The Fig Tree Murder

Chapter 12

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.’

‘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 cafe 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.