The Fig Tree Murder. Michael Pearce

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      ‘Oh, about eight years.’

      ‘I don’t think we’d better move the Tree,’ said Varages.

      ‘I would strongly advise against it.’

      ‘The French wouldn’t like it.’

      ‘They wouldn’t, indeed. They might even, I go so far as to suggest, see fit to treat it as a casus belli.’

      ‘Moving the Tree? A cause of war?’

      ‘It cannot be ruled out. As Captain Owen will know better than anybody, the French have always resented their exclusion from Egypt by the British. They might see this as an opportunity to reassert their influence.’

      ‘I don’t care who runs Egypt,’ said Varages, ‘just so long as I can get on with my job. Which happens to be building a railway. What are we going to do about this Tree?’

      ‘The Tree, actually, is beside the point,’ said Owen desperately.

      ‘It certainly is,’ said Mahmoud.

      At the last moment the Syndicate had made difficulties. It had no objection in principle to meeting a representative of the Parquet and answering any questions he might care to put, but it failed to see any reason, beyond the purely adventitious one of where the body was found, why it should be expected to answer questions bearing on the circumstances of the man’s death.

      True, the man had been part of its workforce. But the death had occurred off the company’s premises and out of company time, while, in fact, the man had been at home and in his native village. The death was, surely, a private or domestic matter, on which the company could hardly be expected to be able to throw any light.

      Nor was it reasonable for the Syndicate to be asked to make working time available for Mahmoud to question the workmen. If the death had resulted from an accident at work that would have been quite another matter. The Syndicate would have been glad to comply. But it had already lost a lot of valuable work time as a result of the accident of the body having been found where it had been and it was loath to lose any more.

      Besides, if the death arose, as it appeared it did, out of private or domestic circumstances, what was the point of questioning the man’s working colleagues about it? What light could they be expected to throw on the incident?

      In vain had Mahmoud put forward reasons. The Syndicate’s lawyers had merely raised further objections.

      At last he had looked at Owen despairingly.

      ‘I think that the reason why the Parquet has asked for this meeting,’ said Owen, ‘is that it is in the Syndicate’s interests.’

      ‘How so?’ asked the lawyers.

      ‘Because while the circumstances of the man’s death remain undetermined, all sorts of stories are getting around. He is concerned that some of these could have an effect on your workforce.’

      It was then that the foreman had mentioned the Tree and they had begun on their detour.

      ‘The Tree,’ said Owen, perspiring and making one last valiant attempt, ‘is not in the way. You do not have to move it. In itself it is nothing. It is the way it might be used that is important.’

      ‘To create mischief, you mean?’ said the foreman.

      ‘We certainly wouldn’t want that,’ said Varages, frowning.

      He glanced at the lawyers.

      ‘What do we have to lose by letting him ask questions?’

      ‘I think we should maintain our position,’ one of them said. ‘Strictly speaking, it is nothing to do with us. There is nothing that points to a connection between the man’s death and the railway.’

      ‘Oh, yes, there is,’ said Mahmoud. ‘We have found sand in the man’s clothes and superficial lesions consistent with the body having been dragged. We do not think he was killed at the place where he was found. He was killed somewhere else and dragged there. And the question is why? The answer, surely, is to make precisely the connection between the killing and the railway that you deny exists.’

      ‘The money is good,’ conceded the labourers.

      ‘But the work is hard.’

      ‘Heavy, is it?’ said Mahmoud sympathetically.

      ‘It’s more that they keep you going.’

      ‘They keep you going in the fields,’ said one of the men.

      ‘Yes. But it’s at a sensible pace. On this job they make you go faster than you’d like.’

      ‘That’s because they want to get it finished. The Khedive, they say, has fixed the day he wants to travel on it.’

      ‘Why can’t he wait a bit?’

      ‘He’s got some big do on, I expect.’

      ‘Well, if he wants to travel to the city, why can’t he go by coach and horses, the way he’s always done?’

      ‘He’s in a hurry, I suppose.’

      ‘All he needs to do is set out earlier. Then he’d get there at the same time.’

      ‘Ah, but that’s not it. Speed’s the thing today.’

      ‘Well, I don’t see why we need it.’

      ‘You’re a man of the past, Abdul. Egypt’s bursting into the future. Or so they say.’

      ‘Well, I wish they’d burst without me. There’s no point in working this hard. It’s worse than when they had the curbash.’

      The curbash was the heavy whip the Pashas had used to force labour. One of the first acts of the British when they arrived had been to abolish it.

      ‘You wouldn’t want the curbash back, would you?’

      ‘I don’t reckon it’d make much difference.’

      ‘I reckon you’d feel the difference!’

      ‘Curbash, money, it’s all the same,’ remarked another of the labourers. ‘It’s all a whip held over the head of the poor.’

      Mahmoud had been allowed to address them during their break. This was another bone of contention. It was usual in Egypt to work till early in the afternoon and then, if you were an office worker or a labourer, stop for the day. Shopkeepers would work again in the evening when it became cooler. The Syndicate, however, had insisted that the workforce on the railway work through till late afternoon, stopping for a brief break at noon when the sun was at its hottest.

      The men were sitting in the shade now, eating their bread and onions.

      ‘Ibrahim found the work hard, so they say,’ said Owen.

      The leader of the workmen looked at him.

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