The Fig Tree Murder. Michael Pearce

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СКАЧАТЬ there is a way of wisdom,’ said the villager hastily, ‘why not hear it?’

      Owen guessed that he was the village omda, or headman, the man who was likely to feel the law most.

      The leader of the workmen shrugged.

      ‘Why not?’ he said.

      The sheikh hesitated.

      ‘No one here wishes to offend the Law of God,’ said Owen, ‘nor that of man, either. For no man wishes to see injustice. And it may be that there is injustice here. For I agree with my friend’ – he motioned towards the leader of the workmen – ‘that there is much here that needs explaining. On the other hand,’ he continued hastily, as the sheikh opened his mouth, ‘there are requirements of decency which must be observed.’

      ‘True,’ said the sheikh.

      ‘The women have their duties.’

      ‘Quite right!’ said the omda, thinking he saw the way that things were going.

      ‘But then,’ said Owen, ‘the men have their requirements too.’

      ‘They do?’

      ‘Yes. The men of the family, and those who have worked with him, will want to know that justice has been done.’

      ‘That’s right!’ asserted the leader of the workmen.

      ‘But—’ began the sheikh.

      ‘In the village, too,’ continued Owen quickly, addressing the crowd and bypassing the sheikh, ‘there will be men who say: “Let us proceed with circumspection, for there are dark and weighty things here.”’

      ‘Yes. No. You think?’ said the omda, spinning.

      ‘There speaks the man of experience!’ said Owen warmly. ‘And there will be others among you, leaders in the village, experienced, wise, who will think as he does!’

      ‘So?’ said the sheikh.

      ‘So?’ said the leader of the workmen.

      In the nick of time it came to Owen.

      ‘Such wisdom should not lightly be set aside!’ he said sternly.

      ‘Well, no, but—’

      ‘Choose three men from among you.’ That should take some time. ‘Let them sit with me and with the omda’ – best to put him on the spot – ‘and with the man of God’ – that should take care of him – ‘and then let us take counsel in front of you all.’

      ‘But that will take—’ began the sheikh.

      ‘Effendi, the body—’ said the omda worriedly.

      ‘Rightly spoken! There is a need for haste. And therefore let the choosing of the men begin.’

      He walked purposefully aside. The members of the crowd looked at each other hesitantly.

      And then began choosing.

      Phew! thought Owen.

      Across the fields wove a column of women in black, ululating as they came.

      ‘So,’ said the Consul-General’s ADC, as they sat sipping their drinks on the verandah of the Sporting Club, ‘you referred it to committee?’

      ‘Instinct,’ said Owen. ‘My years of experience with the Egyptian bureaucracy have taught me that’s what you do with a crisis. Fortunately, the Parquet arrived soon afterwards and I was able to hand it all over to them.’

      ‘A pity,’ said Paul, reflecting, ‘since you were already involved.’

      ‘Ah, but that was by accident. It’s really nothing to do with me at all. Not the sort of thing I handle.’

      He stopped.

      ‘Already?’ he said.

      ‘Actually,’ said Paul, ‘that was what I wanted to talk to you about.’

      Salah-el-Din, the mamur of the new city, was waiting for him at the gate of one of the few houses that had been completed. It was a surprising house for an inspector of police, large, white-stuccoed and Indo-European in style. But the Syndicate had insisted on the house being in keeping with the character of the others in the development.

      The new city was targeted at the very wealthy, who, apart from benefiting from the purity of the air, would also benefit from close proximity to the ruler of Egypt, the Khedive, who had a palace at Kubba.

      The city was not built yet and it was pushing things to appoint a mamur this early, but the Syndicate behind the development had requested it in the interests of community relations, which was very splendid, and had offered to pay the mamur’s salary for the first two years, which was even more splendid.

      They had gone so far as to put forward Salah-el-Din’s name. Garvin, the Commandant of the Cairo Police Force, was normally against that sort of thing, but Salah was a bright young chap and due for promotion and they would need someone special for the job anyway. The Khedive could be relied on to make difficulties; and the Syndicate’s wealthy clientele would certainly feel that they merited especially sophisticated policing.

      Salah-el-Din, it was suggested, was just the man for the job. Unusually for an Egyptian, he had trained abroad, not, it was true, as a policeman but as some sort of lawyer (he had come unstuck in his examinations, which was why he had descended to become a policeman) and spoke French well enough to be able to liaise with the Syndicate (which was Belgian).

      Owen knew very little about him beyond the fact that he played tennis. Rather well, in fact, as Owen had discovered a few weeks ago when he had played against him during a tennis party got up by the Consul-General.

      ‘Where did you find him?’ he had complained afterwards to Paul.

      ‘His name was suggested by the Baron.’

      ‘Baron?’

      ‘The one we’re sucking up to this afternoon, silly!’

      Consulate tennis parties were rarely without political purposes. The Baron was the wealthy Belgian behind the Heliopolis Syndicate. Wealthy financiers who took an interest in Egypt were much to be encouraged.

      A week or two later Owen had been invited to make up a doubles at the Sporting Club. The invitation had come from Raoul, a Belgian he had met at the tennis party and who was something to do with the Syndicate, and the other two were Paul and Salah-el-Din. It was then that Salah had issued his own invitation to Owen.

      ‘Come over,’ he had said, ‘and you can see how it’s all developing. The tennis courts should be ready by next week – they’re building a big new Sporting Park. Why don’t you come and christen them?’

      Why not, indeed? And Owen had been on his way the day before when he had been so annoyingly diverted.

      He СКАЧАТЬ