The Girl in the Nile (9 page)

The price was, however, out of Owen’s reach. He had at his discretion a sum—a considerable sum, in the view of the Accounts Department—which could be used for the payment of informers. A sum like this, though, would eat such a hole in it as to jeopardize his ordinary work.

El-Gharbi was watching his face.

“Of course,” he said, “if you were able to offer me something else—”

“Something else?” said Owen, puzzled. “What could that be?”

“Information. Like you, I am always in the market for information. And I, too, would pay a good price.”

“What sort of information?”

“When wealth travels by river. Which boat. When it departs. Where it is going.”

Owen shook his head.

“Alas,” he said, “I do not sell that kind of information.”

“Alas,” El-Gharbi commiserated, “then it may be difficult for you to find the price my information commands in the market.

“There is always,” said El-Gharbi after a while, “another possibility open to you. You yourself may not be able to raise the money. But perhaps you have friends who could—if it was important to them.”

Owen’s mind had begun to work on the same lines.

“My friends are, I am afraid, like myself, poor. But perhaps I should talk to them.”

“Why not?” said El-Gharbi, smiling pleasantly. “I am sure your friends will be eager to help—once you explain to them what the money is for. Why not consult them? Only do not leave it too long. The market is, as I say, live. As opposed, of course, to the girl.”

“Five thousand pounds!” said the Prince, aghast. “That seems a lot of money.”

“Yes. That’s what I thought, too.”

“It must be just a bargaining price. An opening offer. Pouf, man, you’ve let yourself be scared by a figure plucked out of the clouds. Go back and offer him five hundred.”

“I have. And he wasn’t interested.”

“He
pretended
not to be interested, I daresay. But five hundred—well, that’s a lot of money, too. For these people.”

“He just laughed.”

“A negotiating tactic. I am afraid you’re not used to the ways of the bazaar, Captain Owen. You’ve let yourself be out-negotiated.”

“I got the impression that the price was not negotiable.”

“Oh, come! Any price is negotiable. It’s just that you don’t know how we do it here, Captain Owen. An Englishman—”

“Mr. el Zaki was with me.”

The Prince looked at Mahmoud. “Was he? Well, he certainly ought to know better. Surely—”

“Captain Owen is as used to the ways of the bazaar as I am, Your Highness. He does, after all, negotiate daily with informers.”

“Does he? Yes, well I suppose that’s true. All the same, five thousand pounds! Surely that is excessive? What is the going rate for bodies in Cairo, Mr. el Zaki? Much less than that, I would have thought. Much, much less. Twenty pounds? Fifty pounds at most. A hundred, very exceptionally. Yes, I would have thought this was worth a hundred only.”

“We are not exactly dealing in bodies,” said Owen. “We are merely trying to buy information.”

“Not even a body? And five thousand pounds! The price looks higher every time you speak, Captain Owen. I really do not think bargaining is your line. Information, you say? What information?”

Owen was forced to admit he did not exactly know. “Well!” said the Prince. “Five thousand pounds is a lot of money to pay for something you do not exactly know.”

“Before any money changed hands we would, of course, need to be satisfied that the information was worth it.”

“I would certainly hope so! But, tell me, Captain Owen, what do you expect would be the nature of this information for which you are prepared to pay so high a price?”

Owen was silent.

Mahmoud was not, however.

“Marks on the body,” he said. “How she died.”

“I see.”

The Prince considered the matter thoughtfully.

“Important as that is,” he said, “I am not sure that it is worth five thousand pounds. Certainly not to me. After all, if what I think you are supposing is true, it would hardly be in my interest for such information to emerge. I speak hypothetically, of course.”

“But look at it another way,” said Owen. “If the information did not support what you think is Mr. el Zaki’s view, would it not be helpful to know this? Would it not, as it were, clear the matter up? And might not that be worth five thousand pounds?”

“I do see your point. But I would regard that as a matter of public, not private interest. And I think, therefore, that the public should pay.”

Owen tried in vain to convince him. The Prince was not to be persuaded.

He played one last card.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said, with the air of one who had himself been convinced. “It
is
a public matter. The public should pay. Yes, I am sure you’re right. I’ll get on to it straightaway. It was just that—well, I thought you might have a special interest in what we found out—”

“Oh, I do! I do!”

“—and not wish it to be shared too widely. After all, it could be misinterpreted.”

The Prince smiled.

“I think I can rely on you to see that it is not. After all, in view of the Special Agreement currently being discussed between the British government and the Egyptian government—”

“What Agreement is this?”

“You have not heard? Not even the Mamur Zapt? Well,” said the Prince, “I do call that news management of the highest order. Obviously something there for you to study. Yes, quite a lot there for you to study, I would say.”

He accompanied them to the door. As they parted, he clapped Owen on the back.

“Don’t be downhearted, old fellow. It’s all for the best. You’ve been working jolly hard, I know. You and Mr. el Zaki.” The Prince’s arm reached out to enfold Mahmoud. “But you’ve both got more important things to do, I’m sure.”

“I don’t quite follow you.”

“Well,” said the Prince, “it’s easy, isn’t it? You’ve both been working very hard—two of the best in the Khedive’s service— and you haven’t been able to find anything. This—proposal of yours, it’s not going to come to anything, is it? I mean— five thousand pounds is a lot of money. And for what? Some highly dubious information? Not worth it. I’m sure everyone will agree. So—”

“So what?”

“Is not this the time to drop the whole affair? It’s really becoming rather tedious. Worse, now I come to think of it, a positive drain on resources. Yes, that’s it—a drain on the Government’s scarce resources. You see how quickly I pick up English ways of talking. We must act responsibly. Time to call a halt.”

“I am afraid, Your Highness,” said Mahmoud stiffly, “that once a case has been opened—”

“But
has
a case been opened, old fellow? A preliminary investigation, certainly. But a case?”

“We make no such distinction.”

“Oh, I am sure you do. A report comes in. You investigate. You find there’s nothing to it, a false rumor. So you drop it.”

“I don’t think this is like that.”

“You don’t? Well,” said the Prince, smiling, “I’m not sure I agree with you. No body, no case, I would have said. We’ll see, shall we?”

Zeinab had set it up for Owen to meet her theatrical friends at their usual café and as she and Owen turned into the square, there they were, occupying their usual tables on the edge of the pavement.

Intellectual life in Cairo was conducted, as in Paris, in open-air cafés. It was conducted, too, in French since France was the country to which most of them owed intellectual allegiance. And the latest French journals were much in evidence.

There was one respect, however, in which it was very unFrench. There were no women seated at the tables. Emancipated as she considered herself, Zeinab would not have gone up to them alone. Even with Owen, she attracted some curious glances from people at adjoining tables. Women did not do that kind of thing, even in cosmopolitan Cairo.

“Which was why Leila stood out,” said one of Zeinab’s friends, Gamal.

Gamal was the playwright.

“Oh yes. I remember that evening. It was the first night of
New Roses
, wasn’t it? It had been so successful,
mon cher
— the audience that first night was in rapture—that I thought it would run and run. Alas!” He sighed heavily.

“It was the theme, Gamal,” said someone across the table. “It just wasn’t popular.” He turned to Owen. “The ‘new roses’ were the emerging flowers of nationalism in the arts.”

“I would have thought that would have been pretty popular,” said Zeinab.

“Nationalism, yes; the arts, no.”

“That accounts for it,” said Owen. “The first night you had all the nationalists in Cairo. After that there was none left.”

“Ah, my friend!” said Gamal, laughing reprovingly.

“And how did Leila come to be there?” asked Owen. “Which of the aspects was she interested in?”

“Neither. She was interested in Suleiman.”

“Suleiman?”

“He is here, I think, Suleiman! Where are you? Suleiman?”

Someone sitting at a table at the far end of the café got up and came over to them. He and Gamal embraced enthusiastically.

“Suleiman, there is someone I want you to meet.” He introduced Owen. “A friend of mine. The Mamur Zapt.”

“The Mamur Zapt?” said Suleiman, surprised but, so far as Owen could tell, not disconcerted. “What friends you have, Gamal!”

They shook hands and Suleiman pulled a chair up.

“He wants to know about Leila,” said Gamal.

“Leila?” Suleiman made a face. “This is a shaming thing for me, Gamal. It is not kind of you.”

“Why be ashamed?” asked Gamal. “Is not love a thing to be proud of?”

“It is, when it is love. But I am not sure it was love, not on my side at least.”

“She loved you?” said Zeinab.

“Well, yes, I think so. And at first I felt flattered—I don’t usually have an effect on women like that—and thought I loved her. But then…”

“You fell out of love?”

“Well, no. It was just that she became—tiresome, really, she was so clinging. And then I thought: It is not I she finds special, any responsive man would do, it is the fact of being in love she finds special. I am not expressing myself very well.”

“Being in love
is
special for women,” said Zeinab.

“Yes, yes. I realize that, but I think that also there has to be one man particularly who means something special to you—”

“There were other men?”

“No, no. I did not mean that. I meant, I think, that it is very important to Leila, or it was then, to have a man, simply have a man. Any man would do, it didn’t have to be me. It was as if she was desperate—No, no, I didn’t mean that. What a terrible thing to say! I meant—”

“She needed love and protection,” said Zeinab.

“Yes,” said Suleiman, downcast. “Yes, I am sure you are right. Only—I’m not very good at that sort of thing. I—I want to get on with my work.”

“Suleiman is a sculptor,” said Gamal.

“Well, I am trying to be,” said Suleiman modestly. “Not very successfully, I am afraid. But I did have the chance of an exhibition, and it was just at that time, and I was working hard, and she—she, well, I suppose she was a distraction.”

“Is it just that he is like you?” Zeinab asked Owen. “Or are all men like this?”

“I don’t know about that,” said Gamal. “But I know that if you are an artist, that is how it is.”

“It is not art that needs new roses,” said Zeinab, “it is the way men see women.”

Owen hurriedly intervened.

“At any rate,” he said, “you felt less warmly towards her than you had done.”

“Yes. But she wouldn’t let me go. She clung.”

“What do you expect?” said Zeinab. “A woman’s love is not like a man’s. Once you give it, you can’t take it back.”

“She pursued you?”

“Yes. Everywhere I went.”

“And that was how she came to be at the reception?”

“What reception is this?”

“The first night of Gamal’s play,
New Roses
. There was a reception afterwards.”

“I remember it. Was she there? Yes, I think she was there.”

“Was she invited?”

“No one was invited,” said Gamal. “It just happened.”

“She tagged along.”

“Did she come with you?”

“No. I don’t think she came with anyone. But when I came into the room, there she was. And I thought: There she is again! Will I never be rid of her? This is what I am ashamed of,” said Suleiman. “It was unkind.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No. I tried to avoid her. In fact, I did avoid her. She did not speak to me.”

“Was that because she was speaking to someone else?”

“I do not know.”

There was a general appeal around the tables.

“Who did Leila speak to at the
New Roses
party?”

One or two names were suggested.

“The Prince, I think,” said someone.

“Narouz?”

“Yes. It was the only thing he found interesting during the evening, I think.”

“The man is a Philistine,” declared Gamal.

“What was he doing there, anyway?”

“Raoul was trying to tap him for money.”

“Some hope. He’s only interested in car racing.”

“Women?” asked Owen.

“Leila, certainly. They went off together. Sorry, Suleiman.”

“I don’t mind,” said Suleiman. “In fact, it’s a relief.”

“How did you get to know her?”

“She turned up, didn’t she, at one of our soirées?” He appealed to the group.

“Faisal brought her.”

“Who is Faisal?”

“Oh, he’s not one of us. He hung around us for a while. He thought he was interested in the arts. One of those rich men, you know, no talent, no dedication. He went off to France.”

“And Leila?”

“Leila stayed. She started going around with—who was it? That journalist.”

“Hargazy?”

“That’s right. She went around with him for a while. Off and on. I don’t know when it stopped.”

“When she took up with Suleiman.”

“She was always tagging along with someone.”

“What else could she do?” asked Zeinab with asperity. “Did she have any other friends?” asked Owen.

“I wouldn’t have thought so. Judging by the amount of time she spent with us.”