The Girl in the Nile (4 page)

Owen himself rather enjoyed the views but he had been a little surprised to learn that they had also drawn the Prince.

“
How
long was he up there?” he asked the Rais, the Ship’s Captain, disbelievingly.

“Two hours.”

“Of course, it was cool up there.”

“Yes.”

“And he was keeping the woman company.”

“They were already up there,” said the Rais. There was a note of disapproval in his voice.

“Really? By themselves?”

Mahmoud clucked sympathetically.

“By themselves.”

“That’s not right!”

“They shouldn’t have been up there at all!” said the Rais. “There’s a place for women. And it’s the harem.”

“Ah, but these weren’t—I mean, they weren’t properly in the Prince’s harem.”

“They ought to have been. And they ought to have stayed there.”

“Were they flaunting themselves?” asked Mahmoud, commiserating.

The Rais hesitated.

“It was enough to be there, wasn’t it? My men could hardly take their eyes off them.”

“Unseemly!” said Mahmoud.

“It wasn’t proper,” said the Rais. “The Prince should have known better. Though it is not for me to say that.”

“Have you captained for him before?”

“He’s never been on the river before. At least, as far as I know.”

“So you didn’t know what to expect?”

“All he told us was that he wanted to go up to Luxor. With the Prince Fahid. He was very particular about that. The Prince had his own room, of course, and Narouz wanted a cabin next to him. He didn’t even want to be with the harem.”

“Strange! And then, of course, there were those other women.”

“He didn’t say anything about them. Not until we were nearly at Beni Suef.”

“They were foreigners, weren’t they?”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“They must have been. Our women wouldn’t have behaved like that.”

“Indecent!”

“Did they wear veils?”

“They wore veils,” the Rais conceded grudgingly. “But they showed their ankles!”

“Oh!” said Mahmoud, shocked.

“How could Hassan be expected to steer when they were flaunting their ankles in front of him?”

“Impossible,” Mahmoud agreed. “Impossible!”

They were standing in the stern of the vessel looking up at the back of the cabins. The steersman’s platform, with the huge horizontal rudder bar he used for steering, was right beside them.

“But I don’t understand!” said Mahmoud. “The woman who stayed up there alone—”

“Shameless!” said the Rais.

“Shameless!” agreed Mahmoud. “But she was right in front of him. Surely he would have seen if she had—well, fallen off.”

“Ah, but it was dark, you see. We had stopped for the night.”

“So the steersman wasn’t there?”

“No.”

“Where was he?”

“I don’t know,” said the Rais. “You’d better ask him.”

“And where were you?” asked Mahmoud.

“I was up here,” said the steersman. “We’d finished for the day, so I tied the rudder and then came up forward.”

They were sitting in the shade of the cook’s galley. It was a small shed, rather like a Dutch oven in shape, set well up into the prow to remove it as far as possible from the passengers’ cabins. The cook stood up on the forward side, so that the shed protected him when there was a favorable wind. They could hear him there now.

The spot was clearly a favorite one with the crew and there had been several men dozing there when Owen and Mahmoud had appeared. They had gone aft to leave them to talk to the steersman in private, but one of them, the cook presumably, had disappeared into the galley.

“She was still up there at that point?”

“Yes.” The steersman’s wrinkled face broke into a smile. “I reckoned the midges would soon drive her down.”

“It was dark by then?”

“Just. They were up there admiring the sunset but I wanted to stop while there was still a bit of light. There are one or two things you have to do and you can always do them better if you can see what you’re doing. Besides, the Prince didn’t want us to go too far. He wanted another night on the river!”

“Oh, he did, did he? And why was that?”

“Why do you think? Perhaps he likes it better on the water.”

“That’s what it was about, you think?”

“What else could it be? He goes down to his estate and doesn’t stay there a moment, we call in at Luxor and he doesn’t want to go ashore. We go straight down and straight back and the only thing we stop for is to pick up some women at Beni Suef!”

“Those women,” said Mahmoud, “what were they like?”

“Classy. But not the sort you’d want to take home with you.”

“Foreign.”

The steersman hesitated. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know. Two of them were, certainly. The other—that’s the one who finished up in the river—I’m not sure about.”

“You’re sure about the others, though?”

“Oh yes. You could hear them talking. Mind you, she was talking with them. I don’t know, of course, but it just seemed to me…well, and then there were the clothes.”

“What about the clothes?”

“Well, they all wore the tob.” The tob was a loose outer gown. “And the burka, of course.” The burka was a long face veil which reached almost to the ground. “But from where I was you could see their legs.”

“Yes. The Rais told us.”

“I’ll bet he did! He oughtn’t to have seen that, ought he? I mean, he wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been looking. You’d have thought a man like that, strict, he’s supposed to be—”

“The women,” said Mahmoud patiently.

“Yes, well, the thing was that—I mean, I couldn’t see clearly—but I reckon those two had European clothes on underneath their tobs. You could see their ankles. But the other one, well, I caught a glimpse. She was wearing shintiyan.”

“Pink ones?” said Owen.

“Why, yes,” said the steersman, surprised. “That’s right. How did you know? Oh, I suppose you’ve seen the body.”

“Never mind that,” said Mahmoud. “Let’s get back to when she was on the top deck. She was up there when you last saw her?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she go down with the others?”

“I don’t know.”

“Had they been quarreling?”

“I don’t know.”

“You heard them talking.”

“Well, it was not so much quarreling. I think the Prince was trying to get her to do something. Like, persuade her.”

“And she didn’t want to?”

“I couldn’t really tell,” confessed the steersman. “I couldn’t understand the language, see? It was just the impression I got. He wasn’t nasty or anything, not even angry, really. He was just trying—well, to persuade her, like I said.”

“He didn’t get anywhere, though?”

“No.”

“How was she? I mean, was
she
angry?”

“I couldn’t really say. You never know what’s going on behind those burkas. You think all’s going well and the next moment—bing! They’ve hit you with something. My wife’s like that.”

“Were there any tears?”

“Tears? Well, I don’t know. Not so much tears but you know how they get sometimes, you think they’re going to cry and they don’t, they just keep going on and on. A bit like that.”

“With the Prince? When he was trying to persuade her?”

“Yes. And with the girls, too. A bit earlier. Going on and on.”

“Did they get fed up with her?”

“They left her alone after a bit. Then the Prince came up and had a try and he didn’t do any better.” He broke off. “Is this helping?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. I like to help. Only—all this talking!” He suddenly pounded on the back of the galley with his fist.

“What’s the matter?” asked the cook, sticking his head out.

“How about some tea? I’m so dry I can’t speak.”

“It sounded to me as if you were doing all right. I’d have brought you some before only I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

He placed a little white enamel cup before each of them and filled it with strong black tea.

“No sugar,” he said. “You’d think we’d have sugar on board the Prince’s dahabeeyah but we don’t.”

“It’s that eunuch,” said the steersman. “The stuff never even gets here.”

“It goes somewhere else, does it?” asked Mahmoud sympathetically.

“Into his pocket!” said the steersman.

Mahmoud looked up at the cook.

“You were here that night, weren’t you? The night the girl disappeared?”

“Yes. I was just making supper when that stupid eunuch came along making a great commotion.”

“You left the girl there,” Mahmoud said to the steersman, “and then you came along here. Did you have a cup of tea at that point?”

“Yes,” said the steersman, “I always have one when I finish.”

“Tea first, then supper,” said the cook.

“And you had a cup with him, perhaps?”

“I did. I always do.”

“Here? Sitting here?”

“Yes. Several of us.”

“And you were still sitting here when the eunuch came?”

“
I
was,” said the steersman.

“I had just got up,” said the cook. “To make the supper.”

“So whatever it was that happened,” said Mahmoud, “happened while you were sitting here.”

“I suppose so,” said the steersman. “Well, it must have.”

“Yes, it must have. And you still say you saw nothing? Heard nothing?”

“Here, just a minute—!”

“We weren’t looking!”

“We were talking!”

“You would have seen a person. Or—”

“We didn’t see anything!”

“Two people. On the cabin roof. Together.”

“Here!” said the steersman, scrambling to his feet. “What are you saying?”

“I’m asking,” said Mahmoud. “Did you see two people?”

“No!”

“Up there together. Whoever they were.”

“I didn’t see anything!”

“None of us saw anything!”

“Thirty feet away and you saw nothing?”

“We weren’t looking!”

“You took care not to look.”

“We were talking!”

“And nothing attracted your attention? Someone is attacked—”

“Attacked!”

“Or falls. And you know nothing about it? If she’d jumped into the water she’d have made a splash.”

“A splash? Who hears a splash? There are splashes all the time.

“One as big as this? You are boatmen. You would have heard.”

“Truly!” said the steersman. “I swear to God—”

“He hears what you say!” Mahmoud warned him.

“And sees all that happens. I know. Well, he may have seen what happened to the girl but I didn’t.”

The steersman showed them off the boat. At the gangway he hesitated and then ran up the bank after them.

“What was it, then?
Was
she knocked on the head?”

“I don’t know,” said Mahmoud.

“I thought you’d seen the body?”

“No. It’s not turned up yet.”

“Oh.” He seemed disappointed. Then he brightened. “Tell you what,” he said, “I know where it will fetch up, more than likely.”

“Yes?”

The steersman pointed downriver to where men were working on a scaffolding which stretched out across the river.

“See that? That’s the new Bulak bridge. That’s where they finish up these days.”

They were sharing the boat with a kid goat, a pile of onions and the boatman’s wife, who sat, completely muffled in tob and burka, as far away from them as was possible.

It had been the steersman’s idea. They had been about to set out for the main bridge when he had said:

“Are you going back to Bulak? Why don’t you get Hamid to run you over?”

He had pointed along the bank to where an elderly Arab was standing in the water bent over the gunwale of a small, crazily-built boat. The sides were not so much planks as squares of wood stuck on apparently at hazard. The sail was a small, tattered square sheet.

“In that? I don’t think so,” said Owen.

But Mahmoud, fired with enthusiasm for the life marine, was already descending the bank.

With the two of them on board, the stern dipped until the gunwale was inches above the water. The bows, with the woman and the goat, rose heavenward. The boatman inspected this critically for a moment, but then, unlike Owen, seemed satisfied.

He perched himself on the edge of the gunwale and took the two ends of the rope in his hands. One he wedged expertly between his toes. The other he wound round his arm.

The wind caught the sail and he threw himself backwards until the folds of his galabeah were trailing in the water. The boat moved comfortably out into the river.

Now they were in midstream they could see the new bridge more clearly. There were workmen on the scaffolding and, down at the bottom, a small boat nudging its way along the length of the works.

The boatman pointed with his head.

“That’s the police boat,” he said. “It comes every day to pick up the bodies.”

“Can you take us over there?” asked Mahmoud.

The boatman scampered across to the opposite gunwale, turned the boat, turned it again and set off on a long glide which took them close in along the bridge.

“Bring us in to the boat,” said Mahmoud.

A tall man in the police boat looked up, saw Mahmoud and waved excitedly.

“Ya Mahmoud!” he called.

“Ya Selim!” answered Mahmoud warmly.

A couple of policemen caught the boat as it came in alongside and steadied it. Mahmoud and the other man embraced affectionately.

“Why, Mahmoud, have you done something sensible at last and joined the river police?”

“Temporarily; this is my boat.”

Selim inspected it critically.

“The boatman’s all right,” he said, “but I’m not so sure about the boat.”

He shook hands with the boatman.

“Give me your money,” said the boatman, “and I’ll have a boat as good as yours.”

“And the Mamur Zapt,” said Mahmoud.

Selim shook hands again and gave him a second look.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” said Owen.

“No. I’ve met Mahmoud, though. We were working on a case last year.” He looked at them again. “The Mamur Zapt
and
the Parquet,” he said. “This must be important.”

“It’s the girl,” said Mahmoud. “You’ve received notification, I’m sure.”