The Fig Tree Murder

Chapter 10

Owen had not; but other people, it soon appeared, had. One of the Mamur Zapt’s duties was to read the press for material of a politically inflammatory nature. Splashed across the front page of one of the most popular Nationalist newspapers the following morning was a heavy-breathing article drawing attention to the fact and making much of the insensitivity of the government and of foreign businessmen in allowing such a thing to happen. ‘Surely,’ the article concluded, ‘someone could have foreseen how greatly traditional religious susceptibilities would be offended by such an untimely intrusion at an important moment of spiritual preparation.’

Owen had just put the newspaper down when the phone rang. It was the Syndicate.

‘Have you seen-?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Owen wearily.

‘We wouldn’t want everything to go wrong now. Not when we’re so close to completion.’

‘ Are you so close to completion?’

‘Another couple of weeks. Working Fridays will make all the difference.’

The railwaymen had in the end decided not to strike. They were too near the end of their contracts to want to lose money.

The railway, then, would be finished on time; and that would certainly be while the pilgrims were still congregated at Birket-el-Hadj. It took them several weeks to gather, not as long as in the past, when the first pilgrims would arrive months before departure, but long enough for them to be a considerable presence in the neighbourhood for some time.

But how close would the terminus of the railway actually be to Birket-el-Hadj?

‘Not very close,’ said the man from the Syndicate. ‘We’re ending it in Heliopolis. Quite near to the racecourse, as it happens.’

But distance, like so many other things, was blurred by the paper’s feverish prose, and the next day another article appeared recording, with satisfaction, the volume of protest the paper had received about the foreigners’ determination to press ahead and calling for a public demonstration at the Pont de Limoun the following evening.

The demonstration, coincidentally, was timed to start at exactly the moment that Mr Rabbiki, the veteran Nationalist politician, was due to initiate debate in the Assembly on the question he had put. The question, of course, was to do with Ibrahim and not with the arrival of the railway at Heliopolis, but Owen had no doubt that Mr Rabbiki’s broad brush would tar widely.

‘Any problems?’ he asked Paul.

‘Nothing that we can’t handle,’ said Paul confidently, ‘if you can handle it at your end.’

Owen’s end was the demonstration. It was far larger than the previous one. The Nationalist Party had pulled out all the stops and there were banners everywhere, a properly constructed platform for speakers, speakers of stature and a bodyguard of even greater stature to protect them, together with cohorts of supporters marched in for the occasion.

Owen, too, had pulled out all the stops and had policemen at all street corners and lots more policemen close at hand but tucked away discreetly out of sight.

He had stationed himself on the roof of one of the houses, from where he soon saw first that the number of demonstrators was greater than he had anticipated and then that the policemen he had left on the street corners had noticed this and prudently withdrawn into the cafes with their fellows.

The square below was full of people, their faces ruddy in the light of the torches that many of them held. They were listening quietly and attentively. Owen was always impressed by this, more impressed than he usually was by what was served out to them. They had a kind of hunger, the same hunger that Ali and Ibrahim had shown.

And patience, too, the long patience of the Egyptian fellahin, patience enough to listen for hours to the inflated rhetoric, the got-up emotion, about issues that were in the end unreal. What did they care about when the new railway would get to Heliopolis? What, for that matter, did the Nationalists care, either? The whole thing was being stage-managed just in order to create difficulty for the government.

But perhaps, thought Owen, listening with half an ear as the speeches entered their third hour, that was where the real issue came in. For what the political manoeuvring was ultimately about was who was going to govern Egypt. Who was going to do the stage-managing-Mr Rabbiki with his doomed question or Paul, behind the scenes, getting the Khedive and his Ministers to act to a script that was written in London?

But, hello, what was this? Something was going wrong with the script, or at least with his part of it! Over at the back of the crowd, in one corner, something was going on. The crowd was swirling around, breaking apart. Fighting? Was that fighting? He trained his field glasses.

Yes, fighting. He could see the clubs and sticks. But not among themselves. Someone was coming in from outside. It looked as if a great wedge had suddenly been driven into the back of the crowd. Surely his men had not come out without orders?

He’d have their blood for this! He turned and made for the outside steps leading down from the roof.

But wait! It wasn’t them. They weren’t in uniform. Who the hell were they? What the hell was going on?

Owen had his runners at the bottom of the steps, waiting for instructions. Each one knew the cafe where he had to go. They went at once. Within minutes, policemen were pouring out of the cafe.

The Cairo constables were for the most part country boys, chosen for their size and strength and, some alleged, their simplicity. Given orders to clear a square, they would.

They had, moreover, the advantage of surprise. The crowd, confused already by the disturbance at the rear, split apart under their charge and the separate parts were forced back upon the exits from the square. Many of the torches fell down or were extinguished and in the darkness it was hard to see anything. There was only the pressure of bodies driving people to the edges of the square, the confused shouting and screaming and the incessant blast of the police whistles.

There was hardly any resistance. The crowd was largely unarmed. There were the usual few with knives and clubs but, hemmed in by people and in the darkness, they were unable to use them.

Only in one part of the square, where the original wedge had burst into the crowd, was there serious fighting. The men there were armed and were holding the constables back.

Owen gathered a few extra men and ran across. There were no torches here, but in the dim light from a nearby cafe he could see a struggling throng of men.

‘Police!’ he shouted. ‘Back!’

There was a moment’s uncertainty and then men detached themselves from the throng and came back towards him.

‘Form into line!’ he shouted.

The men spread out on both sides of him. For a moment they stood breathing heavily and looking at the dark mass of men ahead of them.

‘Line: Advance!’

The line moved forward. This was the moment when training and discipline told. Or so Owen hoped.

Someone pushed up beside him.

‘You might need this.’

He recognized the voice. It was one of his plainclothesmen, a Greek.

He felt a gun being pushed into his hand.

Suddenly, things were different.

‘Line: Halt!’ he shouted. And then, in a moment of inspiration: ‘Prepare to fire!’

The constables halted, obedient but confused. Batons were all they had.

‘This is the Mamur Zapt,’ he called out to the dark mass in front of him. ‘I order you to disperse! If you do not, I shall open fire. I shall fire one shot into the air to show you that I am armed.’

The sharp crack came almost at once.

There was a sudden silence in the square.

‘Disperse immediately! Or I shall open fire.’

He would, too.

But there was no need. The dark line ahead of him wavered and broke. In an instant men were running.

The constables moved in. A man came reeling back, dazed and nursing an arm. Owen caught him by the galabeah and then, as that would tear, by the hair.

The square was emptying rapidly now, as the crowd fled in panic.

‘Not good, though,’ said Owen, as he sat in the bar of the Sporting Club at lunchtime the next day.

‘Not good at all,’ Paul agreed. ‘It’s given Mr Rabbiki his publicity triumph on a plate.’

The veteran politician had not waited long to capitalize on the disaster. Early the next morning he had appeared in Owen’s office, stern but undisguisedly cheerful.

‘An outrage!’ he said. ‘We demand a public apology.’

‘You can have one from me,’ said Owen. ‘I’m damned annoyed at what happened.’

‘Oh, we don’t want one from you,’ said Mr Rabbiki. ‘We want one from the government.’

‘You’ll be lucky!’

‘Well, it doesn’t really matter,’ said Mr Rabbiki, catching the smell of coffee-all meetings in Cairo, whether adversarial or convivial, required coffee-and relaxing, ‘since we’ve got what we wanted.’

‘All went according to plan, did it?’ said Owen sourly. Rabbiki gave him a quick look.

‘No,’ he said, ‘it did not. We had planned a straightforward demonstration. Large, but peaceful. What happened? Who were those men?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Owen, ‘but I’m damned well going to find out!’

‘They weren’t police, I know that.’

‘No, I sent the police in afterwards. Once the fighting had started. I wanted to break it all up before it had a chance of spreading.’

‘You took a risk,’ said Mr Rabbiki accusingly. ‘With all those people, someone might have got killed.’

‘I know that. That’s why I’m so annoyed.’

‘I can tell you who the men were,’ said Mr Rabbiki. ‘They were Syndicate men.’

‘I doubt that. What would be the point?’

‘They know we want to stop the railway from getting to Heliopolis on time. This was intended as a warning.’

‘If it was,’ said Owen, ‘then it was a very stupid one.’

‘We are dealing with some very stupid people.’

‘Are we? I’m not so sure about that.’

‘Nor am I, on second thoughts,’ Mr Rabbiki admitted. ‘Stupid, possibly. Ruthless, certainly.’

‘Well-’

‘As they have shown in the case of that poor man whose body was found on the railway line. I hope, Captain Owen, that while you’re grappling with these wider political issues, you won’t lose sight of what happened to that poor man.’

‘If I did, Mr Rabbiki,’ said Owen, smiling, ‘I’m sure you would put down a question. Coffee?’

‘But was it wise?’ asked the man from the Syndicate, half an hour or so after Mr Rabbiki had gone.

‘Wise?’

‘To break up the demonstration so, well, firmly? I know we’ve asked you to take a strong line but, well, frankly, we’d prefer a little more finesse just at the moment, with the line so near completion. Only another couple of weeks to go! You don’t think you could lie low for that period, do you? We really do appreciate your efforts on our behalf, believe me, we know you’re doing your best, but-you couldn’t handle things with a bit more sensitivity, could you?’

‘Sensitivity!’ he said to Paul indignantly. ‘Those bastards! Me!’

‘They were just having fun,’ said Paul confidendy. ‘Trying to provoke you!’

‘No, they weren’t. They meant it!’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. That was the message: hold back! Show a bit more sensitivity! Let’s have a bit more finesse! Those brutal sods!’

‘Well,’ said Paul, reflecting, ‘I suppose they think they’ve almost got there. Brutality is what you need on the way; sensitivity and finesse is what it’s called once you’ve got there.’

He signalled to the waiter for another drink.

‘But why,’ he said, ‘would they have taken that line if all the time they were behind it?’

‘To cover up,’ said Owen.

‘You think they were just trying to put you off?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Owen, ‘but I’m going to find out. And when I do, I’ll show them some bloody sensitivity!’

Most shops in Cairo closed for the afternoon. Most police stations did, too, their inhabitants arguing, reasonably, that if it was too hot for work it was also too hot for crime. Not, however, the police headquarters at the Bab-el-Khalk, where Owen had his office. Some men had been arrested the night before at the demonstration and lodged in the local police station. This morning they had been transferred up, and now Owen meant to interview them himself.

The first three, however, were ordinary members of the crowd. Not entirely ordinary citizens, perhaps, since they had all been armed and had attempted to use their weapons against the constables, which accounted first for their battered appearance and then for their arrest. Owen, though, was not interested in them. What he wanted was someone from the invading wedge. He remembered the man he had himself arrested and went down to the cells to find him.

On the way back to his room they passed Garvin, the Commandant, who cast a professional eye over the prisoners.

‘Oh, Abbas,’ he said, ‘it’s you, is it?’

‘I wasn’t doing anything this time, Effendi,’ protested the man indignantly.

‘Got arrested by accident? Well, blow me!’

‘What were you doing near the Pont de Limoun, then?’ asked Owen, when he had got the man settled in his room.

‘Nothing!’

Owen pointed to the man’s arm, which was in a rough sort of sling.

‘How come you got hit on the arm, then?’

‘The fact is, Effendi, I wasn’t looking. At least, not on that side, I’d got this bloke lined up, a big, fat policeman he was, and I thought, Right, my beauty, I’ll have you! And then, damn me, someone comes at me from the side and catches me a crack, I thought it had broke my arm, and then before I could do anything about it, the other one turns round and gives me a crack over the head! I tell you, in future I’m always going to make sure I’m paired up with someone, it’s better that way, one of you can keep a lookout while the other’s doing the hitting. Then you can take turn and turn about. Hosayn’s the man, I think, he’s quite quick and not stupid-’

He had an attitude to the fighting that was purely technical and Owen soon put him down as a professional heavy, a member of a gang most likely, brought in for occasions.

Had he been brought in on this occasion?

Certainly, the man replied with pride. Word had gone round that good men were required and he and several others had put their names forward. They had worked with Figi before- Figi?

‘He’s our boss. We don’t work with him all the time, but lately he’s been getting some good contracts-’

Like?

‘Well, this one. Go in and break them up. Very straightforward. And they probably wouldn’t even be armed! Well, I mean-’

And that was all?

Well, it was enough, wasn’t it? The reward had to be matched against the risk, after all. In this case there hadn’t seemed to be much risk so they’d settled for something quite low. And then the Mamur Zapt had come along and started shooting!

‘You never know,’ said the man philosophically.

And, indeed, he didn’t know. Not much more than he’d said, anyway. Owen got more out of Garvin, into whose office he dropped after the man had been taken away.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Garvin, ‘I know him. He works the racetracks. Stays with the same gang, mostly.’

‘Do they take on other jobs?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘Political ones?’

Garvin looked doubtful.

‘I wouldn’t have thought so. Mostly they stick to the racetracks… They were up at Heliopolis the other day,’ he offered as Owen was on the way out.

Owen stopped.

‘The ones we saw?’

‘That’s right. They were talking to one of the stewards, if you remember. I’m worried about that, Owen. We don’t want the course to get off to a bad start. You asked me not to take action, but-’

‘Hello!’ said Salah-el-Din, coming across the room to greet him. ‘What brings you here?’

‘I was over at Matariya,’ said Owen, ‘so I thought I would pop in.’

‘Very nice to see you. Care for a drink?’

This being Cairo, Owen didn’t ordinarily accept drinks from subordinates; but this was also the bar at the New Heliopolis Racing Club, where things certainly seemed a bit different, so he accepted graciously.

They sat down in two plushy armchairs near the window, from where they could look down on the racetrack. There being no races today, the track was empty; except for, yes, it was her, Salah-el-Din’s daughter, plus attendant, going for her usual promenade.

Salah-el-Din followed the direction of Owen’s eyes.

‘Yes, it is Amina. We come most days. But she goes for a walk while I come up to the bar!’ He laughed. ‘In case you’re wondering, though, I only have one drink. And I justify my attendance on the grounds that until more of Heliopolis is built, this is where I’m going to meet everybody.’

The bar was certainly filling up. There was a sprinkling of Syndicate staff, mostly Belgians but a number of-well, not so much effendis, too rich for that-wealthy Egyptian young, all males, of course, from the Pashas’ houses round about. Owen looked for Malik. He wasn’t there, but if Amina was, could Malik be far behind?

They talked for a while about the new police station that was being built at Heliopolis and about its staffing. This was really Garvin’s pigeon but Salah was anxious that there should be some Mamur Zapt involvement, on the grounds that the international community, bankers and such, would be heavily represented in the New Heliopolis and policing would have to have regard for international treaties.

Owen offered a return drink, which, however, Salah declined. ‘Since I’ve told you my role, I’d better stick to it,’ he said. ‘However, you can offer it to Amina if you like. I’m just going down to fetch her.’

‘I’ll come with you, if I may,’ said Owen. ‘I’d like to look at the track.’

Some men were laying turf.

‘Big staff?’

‘Building up,’ said Salah. ‘People don’t realize how many the Club will employ. It will be a very good thing for people hereabouts.’

‘And for the gangs.’

‘I’ve seen that here already. That’s one of the things I’m going to have to keep an eye on.’

‘Do they get at the staff? Try to influence them?’

‘It wouldn’t do any good. You’ve got to have safeguards against a thing like that.’

Owen looked for the man he had seen the other day.

‘What happens to the stewards? Are they here all the time?’

‘Just for the races.’

There would be races the following Saturday, Salah said. The Club was anxious to hold them twice a week but at the moment the crowds didn’t justify it.

‘It’ll be different when the new railway’s running,’ he said.

Amina’s eyes, above her veil, brightened when she saw Owen.

‘You’ve still not been to see me,’ she said accusingly. ‘I ride every morning, mostly over towards Matariya.’

‘I’ve been a bit busy lately. One of these mornings you’ll see me!’

The horse would have to be wild indeed that got him over to Matariya, he told himself privately.

‘About seven,’ she said.

‘Lot of people around at that time?’ he said, wondering about Malik.

‘Fortunately not,’ she said, meeting his eyes levelly.

Up in the bar, he bought her a drink. She chose tonic.

She was the only woman in the room. Owen noticed, however, that they seemed to accept her. Probably they’d got used to her. It wouldn’t do, though, to talk to her all the time. Or would it? This was a different world from any other that he had known in Egypt, not exactly more emancipated, but freer in the way that wealth somehow manages to give itself more elbow room.

Salah brought someone across to meet him.

‘George Zenakis,’ he said. ‘Our Secretary.’

Our Secretary?

‘You must be very busy just now,’ said Owen, ‘with everything starting up.’

‘Well, yes. But it’s nothing to what it’s going to be later. Or so they tell me,’ the man said, smiling.

‘And do you handle everything? Or is there a General Manager of some sort?’

‘I handle everything on behalf of the committee. Membership, for instance.’

‘How many members have you?’

‘About two hundred, and growing fast. You wouldn’t yourself-?’

‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to get out here enough. My other commitments-’

He asked, for politeness’s sake, about the subscription, then mentally reeled back.

‘I don’t think I could run to that,’ he said.

‘Oh, you don’t have to bother about that,’ said George Zenakis, smiling. ‘We would be glad to waive, for the Mamur Zapt-’

On the Saturday, Owen was at the races. Not up in the bar this time but down by the track, and not there for long; just long enough to point out to his agents the steward that he and Garvin had seen talking to the gang on the day of the reception.

‘His name is Roukoz,’ said Georgiades in Owens office on the following Monday. Georgiades was the plain-clothesman who had put a gun into Owen’s hand at the demonstration. ‘And he has a history of working the racetracks. He was at the Gezira for a little while but they didn’t like him and so he moved on to Helwan.’

‘Why didn’t they like him?’ asked Owen.

‘He was too friendly with the wrong sort of people.’

‘The gang?’

‘Gangs. Nothing they could put their finger on, but they didn’t like him.’

‘And at Helwan?’

Georgiades hesitated.

‘Nothing you could put your finger on there, either. But again they didn’t like him. This time, though, he had a friend higher up and so he stayed.’

‘Do you know the friend?’

‘Yes. He’s not at Helwan either now.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Heliopolis.’

‘Who moved first?’

‘The friend did. Then, when the racetrack opened, Roukoz.’

‘What’s the name of the friend?’

‘Zenakis.’

Owen went to see the man from the Syndicate who had rung him up.

‘About that demonstration the other night,’ he said. ‘I didn’t break it up.’

‘You didn’t? But-who did?’

‘You did,’ said Owen.

‘Now look here, Owen-’

‘You used a gang from the racetracks. I know. I’ve got one of them.’

‘If you say it was a gang from the racetracks, OK, it was a gang from the racetracks. But it wasn’t anything to do with us.’

‘Well, I think it was. I know the gang, you see, and I’ve seen them at Heliopolis.’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean-’

‘Talking to one of the stewards.’

‘That’s bad. It must be looked into. But that doesn’t necessarily-’

‘He’s a friend of the Club Secretary. A close friend.’

‘Zenakis?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I know Zenakis.’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

There was a long silence.

‘Look, Owen-’

‘If you’re going to ask me to handle this with sensitivity, you’ll have to try again.’

‘I wasn’t going to-Look, you’ve got this all wrong.’

‘So have you. So,’ said Owen, ‘have you!’

‘I know you’re sore. I shouldn’t have said what I did the other morning. OK, I’ve got it wrong. But you’ve got it wrong too.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘Yes. It wasn’t your people who broke up the demonstration, I accept that. But’-he took a deep breath-‘it wasn’t ours either. I swear we don’t know anything about it.’

‘No?’

‘If for no other reason than that it wouldn’t be in our interest. We’re nearly there, as I said the other morning. All we want to do is to wrap it up and get out. Besides-’

‘Keep trying.’

‘Zenakis is not the Syndicate. He’s not ours. The Racing Club is quite separate. All that side is. All the gambling bit. They’re clients of ours, customers. It’s a separate organization. It’s nothing to do with us. Honest!’