pushing something else. That way you got
something
done, at any rate.

So did that mean he ought to forget about Leila? That was what Garvin was more or less saying; that was what, he suspected, Paul would say.

What it boiled down to was a question of priorities. A set of priorities went with the job and if you took on the job you took on the priorities. His priorities were pretty plain. The Mamur Zapt was in charge of law and order in Cairo and that meant keeping the city quiet and stopping them all from getting at each other’s throats. And in the circumstances that was pretty difficult and—

In the circumstances. There he was again.

Zeinab had said something about that. She had said he was too much a man of circumstances, that when the circumstances changed, he changed.

Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she? It was easier for a woman. A woman’s world was more private, she was in charge of it in a way that you couldn’t be if you were a man. In a man’s world you were forever running up against things. Yes, you were more interested by circumstances. They kept bloody coming up and hitting you in the face.

He couldn’t ignore circumstances. They were part of his world; they
were
his world. And he liked his world, damn it!

So what was he going to do about Leila? If anything.

Zeinab announced that she was taking Owen to the theater.

“Not another
New Roses
, is it?” asked Owen suspiciously.

“It
is
by Gamal, as it happens,” said Zeinab haughtily. “At least, the translation is by him. The original play is by an Englishman, though what Gamal is doing translating plays by Englishmen I cannot think. It is called
Love’s Labour’s Lost
.”

“
Love’s Labour’s Lost
? But that’s by Shakespeare.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Zeinab. “But I thought from the title that it might have something special to say to you. That is not the only reason why we are going, however.”

“No?”

“You remember you asked me to see if I could find out who it was that had sent the news item about Leila in to
Al-Liwa
.”

“If you could do it discreetly, yes.”

“Naturally. Well, I talked to Gamal’s journalist friends. Most of them work on the arts pages and don’t know much about the rest of the paper. But one of them is a copy editor, I think that is what he is called, and he told me that he thought the item had come in from a friend of Leila’s.”