The Girl in the Nile (12 page)

A young woman, Miss Leila Sekhmet, was drowned in the river last week. Apparently, she fell off a boat. That is strange, for the boat was moored for the night and the river was calm. What is even stranger is that the boat was a dahabeeyah under the hire of Prince Narouz. What was a young, unmarried girl doing at night on the Prince’s dahabeeyah, we wonder? And what happened, that a girl should fall overboard? The Parquet are investigating.

“It would be interesting to know how they got it,” he said. “The information is good.”

“So good,” said Garvin, “that—”

“I must have given it them?” Owen smiled. “I might have,” he said, “if I’d thought of it. But even if I did, we’re still left with the same question: what are we going to do about it?”

“It’s put the cat among the pigeons,” said Paul. “It really has. You’re sure you’re nothing to do with it?”

“Cross my heart.”

“I’m all for sharp maneuvers, Gareth, but I like to be on the inside of them.”

“Haven’t I always kept you on the inside of them?”

“So long as it stays like that.”

“It’ll stay like that. Anyway, I don’t go in for sharp maneuvers much myself. I always come to you for them.”

Paul sighed.

“Why do I allow myself to be persuaded by this unscrupulous Welsh Levantine?” he asked.

A suffragi went by carrying two sherry glasses on a silver tray. Paul intercepted him.

“Which for you?” he asked Owen. “Pale or medium?”

“Pale.”

“I feel pale. You can have the medium.”

“Would the effendi prefer sweet?” asked the suffragi.

“No, thanks. The world isn’t very sweet just at the moment.” The Consul-General’s agents, fresh from England, might not have been prepared to agree with him. There was a near-Indian opulence about the proceedings. The light from the heavy gilt chandelier overhead sparkled on the silverware: little ornate Persian boxes of sweets and cigarettes, huge Arabesque trays of silver and bronze, the filigree of dainty caskets, the solider work of massive fruit bowls, the trays of the turbanned, red-sashed suffragis gliding round with drinks.

The reception was being held in the main hall of the Residency. The marble floor was already crowded with guests. Knots of expatriates had gathered around each visitor, eager for news from England. Senior Egyptians from the Ministries talked quietly among themselves. Practiced diplomats from the embassies circulated among the groups.

Normally Paul would have been circulating with the best of them, oiling the wheels. The moment Owen had come in, however, he had waylaid him and taken him off behind the potted palms.

“Well,” he said, “if it’s not you, it’s serious.”

“I’m glad you put it like that,” said Owen. “Garvin put it the other way: if it
was
me, there’d be trouble.”

“Oh, that too,” said Paul, waving a hand dismissively

“But you’re right. It
is
serious. It’s bound to get out now. I’ve stopped it this time but it will come out somewhere else. In one of the illegal papers. The point is, they’ve spotted it. And once that has happened, it’s only a matter of time.”

A group began to form on the other side of the potted palms. A tall Egyptian looked over, saw Paul and waved his hand. Paul waved back. A short, plump man in tails peered round the edge of the plants.

“My God!” he said. “The Mamur Zapt! Plotting, as usual.”

“But not against you this time, Chargé,” said Owen in French. “We stand shoulder to shoulder.”

“It’s my back I’m worried about,” said the Chargé. “Come and see me some time. Come to dinner. Bring Zeinab.”

“I will, tomorrow,” Owen promised.

The Chargé waved a hand and turned back into the group. Paul drew Owen a little further away.

“That’s another problem,” said Owen.

“What?”

“Zeinab.”

“Forget Zeinab. What are we going to do about this mess?”

“I can suppress it for a time. I can garble it when it comes out. I can camouflage it with other things. But in the end it will come out.”

“How long’s the end?”

“Two weeks, perhaps three. Two days if we’re unlucky.”

“The Agreement will take at least another month.”

“Why don’t we just disown Narouz? We and the Khedive?”

“It
is
Narouz, is it?”

“Well,” Owen admitted, “we can’t be completely certain.”

“We can hardly disown him publicly, then.”

“I wasn’t thinking of going as far as that. I was just thinking that if the case were unblocked—”

“Gareth,” said Paul, “are you absolutely certain that you didn’t plant the story yourself?”

“Absolutely certain. I would have remembered a thing like that.”

“It’s just that it’s amazingly convenient.”

“It seems so, I know. But actually,” said Owen, “I find it rather worrying. You see, up to now we’ve been able to keep it fairly tight. But this means it may be moving out of our control. Once people get hold of a thing like this they can start using it.”

“So?”

“It needs to be wrapped up quickly. We want to get it out of the way before it starts escalating. Let Mahmoud get on with it. If it is Narouz, and the Khedive is bothered, we can tell Narouz to get out of the country quick. If it’s not, we can finish it off without too many questions being asked. But we’ve got to move fast.”

“This haste,” said Paul, “it’s not anything to do with Zeinab, is it?”

“Certainly not,” said Owen.

Zeinab kissed him.

“I knew you would find a way,” she said.

Owen kissed her back: then said, “Actually, it’s not me.”

Zeinab pushed him away. “What do you mean: it’s not you?”

Owen reluctantly let her go.

“It’s someone else. Nothing to do with me.”

“I don’t understand,” said Zeinab.

“Someone else leaked it. Or else found it out. They gave it to
Al-Liwa
.”

“It’s not in
Al-Liwa
. I was reading it this morning.”

“I know. I cut it out.”

“You cut it out? Then…?”

“I just used it. Privately.”

Zeinab couldn’t make it out. However, she was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Well,” she said, “at least that’s something.”

“The effect is the same. The case is unblocked. Mahmoud can get on with it. So why don’t we—”

“Not so fast,” said Zeinab. “You haven’t done anything yet.”

“I’ve unblocked the case, haven’t I?”

“I don’t think that counts.”

“Oh, come on—”

“No. That’s not enough. I want Leila avenged.”

“Avenged! Look, at the most all I could do was bring whoever did it to trial.”

“As long as they die,” said Zeinab, “I don’t mind about the means.”

“I can’t do that!”

“If you can’t,” said Zeinab, “I won’t.”

And wouldn’t be moved. Owen went off in a huff and read the papers. Zeinab curled up on a divan, deliberately provocatively, thought Owen, and ate Turkish Delight.

After a while Owen said: “There’s something you could do to help.”

“I might be prepared to do that,” conceded Zeinab, dusting the powder from her fingers. “What did you have in mind?”

A call came from Prince Narouz.

“He’s got the message quick,” said Owen.

“He wants you to see him,” said Nikos.

The Prince was waiting for him on the terrace of the Hotel Continental, sitting by himself and looking bored. His eyes lit up when he saw Owen.

“My dear fellow!” He waved him up. “A drink? Whisky, perhaps?”

He was having one himself. It was another of those things, like the green car, which made him a less than perfect Moslem. It would also, Owen thought, make him a less than perfect candidate for Khedive when a vacancy arose. Perhaps the British should back off him.

He sat down at the table and looked over the balustrade at the Street of the Camel below. It was the Regent Street of Cairo; except that in Regent Street you would not see a man walking by with a stuffed crocodile on his head or a pig being carried by in a cage.

What you would see, of course, were tourists and there were plenty of these. They came down the steps of the hotel with their Kodaks—at the Continental there was always a large number of Americans—and were immediately fallen upon by dragomans, donkey-boys and street traders of all kinds, all offering instant picturesqueness without the trouble of having to go too far in the heat to find it.

“Have you noticed,” said the Prince, “that their business has changed? They used to sell beads and hippopotamus-hide whips and boa constrictors. Now they sell themselves to be photographed. That man, for instance”—he pointed to the one with the stuffed crocodile on his head—“he does not expect to actually sell the damned thing. Who would want to buy a stuffed crocodile? But a photograph, ah, well, that’s a different thing. The tourist can carry it home much more conveniently; and the crocodile remains to be used another day.” The Prince sipped his whisky.

“From the point of view of trade it is an improvement. But to my mind it’s got the thing the wrong way round. The really exotic thing is the camera. And for that”—he looked around with distaste—“you don’t need to come to Egypt.”

“There are, after all, other places.”

“True; and I wish I were in them.”

“Ah well, you may be able to escape soon,” said Owen, saying the thing he thought he was being invited to say.

“You think so? Well, I hope you are right. This family business goes on and on.”

The waiter brought Owen a whisky packed with ice, and a little pewter jug of water, also iced. Even in the best hotels they tended to view whisky as a kind of
pastis
and served it for drinking in the French way.

“And how, my dear fellow, are you getting on with your case?” asked the Prince.

“Oh,” said Owen, “it moves, like all these things, in fits and starts. At the moment, I would say, it was starting again.”

“Oh, good,” said the Prince. He looked, however, troubled.

“Yes,” said Owen, “I think it will soon be picking up momentum.”

“Excellent,” said the Prince, fidgeting with his glass. “We’ll soon be getting somewhere.”

The Prince swirled the ice in the bottom of his glass and inspected it. He was about to speak and then thought better of it.

Owen smiled encouragingly and waited.

“I would like to help,” said the Prince suddenly. “I have been thinking over your suggestion the other day. Perhaps I was too hasty in rejecting it.”

“About the money?”

“Yes. I said then that it was a matter for the Government. But then, looking at it another way, I am, loosely speaking, the Government. In the old days, in a case like this, you would have appealed directly to the Khedive, not gone through layers of stupid bureaucracy. You were absolutely right to come direct to me. Right and proper.”

“Ye—es?”

This was not quite what Owen had expected.

“And it was wrong of me to reject it out of hand. I was not being true,” said the Prince, looking at him earnestly, “to my responsibilities.”

“No?” said Owen, a little taken aback.

“No. You see, I was relieved. I thought it might all be going to go away without me having to do anything. That it might all blow over without any unpleasantness—”

“Unpleasantness?”

“Publicity.”

“Oh yes. Of course.”

“A woman dead.” The Prince waved a hand. “Sad. But what’s a woman dead in Egypt?”

“Quite.”

“So,” said the Prince, “I thought I would let it all blow over.”

“Mm.” Owen sounded disapproving.

“You’re right. It wouldn’t do. I couldn’t do it. Not when it came to it. Well, it’s not too late to put things right.”

“Put things right?”

“You can have the money, my dear fellow. Count on me.”

Owen was dumbfounded. What was this? He had been half expecting a confession. Not an offer of help!

Wait a minute: was this quite what it seemed? Was it a genuine offer? Or did the Prince expect something in return?

“I am most grateful, Your Highness,” he said cautiously. “Indeed, I am overwhelmed. But, um, the money will go to redeeming the body, you know.”

“Of course,” said the Prince, surprised. “What else? Oh, I see. Well, no. Not this time.”

“In that case I can only express my gratitude. I will get in touch with Mr. el Zaki immediately.”

The Prince regarded him thoughtfully.

“I know what you think,” he said suddenly. “You think I did it. Killed the girl. Well, I didn’t. Indeed not.”

“I’m not sure that we need his money,” said Mahmoud.

“Well, ordinarily I wouldn’t pay that sort of price—”

“I think we can do without it.”

Mahmoud, Owen knew, did not like paying money for information. It smacked too much of the Old Egypt of bribes and favors which he wanted to sweep away. Trained in the French school of severe deductive logic, he preferred to rely on unassisted reason. Assemble your knowledge and analyze it: that was the way forward. Not haphazard reliance on rumor and gossip.

He was different from Owen. Owen purchased information every day. He had his agents out in the bazaars and souks and offered a steady price for good information. He had inherited when he became Mamur Zapt a vast network of spies, informers and paid agents which dated back to his Ottoman predecessors and which the British saw no reason to disturb.

It was the difference between a detective and an Intelligence Officer. Even in India, where Owen had served before he came to Egypt, and where in his latter years he had been seconded from his regiment to an Intelligence post on the Frontier, it had been normal practice to purchase information. He found Mahmoud curiously puritanical.

“The fact is,” said Mahmoud, “I don’t think we need it.”

“How else are we going to find the body now that those buggers have pinched it?” demanded Owen.

Mahmoud frowned. Owen thought for a moment that he was taking exception to the casual obscenity, but it was not that. He was bothered by “pinch.” Mahmoud’s knowledge of English, as of French, was superb but army colloquial occasionally threw him.

“Stolen,” Owen amended.

“Ah yes, ‘pinch,’ ” murmured Mahmoud, filing the word away for future reference. “Well,” he said, “I think I have found out who did—pinch?—it.”

“You’ve found the body?” said Owen incredulously.

“No, not yet,” Mahmoud admitted. “But I have, I think, found the men. And that is where, my friend”—he placed his arm affectionately round Owen in the Arab way—“I need your help. For I do not think they will talk to me, not without encouragement. The Parquet, you see, is something new to them and the police they view with derision.”