The Fig Tree Murder (2 page)

‘I handle political things.’

‘But this
is
political!’ said Raoul. ‘There are some agitators who’ve got amongst them and we want you to root them out.’

‘The employers always think there are agitators,’ said Owen. ‘There seldom are.’

‘There are this time!’ declared Raoul. ‘We can identify them.’

‘We-ell—’

‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking. But we can prove it. There have been meetings between them and known Nationalists.’

‘Even if there have,’ said Owen, ‘that doesn’t constitute a crime. Nor, actually, does agitation.’

Raoul looked disappointed.

‘I must say I was hoping you’d take a different line. This development is very important to us. And to the country.’

‘Damned right!’ said the Pasha’s son.

‘We’ve spoken to your boss, the Consul-General—’

‘I work for the Khedive,’ said Owen.

‘We know all about that. As I say, we’ve spoken to the Consul-General—’

Government in Egypt was a thing of shadows. The formal ruler of Egypt was the Khedive and he had a government which answered to him. But since the British Army had stepped in, thirty years ago, to assist him to put down a rebellion, and then stayed, behind every Minister was a British Adviser and behind the Khedive was the British Consul-General himself. Government was a thing of shadows; but which was the substance and which was the shadow?

‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘so I gather.’

‘Well, then—’

‘I’ll look into it.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Belgian, relieved. ‘That’s all we ask.’

‘However, I must repeat: I don’t reckon to involve myself in labour disputes.’

‘We’re not asking you to look into the labour side—’

I’ll bet, thought Owen.

‘It’s the Nationalist connection that worries us.’

‘The Nationalist Party is usually in favour of development.’

‘Ah, yes, but it’s not in favour of foreigners doing the developing.’

‘True.’

‘The fact is, Captain Owen—Gareth, may I call you—-?’

‘Please.’

‘The fact is, we’re not against Nationalism. Far from it. But we’ve been aware for some time that someone is trying to stop this development. And we’ve got a pretty good idea who it is.’

‘I hope you’re going to put something stronger in this lemonade,’ complained the Pasha’s son.

Salah laughed.

‘After we’ve played!’

He clapped his hands and a young girl came out on to the verandah.

‘Some more lemonade, my dear.’

She bowed her head submissively and picked up the jug.

The Pasha’s son watched her depart.

‘Who’s that?’ he said.

‘My daughter.’

Owen was astounded. In all the years he had been in Egypt he had never been allowed to see a host’s womenfolk.

‘ We try to bring her up in the modern way—having lived in Europe, you know.’

‘Damned good idea!’ said the Pasha’s son, eyes lingering.

Owen reckoned she was all of fourteen.

She returned with a fresh jug.

‘Fill me up!’ commanded the Pasha’s son, holding out his glass.

The girl walked straight past him and filled Owen’s glass.

‘Amina—’ began Salah-el-Din.

‘Don’t take it out on her,’ said the Pasha’s son. ‘I like a bit of spirit.’

Owen caught the girl’s eye as she went past. Fourteen she might be, but submissive she was not. In fact, from the look she had given him, he was having doubts about the fourteen.

‘I still don’t like it,’ complained Owen. ‘I don’t reckon it’s my job. It sounds like a straight labour dispute to me.’

‘Probably is,’ Paul agreed. All the same, the Old Man would like you to take an interest.’

‘It’s not political.’

‘Listen,’ said Paul, ‘if someone as rich as the Baron asks the Old Man to do him a favour, then it
is
political.’

‘So you didn’t go there?’ said McPhee, disappointed.

‘Well, no, I’m afraid not,’ said Owen guiltily.

‘A pity. You were so close to it. And it’s a site of considerable religious interest, you know. The Virgin and Child are said to have rested under the tree on their flight into Egypt. In fact, according to some chronicles, Mary hid herself from Herod’s soldiers in its branches. There is a tradition that a spider spun its web over the entrance to her hiding place so as to conceal her.’

‘Really?’

‘Interesting, isn’t it? Echoes of both Robert Bruce and the spider and of King Charles in the oak! Extraordinary!’

‘Fascinating! Well, I must go, I can hear the phone in my office—’

It was from someone on the staff of the Khedive.

‘We understand you’re taking an interest in the progress of the new electric railway?’

‘A certain interest, yes.’

‘Quite a lot of interest, we hope. His Royal Highness is very concerned that the line is not advancing as rapidly as had been anticipated.’

‘I’m sure that the contractors will soon be on top of any problems.’

‘Technical ones, yes; but what about the political ones?’

‘Political ones?’

‘The attempt by certain people to use the Heliopolis project as an occasion to advance their own narrow Nationalist interests.’

‘In what way?’

‘By seeing that the project is never completed. His Highness has asked me to emphasize that he regards the success of the project as a matter of honour, both his own, and the country’s.’

‘I see.’

‘Good. His Highness hoped that you would.’

Owen had hardly put the phone down before it was ringing again. This time it was Muhammed Rabbiki, a veteran member of the National Assembly and an important figure in the Nationalist Party.

‘Ah, Captain Owen, a word with you. We understand that you’re taking an interest in this sad affair at Matariya?’

‘A limited interest, yes.’

‘But why limited? Important issues are at stake.’

‘Are there? All I know is that a man’s body has been found on the line, and that, of course, is a matter chiefly for the Parquet.’

‘Oh, Captain Owen, I’m sure you know more than that! How did the body come to be on the line? Who put it there? And for what reason?’

‘All these are, as I say, questions for the Parquet. My concerns are restricted to the political.’

‘But, Captain Owen, what if the answers to these questions
are
political?’

‘How could they be?’

‘Suppose the body were a plant? Designed to have a certain effect?’

‘What sort of effect?’

‘I am sure I have no need to tell you, Captain Owen. But one thing I can say with confidence, that it certainly is not intended to be in the interests of the workers, neither the workers on the Heliopolis project nor workers in general in Egypt.’

‘Aren’t you making too much of this, Mr Rabbiki?’

The politician chuckled hoarsely.

‘I’m just making sure that you don’t make too little of it, Captain Owen. And in order to make
quite
sure, I shall put down a question in the Assembly from time to time. We shall all be following your progress with great interest, Captain Owen.’

McPhee stuck his head in at the door.

‘About the Tree, Owen—’

‘Look, thanks, I’ve got something else on my mind just at the moment.’

‘But it’s to do with the business at Matariya.’

McPhee came worriedly into the room.

‘Apparently, there’s been a development. There’s a rather difficult religious sheikh in the village, it seems—’

‘Yes. I’ve met him.’

‘Well, he’s bringing the Tree into it.’

‘He’s what?’

‘Bringing the Tree into it. It’s a Christian site, you see, of particular interest to Copts, but not just Copts, Catholics too. The balsam—’

‘What the hell’s the Tree got to do with it?’

‘Well, he says it’s not just an accident that the man was killed at that particular spot. It’s within the zone of influence of the Tree, and—’

‘So, it’s become an issue between Muslims and Christians?’ said Paul.

‘That’s right. As well.’

Paul took another drink. Then he put down his glass.

‘Political enough for you yet?’ he said maliciously.

‘First, I’m going to arrest the bloody Tree,’ said Owen.

When Owen got out of the train, the ordinary steam-train this time, at Matariya Station, he could see ahead of him the broad white track which led to Heliopolis. Away on the skyline were half-finished houses and men busy on a large construction of some sort: the new hotel, he supposed.

Nearer at hand, over to his right, a pair of humped oxen, blindfolded, were working a
sagiya
, or water-wheel. Its groan followed him as he walked.

Far to his left, above the mud parapet which hemmed in the waters of the Nile, he could see the tall sails of
gyassas
, like the wings of huge brown birds, gliding along the river. Closer to was the great white gash of the advancing end of the new railway. It was somewhere over there that he must have been two days before.

The track led through a vast field of young green wheat, away in the middle of which an ancient obelisk thrust upwards at the sky.

McPhee, he told himself, would have loved it: both the biblical landscape and the reminder of something even older, the original Heliopolis, City of the Sun, where Plato and Pythagoras had walked and talked, buried now, perhaps even beneath this very field of wheat.

McPhee was not the ordinary sort of policeman. His interests were in the Old Egypt rather than in the New; in the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies and Moses rather than in the Egypt of the Khedive and the occupying British and the foreign developers.

Owen’s mind, however, was gripped more by the New Egypt than by the Old. For he was the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo’s Secret Police, responsible for political order in the city, and the chief threat to that order came from the new forces that were emerging in the country, to do with nationalism, ethnic and religious tension, and the growing impatience with the traditional rule of the Pashas.

If it were not for the fact that the Old Egypt had a habit of rising up every so often and giving the New an almighty kick in the teeth!

The Tree was in a bad way. It lay prone on the ground and although it was green at the top it was very brown underneath. Its bark was gnarled and twisted and much gashed where the irreverent, or, possibly, the reverent, had carved their names.

‘That’s why I had to put a railing round it,’ explained the man who claimed to be its owner, a Copt named Daniel.

There was a wooden palisade all round the Tree. It, too, was covered with names.

‘It costs ten piastres to put your name on,’ said the Copt.

‘Ten piastres!’ said Owen, aghast.

‘That includes the hire of a knife,’ said the Copt defensively, brandishing a large blunt-edged instrument.

‘But ten piastres!’

‘Think, Effendi!’ said the Copt persuasively. ‘Your name bound to a holy relic for perpetuity! That will surely count for something on the Day of Judgement!’

‘You don’t think overcharging may also count for something on the Day of Judgement?’

‘The Tree has many virtues, Effendi,’ said the Copt, smiling.

‘Evidently. But does it not, from what I hear, have vices, too?’

‘That is a calumny put about by the Muslims.’

‘But is there not some truth in it? For I have heard a man lies dead because of the Tree.’

‘That is a story got up by Sheikh Isa. For his own ends.’

‘Ah?’

‘He wishes to drive me out. So that he can take over custodianship of the Tree himself.’

‘But why would he want to do that? If the Tree lacks virtue? And isn’t the Tree a Christian relic rather than a Muslim one?’

‘It is a Muslim one too. As for the virtue, that would return if the Tree were in proper hands. Muslim ones. They say.’

And what do you say?’

‘That Sheikh Isa is a greedy old bugger who just wants to get his hands on the cash!’ said the Copt wrathfully.

‘The Tree is cursed,’ said Sheikh Isa. Anyone can see that. Otherwise, why would it be lying on its side?’

‘Old age?’

Sheikh Isa brushed this aside.

‘The question is:
why
has it been cursed? And the answer is obvious. The Tree fell down a year ago.
At exactly the time,’‘
said Isa with emphasis, ‘that they began to build this new city.’

‘So?’

‘Well, it’s plain, isn’t it? God doesn’t want them to build the city. It’s an abomination to him. So he cursed the Tree to show us his anger.’

‘Why does he abominate the city?’

‘I don’t presume to know God’s mind, but I can make a guess. It’s to be a City of Pleasure. That’s what they say, don’t they? Now God is not against pleasure, but I think his idea of pleasure may well be different from that of the Pashas. Do you think he wants to see such a holy place turned into a Sodom and Gomorrah?’

‘Holy place?’

‘Not here,’ said Sheikh Isa impatiently. ‘The Birket-el-Hadj.’

‘Ah, of course!’

The Birket-el-Hadj was the traditional rendezvous for the Mecca caravan. It was about three miles north of Matariya.

‘Do you think God wants a place like that just where they should be beginning to put their thoughts in order for the Holy Journey?’

‘Perhaps not. But, of course, fewer and fewer people are travelling that way now. They prefer to go by train—’

‘Train?’ roared Sheikh Isa, almost foaming at the mouth. ‘Go to Mecca by train?’

‘Just to the coast—’

‘Train?’ shouted Sheikh Isa. ‘They heap abomination upon abomination! Shall we stand idly by when God’s will is set at naught? Has he not sent us a sign that all can read? Does not the Fall of the Tree spell the Fall of the City—?’

‘Why don’t you just lock him up?’ said the Belgian uneasily.

‘On what grounds?’

‘Causing trouble.’

‘That’s not an offence.’

‘It bloody is in my eyes. Anyway, doesn’t the Mamur Zapt have special powers?’

‘He does. But it’s wisest if he uses them sparingly.’

‘I reckon it would be pretty wise to nip this thing in the bud. Before it gets out of hand.’

‘You don’t lock up religious leaders just like that.’

‘Religious leader? He’s a potty old village sheikh. Look, Owen, I just don’t understand you. This is a very important job and we’re behind schedule as it is, we’ve got to push things along. This business of the man on the line cost us a day and a half. And now you come along and tell us there’s a problem about a Tree!’

‘I’m just telling you to be careful, that’s all.’

‘Well, all right, we’ll be careful. Hey, I’ve got an idea! If that old man is bothered about the Tree falling down, why don’t we just lift it up again? Prop it up with stays? I could send a truck round, we could use a hoist—’

Matariya, although so near to Cairo, was in many respects a traditional oasis village, half hidden under a mass of palms, banana trees and tamarisks and clustered around an old mosque with crumbling, loop-holed walls and a crazy, tottering minaret. Probably because of the proximity to the gathering place for the Mecca caravan, many of the houses were pilgrims’ houses, their walls brightly decorated with pictures of the journey to Mecca.

Against one of the houses a many-coloured tabernacle had been erected beneath which old men were sitting on a faded carpet. In the middle of the carpet was a
dikka
, or platform, on which sat Sheikh Isa, intoning the Koran. At the edge of the carpet was a pile of shoes. A blind man was putting his foot into them to try and find his own by the feel.

The dead man’s house was just beyond the tabernacle, recognizable at once from the mourning banners. The mourning was still going on. Owen could hear the women’s voices in the back room, less frantic now, resigned.

A man in a dark suit and a tarboosh, the red, tasselled, potlike hat of the Egyptian effendi, was just about to go into the house. He saw Owen, smiled and waited.

It was the Parquet man who had come out to the rail-head two days before when Owen had been trying to prevent a confrontation over the body. They shook hands.

‘Asif Nimeri.’

‘You’re formally on the case now?’

The other day he had been sent merely because he was one of the duty officers. He was young and fresh and new, which was probably why they had sent him. Anything out of town on a hot day was for the juniors.

‘Yes.’

He looked at Owen curiously.

‘Are you taking an interest?’

‘Not really. Just making sure of some of the incidentals.’

‘Sheikh Isa?’

‘That sort of thing.’

The Parquet man laughed.

‘I think he’s harmless.’

‘So do I, really.’

‘You’re not directly interested in the case, then?’

‘No.’

Asif seemed relieved. Conducting his first case was problem enough without the additional difficulty of the Mamur Zapt.

‘I thought that since I was here I would look in. May I join you?’

‘Of course!’

They stepped into the house. It had only two rooms, the rear one, where the wailing was coming from, and the one they were in. It was small and bare. The only furniture was a mattress rolled up and stacked against the wall and some skins, not cushions, on the floor.

Two men came into the room, an old man, probably the father, and one much younger, the brother, or perhaps brother-in-law, of the dead man.

‘I come at a time of trouble,’ said Asif ceremoniously, ‘but not to add to it.’

‘Your grief is my grief,’ said Owen formally.

The men bowed acknowledgement. The older one, with a gesture of his hand, invited them to sit down. They sat on the skins.

A woman brought them water and a small dish of dates.

Asif complimented their host on the water and Owen praised the dates.

‘The water is good,’ admitted the old man.

‘The dates eat well,’ conceded his companion, ‘though not as well as the dates of Marg.’

‘God is bountiful!’ said Asif.

The men agreed.

Owen, used to the slow pace of Eastern investigation, settled back.

‘Although sometimes,’ said Asif, ‘the yoke he asks us to bear is heavy.’

‘True,’ asserted the old man.

‘Does our friend have a family?’

‘A wife,’ said the old man, ‘and two daughters.’

‘No sons?’ Asif shook his head commiseratingly.

‘The girls are still young.’

Which meant that the family would have to support them for some time yet. It would, but every extra mouth was a burden on the family.

They sat for a little while in silence.

‘Are you tax collectors?’ said the old man suddenly.

‘No!’ said Asif, startled.

‘Oh. We thought you might be.’

‘You come from the city,’ explained the younger man.

‘I am from the Parquet.’

The men clearly did not understand.

‘I am a man of law,’ Asif explained.

‘You are a kadi?’

‘Well, no, not exactly,’ said Asif scrupulously. It was not for a fledgling lawyer to claim to be a judge. Besides, the two systems were quite separate. Kadis were concerned with religious law, the Parquet, after the French model, with the secular and more modern criminal law.

‘Who is he?’ asked the older man, pointing at Owen.

‘I am the Mamur Zapt.’

‘Ah, the Mamur Zapt?’

They had obviously heard of
him
. Or, rather, they had heard of the post. The position of Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police and his right-hand man, went back centuries. Only things were a bit different now. The Mamur Zapt was no longer the right-hand man of the Khedive; he was the right-hand man of the British, the ones who really ruled Egypt.

‘What brings you here?’

‘My friend has some questions to ask,’ said Owen diplomatically.

‘They are not my questions but the law’s questions,’ said Asif. ‘When a man dies in the way that our friend did, they cannot be left unasked.’

‘True,’ said the old man. Ask on.’

‘The first question,’ said Asif, ‘is why, after the evening meal, when all was dark, did he rise from his place and go out into the night?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Was it to meet someone?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Did he not say?’

The two men looked at each other.

‘All he said was that he had to go out.’

‘Did he often do thus in the evening?’

‘Not often.’

‘Were you not surprised?’

‘We thought he was going to sit with Ja’affar.’

‘Did he often sit with Ja’affar?’

The old man hesitated.

‘Sometimes.’

‘But when he did not return, did you not wonder what had befallen him?’

‘Why should we wonder?’

‘What, a man goes out into the night and does not return, and you do not wonder?’

‘What a man does at night is his own business.’

Owen caught Asif’s eye and knew what he was thinking: a woman.

‘And when the morning came and he still had not returned, you still did not wonder?’

‘We thought he had gone straight to work.’

‘After spending the night with Ja’affar?’

‘Yes.’

‘A strange village, this!’ said Asif caustically. ‘Where the men spend the night with the men!’

The younger man flashed up.

‘Why do you ask these questions?’ he said belligerently.

‘Because I want to know why Ibrahim was killed.’

‘That is our business,’ said the brother. ‘Not yours!’

‘It is the law’s business.’

‘Whose law? The city’s?’

‘There is but one law,’ said Asif sternly, ‘for the city and for the village.’

‘It is the city that speaks,’ retorted the villager.

‘These are backward people!’ fumed Asif, much vexed with himself, as they walked away.

‘The ways of the village are not the ways of the town,’ said Owen.

‘I know, I know! I am from Assiut myself. That is not a village, I know, but compared with Cairo—’

‘You did all right,’ said Owen reassuringly.

‘I should have—’

‘Well, Ja’affar, you work late!’ said Asif.

‘I do!’ said Ja’affar, his face still streaked with sweat.

‘It is not every man who works so long in the fields!’

‘Ah, I’ve not been in the fields. I work at the ostrich farm.’

‘Ostrich farm?’ said Owen.

‘Yes, it’s over by the station. You would have seen it if you’d gone out the other side.’

‘And what do you do at the ostrich farm that keeps you so late?’ asked Asif.

‘I feed the birds. You’d think they could feed themselves, wouldn’t you, only if you don’t give them something late in the afternoon they make such a hell of a noise that the Khedive doesn’t like it.’

‘The Khedive can hear them all the way from Kubba?’

‘So he says.’

Ja’affar removed his skull cap and splashed water over his face. A woman came and took the bowl away.

‘So what is it?’ he said. ‘Ibrahim?’

‘That’s right.’

‘He was a mate of mine. We used to work at the farm together.’

‘The ostrich farm?’

‘Yes. Only then the chance of a job on the railway came along and he took one look at the money and said: “That’s for me!” I warned him. I said: “They don’t give you that for nothing, you know. They’ll make you sweat for it.” And, by God, they did. He used to come back home in the afternoon dead beat. Too tired even to lift a finger!’

‘Too tired to go out?’ said Asif. ‘In the evenings?’

Ja’affar was amused.

‘There’s not a lot to go out to in Matariya,’ he said drily.

‘We heard he liked to go out and chat with his friends.’

‘Ah, well—’

‘You, for instance.’

‘He used to occasionally. He’s not done it so much lately. Not since I got married and he—’

He stopped.

‘Found someone more interesting?’

‘Well—’

‘Just tell me her name,’ said Asif.

A man came to the door.

‘Yes, he used to come here,’ he said defiantly. ‘Everyone knows that. And, no, he didn’t come here just to taste the figs from the fig tree. There’s no secret about that, either. What do you expect? A man’s a man, and if his wife—’

‘Did he come here on the night he was killed?’

‘How do I know?’

‘You live here, don’t you?’

‘No, I live on the other side of the mosque.’