The Fig Tree Murder

Chapter 7

'Not here?’ said Owen, taken aback.

‘Oh, here-the village-is something to do with it. It’s where it happened. But it’s not here that the meaning lies.’

‘The meaning?’

‘I see a lot of killings,’ said Mahmoud. ‘This one has a meaning. The body was put on the line to make a point.’

‘What kind of point?’

‘I don’t know. But I’m beginning to wonder whether it might not be more to do with the railway than it is with the village.’

‘You’re abandoning the idea of it being a revenge killing?’

‘Revenge might be part of it.’

‘I don’t see how revenge could be part of something else. Isn’t it complete in itself?’

Mahmoud was silent. Overhead, in the palms, the doves gurgled contentedly.

‘As I see it,’ he said at last, ‘Ibrahim crops up in two contexts. One of them is the village and there are things here that might have led to his death. But I cannot see why they should have led to his body being placed on the line. That part of it must be explained by something else. And it seems to me that we might find the explanation in the other context in which he crops up: the railway.’

‘His body was found there, certainly. Does that count as cropping up?’

‘He worked there.’

‘But that is incidental, surely?’

‘Is it? I have asked myself if it might not be-if I could find any connection between Ibrahim’s workplace and his death.’ Owen fanned himself. He was used to Mahmoud’s deductive approach. The Parquet lawyers had all been trained in the French tradition of law-the Egyptian legal system was based on that of France-and the French influence extended even to habits of thought.

‘And what answers did you get?’

He hoped that Mahmoud wasn’t going to allow himself to get distracted. He himself was convinced that the answer lay in the village and he wanted to find it pretty quickly before village law took over.

‘It was something the railwaymen said yesterday. About Ibrahim. They said there had been some incident or other when Ibrahim had acted as their spokesman.’

‘Well?’

‘I’d like to find out more about the incident.’

‘It sounded as if it was a dispute about work practices.’

‘Precisely.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t see what you’re getting at?’

‘I was just wondering if the two could be connected.’

‘The dispute and-?’

‘The fact that Ibrahim played a leading part in the dispute, and his death.’

Owen was shocked.

‘You’re surely not suggesting-?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just saying that the time might have come to take a look at the Syndicate’s involvement in all this.’

‘But it’s not involved! It’s just that the body was found on the line that it’s building!’

‘And that the body was that of a man who’d been prominent in a dispute with it.’

‘But the dispute was trivial!’

‘We don’t know that. It might not have seemed trivial to them. Anything that threatened to slow down progress on the line would have struck them as important, I’d have thought.’

‘But you’re surely not suggesting that they would go to the lengths of-?’

‘I don’t know what lengths they might go to. That would be one of the things I would want to find out.’

‘But what for? What would be the point?’

As a warning, perhaps?’

‘You think the whole thing was meant as a warning?’

‘I think the possibility is worth investigating.’

Owen felt quite shocked. How could Mahmoud even entertain the possibility? The Syndicate bore down hard on its workers, perhaps, but to suppose that a respectable international company would go to those lengths was bizarre!

‘Companies don’t behave like that,’ he said.

‘Don’t they?’

‘No. Not even in Egypt.’

It was the wrong thing to say. Mahmoud’s face darkened. ‘Perhaps they might,’ he said, ‘in Egypt. Where they thought it didn’t matter.’

Owen backtracked swiftly. Talking to Mahmoud was sometimes like walking through a minefield.

‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was that I don’t believe a respectable company would do a thing like that anywhere.’

Mahmoud bowed his head in acknowledgement of the apology; stiffly, however.

‘Respectable companies don’t always behave respectably when they go to other countries,’ he said. ‘Especially if they’re poorer countries.’

Owen felt a tide of exasperation welling up.

‘What you’re suggesting is quite ridiculous,’ he said coldly.

‘You may think so.’

‘You think so only because it is a foreign company.’

‘What are you saying? What are you saying?’ cried Mahmoud furiously.

‘That you’re letting your Nationalist prejudices run away with you!’ said Owen, equally angry.

It had all boiled up, as so often in Egypt, out of nothing. One moment you had been talking reasonably; the next, there had been an explosion.

All right, this time it was he himself who had sparked it off. But really! How could Mahmoud think a thing like that? How could someone as intelligent, as reasonable as Mahmoud even consider such a possibility? Owen had no great affection for the Syndicate. He thought it was hard and grasping. He thought it very likely that it would if not bend the law, at least push up as hard against it as it could.

But that was not quite the same thing as breaking the law. And it was not the same thing as killing a man, or having him killed, just because he had crossed them.

Or as a warning. Warning? Who to? To the labour force to work harder? Ridiculous! How could Mahmoud even suppose such a thing! It was quite unlike him. He was normally the most reasonable of men: a little prickly on occasion, emotional, perhaps, like most Arabs. But this was plain crazy! Companies were not like that. Not even- pace, Mahmoud-in Egypt. Not even-despite the fulminations of the most lunatic Nationalists-foreign companies in Egypt. How could Mahmoud even entertain the idea?

The telephone rang. It was Mr Rabbiki, the veteran politician.

‘Ah, Captain Owen! So glad you are there. I wanted to let you know before actually putting down the question.’

‘Question?’

‘Yes. In the Assembly. It’s on the agenda for Tuesday. I wanted to give you prior warning. After all, we’re old friends, aren’t we? And I understand the difficult position you’re in. But really, we can’t allow this to go on. The poor fellow’s family-’

‘Poor fellow?’

‘The one who was killed. I understand you are not going to press charges?’

‘It’s not my job to press charges. That’s up to the Parquet.’

‘Ah, yes, but sometimes they need help.’

‘I give them all the help I can.’

‘We-ell…it’s not always possible, is it?’

‘Why not?’

‘Political considerations? Do not sometimes political considerations intervene?’

‘They haven’t intervened in this case.’

‘No? That’s not the impression I have gained.’

‘I don’t follow you, Mr Rabbiki.’

‘The Syndicate, Captain Owen…is it not obstructing inquiries?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware.’

‘I understand Mr El Zaki wishes to put some questions?’

‘He wanted to talk to the workforce. He asked me to approach the Syndicate on his behalf, which I was glad to do. Permission was given, and he spoke to the men. I was there.’

‘Yes, but since then…’

‘I don’t think the issue has arisen since then.’

There was a little silence.

‘Then I am under a false impression, Captain Owen. I had gathered he wished to put some questions about an incident that had happened on the railway some weeks ago.’

‘I know the incident to which you refer. I wasn’t aware that he wanted to approach the Syndicate over the matter.’

‘You weren’t? Well, perhaps there are problems of communication on your side. Or perhaps he didn’t feel it necessary for an officer of the Ministry of Justice to have to direct his inquiries through an intermediary. Be that as it may, his request was refused.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘It is unacceptable, Captain Owen. It raises important questions of principle.’

‘It is regrettable, certainly. And the issue might not have arisen had the request been directed through me.’

‘But that, too, raises questions of principle, Captain Owen. So you will quite see why we are putting down a question.’

Owen could quite see why the Nationalist Party was putting down a question. It wished to embarrass the Administration and a foreign company was a good stick to beat the government with.

He was a little disappointed, though, by Mahmoud. After that last exchange at the well, Mahmoud had stalked off in high dudgeon. This was not uncommon with Mahmoud, and usually after a decent interval had elapsed he stalked back again. This time, however, he had made no effort to contact Owen. Instead, he had approached the Syndicate head-on and received the rebuff he must have expected.

Why had he done that? Owen could see why this time he had not wished to enlist his own aid. Apart from understandable pique, he, too, had principles. But why had he gone at it like that? He was no fool, he was wise in the games that Cairo played, he must have known he would get nowhere.

Unless, of course, that was where he had wanted to get. Unless that had been his deliberate intention. Unless he had been party to the Nationalists’ decision to exploit the issue for political ends and had seen this, with them, as a heaven-sent opportunity to set the Syndicate up.

Mahmoud was, like all the other Parquet lawyers, himself a Nationalist. Unlike most of them, however, he was also his own man. He made it a matter of principle not to get into politicians’ pockets. The law for him was clean and pure and should be above politics. Those who professed it should serve it with independence and austerity. Friends said of him-increasingly-that he was a born judge but too honest to be an advocate. Especially in Cairo.

Owen was surprised, then, to find that in this instance he seemed to have shifted; surprised, and disappointed. He and Mahmoud had always seen eye to eye, in so far as it was possible for a foreigner to see eye to eye with an Egyptian. But it was precisely that which was raising the difficulty in the present case. For it was surely only the fact that it was foreign that had led Mahmoud to make his extraordinary accusations against the Syndicate.

It was most unlike him. Certainly, like most Nationalists and, indeed, most Egyptians, he chafed at his country’s subservience to foreign interests and objected, in particular, to British rule; but up till now he had always been temperate and pragmatic about this, believing that Reason-Mahmoud was a great man for Reason-and the ordinary political processes would in the end deliver Egypt from its foreign yoke. The sanguinary rhetoric of the extremists was not for him.

And yet here he was supposing things about the Belgians which would not have been out of place sixty years before at the court of Muhammed Ali! Muhammed’s daughter, taking after her father, had been in the habit of having slave girls who had fallen asleep on duty disembowelled in her bedroom.

It was most unlike him. So unlike him that Owen began to wonder.

Salah-el-Din took Owen to a little square not far from the Pont de Limoun. There was a fountain in the square and a small crowd had gathered in front of it. Among them, Owen could see the railway workers. They stood in a group, huddled together sheepishly, occasionally casting a longing look over their shoulders at a small cafe on the other side of the square, as if they would rather have been there than here and as if they might have been tempted to make a bolt for it had they not been hemmed in.

It was a hot evening and most of the little houses in the square had their front doors open. From the yards at the back came drifting the smell of charcoal and burning cooking fat, and then a very pungent smell of fried onions.

One or two of the households had already finished their evening meal and had come out to sit on their doorsteps, trying to catch a breath of cooler air. They called across to the men sitting on the big stone bench, the mastaba, that ran along the front of the cafe. Other men were sitting on the ground in front of them. Mixed with the smell of charcoal and fat came now a strong smell of coffee.

Darkness fell quickly at this time of year. Already people in the crowd were lighting torches. On the side of the square opposite the cafe the dome of a mosque was beginning to show against the sky.

There was the sound of singing in one of the side streets and then a small procession came into the square carrying cresset torches, long staves with bits of burning wood attached to them, and chanting slogans.

They marched up to the fountain and pushed through the crowd. The men with torches gathered around the base of the fountain. Owen could see now that the water had been turned off. A man began to climb up on to the base.

It was dark now in the square. Only the cafe was lit up. The dome of the mosque was very clear against a deep-blue velvety sky. There was a little group of men standing in front of its doors, the local imam, probably, with some of his helpers.

The men at the fountain held their cressets up to illuminate the speaker on the plinth. He wore a dark suit and a tarboosh. Apart from one or two of the men who had come with him, no one else in the crowd wore a tarboosh. They were all in galabeahs, the long, dress-like costume of the ordinary Cairo working man, and skull caps.

That was how it was, thought Owen. The Nationalist Party drew almost all its strength from office workers and from the professional classes. They hardly touched ordinary working people. There was as big a gulf between them and the ordinary people of Egypt as there was between the ruling Pashas and most educated Egyptians. Egypt was a country divided among itself.

The man on the plinth began to speak. It was the usual Nationalist line. The rich were assailed, foreigners were attacked. But it was a man in a suit who was speaking and the crowd listened for the most part in silence.

Here, though, suddenly, was something different. The speaker began to talk about the railway. Railways were good, he said. It was through railways that a modern Egypt would be built. But why did they have to be built by foreigners? Were there no Egyptians who could build them?

But, pardon him, he had made a mistake. They were built by Egyptians, by people like those he could see before him in the crowd below. It was Egyptian hands that laid the tracks. But was it Egyptian people who got the money? Was it Egyptian mouths that got the bread? No, it was foreign mouths that got the bread. Only it wasn’t bread they wanted, it was cake! With icing on it! The Egyptians did the work but it was the foreigners who benefited.

And it was hard work! His friends down below him could testify to that. It was hard work, back-breaking work. And now they were about to heap more on weary shoulders! Had they not heard about the straw that broke the camel’s back? And this was no straw that they were piling on. No, indeed.

Their hearts went out to their weary brothers. They would not struggle alone. The country was with them. There was action they could take and if they took it, they would find they were not without friends. No, indeed.

But this time the foreigners had overreached themselves. Not content with oppressing their workers, they seemed determined now to offend everyone else. An insult to religion was an insult to all Egyptians. God’s Day was holy; and Egyptians, he said, raising his voice for the benefit of those gathered on the steps in front of the mosque, were determined to keep it holy!

He waited for the cheers, and indeed they came, but not exactly enthusiastically. The little group before the mosque did not join in. If there was a gap between the Nationalists and the ordinary Cairene, there was an even wider gap between the Nationalists and the Church. The Nationalist Party was predominantly secular. They were a modernizing party and modernizing, for many of them, meant sweeping away much of the influence of the Church.

Which the Church knew very well. The imam would have spotted this tactic a mile off. Even so, thought Owen, it might be worth keeping an eye on how successful the tactic was. Ordinary people might be less discriminating than the imam and if the Nationalists could add religious fervour to popular hostility then they could make a lot of trouble.

The orator, as was the way with Arab orators, continued for another hour or two before bringing his final peroration to a close. His friends helped him to climb down. In the light of the cresset torches Owen could see them clearly. As the party prepared to move off, one of the men talking to the speaker turned and Owen saw his face. It was Wahid. Not the Wahid of the railway line, in skull cap and galabeah, and begrimed with sweat, but a Wahid in the sharp, cheap suit and tasselled tarboosh of the smart, young, Nationalist effendi.

‘Satisfied?’ said Salah-el-Din.

Unexpectedly, Owen received a request from Mahmoud to hold the three brothers for a few days longer. He was rather relieved. The brothers had been on his conscience. It was all very well holding them in their own best interests-he was fairly convinced that if they were released Ibrahim’s family would take a pot-shot at them-but it was hard to justify in terms of law. Something must have turned up for Mahmoud to be making this request.

It meant, too, that Mahmoud must still be working on the village end. Owen had feared, from what Mahmoud had said the last time they had met, that he was about to shift his attention entirely to the Syndicate end-if Syndicate end there was.

Cheered by the thought that things were moving, he rang up Mahmoud to say that of course he would continue to hold the brothers if that was what Mahmoud wanted. Mahmoud, caught off guard by the call, tried to remain distant but found it hard when Owen was being so conciliatory.

‘You’re getting somewhere, then?’

‘Yes.’ Mahmoud hesitated. ‘I think so. Do you need grounds for holding?’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

This, from the point of view of keeping his distance, made matters worse for Mahmoud. What made it even more difficult was that Mahmoud himself had doubts about the strict legality of holding the men further. They were being held under powers special to the Mamur Zapt. Mahmoud, on principle, did not believe the Mamur Zapt should have such powers. They were not assigned him in the Legal Code; and for Mahmoud the Code was Bible-or, possibly, Koran.

However, he was rather glad of the powers on this occasion, for he was not at all sure that holding the brothers could be justified by the normal letter of the law.

‘I ought to give you grounds,’ he said determinedly.

‘Fine!’

Mahmoud hesitated.

‘Unfortunately, it is not quite straightforward.’

‘Like to talk to me about it?’

‘That might be a good idea,’ said Mahmoud, relieved. Not all legal considerations, after all, had to be written down.

They met, as usual, on neutral ground, at a cafe halfway between the Ministry of Justice and Owen’s office at the Bab-el-Khalk. It was an Arab cafe and outside it were several little white asses, waiting for their owners. Inside, water-pipes were bubbling. Neither Owen nor Mahmoud, however, were smoking men, Owen from inclination, Mahmoud out of Muslim conviction. Today he felt slightly relieved at his strictness. Any more relaxing of rules would have made him feel very uneasy.

‘Well, what have you found?’ said Owen, sipping his coffee.

‘I need a little more time,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but I think I’ve got it.’

‘Got what?’

‘The connection. You remember,’ he said, ‘that I was looking for a connection with the Syndicate. Well, I think I’ve found it.’

Owen listened with sinking heart. Was Mahmoud still on that tack?

‘I had hoped you had found out something more in the village,’ he said. ‘I mean, if we’re going to justify holding them-’

‘But that’s it,’ said Mahmoud, bending forward earnesdy, ‘that is what I have found. A connection between the brothers and the Syndicate. One of the brothers, Ali, his name is, hangs around at the Helwan racetrack a lot. He’s in with a gang there.’

‘Well, that’s interesting. But what has it got to do with-?’

‘The Syndicate’s building a racetrack out at Heliopolis.’

‘Well?’

‘Gambling’s important to them.’

‘I know that. They’ve applied for a licence to open a saloon at the hotel they’re building there.’

‘They’re opening the racetrack very soon. Even before they’ve finished building.’

‘They need the cash, I think.’

‘I think so, too,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I think they need it badly.’

Owen looked at him.

‘You’re not suggesting they need it badly enough to kill a man, are you?’

‘I’m suggesting that it’s pretty important to them to get the railway line to Heliopolis finished as soon as possible.’

Owen could see how from Mahmoud’s point of view it all fitted together. All the same…!

‘Aren’t you jumping the gun a bit? You haven’t even succeeded in connecting the brothers with the killing yet.’

‘I’m working on that.’

‘You need to do that before you start worrying about other connections.’

Mahmoud pursed his lips obstinately.

‘I need to work on both. It’s not just the killing that has to be explained, but the fact that the body was placed on the line.’

‘You’re still on that?’

‘In my view it is the key.’

‘You don’t think it could all be explained simply as a revenge killing?’

He couldn’t keep the exasperation out of his voice. Mahmoud sensed it and reacted strongly.

‘I think it would be very convenient if it were explained as a revenge killing. For some people.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Such as the Syndicate.’

‘For goodness’ sake!’

Owen fought to keep his irritation down.

‘There are so many gaps! Between the brothers and the killing; between the brothers and the Syndicate. You say he hangs out with a gang; well, between the gang and the Syndicate, too. Gaps, gaps! Everywhere!’

‘You see gaps; I see connections. Why was the body placed on the line?’

‘How the hell do I know?’

‘You’re not being very rational.’

‘Me? Not being very rational? Well, at least I’m not prejudiced!’

‘What is this talk of prejudice?’ said Mahmoud furiously.

‘The only reason why you’re involving the Syndicate at all is because they’re foreign!’

‘You think it is just that I am a Nationalist, is that it?’

‘I think the Nationalist involvement in this needs some explaining.’

‘What exactly do you mean by that?-’

‘Wahid-the railwaymen’s leader-is a Nationalist agitator. Why was he put there?’

‘ “Put there”?’

‘He was planted. To make sure that the opportunity was not missed.’

‘What “opportunity”?’

‘To make things difficult for the government. It’s nothing to do with the Syndicate. It’s everything to do with the government-and with the Nationalists!’

Mahmoud rose from the table.

‘You would think that!’ he spat.