The Fig Tree Murder (13 page)

‘But you did lend a hand that night?’

‘I could see he needed one. There was just him, you see, him and Sayid. I knew that wouldn’t be enough, not in the dark. So I pitched in. It wasn’t that easy even then. It took us the best part of the night. But in the end we did it. And it was only then, after we’d got the bird trussed up, that Zaghlul says to me: “Well, Ali, what are you doing here this time of night?”

‘ “I’ve had business to attend to,” I says.

And he says: “I reckon I saw some of that business back by the Tree. There’s a dead man lying there.”

‘ “I’m not saying anything,” I says.

‘ “No,” he says, “and you’d better not. But who was that girl, then?”

‘ “That was my sister,” I says.

‘ “Oh,” he says. Of course he knew the whole story. “Well,” he says, “he had it coming to him.”

‘He was right, too. I couldn’t do anything else, Leila being my sister. I was sorry in a way. He’d been a friend of mine. But I was that mad—! I’d brought them together, you see. I said to Ibrahim one day: “I’ve got a sister, you know.” And he said: “Let’s have a look at her, then.” And it seemed all right. They’re a good, hard-working family. But that stupid bastard—I ought to have known, all right. I ought to have known. But he was so open about it. Everyone knew about it. Well, I couldn’t let that go on, could I? And then there was this other thing—it all came together, so he had to go, I couldn’t do anything else, could I?’

‘Why did you put the body on the line?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘That was Zaghlul’s idea. “What are you going to do about that there body?” he says.

‘ “Leave it where it is,” I says.

‘ “I’ve got a better idea than that,” he says.

‘ “Oh?” I says. “What’s that, then?”

‘ “Put it on that new railway line,” he says. “That’ll give them something to think about!”

‘Well, the more I thought about it, the better I liked it. I reckoned Ibrahim wouldn’t mind it at all. He’s always been one to speak up against the Belgians and if he could cause them trouble just by lying there, I thought he’d be glad to. And then I knew how other people would see it. A death well spent, they would say. So I says, “Right, then.”

‘Well, old man Zaghlul helps me carry him—he weighed a bit, I can tell you, we had to drag him in parts—and we put him down there on the new railway line—all decent, mind you, quite respectful. And then I had to get away because it was already beginning to get light.’

Zaghlul confirmed the story, once he had received Ali’s permission. So, too, did Sayid.

So also did Ali’s sister, speaking to them in her brother’s presence. The question arose of what to do with her. She was plainly an accomplice but equally plainly had been entirely under the influence of her brother, to whom it had obviously never occurred that if he were to suffer for the crime, she would suffer too.

‘Effendi, this is not right!’ he said to Owen, perturbed. ‘She is a good girl.’

‘Allowances will be made,’ Owen assured him. ‘I have spoken to my friend from the Parquet and he says that she will be treated lightly, the time she has served in prison being counted for her.’

‘The time she has served in prison?’ said Ali, aghast.

‘Just until the trial.’

‘How long will that be?’

‘A month or two.’

Ali was still perturbed.

‘Who will do the house?’ he said.

‘Have your brothers no wives?’

‘No,’ said Ali. ‘For some reason families are not eager to marry us.’

‘Well, that’s your problem. Or your brothers’.’

They had been let out the day before.

‘I will do what I can for her,’ promised Owen.

And that, he thought with satisfaction, was that. The matter had been resolved, and without any of the wider problems, which had at one time seemed so threatening, coming to a head. In the end it had boiled down to another revenge killing, regrettable, but not, as he pointed out to Mr Rabbiki, exactly unusual in Egypt.

‘The cause,’ said Mr Rabbiki resourcefully, ‘is the state of backwardness in which the people are kept. Now, with more education and more social spending—’

The Nationalists, however, dropped the issue like a hot brick. They had, in any case, got most of what they wanted. The government had been severely embarrassed. It had been shown, yet again, to be in the pocket of the foreigners. It would have been nice if the railway could have been delayed sufficiently to muck up the Khedive’s plans for a Grand Official Opening, but you couldn’t have everything. The Nationalists, anyway, were not against development. They were just against anyone else doing the developing.

The last part of the track was now being laid. A few things remained to be done but they would certainly be completed before the Opening. The Khedive purred like a contented cat.

The Belgians were already making arrangements to pull out. The Baron would retain a controlling interest in the New Heliopolis Scheme but from now on his influence would be able to be exerted from behind the scenes, which was likely to be less provocative and by no means less lucrative.

The Syndicate had had, in the end, nothing to do with the murder, Owen pointed out to Mahmoud as they sat sipping coffee one evening in a café in the Ataba. Nor, of course, as Mahmoud pointed out to Owen, had it had anything to do with the Nationalists. The Nationalists had, indeed, as Mr Rabbiki admitted privately, infiltrated Wahid among the railway workers so as to create trouble; but that trouble definitely did not extend to murdering Ibrahim. Wahid had been genuinely shocked and angered when the body had been found on the line. He had been convinced that it was the Syndicate’s doing. That was why he had been so determined to make an issue of it.

By the time they had finished their second cup, Mahmoud had succeeded in convincing Owen that the Nationalist move had been fair, given the heavy-handedness of the Belgian employers; and by the time they had finished their third cup they had both agreed that the new electric railway and other such developments might actually be a good thing if the March of Progress eventually led to a diminution in the number of revenge killings in the more backward parts of Egypt.

Everything, thus, was tidied up. Except—

Except that one morning Ibrahim’s widow, Leila, came to Owen. She sat down on the floor of his office, declining a chair; declining, too, the coffee he offered. He imagined that she had come to talk about the gratuity that he had persuaded the Syndicate to award her. He had asked for a pension but the Syndicate said that it did not pay pensions to widows, did not pay pensions anyway to casual workers, did not, in fact, if it could help it, pay pensions to anybody. A one-off cash payment in the circumstances and not to mar the Khedive’s Official Opening, they were prepared to consider.

Leila had indeed come to talk about that. She was, first of all, astonished to receive anything. Having received it, though, she wanted to talk to Owen about the mechanics of the payment. Could it be done, she wondered, in such a way that the benefit would go to her children and not to the men of the family that she had married into?

Owen said that this was not easy, that if payment were made direct to the children then the family would simply annex it. Much the same would happen, he admitted, if the payment were made to her. The family would reason, he said, that since it was supporting her and her children, the payment should go to the common good.

That would be only fair, she said hesitantly. But suppose they were no longer supporting her?

What had she in mind, asked Owen.

What she had in mind, she said, was returning to the house of her brothers. They would be without a woman in the house now that her sister had gone with Ali into the
caracol
.

Ah, said Owen, but her sister would soon return. And would not her brothers do exactly the same as the men of her husband’s family and take the money from her?

They would, she said; and therefore what she wanted was for Owen to keep the money for her and pay her a little each month which would go towards the general housekeeping. The rest would then be there should she and her children need it.

Owen said he thought he could do this and they spent some time discussing how the monthly payment might be made. She said the best thing might be for her to come to his office each month to collect it. Owen asked her how she proposed to travel to the city each time. It was, he knew, a big step for her. Indeed, it transpired that today was the first time she had actually been to the city. She had come on a cart. The lift had been arranged for her by the barber and some of Ibrahim’s friends in Matariya. She thought that perhaps she could do the same again.

Owen said that she didn’t have to come all the way to his office to collect the money. The payment could be made through the local mamur’s office in Heliopolis.

Leila was silent for a moment or two. Then she said that she would prefer to come to the city as the local mamur was too much under the influence of the Pasha’s son:

‘And Malik has had too much to do with this business already.’

‘In what way?’

Leila was silent now for quite some time. Eventually she said:

‘He spoke to Ali.’

‘Spoke to Ali?’

‘My sister told me. He came over to the house one day and said he wanted to speak to Ali. They spoke for a long time. And afterwards Ali came back to the house and said: “Well, that is settled then.”

‘And my sister asked what was it that was settled?

‘And Ali said it was no business of hers. And then he laughed and said that for once the Pasha’s interests and his were the same. And then he thought, then looked at her, and said that perhaps it was her business after all.

‘She asked him what he meant and he said that she would find out soon enough. And then he would say no more.’

Owen thought for a moment.

‘This was when? After Ibrahim and the Pasha’s son had had hot words?’

‘Yes. That kind of thing should not be,’ said Leila bitterly. ‘A Pasha and one of his villagers quarrelling over a slut! I said that to Ibrahim and he spoke to me roughly. So then I said it to my brothers. “A Pasha should not do such things,” I said. “A Pasha can do what he likes,” said Ali, “for he does it with his own. It is your husband that is at fault.” Then I was silent, for I knew I would only make things worse between Ibrahim and my brother. Besides, I knew that Ali would take the Pasha’s side.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘He was one of the Pasha’s men.’

‘One of his villagers?’

‘Not just that. He had done things for Malik. In the city. Along with others. And now they were all going to Heliopolis to work for him again!’

‘Has Ali ever spoken to you the name Roukoz?’

‘Yes.’ Leila hesitated. ‘But that was more in the past. He speaks a different name now.’

‘What is that name?’

Leila looked him in the face.

‘That of the local mamur,’ she said.

Owen had decided that the time had come to go riding. The following morning he rose early, as usual, borrowed a horse from the barracks at Abbasiya, and rode on out of the city in the direction of Heliopolis. This early in the morning riding was possible. Later, the heat would come up like a furnace and both man and horse would flinch. Out in the desert, which in those days began just out of town, the temperature would rise sharply. Only people used to it, like Zaghlul, would care to ride in the middle of the day.

But very early in the morning, when the sun was only just coming up, and the desert still had the freshness of the night, riding was not only possible but delightful. Owen, who had not ridden for some time, now wondered why he hadn’t.

He put the horse into a gallop. It sniffed the air and responded strongly. The sun was still low in the sky, still retaining some of the redness, and their shadow stretched out forever across the sand.

There was no one else about. Over to his right he could see fields, but no villagers had yet come out to work in them. There, too, sharp against the sky, was the obelisk and somewhere over there would be the Tree.

He pressed on towards Heliopolis; and then suddenly he saw, away in the desert to the left of him, over towards the river, a solitary figure on a horse. It changed direction and came towards him.

While it was still some way away he saw that it wore jodhpurs, a sun helmet and, incongruously, a veil.

‘Hello!’ said Amina.

They began to ride along together.

‘I wondered when you would come.’

‘I would have come before but I’ve been rather preoccupied—’

‘At five thirty in the morning?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘With your fine lady?’

‘With work. My day starts early.’

‘And it is work that brings you here this morning?’

He smiled.

‘Perhaps,’ he said.

‘Well, that is disappointing. Perhaps I shall go for a ride on my own.’

She galloped off. He followed her.

After a while she stopped.

‘That
is
a relief!’ she said. ‘I was afraid for a moment you were not going to follow. At least you’ve been faithful so far. Or perhaps it is merely preoccupation with work?’

‘That, too. I wanted to ask you something.’

‘What do I get if I tell you?’

‘What do you want?’

‘You.’

‘I’m afraid—’ he began.

She nodded, accepting.

‘You for a bit, then.’

‘Well—’

It was not until later, fortunately, that he remembered how old she was, or, rather, wasn’t. Then he reproved himself and rolled away.

Amina, too, however, had her preoccupations.

‘I wish I was taller,’ she said gloomily.

‘What?’ said Owen, startled.

‘Like her.’

‘Like—?’

‘Your girlfriend. I saw her in the shop. She’s Nuri Pasha’s daughter, isn’t she?’

‘Yes. But tallness doesn’t come into it.’

‘I’m getting taller,’ said Amina. ‘It’s just that it’s taking a bit of time.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that.’

‘No,’ said Amina, ‘it’s other things, isn’t it?’

‘The problem is,’ said Owen, ‘I’m faithful to her, too.’

‘I know,’ said Amina. ‘Faithful everywhere. How difficult it must be!’

‘You haven’t hit it yet. It’s like getting tall.’

‘The fact is,’ said Amina, ‘I’m practising being unfaithful first.’

‘Why are you practising being unfaithful?’

‘Because if I ever marry Malik,’ said Amina grimly, ‘I’m going to be unfaithful all the time!’

‘It might not come to that. Pashas’ sons don’t usually marry mamurs’ daughters. Besides, whatever Malik might say, I don’t think he intends—’

‘It’s not him,’ said Amina. ‘It’s my father.’

‘I know he wants to marry you well, but—’

‘No, no. He knows something about Malik. Malik has to go along with him.’

‘I wonder if it’s the same thing as I know about Malik?’

Amina sighed.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I knew we would have to get round to it. What was it that you wanted to know?’

‘The Racing Club at Heliopolis: what do you know about it?’

‘It’s controlled by a group of big men. The racing is only part of it. They’re hoping to make the city a gambling centre in general. Casinos everywhere. The aim is to cater for the really rich. There are Pashas’ palaces all round Heliopolis but it’s not only them. They’re looking further afield, abroad, even. They want people to come to Heliopolis just for the gambling. The racing is merely a sideshow, really, but it just happens to be the first part that’s up and working.’

‘What’s the connection between them and the Syndicate?’

‘There isn’t one. The Belgians just build the facilities and let them out. Of course, they’ve a pretty good idea what they’re going to be used for but they don’t inquire too closely. There’s too much money in it for them. Besides, the group has got influence. There are Pashas behind it. Royalty, even—’

‘Is Malik a member of the group?’

‘Not really. He’s not clever enough or rich enough. But he thinks he is, and they let him go on thinking that. They use him to give evidence when they’re applying for a licence to gamble, that sort of thing.’

‘And other sorts of things?’

‘Probably. He works with a man named Zenakis.’

‘And your father?’

‘They make use of him, too,’ said Amina bitterly. ‘He knows he’s being used, of course, but he goes along with it because he thinks that’s the way to get on. He wants to get on,’ she said.

‘I’ve noticed that. To the extent of marrying you off to Malik.’

‘That’s the bit,’ said Amina, ‘that I can’t forgive.’

‘I think,’ said Owen, ‘that I might be able to do something about that.’

‘But, Ali,’ said Owen, ‘I am surprised: that a man like you, who used to go to hear the great Mustapha Kamil speak, should take the side of the Pashas.’

‘He’s my boss,’ said Ali doggedly. ‘There’s got to be loyalty somewhere.’

‘But to one such as Malik?’

‘There’s money in it, too.’

‘You’d have done better to have stayed with old man Zaghlul and raised ostriches. I’ll bet he wouldn’t have taken the side of the Pashas.’

‘He wouldn’t that,’ said Ali, chuckling.

‘So why do you? Against your own people?’

‘It’s not my own people. We’re just ripping off the rich.’

‘Ah, but that’s at Heliopolis. What about at Matariya?’

‘We haven’t done anything at Matariya.’

‘No? What about killing Ibrahim?’

‘That was a private matter.’

‘What, then, had Malik to do with it?’

‘His was a private matter, too.’

‘If it was, why did he have to come to you? Could he not have settled it for himself?’

‘It is not seemly for a Pasha’s son to go around—’

Ali stopped.

‘Killing people?’ Owen finished for him. ‘Is it more seemly, then, to do his dirty work for him? One villager to kill another? At the Pasha’s behest?’

‘I was going to kill him anyway.’

‘Could he not wait? Was it that he had to make sure?’

‘I don’t know anything about all this,’ said Ali. ‘All I know is that he came to me and asked me when I was killing Ibrahim to put in a blow for him.’

‘Would you have done it if he had not spoken?’

‘Sure.’

‘Even though Ibrahim was your friend?’

‘He shamed us!’

‘I’ll bet,’ said Owen, choosing his words carefully, ‘that when Mustapha Kamil looked down and saw you standing in front of him, he would never have thought: there is a man who would kill his friend just because a Pasha says so!’

Ali jumped to his feet in fury.

Nationalism had its uses, thought Owen.

‘You’re not going to take a fellah’s word against mine!’ said Malik, shocked.

‘Why not? Especially when there is corroborative evidence?’

‘But he is just a rogue, a villain, a petty criminal!’ Malik spluttered.

‘That is so. And we shall show that you had criminal dealings with him.’

‘Criminal dealings?’

‘At the racetrack.’

‘But that—But that—’

‘Was just business?’

Malik went silent. After a moment he said:

‘Ali would have killed him anyway.’

‘True; and for that he will pay the price.’

‘Quite rightly,’ said Malik, recovering. ‘A dangerous fellow.’

‘But you had a hand in it. And for that you, too, must pay a price.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Malik confidently. ‘For the death of a mere villager?’

‘Perhaps not directly. Let us say, for your other dealings.’

‘What price had you in mind?’ asked Malik, amused.

‘I think you should catch the next boat and stay out of Egypt for five years.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no chance of that. I have commitments here, you see.’

‘I think the Racing Club might be prepared to release you.’

‘I doubt that, actually. I’m much too valuable to them.’

‘You could be in for a surprise.’

‘And behind them there are even more powerful people.’

‘The Khedive?’

Malik did not quite dare say that.

‘Well, behind me,’ said Owen, ‘there is the Consul-General. So we’ll just have to see.’

Who governed Egypt: the British Consul-General or the Khedive?

In fact, it was doubtful whether anyone governed Egypt; but in so far as the gambling laws were concerned, there was behind them a force greater than both the Consul-General and the Khedive: religious nonconformist opinion in England, which had recently returned a Liberal government for the first time in many years.

The Consul-General had already decided to tighten the gaming laws and refuse all new applications for licences, so when Owen went along and suggested that all was not as it might be in the New City of Pleasure it was very soon resolved that in future Heliopolis should seek its pleasure in other ways. The Consul-General’s stance received strong support from the religious authorities in Egypt, both national and local, who pointed out the jarring proximity to the pilgrims’ gathering place for the Mecca caravan; and also from the Nationalists, who felt that if the Khedive was for anything then there must be compelling reasons against it. Faced with such a coalition, the Pashas had little option other than to withdraw.

Withdrawal, of course, meant sacrifice, and one of the first sacrifices was Malik, who caught not the next boat but one very soon after it.

Another of the sacrifices was Salah-el-Din, who lost his post as mamur the day that Garvin heard about his links with the racetrack gang. Being an enterprising chap, he soon popped up again, but this time in Alexandria and in the private sector, where his foreign expertise and government contacts proved attractive to companies wishing to break into the Egyptian market. His contacts were not, perhaps, quite as good as they thought.

Owen was, on the whole, relieved, in view of what he had said to Amina, that Salah-el-Din did not decide to pursue his fortune abroad where he might have run into Malik and tried yet again to marry her off to him.

Amina did in the end make a good marriage; in fact, several of them.

When, during one of these, she was based for a time in Cairo, Owen caught sight of her occasionally. For the sake of peace and quiet he tried to keep this secret from Zeinab, usually without success, as her intelligence system was infinitely superior to his. She had, actually, nothing to fear, as he frequently pointed out to her. Zeinab, however, remained unconvinced. It was true that she still retained a decided advantage in height. Amina, though, was catching up rapidly in terms of maturity and experience; and then there was the troubling discrepancy in age. Zeinab watched Owen like a hawk.

Leila made the journey in each month from Tel-el-Hasan to draw her money from Owen’s office. She was needed less at her brother’s house now that her sister had been released, and one day she shyly mentioned the growing warmth of her relationship with one of Ibrahim’s friends.

Owen took the hint and the next time he dropped in on the barber’s circle at Matariya took the opportunity to praise her virtues; not least among which was her possession of a nest-egg securely lodged with the Mamur Zapt.

The barber’s friends rejoiced at his good fortune.

‘The love of a good woman is beyond the price of rubies,’ he said. ‘However, if she has some rubies as well, it is even better.’

It would go some way towards compensating for the collapse of his other prospects. The Racing Club, it seemed, was no longer interested in purchasing land for gallops. Despite this, he remained committed to Progress.

‘One day,’ he prophesied, ‘there will be houses from here to Cairo! And the pilgrims will go to Mecca not by camel, no, nor even by train; but by flying carpets which will take them up and carry them to Mecca in the blink of an eye!’

The whole circle—and Owen—united in declaring this to be a load of utter bollocks. However, a future historian might interpose that some eighty or ninety years later this was, in a way, precisely what did happen.