A Dead Man in Tangier (6 page)

‘That is what I keep saying to Juliette. It’s not as if his affairs were confined to Tangier, I say.'

‘The business trips alone –’

‘Exactly! “I have a job,” I say to Juliette. “I can’t be always going off to places like Marrakesh. I have responsibilities here.” But she does not understand!'

‘Ah, women!'

‘Exactly, Monsieur: women!'

‘But perhaps I can help?'

‘Help?’ said Renaud, disconcerted.

‘Over the business trips at least. I have some information on them.'

‘You do?'

‘Dates, for instance.'

‘Dates?'

‘And places.'

‘Places?'

‘And sums. Do you have sums?'

‘Well . . .'

‘Perhaps we could compare notes. You show me your information and I’ll show you mine. I gather you have his papers?'

‘Some, yes. Well, most –’

‘Then we could go through them together.'

‘Um, ah – They are not – not all to hand.'

‘You do have them still?'

‘Oh, yes. But – some are still to be sorted.'

‘We can do that together.'

‘Um. Ah. Yes.'

Renaud pulled himself together.

‘But before I could do that, I would have to . . . They are Juliette’s papers, after all. Private papers. Yes, that’s it. Private papers. I feel I ought not to –’

‘Naturally, I would not wish to pry into Madame Bossu’s private papers. But Bossu’s papers . . . Surely Bossu’s papers are within the scope of the public investigation?’

‘Um. Ah. Yes. But . . .'

Seymour could see that he was not going to let Seymour anywhere near them.

That evening he went to see Monique.

‘Well, this is a pleasure,’ she said.

Her apartment was tucked away from the sea front but close enough to it and high up enough for him to be able to see the sea. She took him out on to a little balcony which overlooked the bay. It was dark now and the harbour was alive with lights. From the cheap Arab cafés over to their left came the throbbing and wailing of Arab music. They sat down.

‘Well, now,’ she said, ‘I am not so foolish as to imagine that this is just a social call. How can I help you?'

‘I am sorry to trouble you over something so small. But I can see no other way of finding out. It is just a very simple question.'

‘Simple?’ she said. Her eyebrows went up. ‘But in Tangier no questions are simple. Because they nearly always lead to difficult answers.'

‘This one won’t,’ said Seymour. ‘It is just to ask you if you know the name of the bank Bossu used. And I wouldn’t have troubled you if I had been able to get anything sensible out of Juliette.'

‘Thousands have tried before you! But I do see that that is the kind of mundane detail that might have escaped her notice.'

‘I had hoped, actually, that it might be in Bossu’s papers. But Renaud had taken them all away.'

Monique was amused.

‘So he’s not so stupid!’ She thought. ‘Actually he’s not stupid at all. He can be quite cunning at times. When it’s in his interests.'

‘So I come to you.'

‘It’s easy.'

She wrote the name down on a slip of paper. It was the name of the bank in which the committee had its offices.

‘That all? Really? Well, I’m not going to let you get away with that. At least you must have a drink.'

Seymour found himself staying rather longer than he had intended.

‘So how did you get on with Monique?’ asked the receptionist when he came down the next morning.

He stopped.

‘You know?'

‘Of course.'

‘How?'

‘Someone saw you. And then came back and told me.'

‘Why did they come back and tell you?'

‘Cash. I like to know these things.'

‘I wouldn’t have thought this was worth paying for.'

‘I didn’t pay very much.'

‘Still . . .'

‘You have to cast your bread upon the waters if you’re a journalist. Usually it leads to nothing. But occasionally there is a return.'

‘Is this for your newspaper?'

‘My newspaper would certainly pay for information. If it was worth printing.'

‘I wouldn’t have thought this was.'

‘I don’t think so, either,’ she agreed. ‘Still, I didn’t know that until after I had paid. It was only a few coins. My informant was a small boy and he brings information rather indiscriminately.'

Seymour laughed.

‘Do you use a lot of boys?’ he asked.

‘I find them useful. And girls, too, but they don’t get around so much.'

‘Do you know a lame beggar boy?'

‘I know several lame beggar boys.'

‘Something wrong with his hip.'

She thought for a moment.

‘Why do you want to know?'

‘Because this one may have seen what happened to Bossu. He was lying in the scrub when Bossu rode in after a pig.'

‘It may be Salah,’ she said. ‘He lives over in that direction and is just the sort of boy who would want to follow the pig-sticking.'

‘Where would I find him?'

‘You could try the Mosque Al-Baylim. He sleeps there and they give him food.'

‘Thank you.'

‘If you find out anything,’ she said, ‘tell me.'

He nodded.

She came to the door with him. As she opened it she saw Mustapha and Idris outside.

‘Are they coming with you?'

Seymour sighed.

‘Almost certainly.'

‘Go easy with them today. It’s Ramadan and they don’t eat until after sunset. What with that and the heat, people get very exhausted. By the time they’d finished yesterday they were really knocked up.'

‘Look, they don’t have to come with me.'

‘Oh, but they do. It’s a question of honour.'

She went across to them and spoke to them. Then she came back.

‘I’ve told them which mosque it is,’ she said. ‘You’ll find Salah asleep in the porch if you go there about noon.'

The Mosque Al-Baylim was on the poor edge of Tangier, where the cheap, flat-roofed houses with tomatoes and onions spread out to dry on the top gave way to the poorer kind of workshops: potteries, consisting of trenches where the potters sat outside on planks and worked their wheels with their bare feet, tanners, where bare-chested men dipped skins into huge vats, underground flour mills in dark cellars where great wheels were driven by subterranean streams, oil presses where the ground around was damp and discoloured and the air was heavy with the sticky, slightly sugary smell of pressed sesame seed.

The mosque itself was next to a tannery and its white stucco walls were stained brown with the effluent. But it was entered through a beautiful, old, wooden porch, all latticework and ornamentation. In the cool of its shade several ragged forms were lying. Mustapha stirred one with his foot.

‘Salah?’ he said.

Another form sat up.

‘Who asks?’ it said.

‘Mustapha.'

The form scrutinized him carefully.

‘I know you,’ it said.

‘Everybody knows me,’ said Mustapha impatiently.

‘Why do you want me?’ asked the boy in sudden panic.

‘I want to talk to you.'

‘If it’s about that load of kif, I don’t know anything about it!'

‘It’s not about the kif,’ said Mustapha, slightly uncomfortably. ‘It’s about that dead Frenchman. Look, you’d better come out here.'

There was a sudden chorus of protests from the other forms in the porch.

‘What are you going to do to him?'

‘Leave him alone!'

‘He had nothing to do with it!'

‘Shut up!’ said Mustapha. ‘It’s not about the kif. I just want to ask him some questions, that’s all. About the Frenchman.'

‘I’ve told you everything I know!'

‘All I want you to do is tell it once again. Only this time so that my friend will hear.'

‘Your friend?'

Salah took in for the first time Seymour’s presence.

‘Who’s he?’ he said suspiciously.

‘My friend. Like I said. He’s an Englishman. From the police in London.'

‘The police?'

The porch went still. There was a long silence. Then – ‘Mustapha!’ the beggar boy said reproachfully.

‘What is it?'

‘Mustapha, I would never have believed this of you!'

‘What are you on about?'

‘You, whom I have always heard spoken of as a man of honour!'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘The police! Mustapha, I would never have believed this of you!'

‘Have you gone crazy or something!'

‘That you, of all men –’

‘What’s the matter with him?’ said Idris.

‘It must be big. Of course! I’ve got it now,’ said the beggar boy conciliatorily. ‘Really big! Something that will make your fortune. Well, Mustapha, I congratulate you.

’ ‘Either he’s mad or I’m mad!’ declared Mustapha.

‘It’s just that I’m – well, surprised, that’s all, disappointed. A little.'

‘It’s him!’ said Idris. ‘Definitely. He’s gone mad.'

‘You wouldn’t have cut them in on it if it hadn’t been really big –’

‘What the hell are you talking about?'

‘The kif. You wouldn’t have sold out to the police if –’ ‘Shall I just cut his throat?’ asked Idris.

There was another chorus from inside the porch.

‘Leave him alone!'

‘You bastards!'

‘Salah,’ said Mustapha dangerously, ‘I have been very patient with you. But –’

Seymour intervened hastily. He had just about enough Arabic to get it across.

‘It’s nothing to do with the kif,’ he said. ‘Mush kif. And there’s no deal. Mush deal. I’m interested only in the Frenchman. Tell him that, will you?'

‘Mush kif. Mush deal,’ said Mustapha. ‘Got that, you little bastard? My friend has hit the nail right on the head. And now you’re going to tell us, exactly and pretty quickly, just what it was that you saw when that French bastard rode out into the scrub last week.'

‘There were two pigs, see. And they ran off to one side. And the fat Frenchman went after them. Then he settled on one and rode after that. I could see him above the scrub, going up and down because the ground rose and fell at that point. And I thought, You’d better watch it, my fat friend, or else you’ll come off. And then you’ll be in trouble, especially if the pig turns and goes for you. And then I thought, That would be good to see. So I made haste to get there. But, Monsieur, I do not make haste very fast.'

He looked at Seymour apologetically.

‘I have to go like this.'

He showed Seymour how he ran: head down, almost touching the ground, hip up higher than his head. It was just like a hyena, Seymour thought.

‘And when I raised my head, I could not see him. “Lo, it has happened as I foretold,” I said to myself, and redoubled my efforts to get there. I heard the horse in the bushes and ran towards it, but not too fast in case it was the pig and not the horse.

‘And then I saw the lance. It was standing upright, just like this. And I thought, That is strange, but it must have fallen so. But when I went closer I saw that it was stuck through the fat Frenchman, and I thought, How can that be? He cannot have fallen thus. And then it came to me that he could not have done it himself and that someone else had a hand in this! So I sat beneath a bush and waited.

‘And gradually men came. I heard them speak. “What is this?” they said. “He needs help,” someone said. But then someone else said, “Nothing can help him now!” And another said, “Let us not go too close, for the Sheikh will send his men and then it will be better for us if we are not near.”

‘So they sat down and waited. And then the Sheikh’s men came. And they said, “Right, you bastards, who has done this?” And we all said, “Not I!” And they must have believed us, for one stayed and one rode away, and eventually he came back with another Frenchman, the tall captain.

‘That is all, and it was thus, and as I told you the first time.'

‘Not all,’ said Seymour, when Mustapha had finished interpreting.

‘Not all?'

‘Was not there another horse?'

‘Another horse?'

‘Didn’t someone ride in after the Frenchman? Immediately after.'

‘I saw no other horse.'

‘Ask him to think again. Carefully. Is he sure there was no other horse?'

Salah shook his head stubbornly.

‘I saw no other horse.'

‘Think again, Salah, for how else did the lance get there?'

‘That’s a good one,’ said Idris. ‘Someone stuck him, didn’t they? So someone else must have been there.'

‘Ah, but was he on a horse?’ asked Mustapha. ‘Well, was he, you little bastard?’ he said to the beggar boy.

‘I saw no one,’ repeated the beggar boy. ‘And no horse, either.'

‘Salah, I believe you,’ said Seymour. ‘But, then, as my friends say, there is left a riddle. Which, perhaps, you may still help us solve. Go on thinking. Think back to that day. You saw no other horse. Nor person, either. Might that not be because at the time you were running through the scrub with your head down, as you showed me?'

‘Well, it might, but –’

‘Go on thinking. Salah, you
saw
nothing. But you
heard
something. You told me. Something in the bushes. A pig, you said, or a horse. Could it not have been a horse?’

‘Well . . .'

‘You, yourself, were in doubt. Now, Salah, you heard this thing in the bushes, and you were concerned lest it might come upon you. Does that mean it was coming towards you? Or was it going away from you?'

‘Monsieur, I –’

‘Draw it in the sand. With your finger. Here is the spot where the Frenchman fell. And here is the track that he came from, where all the others were. Now, where were you? Draw it.'

Mustapha and Idris bent down to see.

‘So, Salah, you were here. Beside the main track?'

‘Watching the horses go by, yes.'

‘And the Frenchman rode into the scrub here, over to your right hand as you lay?'

‘That is so.'

‘And disappeared here. And you turned and went up to where you had last seen him. And then you heard something in the bushes . . .?'

‘Here,’ said Salah, pointing with his finger.

‘Near the spot where the fat Frenchman fell, but this side of it. Which means that whoever-it-was was coming away from where he fell?'

‘It seems so,’ Salah agreed.

‘And therefore towards you?'