The Fig Tree Murder (12 page)

‘But it’s not your land!’

‘It’s my cousin’s land. And my cousin is but a fool, a simple man. He has no head for this kind of thing. I shall negotiate for him.’

‘Against the Pasha? He’ll have your balls off!’

‘Anyway,’ said another of the circle, ‘I thought you didn’t agree with selling off the Tree to foreigners?’

‘The Tree? What is the Tree? It is mere superstition. Sell it off, I say. Pocket the money. The money is real; the Tree is but vapour.’

‘This is a different tune from what you were singing yesterday.’

‘I sing with the times. I am,’ said the barber with dignity, ‘on the side of Progress.’

‘Now you are, but—’

‘You’ll never make any money out of this!’

‘Malik’s the one who’ll make the money.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said someone else. ‘Zaghlul owns some of the land, too, and he’s not going to sell. He doesn’t like Malik.’

‘He’ll sell if the money’s right.’

‘No, he won’t. Just to spite Malik.’

‘Anyway,’ said someone who had not yet spoken, ‘what does Malik want a gallop for? He goes on enough gallops with Jalila!’

They all laughed.

‘Not any more, he doesn’t,’ said the barber. ‘She won’t have anything to do with him now. Not since Ibrahim died.’

‘Why not?’ asked Owen.

‘She used to like Ibrahim. Of course, she had to go with Malik if he asked her, because he was the Pasha. But she preferred Ibrahim. Anyway, one day when he called, there was Ibrahim. “Bugger off!” he says to Ibrahim. Well, you know Ibrahim. Head too hot, tongue too quick. “It’s not for me to bugger off,” he says. “Times have changed. You don’t own me now. And it won’t be long before you and your lot’ll be swept away.” “Oh, is that so?” says Malik. “We’ll see about that!” And then, do you know, that stupid woman has to butt in. “Take yourself off!” she says to Malik. “He’s right. You don’t own him now and you don’t own me either.” So off Malik has to go, with his tail between his legs.’

‘She oughtn’t to have said that!’ said someone. ‘Not to the Pasha!’

‘Well, she’s sticking to it. He’s been over to see her several times and each time she says, “Not you, Malik.” ’

‘She was always too outspoken,’ said someone uneasily.

Owen went to see Jalila.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘this is a surprise!’

Her brother was obviously not there, for she did not invite him in.

‘I’m still looking for the man who killed Ibrahim.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know you are.’ There was a pause and then she said: ‘You’ve got him, haven’t you?’

‘Have I?’

She did not reply.

‘What did you come to see me for?’

‘Ibrahim and Malik quarrelled. Since then you have refused to see Malik. Why?’

‘What’s the Pasha’s son to me?’ she said. ‘Ibrahim was right. Their day has gone.’

‘Is that all?’

‘What else could there be?’

‘Did Malik come to see you on the night that Ibrahim was killed?’

She looked at him in surprise.

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

She suddenly understood.

‘If Malik had been anywhere around,’ she said bitterly, ‘I would have told you.’

He had felt he had to explore it. But really he could not see it. A quarrel over a woman, affronted pride, revenge taken, yes; but Malik? Somehow Owen could not see him in the part. Ali, now, Leila’s ferocious brother, that was a different matter: a rough, tough customer, used, probably, to such work through his association with the racecourse gang, quick, as Owen had seen for himself, to reach for a gun in an argument, more than ready to resent an affront—Owen could certainly see him doing it.

And that, clearly, was what the village thought. Even Jalila herself, probably. Malik? He didn’t come into it—except that he obviously loomed much larger in the life of the village than Owen had supposed.

Besides, one always came back to it—if Malik had been involved, what could one make of the body’s being placed on the line? It was directly contrary to Malik’s interests. What he wanted was to get the line completed as quickly as possible. No, revenge might have had some part to play in Ibrahim’s death, but it wouldn’t have been Malik’s desire for revenge—if desire for revenge he had; more likely, he viewed the whole thing as simply beneath him—but someone else’s. There seemed to be plenty of desire for revenge washing around the village, not least on the part of Ali. And that, Owen was convinced, was far more likely.

Coming out of Sheikh Isa’s house he saw Zaghlul. Unexpectedly, the old man crossed the street and came up to him.

‘This is a bad business,’ he said.

‘There are many bad businesses, especially just now. Which one is troubling you?’

Instead of replying, Zaghlul nodded his head.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there are many bad businesses just now. But they all come from one thing. Two years ago everything here was like that.’ He pointed out across the fields shimmering in the sun to the more distant shimmer of the desert. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘it is like that.’

He gestured towards the houses.

‘Everywhere they build. The city creeps out into the desert. The railway—’

He spat into the dust.

‘They squeeze us out,’ he said. ‘At first we say: “The desert is big enough for both of us,” and let them come. But the desert is not big enough for both of us. They want more and yet more. They squeeze us out.

‘At first I said: “The times are changing and I must change with them.” I saw the railway coming out to Heliopolis and saw them building the big stores. And I said to myself: “Zaghlul, you must learn new tricks.” So I bought some land out in the desert, away from Heliopolis, and I stocked it with ostriches. And I thought, “Here I will be safe,” for it is away from Heliopolis and among the palaces of the Khedives and the Pashas and they will not let them build there. But always they want more. Now they are building these gallops.’

‘Not yet,’ said Owen. ‘And, anyway, does it matter? The gallops will be land, not houses. And they are still two miles from your farm.’

‘But what if they want more gallops?’ Zaghlul shook his head. ‘Ostriches and horses don’t get along with each other. They smell each other and and are frightened.’

‘Zaghlul,’ said Owen, remembering suddenly, ‘are other animals besides horses frightened by ostriches? Goats, for instance?’

‘Goats?’ said Zaghlul, startled. ‘I do not know. I have not thought about it.’

‘I have heard that it is so. But if it were so, the bird would have to pass close, would it not?’

‘It is the smell. They would have to be able to smell it.’

‘But then, if it passed close, in the night, let us say, they would be disturbed and restless?’

‘I would expect so.’

‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘I would expect so. Tell me, Zaghlul, do your birds often escape?’

‘That is what they say,’ said Zaghlul, ‘but it is a lie!’

‘There was one that escaped. I saw it.’

‘There would have been no problem if that fool Malik had not chased it and scared it. I would have caught it and it would have been back behind the fences before anyone knew anything about it!’

‘So they do escape?’

‘Occasionally. But—’

‘And you pursue them. Tell me, Zaghlul, did one escape on the night that Ibrahim was killed? And did you by any chance pursue it?’

Zaghlul’s face darkened.

‘You take the side of the city,’ he said angrily. ‘For you, my ostriches are always breaking out. No, one did not break out on the night that Ibrahim was killed. And no, I did not pursue it.’ He stumped furiously away and a little later Owen saw him riding off into the fields on his way back to his farm.

For a moment the village street was empty and then a group of women came along, chattering as they went to fetch water for the evening meal. They called out to Owen cheerfully as they passed. Everyone in the village knew him, he suddenly realized. He had been out here so often over the past two weeks that they almost took him for granted.

The first smells of the evening cooking drifted down the street. A particularly pungent whiff made him splutter. Someone must have just thrown a load of too-recently-dried cattle dung on to a fire.

Men were coming back from the fields with hoes and baskets and a donkey nodded past carrying a huge load of
berseem
. The doves in the palms around the well were beginning to take up their evening cooing, a low, fulfilled murmur which would go on until the sun dropped finally beneath the horizon.

Another of the sounds had changed, too. For a moment he did not realize what it was, and then he saw a man lifting the small boy down from the back of the ox that had driven the water-wheel.

The day’s work in the village was coming to an end. Men would be walking back from the irrigation channels, the ostrich farm, the railway or wherever they worked. Everyone would be going home. Daniel, the Copt, would—on a normal day—be untethering his donkey in the grove of balsam trees and preparing to set out on the journey back to Tel-el-Hasan.

Owen stopped.

Daniel, the Copt, would, on a normal day, be just starting out on the journey back to Tel-el-Hasan.

The following morning Owen was at the Tree again; not as early as Daniel, the Copt, always eager to see that his property had not been stolen in the night, but early enough to share the first cup of tea of the day with the Tree’s unwilling guardians.

‘How much longer are we going to have to stay here?’ asked one of his policemen.

‘Not much longer, I think,’ said Owen.

He took his cup of tea and walked over to where Daniel was looking at the names on the Tree and fretting at the diminishing rate of new inscriptions.

‘If it goes on like this,’ said the Copt gloomily, ‘the Tree won’t be worth having.’

‘Have not the Belgians made you an offer?’

‘That money is still to come, meanwhile, this lot has to be paid,’ said Daniel, nodding sadly towards his Coptic henchmen.

‘It could go on for ten years,’ said Owen.

Daniel winced.

‘Tell me, Daniel: every morning you ride here across the desert from Tel-el-Hasan, and every evening you ride home again. It must be a lonely ride, for there cannot be many who make the journey. You would remember those you saw. That night that Ibrahim died—’

‘Would he had never died!’ said Daniel gloomily. ‘Since that day, the world has come to Matariya. If only it would go away again!’

‘You remember the night? Well then, tell me, as you rode home to Tel-el-Hasan that night, did you meet anyone on the way?’

‘I do not remember…’

‘Think. They would have been coming from Tel-el-Hasan. Might you not have wondered why they were making the journey so late in the day?’

‘That was not the riddle. He must have been taking her to meet her prospective husband’s family. He would eat with the men and she with the women and then they would go home again. No, that was not the riddle.’

‘What was the riddle, then?’

‘That they should stay so late. For the next morning as I rode I saw them on their way back.’

‘Ah! And their names?’

‘It was Ali and his sister. You know, that mad brother of Leila’s. Though who he was taking the girl to, I cannot think. For who, knowing what had happened to the husband of the one sister, would wish to take on the other sister and that mad family?’

‘Thank you, Daniel.’

Owen rose from his squat. They would have to make inquiries but he was pretty sure that no prospective husband’s family would be found. That was not what Ali and his sister had come over for. The old goatherd, as he had sat with his goats among the balsam trees by the well, had heard people talking by the Tree: a man and a woman. The sister had been there as bait. An assignation must have been made previously and Ibrahim, unable, it appeared, to resist any woman, and drawn to the sister anyway, had come to keep it.

But why had they taken so long? Some time must be allowed for them to take the body to the railway line and return; but then what had they been doing for the rest of the night? And why had they taken the body to the line anyway?

It kept coming back to that. And that, in fact, was where he, Owen, came in. For Ibrahim’s murder was not, strictly speaking, the Mamur Zapt’s concern but the Parquet’s. Owen was interested only in so far as it impinged on wider issues, the progress of the new railway, for instance, and its political and commercial implications.

He still could not fathom that bit out. Was there a connection between Ibrahim’s murder and the railway? Or were they quite separate, a matter of coincidence only, and Ibrahim’s death merely another revenge killing, one of the many that swelled Egypt’s crime lists?

One thing was clear, though. He had learned something that Mahmoud ought to know.

‘It’s not enough,’ said Mahmoud, however, as they walked away from the Tree the next morning, after Daniel had repeated his story for Mahmoud’s benefit.

‘Not enough? There won’t be any family—’

‘No, I know. But all that the Copt has told us is that Ali was in the area that night.’

‘And his sister.’

‘They might have gone on to somewhere else.’

‘The goat man heard them. At the Tree.’

‘We could still do with another witness.’

‘We’ve already tried, but—’

Owen stopped.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I know somebody else who must have been near there that night. Or rather, something.’

‘Something?’ said Mahmoud.

‘Hello, Ja’affar,’ said Owen. ‘I’m surprised that you’re not with your friend, the barber.’

‘I’m just on my way,’ said Ja’affar.

‘My friend and I will walk with you if we may. How is the shoulder?’

‘Getting better. Unfortunately.’

‘Old man Zaghlul will soon be getting after you to go back, will he?’

‘He’s already been after me. In fact, he’s after me most days.’

‘Ah, well, there you are. You’re such a good man that he needs you.’

‘I’m beginning to wonder if I need him. It’s those birds. Once they’ve given you something, you never feel quite the same about them again.’

‘Ja’affar had his shoulder put out by one of the ostriches,’ Owen explained to Mahmoud.

‘They’re like an express train,’ said Ja’affar. ‘They weigh a ton, and when they hit you, bang! Down you go and you’re lucky if you don’t get your back broken. You’ve got to be fit to handle those birds. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling Zaghlul.’

‘And what does he say?’

‘He says you don’t have to be fit just to carry food to them. That’s true enough, but what happens if one escapes? You need every man you’ve got, then. And you need to be able to throw yourself around a bit, too. That’s the bit I wouldn’t fancy, not with a shoulder like this.’

‘They’re always getting out, are they?’

‘It’s the same one. When they’ve done it once, they know how to do it again. He’s either going to have to put it in a special pen or shoot it. Pity Malik didn’t shoot it the other day.’

‘That was the one, was it?’

‘It’s always the same one.’

‘And it’s always getting out? You don’t happen to remember, Ja’affar, do you, if it got out the night that Ibrahim was killed?’

‘The night Ibrahim was killed? They came and told me about it at the farm. That was a day to remember! Everything was all over the place that morning. They had a job bringing it back, you see. There were only two of them, Zaghlul himself—how he found out it had gone, I don’t know, I reckon he sleeps with those damned birds—and Sayid, who’s on at nights. Just the two of them. Well, that’s not enough, you need two just to handle the net, and then you need someone to chase it in. And at night, too! I don’t know how they managed it.’

After what Ja’affar had said, they approached the ostrich farm with diffidence. It lay on the other side of the station at Matariya. The gap in the fence, broken on the day that Ja’affar had received his injury, had been repaired. There were ostriches on the other side, but perhaps, still mindful of the disturbance of the day, they were keeping to the far side of the pen.

Owen and Mahmoud had some way to walk before they found the entrance to the farm. It was not a place you would normally approach on foot, although, of course, the men who worked there did. For Owen and Mahmoud, unused to toiling across the desert in the heat, it was hard going.

The farm, out beyond the cultivated area surrounding the village, was desert not field. Desert was, presumably, what the ostriches were used to, although they may have preferred the grass of the south; and, of course, the land was cheap. The chief expense would have been the pens. The smaller ones were fenced off with wood, although wood itself, this near the city, was not cheap. In many places on the perimeter of the farm the wood had been replaced by cut thorn bushes, the traditional resource of the desert men; which explained, perhaps, why a determined ostrich was able to get out so regularly.

Zaghlul, they were informed, was out in the pens, which meant still more walking, some of it through the pens themselves. Owen was relieved to see that the ostriches kept away from them. On his way past some of the smaller pens he had been able to examine the birds closely. Up till now in his life he had never thought about ostriches. If asked, he would have said they were silly birds. They didn’t fly, they just stood around awkwardly; their only use, so far as he could see, was to provide feathers for women’s hats, which, although jolly, was hardly a crucial role in the modern economy; and with their small heads and their long necks and their general flapping about they seemed somehow scatty.

Now, however, viewed at close quarters and in the light of Ja’affar’s words and experience, they appeared rather formidable.

They were, for a start, surprisingly tall, about nine feet. The small head had a sharp beak and the long neck looked as if it could deliver the beak with force and dexterity. The splendid feathers concealed a muscular body, and the feet—what was it that he had heard about the feet? Did ostriches kick? If they did, it looked as if it could prove a real finisher. Those feet, now: huge! And what about the claws? Equally long, and as sharp as the beak? On the whole he thought it best not to look too closely.

Wondering which to guard against, the feet or the beak, and deciding that probably the thing to worry about was being knocked over while he wondered, he reached the enclosure where Zaghlul was bent over a sick or injured ostrich being held on the ground by three men.

He saw them coming but ignored them. They stood politely waiting until he had finished doing whatever he was doing and the bird was released. One of the men helped it up. It stood for a moment as if shocked and then suddenly bolted away. For several minutes it ran frenziedly up and down the pen as if it had quite lost its senses. Zaghlul watched it for some time and then grunted, apparently with satisfaction.

Only then did he turn to Owen.

‘Who’s he?’ he said, nodding at Mahmoud.

‘The Parquet,’ said Mahmoud.

‘Ah, the Parquet.’ Zaghlul had evidently heard of the Parquet. ‘
And
the Mamur Zapt,’ he said after a moment.

‘That’s right. We want to ask you some questions.’

‘The government would do better to listen than to ask questions,’ said Zaghlul.

‘We’re ready to listen, too. And the first thing we want to listen to is why you told me that an ostrich had not escaped on the night Ibrahim was killed when it had.’

‘Do I have to tell the government everything?’

‘If you don’t, it wonders why you can’t.’

‘There’s no “can’t” about it. I choose not to, that’s all. I don’t want to have anything to do with the government and I don’t want the government to have anything to do with me.’

‘That bit,’ said Owen, ‘you can’t choose.’

‘Have you something to fear?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘Fear?’ said Zaghlul, frowning. ‘What have I to fear?’

‘You were there on the night that Ibrahim was killed.’

‘I was somewhere on the night Ibrahim was killed.’

‘You were by the Tree of the Virgin.’

Zaghlul was silent for a moment.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘what if I was? I was following the bird. There’s no crime in that.’

‘A man was killed.’

‘I did not kill him,’ said Zaghlul.

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘Who was with you?’

‘No one was with me.’

‘Sayid was with you. Be careful what you say. I shall speak with Sayid.’

‘Sayid will say as I do. That I did not kill Ibrahim.’

‘Who else did you see that night?’

‘I saw no one.’

‘Will Sayid say the same as you on that? If I go to him now and ask him?’

Zaghlul was silent for some time.

‘I saw Ali,’ he said at last, unwillingly.

‘Of course you did. And his sister, too?’

‘And his sister.’

‘Tell me what you saw.’

‘I will not tell you anything,’ said Zaghlul, ‘unless Ali bids me to.’

‘Was that Zaghlul I saw?’ asked Ali, when they were sitting in the room used for the questioning of prisoners.

‘It was.’

‘What is he doing here?’

‘He is here for the same reason that you are here.’

‘That cannot be so.’

‘If it cannot be so then you must tell us why it cannot be so.’

‘Cannot Zaghlul tell you himself?’

‘He says he will tell us nothing unless you bid him.’

They let him sit there for some time thinking this over. Then Owen said:

‘He was there that night, wasn’t he?’

‘If he says so.’

‘He does say so. He also says that he saw you. You and your sister.’

‘Well, then.’

‘You admit it?’

Ali shrugged.

‘There is another who will say that you were in the area, too.’

‘Well, then.’

The shrug this time had defeat in it. When, after a moment or two, he spoke, though, it was not about himself.

‘Zaghlul here too?’ He shook his head. ‘He won’t like that. He is a man of the open spaces.’

He seemed to have difficulty taking it in.

‘Old man Zaghlul!’

After a while, Mahmoud prompted him.

‘That night: tell us what happened.’

Ali jerked up with a start.

‘That night? Oh, I helped him.’

‘Helped him?’ said Mahmoud and Owen together, taken aback.

‘Yes. There were only two of them, you see. Well, that’s not enough. You need at least three—one to drive, the other two to hold the net. Even that’s not too many. They never run straight, you see. They’re always twisting off to one side or the other. You’ve got to keep right behind them. And it’s not easy in the dark.’

‘You helped him catch the ostrich?’

‘Yes. I knew about ostriches, see. I’d worked with him for a time on that farm of his. Just for a bit. I didn’t stay long. “This sort of thing’s not for me,” I said. “One of these days one of those bloody great things is going to peck my eye out.” He tried to talk me round but I wouldn’t have it. I wouldn’t do it even for Zaghlul. He’s always been good to me, you know. People say he’s a mean old bastard, but he’s always been all right with me. I used to work with him. Before he started up that ostrich farm.’

‘Supplying the pilgrims?’

‘Yes. First it was mounts, then it got wider. It looked pretty good to me, but Zaghlul said no, other people would come in. And when they started building this new town he said: “That’s it!’‘ So he sold up and off he went. He asked me to go with him. I was his right-hand man, you see. But the birds were not for me.’