The Last Cut (7 page)

‘So it’s a good thing?’

‘Well, it’s perhaps a good thing to put a girl there. But I don’t hold with it being a Muslim girl. Why can’t it be a Jewish girl? Or a Copt?’

‘The Jews picked her, didn’t they? And they wouldn’t have picked one of their own.’

‘Well, I don’t like it. They seem to be having everything their way. First, they get to do the cutting. Then they get paid extra for it! And then they pick a girl who’s not even theirs!’

‘It’s a sort of sacrifice, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, well, if it’s a sacrifice, that means you ought to be giving something up, doesn’t it? I mean, if we did it, we’d be giving up one of our girls, wouldn’t we? And we wouldn’t be too happy about that, because we’re advanced, like. But those Jews, they’re really crafty. They offer up the girl and say, “here’s the sacrifice, let’s have something back on account,” and all the time they’re not offering up one of their own but one of ours!’

‘Yes, but God will see through that, won’t he?’

‘I reckon he already has. The body was found, wasn’t it? Well, I reckon that’s his way of saying: “No thanks, you crafty buggers, that won’t do for me!”’

‘Well, I do think he ought not to let them get away with it.’

‘Yes, but he needs a bit of help, doesn’t he?’

‘What do you mean, Abdul?’

‘Well, they’re going to turn up to do the Cut, aren’t they? In spite of everything they’ve done. And I think somebody ought to teach them a lesson!’

Owen heard the clinking as he turned down a street away from the graveyard and, sure enough, there, coming down the road towards him was a water-carrier. The clinking came from two brass saucers which he was striking together like cymbals to give notice of his presence. Not all the water-carriers had saucers which were brass. Some had mere earthenware ones. Those a step or two up had cups.

Seeing Owen looking at him, the man stopped in the shade. Owen accepted a saucerful, drinking directly from the saucer. Like so many before him. He had learned to stifle qualms.

‘The water is fresh,’ he said, with the obligatory compliment.

‘And heavy,’ said the water-carrier.

It was a different man from either the one he had met outside the café or from Ali Khedri. Evidently there were a lot of water-carriers down here, although that was to be expected in so poor a quarter.

‘There are some who wait for you with eagerness,’ said Owen, pointing to the graveyard.

‘The diggers? Well, digging is thirsty work.’

‘And carrying. The river is far. Are you not eager for the Cut? The Canal is closer.’

‘I like the river,’ said the man. ‘It is not so far, not when you are used to it. And I like to walk into it with the bags, which you can’t do with the Canal.’

‘You are a true water-carrier,’ said Owen, complimenting him.

‘But one of the last. My son will not follow in my footsteps.’

‘Because of the pipes?’

The man shrugged.

‘Because of everything. This is the last Cut. Next year there will be no canal. The world changes.’

‘But the river stays the same.’

‘They try to change that. Even in my lifetime I have seen new barrages at Aswan and Assiut and Asna.’

Irue.

Owen handed the saucer back.

‘Do you know the house of Fatima?’ he asked.

Ahmed Uthman’s wife?’

‘I know only that she is the wife of a water-carrier.’

‘That would be her.’

The man gave him directions.

‘I know one other thing about her,’ said Owen. ‘She took in the daughter of Ali Khedri when he threw her out.’

The man looked pained.

‘That was a bad business,’ he said.

‘It was well that someone took her in.’

‘Not well enough,’ said the man grimly.

‘How came it that she died when she was under their roof?’

‘The Jews took her.’

Ah? And how do they know it was them?’

‘Who else could it have been? With the Cut coming up. But what I know is this: they will not go unpunished.’

‘By God?’ said Owen. ‘Or by man?’

‘God, certainly. But sometimes he uses man.’

‘What man?’

But the water-carrier could tell him nothing, probably knew nothing, specific. It was significant, though, that the assumption was widespread in that quarter. With the Cut coming up.

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‘Well, I couldn’t leave her,’ said the woman, ‘not the way she was.’

‘It would have been better if you had,’ said her husband. Owen had caught them at the end of the siesta, when the man was just on the point of setting out again. The half-full water-skins lay by the door.

The woman turned on her husband.

‘He might have changed his mind,’ she said.

‘He thought right the first time,’ muttered the man, then lapsed into surly silence.

‘It was only for a day or two,’ said the woman, ‘and she eats no more than a bird.’

The house was, perhaps, not as poor as Ali Khedri’s, but poor enough. The number of mouths was important in such places. ‘How long was she with you?’ asked Owen.

‘No more than five days.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, then she went out one day and—’ the woman looked bewildered—‘and then we didn’t see her any more.’

‘The Jews got her,’ said the man.

‘She went out?’ said Owen. ‘What for?’

‘To meet up with that boy,’ said the man.

‘No, she didn’t!’ said the woman angrily. ‘She went out to see if she could find any leavings of onions at the stalls.’

‘That’s what she said,’ retorted the man.

And that’s where she was going. She’d stopped seeing that boy.’ ’That’s what she said!’

‘That girl,’ said the woman, eyes flashing, ‘is as honest as an Imam. Which is more than could be said of you. And of Ali Khedri, for that matter!’

‘Enough, woman!’ said her husband, sheepishly.

And she didn’t come back?’ said Owen.

‘No. After a time I went out to look for her—I thought she might have fallen, you know, she wasn’t right yet, not after all that cutting—but I couldn’t find her. So I thought—’

‘What did you think?’

‘I thought, may I be forgiven, that she was with that boy. But then when she didn’t come home, I know she couldn’t have been.’

Her husband started to mutter something. The woman faced him down.

‘When it got on to night,’ continued the woman. ‘I knew that something must have happened to her. Because otherwise,’ she said, looking fiercely at her husband, ‘she would have come home. She wasn’t that kind of girl. Her heart was pure.’

‘If it was so pure,’ asked the man, ‘how did she get to be talking to him in the first place?’

‘Talking is nothing. It’s what all women do. It never got to anything more than that.’

‘But she didn’t come back?’

‘No. I went to the
souk
. I asked round the neighbours. I went to the hospital—I thought that maybe she’d collapsed. You know, after all that bleeding. I even,’ said the woman, with an edge to her voice, ‘went to Ali Khedri.’

‘More fool you,’ said her husband.

‘I walked all over the quarter. I knew something must have happened to her.’

‘The Jews got her,’ said the man.

Owen turned to him.

‘How do you know that?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s where they found her. Under the Bride. That’s not accident, is it? She was put there for a purpose.’

‘She could have been put there by anyone. Anyone could have had that purpose. Muslims, Copts. Anyone.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the man, unconvinced, ‘but the Jews.

‘Did she ever have anything to do with Jews? Was she ever seen with Jews?’ demanded Owen.

‘Well, no. But then she wouldn’t have been, would she? They’re too cunning for that.’

‘But then—’

It was useless, however, trying to talk to him. He couldn’t see it. It had to be the Jews.

‘They’re always creeping around,’ he said. ‘They’re worse than that boy.’

It was the same story as everywhere else.

Coming back through the
souk
he met Mahmoud. He was talking to one of the stall-holders.

‘No,’ the stall-holder was saying, ‘I don’t remember seeing her. I wouldn’t remember her anyway. She was that quiet! Like a mouse.’

‘You remember, though, that she used to come to the
souk
?’Oh, yes. Before her—well, you know, before it happened— she used to come most days. Always the same time, just when the stalls were closing. You can pick up a few things then, you know—I mean, if they’re going off, you might just as well give them away as throw them away. And the water-carriers’ wives—well, they’re not too well off. And God says, look after the poor, doesn’t he? And it’s well to have one or two things to your credit when the Angels come asking their questions.’

‘So she would probably have come late?’

‘Yes. We don’t close till dark. And then we close pretty smartly because if you’re not careful those thieving boys will have half your stuff before you can get it away!’

‘So she would have been walking home in the dark?’

‘She would. And if I could get my hands on—’

The news was already round the
souk
. People talked about it in shocked whispers. In one way it made Mahmoud’s task easier, for he had no need to recall Leila to their minds.

He, too, had discovered that when Leila had been thrown out by her father, Fatima had taken her in. He had been checking her story and, although it had all happened some time ago now, had been able to confirm much of it. Neighbours remembered her being ‘in a state’, as they put it, that night about ‘little Leila. Some of them had, in fact, gone out with her to help in the search. The hospital, surprisingly, had a record of her making enquiries; and Ali Khedri’s neighbours confirmed that Fatima had indeed called on him, recalling with relish the altercation that had followed on her rebuff.

The local police themselves could help. Leila’s disappearance had not been formally reported to them, but then, in that poor quarter it wouldn’t have been. One of the local constables, however, recalled being asked about her. Had a body been found? Several, but none of them Leila’s. When, weeks later, a female corpse had been found buried beneath the ‘Bride of the Nile’, he had wondered if it might be that of the missing girl and had mentioned the possibility to a friend, a gravedigger, who had in turn mentioned it to his brother, who worked at the mortuary. And so it was that long before identification had been officially made, everyone had known all about it. Which was, said Mahmoud, pretty well the usual course of things.

He had been trying to retrace her footsteps that night, without, so far, much success. Even as they were talking, however, one of his men came over and said that he had found a woman who claimed to remember seeing her on the night she disappeared.

‘It stuck in my mind,’ she said, ‘because it was so unusual. And then what with her disappearing—I couldn’t help wondering.’

‘What did you see?’

‘Well, she was talking to someone. A man. Well, she hardly ever talked to anyone, never mind a man! I was that surprised!’

‘Did you see who it was?’

‘Well, no. It was getting dark, you see, and I just caught a glimpse of them, just as they turned the corner. And I thought: “That’s never Leila!” But I think it was, you know, she’s such a slight little thing, and she wasn’t walking too well, you know, not after—’

She wasn’t able to add much more.

‘Why didn’t you tell someone else?’ demanded Mahmoud sternly.

‘I did tell someone!’ protested the woman. ‘I told my husband. But he said: “You stay out of this!” So what could I do?’

‘I’ll check the husband later,’ said Mahmoud, pleased, as he and Owen walked back together, ‘but I think we’ll find she’s speaking the truth.’

Owen nodded.

‘It makes a difference. Up till now I’ve been thinking that the chances were that this was, well, you know, the usual kind of attack. But now—’

‘It looks as if she knew him,’ said Owen.

‘Exactly!’ Mahmoud looked at his watch. ‘In which case,’ he said, ‘it makes my next meeting even more interesting.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the boy, ‘I was down there quite a lot.’

‘I thought you said you weren’t seeing her,’ said Mahmoud accusingly.

‘I wasn’t. It’s my job.’

‘You work down there?’

‘Sometimes. I’m an inspector with the Water Board. We’ve got some pipes out that way. I was looking for leaks. Still am, for that matter.’

‘In the Gamaliya.’

‘We’re not out that far yet. In the Quartier Rosetti.’

‘Was that how you came to see her in the first place?’

‘Yes. And why I was able to go on seeing her. I work on my own and have a lot of freedom. I put the hours in,’ he said anxiously, ‘but I can take time off during the day if I want to.’

‘So you were able to meet her?’

‘Yes.’

‘More or less when you wanted?’

‘At lunch, mostly. When she was on her way to her father to take him lunch. Or on the way back. Not at other times. She was very strict.’

‘Did you ever see her in the evening?’

‘No.’

‘Or at the end of the afternoon? Just, say, when it was getting dark?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘But you were in the area?’

‘Not, really, after dark. I need to be able to see. We’ve been looking for holes in the pipes. There’s been quite a water loss.’

‘I’d like to ask you about one specific date: the 27 th of June.’ Suleiman took out a diary.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I was over there that day.’

‘Evening?’

‘All I’ve got down is that I had to be over there that day. I wouldn’t have thought so.’

‘Did you see Leila?’

‘No. It was after she’d said—well, that we couldn’t see each other any more. In fact—’he looked at his diary again, ‘that must have been about the time that—’

‘Yes.’

He put the diary away.

‘I didn’t know they were going to do that to her. It happened after—after we’d said goodbye. I didn’t know till later.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘I asked someone. When I hadn’t seen her for some time, I thought she might be already married.’

‘I thought you said that you didn’t see her?’