The Fig Tree Murder

Chapter 6

There had been a sharp wind overnight which had blown the sand in from the desert. It lay everywhere; on the slats of the shutters, on the top of Owen’s desk in a thin film, in a neat little pile inside his sun helmet hanging on the back of the door. It had got into the filing cabinet and made the papers gritty to touch; it had, despite the cloth folded lovingly by his orderly over the top of the water jug, got into the water so that it tasted of sand.

Everyone was out of sorts. In the orderly office the bearers were unusually subdued. Cleaners were going around ineffectively trying to sweep up the sand. Nikos, the Mamur Zapt’s austere Official Clerk, was in a fury, pulling open drawers and inspecting the damage, wondering, madly, whether to have all papers retyped to restore their pristine purity.

McPhee, the Deputy Commandant, normally Boy Scoutish in his cheerfulness, stuck his head in at the door dolefully.

‘More to come,’ he said, and went off up the corridor.

Yussef, Owen’s orderly, who could read Owen’s mind but nothing else, padded along the corridor with a fresh pot of coffee. It, too, tasted of sand.

The telephone rang.

‘It’s the Parquet,’ said Nikos, handing Owen the phone.

It was Mahmoud, as Nikos would normally have said. This morning, though, he felt particularly ungiving.

‘The courts are closed,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Sand everywhere. 1 was thinking of going over to Matariya. Like to come?’

Owen would like to be anywhere but in this grit-tasting office.

‘Got to go out,’ he said to McPhee as he passed him in the corridor.

‘Lucky devil!’ said McPhee, bound to his place by duty and, thought Owen, lack of imagination.

He met Mahmoud at the Pont de Limoun. All trains were at a standstill, including those going to Marg, and therefore, Matariya.

‘I’ll see if they’ve got a buggy,’ said Owen. ‘They’ll be sending something out to clear the line.’

The booking clerk now regarded him as an old friend.

‘But certainly, Effendi! At once! Only it has not come back yet.’

‘When will it come back?’

‘Ah, well, Effendi…’

‘ Bokra?’

‘That’s it, Effendi! Tomorrow! Yes, certainly. Tomorrow.’

Mahmoud turned away.

‘Hold on!’ said Owen. ‘This is only the start of the story. Go and check,’ he said to the clerk.

The clerk went happily off. It had been a good morning; he had been able to say ‘no’ to everybody.

‘Just tell him it’s the Mamur Zapt!’ Owen called after him.

A few moments later the clerk came scurrying back.

‘Effendi! It’s just come in!’ he cried joyfully.

‘I’m against all this,’ muttered Mahmoud wrathfully, as he followed Owen up the platform.

‘Privilege?’ said Owen. ‘It doesn’t usually get me very far. But I’ve met these blokes before.’

‘Not privilege,’ said Mahmoud, frowning. ‘The way these people muck you around!’

Mahmoud lived continually in the hope of a better, brighter Egypt. He worked for it with all his energy; and he couldn’t understand why other people didn’t do the same.

The buggy was empty apart from tools and water. Owen and Mahmoud settled down and the two-man crew began pumping the vehicle along.

In the cuttings the track had escaped the drift of the sand, but out in the open it had obviously had to be cleared away. Fresh piles of sand lay beside the track.

Out in the desert the wind was still blowing. Puffs of sand raced the buggy along the track, rising up sometimes into a cloud and then dying down again before scudding on at knee-high level.

The crew pulled their headdresses across their faces.

‘It’s a waste of time clearing all this,’ one said. ‘It’ll soon be back.’

There was plenty of sand on the line already and the buggy slowed appreciably. The piles beside the track grew in size.

Ahead of them they could see men working on the line. The buggy came to a stop just short of them.

‘This is as far as we go,’ the men said.

The Belgian foreman came towards them.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ he said. ‘A fine business this is!’ He went up to the buggy and peered in. ‘Got the picks?’ He moved some of the tools. ‘They’ve sent us more bloody spades!’ he said disgustedly. ‘Picks!’ he said to the buggy men. ‘I asked for picks! The sand’s packed hard. Go back and tell them. Tell Mustapha: I want picks, picks! I’ve got to loosen the sand.’

The buggy men shrugged and got back into the buggy. A moment or two later it moved off again, slowly.

‘This bloody country!’ said the Belgian.

Owen and Mahmoud walked up the line to where the men were working. Great, deep drifts of sand lay across the track. The men were shovelling it aside with wooden spades. It was hard work and the sweat was running down their faces.

‘They’ve been working all morning,’ said the foreman. ‘You can’t expect them to go on all day. They’re supposed to be sending me another shift. When I saw the buggy I thought it was them coming. You didn’t see any signs, did you?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Owen.

‘Well, I’m going to give them a spell in a moment or two,’ said the foreman. ‘Let them brew up. Water’s all very well but you want something with a bit of bite in it, if you’re working like this. That’s so, isn’t it, Abdul?’ he said to one of the workmen. The man straightened up and smiled.

‘You want something to take away the taste of the sand,’ he said. He resumed shovelling.

‘They work hard,’ said the Belgian defensively. ‘I’ve never said they didn’t.’

He looked out across the desert.

‘I was hoping the wind would drop,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t look like it,’ said Owen, uncomfortably aware of the particles of sand stinging his face.

‘What will you do if it gets up?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘That’s just what I’m wondering,’ said the foreman.

A new layer of sand, blown in by the wind, was already covering the track that had previously been cleared.

‘We’ll have to get them back if it gets any worse,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some more men working further up the line. It’ll need two trips.’ He looked out across the desert. ‘Maybe it won’t come to that,’ he said. ‘I hope not. We’ve got to get this line finished.’ The wind now seemed to be dying down again.

‘I’ve got to go up the line,’ said the foreman. He looked at Owen and Mahmoud. ‘What were you here for, anyway?’

‘We were hoping to go to Matariya.’

The foreman looked dubious.

‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Ever been caught in a dust storm?’

‘Yes,’ said Owen.

‘Well, you’ll know what I mean.’

‘There’s more wind out here than there was in the city,’ said Mahmoud.

‘There’s more wind than there was when I came out first thing. If I were you I wouldn’t risk it. Catch the next buggy back. You lot,’ he called to the workmen, ‘can take a spell. Twenty minutes, mind! No longer!’

He marched off. The men put down their spades with alacrity and gathered in the lee of a small dune. Someone brought out a primus stove and put a kettle on it.

Mahmoud looked at Owen.

‘He’s probably right,’ said Owen.

Mahmoud nodded.

‘The buggy will be back in a bit,’ said the workmen. ‘Come over here out of the wind.’

Owen and Mahmoud lay down beside them on the dune. Several of the workmen took out coloured handkerchiefs and unwrapped bread and onions, which they offered hospitably to Owen and Mahmoud. They declined the food but accepted the hot black tea.

‘Hard work,’ said Mahmoud sympathetically.

‘It is that,’ said his neighbour.

‘The worst thing is,’ said one of the other men, ‘that we’re going to have to do it all again.’

‘This wind, you mean?’

‘It’s not going to amount to anything,’ said one of the other workmen, looking at the sky. ‘It’ll be easy enough to sweep it off the rails.’

‘We don’t want it too easy,’ said someone. ‘The longer this job lasts, the better.’

‘That’s not what the Belgians think!’ said someone.

They all laughed.

‘It’s get-it-all-done-in-a-hurry with them!’

‘That’s why they want this Friday-working.’

‘I don’t agree with that. It’s not going to make much difference to them, but it makes a lot of difference to us. You don’t want back-breaking working every day!’

There was a mutter of agreement.

‘You want to be able to sleep it off, don’t you? I mean, six days a week is all very well, you can cope with that. It doesn’t go on forever, after all. But if you’re doing it every day without a break, it gets on top of you.’

‘There’s not much you can do about it, though, is there? It’s all very well Wahid saying come out on strike, but where will that get us?’

Owen noticed now that Wahid, their spokesman on the previous occasion he had talked to them, wasn’t there.

‘You’ve got to do something!’

‘I don’t know there’s a lot you can do. If you walk out, all they’ll do is get somebody else in.’

‘They might not be so keen. Not if it’s Friday-working.’

‘There’s plenty who’d jump at the chance. It’s only for a month or two, isn’t it? And you get extra money.’

‘You work extra for it, though, don’t you?’

‘There are plenty who wouldn’t mind that. We’ve done all the work; why should we give them the money?’

There was a general mutter of agreement.

‘You’ve got to do something, though.’

‘Yes, but what?’

‘We should get Wahid to speak to them. In everybody’s name.’

‘A fat lot of good that would do! Where did it get Ibrahim that time?’

‘At least he made the point.’

‘Yes, but where did it get us? They went on just the same as they’d always done. If you don’t like it, they said, you know what you can do.’

‘I don’t reckon it’d be so easy for them to say that this time. They’ve got to get the job done quickly. That’s what all this is about.’

‘They’re more likely to get rid of us, then, aren’t they?’

‘No, they’re not. It’d take time to get other men in.’

‘Not that much time. About a day, I’d say. And anyway, where would that get us? Out of a job!’

The discussion continued, not very animatedly. On the whole the workmen seemed resigned to the prospect of Friday-working.

‘After all,’ they said, ‘it’s only for a few weeks, isn’t it?’

The foreman came into view, walking along the track towards them.

The workmen stood up and picked up their spades.

‘Where’s Wahid, then, this morning?’ Owen asked one of them. ‘Isn’t he with you?’

The men looked around.

‘He’s up the line, I think.’

‘Come on, then!’ said the foreman, hurrying up. ‘Back to it!’

The men pointed back along the line. The buggy was approaching, crammed full with men.

‘It’s the next shift,’ said the foreman, relieved. ‘That’s more like it.’

Owen and Mahmoud went back with the buggy. As they left the Pont de Limoun, Owen said:

‘Well, a pity. But not altogether wasted.’

‘No,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Definitely not!’

‘If it’s that kind of information you’re after,’ said the Syndicate’s voice on the other end of the telephone, ‘then the man you want is Salah-el-Din.’

‘Salah-el-Din? The mamur of Heliopolis?’

‘That’s right.’

Owen was surprised. He had been unaware of this side of Salah’s activities.

‘Would you like to speak to him?’

‘Yes. But things are a bit disrupted between here and Heliopolis. The sand-’

‘We can put you through if you like.’

Owen was surprised again. So far as he knew the police station at Heliopolis wasn’t connected up yet.

‘It’s his home number.’

‘Home number!’

Owen had never met anyone with a home telephone before. Even the Consul-General didn’t have one. The Ministries were now connected by phone and so were the banks and some of the biggest companies. It was catching on, no doubt; but telephones at home!

‘Well, yes, please. If it’s not too much of a problem.’

‘No problem at all.’

And in a moment or two he heard Salah’s voice on the line.

Yes, he could certainly supply Owen with the information he needed, would be glad to, in fact. Perhaps they could meet?’

‘I’d come over,’ said Owen, ‘but things are a bit disrupted-’

It was better now, Salah assured him. The Syndicate had pulled all stops out in an effort to get communications working again. The roads were virtually clear, he could come up on the buggy if he liked, and the train to Marg, calling at Matariya, was functioning normally.

Perhaps that would be the best bet, if Owen didn’t mind taking the trouble. He, Salah, would be glad to come into the Bab-el-Khalk, if Owen would prefer. But he had to go over to Matariya Station anyway this morning, to read the owner of the ostrich farm the riot act, and if Owen wouldn’t mind meeting him there-

The sand had, indeed, been removed from the line and the train ran smoothly. The wind had died down and the sky cleared and when Owen got off the train at Matariya he found the air unusually clean and fresh and for the first time felt inclined to believe the Syndicate’s promotional literature about the quality of the atmosphere at Heliopolis.

Salah was waiting for him with outstretched hand, some chairs in the shade and a flask of rather good coffee.

‘Yes, I’ve got to see him,’ he said. ‘They’re always breaking out. I know that this time there was an excuse-the wind blew down part of the fencing-but really, we can’t go on like this. Suppose a stray one frightened the horses? During a race? I mean, the racing is about to start, and there’ll be a lot of money riding on the horses, and you just can’t have the whole thing being interrupted by ostriches! We’d become a laughing stock!’

‘Does it happen that often?’

‘Oh yes. There was one the other day-you saw it, I believe. Malik tried to shoot it. It would have been a good thing if he had. But he had bad luck, I understand. No, they’re breaking out all the time. There was another one two or three days before, caused a lot of damage.’

‘Well, I suppose it’s all part of the mamur’s job. At Heliopolis, at any rate.’

Salah laughed.

‘Heliopolis is a bit different from the usual district. I quite like it, though. The Syndicate’s good to work with. They get on and do things, and that’s what this country needs.’

He looked sideways at Owen.

‘I’m quite a Nationalist, you know. Not a Party member, of course. I wouldn’t go as far as that. That was what you wanted to talk to me about, wasn’t it?’

Owen nodded.

‘The Syndicate said that it had evidence that some of the workforce were professional agitators. I just wondered how reliable that evidence was.’

‘Pretty reliable. It asked me to do a bit of digging, in my spare time. That was before I took up the post here. I checked on the backgrounds of some of the men they mentioned.’

‘The man I am interested in is named Wahid. He works in the track-laying gang.’

‘I know the man. Yes, he was one of them. I can tell you quite a lot about him. He was one of those who failed the secondary certificate so he couldn’t go on to one of the higher colleges. I think he always felt bitter about that, I think that may explain-Anyway, he’d failed and that was that. He had to go into an office as a junior effendi. He went into Public Works.’

‘Not Railways?’

‘No, no. This was some time ago, five or six years ago. And he went in as an effendi, not as a labourer. He stayed there for about three years and became increasingly dissatisfied. He wasn’t getting anywhere, or, at least, not as far as he thought he ought to be getting and he put it down to bias. Anyway, one day, after an argument, he walked out. There’s a gap in the record after this. He appears to have done a number of odd jobs, some of them possibly in the docks, for the next time we heard of him, which is when he applied for a job with the electric railway, he produced a reference from a warehouse at Bulak.’

Salah looked at Owen.

‘The reference was false. When I checked at the warehouse they’d never heard of him.’

‘The company didn’t check at the time?’

‘They didn’t bother. He seemed the sort of man they wanted-experience of hard labour, shifting sacks of grain, that sort of thing.’

‘Why did you check the references?’

Salah stared at him.

‘Why did I check the references?’

‘Him particularly.’

‘He was one of several. The company asked me-’

‘They picked him out? Why was that, I wonder?’

‘Because he was difficult, I suppose.’

‘I can understand that. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a Nationalist. I’m still looking for evidence of a Nationalist connection.’

‘There’s plenty of that. He’s been seen at Nationalist meetings.’

‘So have half the workforce, I imagine.’

‘Playing an active part.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Distributing leaflets.’

‘That’s more like it. But it hardly makes him a professional agitator.’

‘Have you heard him talking to his gang? He’s always stirring up trouble!’

‘I’ve no doubt about that. But professional!? Paid?’

‘There’s no direct evidence. But-’

Owen was silent. He thought it very likely that Wahid was a Nationalist. He was pretty sure, from what the men had said, that he tried to raise them to action in pursuit of their grievances. But that didn’t make him a planted agitator.

‘I’d need more evidence of a direct Party connection,’ he said, ‘before I could be sure that the Nationalists were behind this.’

‘There is evidence,’ Salah insisted.

‘Can you produce it?’

‘You will have it,’ promised Salah.

Sand had drifted against the fences of the pens, in several places bending them over. Men were working on them to repair them. The ostriches were huddled on the far side of the pens.

The old Arab, Zaghlul, whom Owen had seen on the day of the ostrich hunt, was overseeing the work.

‘Yes,’ he said impatiently, ‘the fences were damaged. What do you expect? Think the sand’s going to miss me out?’

‘The fences need to be kept in good order,’ said Salah sternly. ‘Things are not like they used to be!’

‘What do you think I’m doing to the fences? And I know things are not the way they used to be; they’re a great deal worse!’

‘We can’t have these birds getting out.’

‘Do you think I want them to get out? Each one costs me a packet, I can tell you. That’s money walking away, that is. And if they don’t get away altogether, some fool tries to shoot them!’

‘You go easy on the “fools”. We’re talking Pashas here!’

‘What do I care about Pashas? Or the Khedive either. Put a bullet in my birds and I’ll put a bullet in them!’

‘These birds of yours are nothing but a nuisance. They frighten the horses. Do you know what a racehorse costs?’

‘I know what an ostrich costs. And the birds were here before the racehorses.’

‘Yes, well, you keep them on this side of the railway line! Otherwise there’ll be trouble.’

‘There’s been no trouble up till now. It’s building this new city that’s causing the trouble. City!’ said the old man contemptuously. ‘What do they want to build a city for out in the desert? The desert’s the desert. Keep it like that!’

‘Things don’t stand still. They’re going to build the city and there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re going to have to live with it. And that means seeing that your birds don’t get out.’

‘They’d be all right if they were left alone.’

‘If they stay in the pens they will be left alone.’

‘No, no, it’s in the air. They can smell it. It frightens them. That’s what makes them panic.’

‘What’s in the air?’

‘People. Houses. That new railway line. The old one’s all right. They’ve got used to that. But now they’re building a new one. What do they want another one for? They’re building them all over the place. How many more are there going to be?’

‘There aren’t going to be any more. Just this one. And they’re having it because it’ll go straight to Heliopolis. It won’t come near your pens.’

‘There’s something wrong with it, isn’t there?’

‘What do you mean, something wrong with it?’

‘It’s electric, isn’t it?’

‘Well?’

‘There you are, then. It’ll be getting out and affecting my birds.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Well, I can tell you, if it starts affecting my birds, I’ll be over there with my gun! I’ll soon put a stop to it!’

‘It won’t affect your birds at all.’

‘It had better not. And you’d do better to be worrying about all that stuff getting out than about my birds getting out. I’ll look after my birds. And I’ll look after that new electric railway, too, if you don’t watch out!’

Since he was out at Matariya, Owen thought he might as well go over to the village. With any luck he would meet Mahmoud and find out if he had made any further progress.

The village was only a mile from the ostrich farm but by the time he reached it, even in what he had thought the fresher atmosphere of out of town, the sweat was running down his face and his shirt was sticking to his back. When he got to the village he went to the well and scooped water over his face and drank a little from the bucket he had pulled up. It tasted of sand.

There were some women at the well, filling their pitchers. They saw the face he had made and one of them said:

‘Here, have some of mine. We got it up before the water was disturbed.’

‘It was Miriam who disturbed it,’ said one of the other women. ‘She let the bucket go in too far.’

‘I had to, didn’t I?’ retorted Miriam angrily. ‘I was the last one and you’d got the good water out.’

‘Ali should have put the cover over the well,’ said the first woman accusingly.

An old man sitting in the shade straightened up.

‘I did!’ he protested. ‘It got underneath. It gets everywhere.’

‘Well, it does that,’ the woman conceded.

‘It got into my stew,’ said another of the women, ‘even though I had the lid on.’

Owen accepted the drink gratefully. The women, as was often the case in the villages, were very chatty. None of them wore veils and no one was particularly abashed at speaking to a man, even a white man. It was the men, thought Owen, who insisted on the forms, so jealous of their wives’ honour were they.

Or perhaps it wasn’t their wives’ honour but their own. That, he thought, was certainly so in the case of those brothers they’d locked up.

Actually, he was uneasy about that. He would have to release them soon. He couldn’t hold them forever. That was one of the things he wanted to talk to Mahmoud about. He rather hoped that by now Mahmoud was getting somewhere with his investigations. If he was closing in on someone, especially if, as Owen suspected, the person was one of the brothers, it would make it easier to hold them and to prevent the family of the murdered man from taking the law into their own hands.

Mahmoud emerged from one of the pilgrim’s houses, saw Owen and came across to greet him. The women, suddenly self-conscious, picked up their pitchers and went off.

Mahmoud sat down on the parapet of the wall and helped himself to some water.

‘Getting anywhere?’ asked Owen.

‘No. I’ve just about been through all the houses now and no one’s seen or heard anything. No one was out on the night Ibrahim was killed, nor knows anyone else who was out. Well, I can believe that. Once it gets dark, everyone in the village stays at home. But these days, when the nights are hot, they sit outside; and don’t tell me that no one, no one in the entire village, saw or heard anything!’

‘What might they have heard or seen?’

‘Someone going out to the Tree. People at the Tree, talking. They were talking, we know that from the goatherd.’

‘It’s some way from the village, though. And it was dark.’

‘I need to know who it was that met Ibrahim that night,’ said Mahmoud, frustrated.

‘Have you gone through the other village yet, Tel-el-Hasan? Someone might have seen people leaving that.’

‘The brothers, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got Asif helping me. He’s been through the village.’

‘Without any luck?’

‘The same thing as here. Villagers,’ said Mahmoud, ‘will tell you nothing. Not if you’re from outside.’

He put the bucket back into the recess.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m increasingly coming to think that the answer doesn’t lie here anyway.’